#condylea

“In Greece the great goddess Artemis herself appears to have been annually hanged in effigy in her sacred grove of Condylea among the Arcadian hills, and there accordingly she went by the name of the Hanged One. Indeed a trace of a similar rite may perhaps be detected even at Ephesus, the most famous of her sanctuaries, in the legend of a woman who hanged herself and was thereupon dressed by the compassionate goddess in her own divine garb and called by the name of Hecate. Similarly, at Melite in Phthia, a story was told of a girl named Aspalis who hanged herself, but who appears to have been merely a form of Artemis. For after her death her body could not be found, but an image of her was discovered standing beside the image of Artemis, and the people bestowed on it the title of Hecaerge or Far-shooter, one of the regular epithets of the goddess. Every year the virgins sacrificed a young goat to the image by hanging it, because Astypalis was said to have hanged herself. The sacrifice may have been a substitute for hanging an image or a human representative of Artemis….”

—J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. V, 1914, p. 291-292)

The head of Artemis Aspalis, carved in marble (now found in the Archeological Museum of Lamia, Greece).