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Actaeon

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Greek mythical character

For other uses, seeActaeon (disambiguation).

InGreek mythology,Actaeon (/ækˈtiːən/;Ancient Greek:ἈκταίωνAktaiōn)^[1] was the son of the priestly herdsmanAristaeus inBoeotia, and a famousTheban hero. Through his motherAutonoe he was a member of the ruling House ofCadmus. LikeAchilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaurChiron.

He succumbed to the fatal wrath ofArtemis (later his myth became attached to tales of Artemis' Roman counterpartDiana), but the surviving details of his transgression vary: "the only certainty is in what Aktaion suffered, hispathos, and what Artemis did: the hunter became the hunted; he was transformed into astag, and his raging hounds, struck with a 'wolf's frenzy' (Lyssa), tore him apart as they would a stag."^[2]

Many depictions—both in ancient art and in Renaissance and post-Renaissance art—show either the moment of transgression and transformation, or his killing by his own hounds.

Story

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Actaeon, sculpture group in the cascade atCaserta

Among others, John Heath has observed, "The unalterablekernel of the tale was a hunter's transformation into a deer and his death in the jaws of his hunting dogs. But authors were free to suggest different motives for his death."^[3] In the version that was offered by theHellenistic poetCallimachus,^[4] which has become the standard setting, Artemis was bathing in the woods^[5] when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her, thus seeing her naked. He stopped and stared, amazed at her ravishing beauty. Once seen, Artemis got revenge on Actaeon: sheforbade him speech – if he tried to speak, he would be changed into astag – for the unlucky profanation of her virginity's mystery.^[6]^[7]

*The Transformation of Actaeon*,etching byJean Mignon, 430 x 574 mm, 1550s?, without its very elaborate frame. Actaeon is shown three times, finally being killed by his hounds.with frame

Upon hearing the call of his hunting party, he cried out to them and immediately transformed. At this, he fled deep into the woods, and doing so he came upon a pond and, seeing his reflection, groaned. His own hounds then turned upon him and pursued him, not recognizing him. In an endeavour to save himself, he raised his eyes (and would have raised his arms, had he had them) toward Mount Olympus. The gods did not heed his desperation, and he was torn to pieces. An element of the earlier myth made Actaeon the familiar hunting companion of Artemis, no stranger. In an embroidered extension of the myth, the hounds were so upset with their master's death, thatChiron made a statue so lifelike that the hounds thought it was Actaeon.^[8]

There are various other versions of his transgression: The HesiodicCatalogue of Women and pseudo-ApollodoranBibliotheke state that his offense was that he was a rival ofZeus forSemele, his mother's sister,^[9] whereas inEuripides'Bacchae he has boasted that he is a better hunter than Artemis:^[10]

ὁρᾷς τὸν Ἀκταίωνος ἄθλιον μόρον,

ὃν ὠμόσιτοι σκύλακες ἃς ἐθρέψατο

διεσπάσαντο, κρείσσον' ἐν κυναγίαις

Ἀρτέμιδος εἶναι κομπάσαντ' ἐν ὀργάσιν.

Look at Actaeon's wretched fate

who by the man-eating hounds he had raised,

was torn apart, better at hunting

than Artemis he had boasted to be, in the meadows.

InFrançois Clouet'sBath of Diana (1558–59) Actaeon's passing on horseback at left and mauling as a stag at right is incidental to the three female nudes.

Further materials, including fragments that belong with the HesiodicCatalogue of Women and at least four Attic tragedies, including aToxotides ofAeschylus, have been lost.^[11]Diodorus Siculus (4.81.4), in a variant of Actaeon'shubris that has been largely ignored, has it that Actaeon wanted to marry Artemis. Other authors say the hounds were Artemis' own; some lost elaborations of the myth seem to have given them all names and narrated their wanderings after his loss. A number of ancient Greek vases depicting the metamorphosis and death of Actaeon include the goddessLyssa in the scene, infecting his dogs withrabies and setting them against him.^[12]

