Artemis is a complex goddess. Historically there appears to have been several deities named Artemis, including the one worshipped by the Amazons and who became linked to the many breasted Diana venerated in Ephesus. This version of the goddess was probably distinctly different from the Greek Artemis, the virgin huntress who had someone torn to peices simply because he spotted her bathing one day. I have decided that, for the purposes of the Chronology, they are the same goddess, just that the Amazons have seen a slightly different side of her to the rest of Greece.
Artemis is the goddess of the waxing moon, patron of hunting, keeper of the wild forest and notoriously chaste. Traditionally she is the daughter of Leto, by Zeus, and the twin sister of Apollo (so why he was calling Hera ‘Mom’ when he ran into Hercules, only he knows ...) and one of her attributes is as the goddess of childbirth because she was supposed to have been born first and then helped her brother from the womb.
She had a retinue of 50 nymphs and supposedly savagely punished any who strayed from the path of virtue. Even Callisto (that’s the mythical Callisto, not Xena’s arch enemy) who was unwittingly seduced by Zeus. She got turned into a bear and became the constellation of the Great Bear. Her son, the little bear, shares the sky beside her.
The only glimpse we have had (so far) of Artemis in HTLJ was in the episode The Apple, in which she described herself (somewhat unjustifiably) as the family ‘jock’. She offered Iolaus an interesting bribe, and although he ended up choosing Aphrodite on that occasion, in the Chonicles it turns out to be Artemis who finally gets to win the judge’s heart.
Literally.
The goddess that appears in Hero’s Price is also a complex character. She is the virgin huntress who requies her sworn Amazon Protectors to take a vow of chastity, yet she deliberately hunts -and catches - the golden haired hunter who had once chosen Aphrodite over her. Maybe she’d intended to boast about it, next time she saw the goddess of love. Maybe she really did just mean it as a joke. Whatever the reason she catches more than she bargained for - but, unlike Aphrodite, she take full responsibility for the consequences of her actions. Artemis takes care of her own, she tells her brother, and means it.
Ursus is partially my invention. The son of the Great Bear was supposedly Arcas, from whom all the kings of Arcadia were descended, but I felt it would be fun if he were a real bear, albeit a supernatural one. This is one big bear - probably a Grizzly, even if they weren’t known to roam Ancient Greece. This is myth, and anything is possible ...
The three nymphs represent that 50 plus retinue the mythology mentions - and I think of them of being a mix between a bunch of High School cheerleaders and the Spice Girls. Cute as anything and as in your face as they want!
The gods in HTLJ seem to have favourite places in Greece that they like to haunt - Hephaestus his mountain, Ares his temples, Aphrodite the sea shore, Cupid Heph’s old forge - and Artemis is no exception. The Lodge is probably one of a few places where the Huntress likes to hang out and hunt. The amazons here are not the same tribe as Ephiny’s, although they would probably know about her and her people. They are part of a tribe based in the Macarean woods, and we shall see them again ....
Pheneus is a city listed in Lempriere’ Classical Dictionary (a useful reference book and a fascinating read ) under:
PHENEUS, a town with a lake of the same name in Arcadia, the waters of which were very unwholsome in the night, and wholesome in the day time.
The entry above it reads:
PHENEUM, a town of Arcadia, near a small lake, which was said to emit very dangerous vapours in the night. The inhabitants called Pheneatae, pretended that Hercules had for some time resided in the house of Laonome the mother of Amphityron. Minerva Tritonia had a temple there, also Diana, and Neptune Hippeus a statue, which had been raised by Ulysses, who found there his horses, which he had searched for all over Peloponnesus. The chief diety of the place, however, was Mercury, in whose honour games called Hermea were regularly celebrated. The tomb of Myrtillus, the son of Mercury, was shown there behind his temple, and it was said that the herb moly, a powerful antidote to poison, grew there in great abundance.
It looked to me as if the two places were one and the same. The Hercules reference was too good to miss - although it was unlikely that he would visit his grandmother while he was there. (Herc’s family having been systematically wiped out during the course of the series, with the currrent exception of Iphicles and his (apparently) surviving child). They had a temple to Diana (Artemis) and they held regular games. I don’t know if they were judged by priests of Hermes. It just seemed a logical assumption. Nor do I know what was offered as a prize. (Although I’m willing to bet it wasn’t a crystal arrow ...)
The noxious fumes gave Iolaus a perfect excuse to be out of town at night - as well as giving Hercules a reason to hurry to the Lodge without stopping to look at the docks too closely.
So I placed Pheneus in Northern Arcadia, promoted it to city status, gave it a King, a temple to Hermes and camped a troop of Amazons on its doorstep.
I guess the place missed most of Xena’s attempt to conquor the province, although she might not have thought it worth taking and simply rode straight by. It’s possible the ongoing local conflict was fuelled by her incursions and - should she ever wander in that direction - she’ll probably recognise the warlords involved in the dispute. Arcas’s solution to the problem - paying more to mercenaries than either warlord can afford - is sneaky and prevents major bloodshed.
