FEMALE FIRSTS

 Hello ladies and gents this is the Viking telling you that today we are talking about

ARTEMISIA I of CARIA

Artemisia I of Caria (Ancient Greek: Ἀρτεμισία; fl. 480 BC) was a queen of the ancient Greek city-state of Halicarnassus and of the nearby islands of Kos, Nisyros and Kalymnos, within the Achaemenid satrapy of Caria, in about 480 BC. She was of Carian-Greek ethnicity by her father Lygdamis I, and half-Cretan by her mother. She fought as an ally of Xerxes I, King of Persia against the independent Greek city states during the second Persian invasion of Greece. She personally commanded her contribution of five ships at the naval battle of Artemisium and in the naval Battle of Salamis in 480 BC. She is mostly known through the writings of Herodotus, himself a native of Halicarnassus, who praises her courage and the respect in which Xerxes held her.

Artemisia's father was the satrap of Halicarnassus, Lygdamis I (Λύγδαμις Α')  and her mother was from the island of Crete. She took the throne after the death of her husband, as she had a son, named Pisindelis (Πισίνδηλις), who was still a youth. Artemisia's grandson, Lygdamis II (Λύγδαμις Β'), was the satrap of Halicarnassus when Herodotus was exiled from there and the poet Panyasis (Πανύασις) was sentenced to death, after the unsuccessful uprising against him.

The name Artemisia derives from Artemis (n, f.; Roman equivalent: Diana), itself of unknown origin and etymology although various ones have been proposed; for example according to Jablonski, the name is also Phrygian and could be "compared with the royal appellation Artemas of Xenophon; according to Charles Anthon the primitive root of the name is probably of Persian origin from arta*, art*, arte*,.. all meaning great, excellent, holy,.. thus Artemis "becomes identical with the great mother of Nature, even as she was worshipped at Ephesus"; 

Anton Goebel "suggests the root στρατ or ῥατ, "to shake," and makes Artemis mean the thrower of the dart or the shooter"; Plato, in Cratylus, had derived the name of the Goddess from the Greek word ἀρτεμής, artemḗs, i.e. "safe", "unharmed", "uninjured", "pure", "the stainless maiden"; Babiniotis while accepting that the etymology is unknown, states that the name is already attested in Mycenean Greek and is possibly of Pre-Greek origin.

And as always have a chilled day from the Viking