Artemis

Goddess of the hunt, of wild country and of young things, and twin of Apollo. Homer gives her arrows that bring sudden death to women as her brother's do to men.

Her Spartan sanctuary stood on the bank of the Eurotas. Pausanias records the wooden image kept there, said to have come from the land of the Tauri, and the ritual at the altar that replaced human sacrifice: boys flogged while the priestess held the image, which grew heavy in her hands if any blow was pulled.

Pausanias says he was told the image itself judged the flogging. He reports the explanation given to him without endorsing it.