At Brauron, in east Attica, Artemis was a great local goddess with an important temple. Her cult was accepted by the Athenian state, and by the late 6th century BCE Artemis Brauronia even had a temple on the Acropolis. There was in east Attica an annual festival called Brauronia, which, like the Panathenaia in honor of Athena, was celebrated with special splendor every fourth year.

 The most notable feature of the ritual at Brauron was the practice of "acting the she-bear." It was supposed to be a ritual of appeasement to Artemis performed by little girls perhaps between five and ten years old. They were dressed in long yelowwish colored robes and probably mimed the actions of a bear walking on its hind legs.

A myth was told according to which a she-bear frequented the neighborhood and was tamed and lived in the sanctuary. A young girl who was playing with it teased it so that the animal in its rage tore out one of the girl's eyes. Her brothers in revenge killed the bear. But the anger of Artemis was roused and she sent a plague to Brauron. When the oracle was consulted for a remedy, the Athenians were told to make their daughters act the she-bear as an atonement. So the Athenians voted that a maiden might not be wedded before she had performed this ritual. The myth probably arose as an explanation of the requirement for little girls to spend a period of time at Brauron, serving the goddess in the guise of bears, perhaps a very ancient custom.

 By the time the cult had been recognized as part of the Athenian state religion, the practice of acting the she-bear was the duty and privilege of a limited number of the aristocrats. The ritual at Brauron is illustrated in a number of vases: in some the girls wear a short robe (probably the yellow robe) but in others they are naked. It has been said that in some part of the ceremonies the girls dropped their clothes and performed their rites in the nude.