" It was told{468} that she besought her father to give her only nine-year-olds as companions. This was the age at which girls left their mothers and entered the service of Artemis: in earlier times all girls did this, but later only certain chosen ones. They remained in the goddess’s service until they were nubile. At Athens the little handmaidens of Artemis were called arktoi, “she-bears”. Artemis herself must at one time have been supposed to be a bear—or, in more ancient times, when the fauna of Greece was more southern, a lioness. "

― Karl Kerényi , The Gods of the Greeks