Arcas (as I said above) was supposedly the first King of Arcadia. According to myth he married a Nymph who gave him three sons - Azan, Aphidas and Elatus. I may have demoted him a little since here he only rules a single city, but the tale of the Nymph who was lured away from Artemis’s service seemed to fit the setting. Her price was mortality of course - and she died just after the birth of her youngest son. Its probable that Arcas knew exactly who the Protector at the Lodge was, or - if not - had some kind of suspicion at least.
According to my reference books there was a town in Laconia who once appeased Artemis by offering human sacrifice. This was later replaced by the ritual flagelletion of youths in front of her statue. Laconia is the province in which Sparta is the main city - two facts which collided to produce the Spartan scourge and its somewhat blasphemous use in the story. I’ve adapated this somewhat blood thirsty history to add an extra layer to the Chronicles; it’s Iolaus’ recollection of the tale of the child flogged to death that spurs his own gift of sacrifice - a ‘price’ that is far higher than any Artemis might have asked. Especially since she was the one breaking her own rules! Faithful, the smallest Hound, is actually the child who paid the original price, although he could, and did, die under the lash. He’s the one that gives the Huntress the final count. (Which was six more than it took to kill him, by the way. He was impressed ...)
Karvo’s transformation is very much in keeping, both with the Artemis myth and with the series itself. The power of her bow changed Hercules into a pig (and back again), so turning an ugly villan into an even uglier warthog would have been an easy thing to do. Setting the Hounds on him afterwards might be thought cruel, but he undoubtedly deserved his fate. Legend states that Artemis turned the hunter Aceaton into a stag and set his own hounds onto him just because he looked at her when she was bathing. Considering what Karvo had done - not to mention what he was about to do when she interrupted him - well, personally, I think he got off lightly.
I’m not so sure about what happened to the rest of his band - but there might well be a few extra fish in that lake now ...
And then there’s the staff of Chronos.
Which is entirely my invention. It was inspired by speculation about the nature of the Chronos stone - the one that Autolycus stole and Hercules used to change Serena’s history. The same one that turned up in Xena’s possession in the alternative time line and which Iolaus used to go back and rescue Alcmene (on the second attempt. He’s persistant, our Hero ...) On both occasions the stone was destroyed at the end of the relevant episode. Which seemed a little unlikely to me. An artifact with that much power might be shattered by a Goddess (thank you, Callisto) but hardly by a cartwheel! I figured that something like that had to be unique, and the one that Autolycus lost was actually a copy created by the shifting timelines. (Something along the lines of - in the original history he stole it, which meant he had it to go back in time. But that duplicated the peice, creating a copy which couldn’t exist at the same time as the original. Then he stole it again, so it wasn’t there for him to steal in the first place - and this created a paradox which was resolved when the users of the stone returned to their proper time. Follow me? No, I don’t quite either, but it works if you don’t look at the argument too hard!) When Iolaus duplicated the stone yet again (by bringing it back to a timeline where Xena hadn’t looted it) the copy was destroyed by Callisto. So the original’s still out there. Somewhere. I think Ares has it. And now he’s looking for the rest of the staff ...
I’ve taken a few liberties with the Chronos myth (just like in the series really ...). Chronos (or Cronus, depending which scholarly book you read) was the son of Uranus and Gaia, brother to the Titans and the father of Zeus. Which makes him Hercules’ grandfather. To his power as God of Time, I have added the power of Chaos, making him a very powerful figure indeed; he was overthrown by Zeus (like father like son) and - according to HTLJ - his corpse was thrown into the Abyss. (Hera tried to toss Hercules down the same pit - only he threw her down it instead. As it’s pretty hard to kill a god, I figure she’s busy trying to climb back out, only it’s going to take her a loooong time ... ). Since all the Gods seem to have some kind of artifact associated with them - Zeus his thunderbolts, Ares his sword, Artemis her bow - it seemed logical that the Lord of Time and Chaos would have had something pretty spectacular to contain his power. The staff can be thought of as the key to Time and all creation - a tempting prize for any meglomaniac. After Chronos was killed and the staff shattered the gods found they could no longer control time with any confidence - even Zeus is reluctant to tamper with it, as he revealed in ‘Hercules and the Amazon Women’. On that occasion he risked it, restoring a number of lives and changing history in the process. When Hercules tried the same trick (using a peice of the staff to help him) he saved Serena, but changed his own life dramatically. Callisto tried to change the past, but failed (thanks to Iolaus, some reluctant help from the god of War and that same peice of the staff). Time is a tricky toy to master, as Ares well knows. But the staff means power and he desires that more than anything.
Hence the story. And the reason why Iolaus realised that there was something special about the arrow - and why Hercules realised that Ares shouldn’t get it. Or the Heart stone either.
The events of ‘Hero’s Price’ are the foundation for the whole Chronicles, just as the staff of Chronos is the foundation for the whole of Space and Time.
I don’t know what power the arrow holds, although we might find out later in the season. The Heart stone will certainly turn up again, its ability to ‘lock’ and ‘unlock’ time proving to be very useful on a number of occasions. And there will be other pieces that come to light, although I don’t intend putting one into every episode.
(I should point out that they will undoubtably react in Autolycus’s presence as well - he’s used the stone too, remember?)
By the way, we have met all the Hounds in this episode, although only one actually appears in human form ...
