Artemis was well known as a Goddess of forests, hills, the wild, maidens, birth and healing, but some are more intimate with her cruel side. It takes on two forms in the ferocious, merciless thrill of the hunt and in her dark side; a much more malicious part of her obscured in a long robe and a veiled visage. When this mood struck her, she was one of the cruelest gods, famous, among many other jealously brutal acts, for the murder of the seven daughters of Niobe, a mere mortal, who angered Leto, the mother of Artemis and Apollo, by mocking her for having only two children.
Artemis went after Niobe's maiden daughters with poison arrows in that relentless, overreacting psychotic way only gods seem capable of. In some versions, Artemis and Apollo spared one son and one daughter but the mortal father Amphion still killed himself in his grief. As Niobe and her offspring wept over their fate, Artemis finished this famously grim tragedy by turning the remaining mortals to stone for some reason.
She's always been a big favorite of mine as one of the original femme fatales, but she was very much prone to fits of rage. I suppose that's true to the reality of the wilderness; life has equal parts light and darkness.
