Belphoebe Belphoebe Belphoebe (or "Belphebe", "Belphœbe") is a character in Edmund Spenser's poem "The Faerie Queene" (1590), a representation of Queen Elizabeth I (conceived of, however, as a pure, high-spirited maiden, rather than a queen). Spenser intended her name to mean "beautiful Diana" (Phoebe being an epithet of the Greek moon goddess Artemis, who was known to the Romans as Diana), and it is suggested that she is a member of Poseidon's family. A virgin huntress, Belphoebe can certainly fight, as a potential rapist found out. She is the stronger, militant sister of Amoret. Belphoebe is mentioned in Kipling's poem "The
Apollo twin sister. At Delphi, Apollo was venerated as the slayer of Pytho. For the Greeks, Apollo was all the Gods in one and through the centuries he acquired different functions which could originate from different gods. In archaic Greece he was the prophet, the oracular god who in older times was connected with "healing". In classical Greece he was the god of light and of music, but in popular religion he had a strong function to keep away evil. Walter Burkert discerned three components in the prehistory of Apollo worship, which he termed "a Dorian-northwest Greek component, a Cretan-Minoan component,