According to the Latin version of the story told by the RomanOvid^[13] having accidentally seen Diana (Artemis) onMount Cithaeron while she was bathing, he was changed by her into a stag, and pursued and killed by his fifty hounds.^[14] This version also appears in Callimachus' Fifth Hymn, as a mythical parallel to the blinding ofTiresias after he sees Athena bathing.The literary testimony of Actaeon's myth is largely lost, but Lamar Ronald Lacy,^[15] deconstructing themyth elements in what survives and supplementing it by iconographic evidence in late vase-painting, made a plausible reconstruction of an ancient Actaeon myth that Greek poets may have inherited and subjected to expansion and dismemberment. His reconstruction opposes a too-pat consensus that has an archaic Actaeon aspiring toSemele,^[16] a classical Actaeon boasting of his hunting prowess and a Hellenistic Actaeon glimpsing Artemis' bath.^[17] Lacy identifies the site of Actaeon's transgression as a spring sacred to Artemis atPlataea where Actaeon was ahero archegetes ("hero-founder")^[18] The righteous hunter, the companion of Artemis, seeing her bathing naked in the spring, was moved to try to make himself her consort, asDiodorus Siculus noted, and was punished, in part for transgressing the hunter's "ritually enforced deference to Artemis" (Lacy 1990:42).

Names of dogs

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List of Actaeon's dogs
Dogs	Source				Consorts	Source
	Apollodorus^[19]	Ovid^[20]	Hyginus^[21]			Apollodorus	Ovid	Hyginus
	Apollodorus^[19]	Ovid^[20]	Ovid^[22]^[23]	Other author		Apollodorus	Ovid	Ovid	Other author
Acamas				✓	Aello (Storm)		✓	✓
Aethon				✓	Alce (Stout)		✓	✓
Agrius				✓	Agre (Chaser)		✓	✓
Amarynthus	✓				Arcena	✓
Arcas			?		Arethusa				✓
Argiodus (Towser)		✓	✓		Argo				✓
Asbolos (Sooty)		✓	✓		Aura			?
Balius (Dappled)	✓				Canace (Barker)		✓	✓
Borax				✓	Chediaetros*				✓
Bores	✓				Cyllo				✓
Boreas				✓	Dinomache				✓
Charops				✓	Dioxippe				✓
Corus				✓	Echione				✓
Cyllopodes				✓	Gorgo				✓
Cyprius			?		Harpyia (Harpy)		✓	✓	✓
Dorceus (Quicksight)		✓	✓		Lachne (Bristle)		✓	✓
Draco				✓	Lacaena				✓
Dromas (Racer)		✓	✓		Leaena				✓
Dromius				✓	Lycisca (Wolfet)		✓	✓
Echnobas			?		Lynceste				✓
Elion			?		Melanchaetes (Blackmane)		✓	✓
Gnosius			?		Nape (Wildwood)		✓	✓
Eudromus				✓	Ocydrome				✓
Haemon				✓	Ocypete				✓
Harpalicus				✓	Oresitrophos (Rover)		✓	✓
Harpalos (Snap)		✓	✓		Orias				✓
Hylactor (Babbler)		✓	✓		Oxyrhoe				✓
Hylaeus (Woodranger)		✓	✓		Poemenis (Shepherdess)		✓	✓
Ichneus				✓	Sagnos*
Ichnobates (Tracer)		✓	✓		Sticte (Spot)		✓	✓
Labros (Wildtooth)		✓	✓		Theriope				✓
Lacon		✓	✓		Theriphone				✓
Ladon		✓	✓		Therodamas (Savage)		✓	✓
Laelaps (Hunter)		✓	✓		Therodanapis			?
Lampus				✓	Urania				✓
Leon				✓	Volatos*				✓
Leucon (Blanche)		✓	✓		Number	1	13	15	20
Lynceus	✓			✓
Machimus				✓
Melampus (Blackfoot)		✓	✓	✓
Melaneus (Blackcoat)		✓	✓
Obrimus				✓
Ocydromus				✓
Ocythous				✓
Omargus	✓
Nebrophonos (Killbuck)		✓	✓
Oribasos (Surefoot)		✓	✓
Pachylus				✓
Pamphagos (Glutton)		✓	✓
Pterelas (Wingfoot)		✓	✓
Spartus	✓
Stilbon				✓
Syrus				✓
Theron (Tempest)		✓	✓
Thoos (Quickfoot)		✓	✓
Tigris (Tiger)		✓	✓
Zephyrus				✓
Number	6	22	27	26

