Greek religion had several goddesses touched by the moon, Artemis, Hecate, but Selene alone is the moon, the bright disc driving her chariot across the night, and the distinction mattered to the Greeks even as the three were increasingly blurred. In magic and later cult the three lunar goddesses fuse into a single triple power invoked at crossroads and in spells, and the Roman Luna takes on the same role. Selene's pure identity as the celestial body kept her central to astronomy and astrology even as her personal mythology stayed thin; where Artemis had temples and festivals, Selene had comparatively few, honoured more in hymn, invocation and the reckoning of the month than in civic cult.
A short Homeric Hymn, the thirty-second in the traditional collection, is addressed to Selene directly, praising the far-shining light that spreads from her immortal head and calling her a great help to young men and to gods alike, one of the few pieces of surviving Archaic Greek poetry devoted to her alone rather than shared with Artemis or Hecate. Where Helios drives horses, ancient sources and artists more often give Selene a chariot drawn by a pair of oxen or, in some accounts, mules, a detail some ancient commentators connected with the moon's comparatively slow, patient course across the sky, in deliberate contrast to the sun's swift daily gallop.