InGreek mythology,Titanis (Ancient Greek:Τιτανίς,romanized: Titanis,lit. 'she-Titan') is an obscure figure who is connected toArtemis, the goddess of the hunt. Her existence and myth is only attested inEuripides, an Athenian playwright of the fifth century BC. Titanis' story seems to be an amalgamation of the myths ofCallisto andTaygete, two virgins connected to Artemis.

The only thing known about her family is a father namedMerops.^[1] That Merops might have been identical with Merops the king ofKos, an island in the southeasternAegean Sea.^[2]

Titanis' tale is a very brief and obscure one, surviving in just one line in Euripides' playHelen. According to Euripides, the beautiful Titanis was changed byArtemis into a golden-antlered deer and expelled from her group on account of her beauty.^[1][2]

The brief passage containing Titanis' myth is very ambiguous due to its short length, as it is not entirely clear what Euripides meant when he wrote that Artemis kicked her out 'on account of her beauty'; it could be that Titanis bragged about being more beautiful than the goddess, or that her beauty attracted the attention ofZeus, or that Artemis got jealous of her.^[3]

The story seems like an echo of the myth of the Arcadian princessCallisto, whom Artemis punished for being seduced or raped by Zeus, and might be a deliberate distortion or imitation of that story on Euripides' part.^[4] The similarity to another myth, that of Artemis turning the nymphTaygete into a doe in order to help her escape from the advances of Zeus, has also been noted.^[3]Pindar, one of the earliest sources of Taygete's myth, wrote that shededicated a deer to Artemis, and Euripides' Titanis might be a twist on that story.^[4]

Titanis's own nature is questionable, as Euripides names her father as Merops, but given that her name translates to "femaleTitan", he could be designating her as a Titaness without naming her.^[3] In theOrphic Hymns, 'Titanis' (there spelled asΤιτηνίς,Titēnís) appears as an epithet of Artemis herself, while the masculine version, 'Titan', is also an epithet ofApollo.^[5][6]

Punitive transformations in Greek mythology:

• Antigone
• Themisto
• Gerana
• Rhodope

• Athanassakis, Apostolos N.; Wolkow, Benjamin M. (July 31, 2013).The Orphic Hymns. Baltimore, Maryland:Johns Hopkins University Press.ISBN 978-1-4214-0881-1.
• Euripides (1938).The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Vol. 11: Helen. Translated by E. P. Coleridge. New York: Random House.
• Fontenrose, Joseph Eddy (1981).Orion: The Myth of the Hunter and the Huntress.University of California Press.ISBN 0-520-09632-0.
• Forbes Irving, Paul M. C. (1990).Metamorphosis in Greek Myths.Clarendon Press.ISBN 0-19-814730-9.
• Hathorn, Richmond Y. (1967).Crowell's Handbook to Classical Drama. NYC, United States: Thomas Y. Crowell Company.ISBN 0-690-22501-6.

• Deeds of Artemis
• Retinue of Artemis
• Women in Greek mythology
• Metamorphoses into animals in Greek mythology
• Epithets of Artemis
• Mythological deer

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• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text
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