Volterra, Italy. Etruscan cinerary urn; Actaeon torn by the dogs of Diana, Volterra. Brooklyn Museum Archives, Goodyear Archival Collection

Notes:

Names of dogs were verified to correspond to the list given in Ovid's text where the names were already transliterated.^[24]
? = Seven listed names of dogs in Hyginus'Fabulae, was probably misread or misinterpreted by later authors because it does not correspond to the exact numbers and names given by Ovid:
- Arcas signifies Arcadia, place of origin of three dogs namely Pamphagos, Dorceus and Oribasus
- Cyprius means Cyprus, where the dogs Lysisca and Harpalos originated
- Gnosius can be read as Knossus in Crete, which signify that Ichnobates was a Knossian breed of dog
- Echnobas,Elion,Aura andTherodanapis were probably place names or adjectives defining the characteristics of dogs

The "bed of Actaeon"

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In the second century AD, the travellerPausanias was shown a spring on the road inAttica leading toPlataea fromEleutherae, just beyondMegara "and a little farther on a rock. It is called the bed of Actaeon, for it is said that he slept thereon when weary with hunting and that into this spring he looked while Artemis was bathing in it."

"As to Actæon there is a tradition atOrchomenus, that a spectre which sat on a stone injured their land. And when they consulted the oracle atDelphi, the god bade them bury in the ground whatever remains they could find of Actæon: he also bade them to make a brazen copy of the spectre and fasten it with iron to the stone. This I have myself seen, and they annually offer funeral rites to Actæon."^[25]

Parallels in Akkadian and Ugarit poems

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In the standard version of theEpic of Gilgamesh (tablet vi) there is a parallel, in the series of examplesGilgamesh givesIshtar of her mistreatment of her serial lovers:

You loved the herdsman, shepherd and chief shepherd
Who was always heaping up the glowing ashes for you,
And cooked ewe-lambs for you every day.
But you hit him and turned him into a wolf,
His own herd-boys hunt him down
And his dogs tear at his haunches.^[26]

Actaeon, torn apart by dogs incited by Artemis, finds another Near Eastern parallel in theUgaritic heroAqht, torn apart by eagles incited byAnath who wanted his hunting bow.^[27]

The virginal Artemis of classical times is not directly comparable to Ishtar of the many lovers, but themytheme of Artemis shootingOrion, was linked to her punishment of Actaeon by T.C.W. Stinton;^[28] the Greek context of the mortal's reproach to the amorous goddess is translated to the episode ofAnchises andAphrodite.^[29]Daphnis too was a herdsman loved by a goddess and punished by her: seeTheocritus' First Idyll.^[30]

Symbolism regarding Actaeon

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In Greek Mythology, Actaeon is widely thought to symbolize ritualhuman sacrifice in attempt to please a God or Goddess:^[31] the dogs symbolize the sacrificers and Actaeon symbolizes the sacrifice.

Actaeon may symbolize human curiosity or irreverence.^{[citation needed]}

The myth is seen byJungian psychologistWolfgang Giegerich as a symbol of spiritual transformation and/or enlightenment.^[32]

Actaeon often symbolizes a cuckold, as when he is turned into a stag, he becomes "horned".^[33] This is alluded to in Shakespeare'sMerry Wives,Robert Burton'sAnatomy of Melancholy, and others.^[34]^[35]

Cultural depictions

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Vasiliy Ryabchenko,*The Death of Actaeon*, oil on canvas, 1988

The two main scenes are Actaeon surprising Artemis/Diana, and his death. In classical art Actaeon is normally shown as fully human, even as his hounds are killing him (sometimes he has small horns), but in Renaissance art he is often given a deer's head with antlers even in the scene with Diana, and by the time he is killed he has at the least this head, and has often completely transformed into the shape of a deer.

