How would you describe the sibling relationship between Apollo and Artemis? If you've ever even thought about it. Being twins I always imagined them being rambunctious and mischievous when they were children.

So many ideas about these two…

Artemis and Apollo were thick as thieves when they were younger.  They were constantly getting into trouble, running around the palace at Olympus, teasing Ares, accidentally knocking over a pithos and dumping olive oil into the hearth in Hestia’s apartment, standing on each other’s shoulders to pick apples from Hera’s trees. 

They shared everything, were each other’s best friends, and thought they would be inseparable forever.  But their tastes started drifting apart when they got older.

In my telling Artemis is asexual, aromantic.  This didn’t sit well with Apollo.  He was convinced that they were meant for each other, halves of the same soul.

To make sure that she wasn’t married off, Artemis took her vow of perpetual virginity within a day of menarche.  She thought her brother would support her.  He didn’t and was heartbroken when she told him.  Artemis said he should join her cause, be unbound, unbeholden to the lusts that drove most of the Olympians to folly.  But Apollo, once he reached manhood, took an entirely different path.

Artemis, disgusted by her family’s behavior, drew nymphs to her who also wanted to keep away from men, keep themselves safe in a world ruled by men, a world where women were traded and used like property.  She created the Nymphae Artemisiai, a band of Oceanids and Hyperboreads who could join her at the age of nine, before menarche, take the vows and rely on safety in numbers.

Apollo pursued just as many nymphs on his own.  Embittered by Artemis’ supposed rejection, he would often pursue women until death.  When this happened— especially after Daphne chose becoming a laurel over being with him— he would think about what Artemis had told him when they were young, how he should free himself of the passions that plagued the rest of their kind.  He would throw himself into obsessive study after each failed pursuit.

Artemis rarely spoke to Apollo after Daphne.  She viewed him as dangerous, and always grew sad when he was mentioned because she knew that he could have taken another path through life.  Apollo quickly changes the subject if anyone mentions his sister.  Their roles in the Dodekatheon mean that they must sit together, interact with each other when the gods meet.  The casual observer assumes their treatment of each other is simply regal, dignified regard instead of icy silence.  But those who knew them looked upon them forlornly, remembering the fair haired children who used to laugh and dance and pick apples together and lay in the grass and name the stars at night. 

As the centuries passed, Apollo’s fatal attractions and obsessions died or turned themselves into flowers or trees, which drove him back to intense study so he could purify his mind and forget.  In the process he became a patron of medicine, art, music, and even learned how to drive Helios’ chariot across the sky.  But always echoing in his heart and soul was one name.  Artemis.