Britomartis

A hunter of Crete

Britomartis is a goddess of Crete. She spends her life hunting with the goddess Artemis and refuses to marry. Her story comes in two main versions, and ancient writers argued openly over which one was right. They agree that she was born on Crete.

Diodorus Siculus, author of the Library of History, makes her a daughter of the god Zeus and of Carme, born at Caeno in Crete. He gives her an invention: the nets used in hunting. In his account, the Greek word for nets, dictya, explains her title, or second name, Dictynna. That name comes from a skill, not from danger.

Britomartis belongs beside Artemis because both choose the hunt and a life without marriage. Diodorus notes that some people treated Dictynna as Artemis herself.

The leap into the nets

Pausanias, who wrote a Description of Greece, tells the other story. Minos, a king of Crete, desires Britomartis and chases her as she runs. To escape him, she throws herself into fishermen’s nets, and Artemis makes her a goddess. It is a desperate act. The sea and the net give her a chance to get away from a king who will not stop.

In this version, the name Dictynna comes from the fishermen’s nets she leapt into. Diodorus knew this story and called it false. He thought sexual pursuit unworthy of a daughter of Zeus. He also thought it did not fit the reputation of Minos as a just ruler.

Why Diodorus defends Minos

His objection is about morals, not about places. He gives no evidence that older poetry left out the pursuit. He argues that the conduct would offend the gods and would not fit the king’s known justice. By protecting the good name of Minos, he turns Britomartis from a woman escaping force into a goddess who invents tools for the hunt.

The two accounts cannot be joined by saying she invented the net and later fell into one. Each is built to explain the name Dictynna in a different way. Diodorus openly denies the version that Pausanias accepts.

Aphaea on Aegina

In Pausanias, her title on Crete is Dictynna, and on the island of Aegina she is worshipped as Aphaea. The people of Aegina believed the goddess still appeared on their island. Pausanias reports that the poet Pindar composed an ode, a song of praise, in her honour there.

In his account, the new name does not mean a new goddess. Britomartis flees on Crete and then becomes a divine presence on Aegina under a local name. Artemis grants the change. The two stay close, and Britomartis gains a sanctuary, a holy place of worship, of her own.

The ancient evidence does not draw a clean line between the two goddesses. Diodorus says some people treated Dictynna as Artemis. Pausanias treats Britomartis as the companion of Artemis and as a goddess in her own right. Local worship could keep apart two figures whom the written family trees left uncertain.

Where the leap happened

Strabo, author of the Geography, accepts the pursuit but disputes where it happened. He names the poet Callimachus as the one who placed the leap at Dicte in eastern Crete. But the sanctuary of Dictynna stood far away on Mount Tityrus, in the land of Cydonia. So Strabo argues that the setting Callimachus gives cannot explain where she was worshipped.

Cydonia stood on the site of modern Chania in western Crete. Strabo insists on the exact word: the temple was Dictynnaean, not Dictaean. The two similar names had let the story drift across the island, and Strabo uses geography to correct it.

No surviving account settles every part. Diodorus keeps the nets and removes Minos. Pausanias keeps the pursuit and brings Britomartis to Aegina. Strabo keeps the pursuit but moves its Cretan centre west. The sanctuary on Mount Tityrus fixes Dictynna to Cydonia. The reason for her name stays open between an invention and an escape.