Aeschylus and other tragic poets made use of the story, which was a favourite subject in ancient works of art.^[14]
There is a well-known small marble group in theBritish Museum illustrative of the story,^[14] in gallery 83/84.^[36]
Two paintings by the 16th century painterTitian (Death of Actaeon andDiana and Actaeon).
Actéon, an operatic pastorale byMarc-Antoine Charpentier.
Percy Bysshe Shelley suggests a parallel between his alter-ego and Actaeon in his elegy forJohn Keats,Adonais, stanza 31 ('[he] had gazed on Nature's naked loveliness/ Actaeon-like, and now he fled astray/ .../ And his own thoughts, along that rugged way,/ Pursued, like raging hounds, their father and their prey.')
The aria "Oft she visits this lone mountain" fromPurcell'sDido and Aeneas, first performed in 1689 or earlier.
Giordano Bruno,Gli Eroici Furori.
In canto V ofGiambattista Marino's poemAdone [it] the protagonist goes to theater to see a tragedy representing the myth of Actaeon. This episode foreshadows the protagonist's violent death at the end of the book.
In Act I Scene 2 ofJacques Offenbach'sOrpheus in the Underworld, Actaeon is Diana (Artemis)'s lover, and it is Jupiter who turns him into a stag, which puts Diana off hunting. His story is relinquished at this point, in favour of the other plots.
Ted Hughes wrote a version of the story in hisTales from Ovid.
Diane and Actéon Pas de Deux fromMarius Petipa's ballet,Le Roi Candaule, to the music byRiccardo Drigo andCesare Pugni, later incorporated into the second act ofLa Esmeralda (ballet).
InTwelfth Night byWilliam Shakespeare, Orsino compares his unrequited love for Olivia to the fate of Actaeon. "O, when mine eyes did see Olivia first, Methought she purged the air of pestilence, That instant was I turned into a hart, and my desires like fell and cruel hounds e'er since pursue me." Act 1 Scene 1.
InChristopher Marlowe's playEdward II, courtierPiers Gaveston seeks to entertain his lover, KingEdward II of England, by presenting a play based on the Actaeon myth. In Gaveston's version, Diane is played bya naked boy holding an olive branch to hide his loins, and it is the boy-Diane who transforms Actaeon into a hart and lets him be devoured by the hounds. Thus, Gaveston's (and Marlowe's) interpretation adds a strong element ofhomoeroticism, absent from the original myth.
Paul Manship in 1925 created a set of copper statute ofDiane and Actaeon, which is in the Luce LunderSmithsonian Institution.
French based collective LFKs and his film/theatre director, writer and visual artist Jean Michel Bruyere produced a series of 600 shorts and "medium" films, an interactive 360° installation,Si poteris narrare licet ("if you are able to speak of it, then you may do so")^[37] in 2002, a 3D 360° installationLa Dispersion du Fils^[38] (from 2008 to 2016) and an outdoor performance,Une Brutalité pastorale (2000) all about the myth of Diana and Actaeon.
InMatthew Barney's 2019 movieRedoubt set in theSawtooth Mountains of the U.S. state ofIdaho and an accompanying traveling art exhibition originating at theYale University Art Gallery the myth is retold by the visual artist and filmmaker via avenues of his own design.^[39]
Seamus Heaney's collectionNorth contains anaisling concerning the myth of Diana and Actaeon.^[40]

Royal House of Thebes family tree

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Royal house of Thebes family tree

Solid lines indicate descendants.
Dashed lines indicate marriages.
Dotted lines indicate extra-marital relationships or adoptions.
Kings of Thebes are numbered withbold names and a light purple background.
- Joint rules are indicated by a number and lowercase letter, for example, 5a. Amphion shared the throne with 5b. Zethus.
Regents of Thebes are alphanumbered (format AN) withbold names and a light red background.
- The number N refers to the regency preceding the reign of the N^th king. Generally this means the regent served the N^th king but not always, asCreon (A9) was serving as regent toLaodamas (the 10th King) when he was slain byLycus II (the usurping 9th king).
- The letter A refers to the regency sequence. "A" is the first regent, "B" is the second, etc.
Deities have a yellow background color.

Harmonia

1.
Cadmus

Polyxo

A4.
Nycteus (Regent)

Dirce

B4 & A6.
Lycus (Regent)

3.
Polydorus

Nycteis

2.
Pentheus

4.
Labdacus

5a.
Amphion

5b.
Zethus

Menoeceus

Eurydice

A7, A8 & A9.
Creon (Regent)

6.
Laius

Hipponome

7.
Oedipus

8b.
Eteocles

8a.
Polynices

Pyrrha

Lycomedes

Ismene

9.
Lycus II

A12.
Peneleos (Regent)

10.
Laodamas

Demonassa

11.
Thersander

Opheltes

12.
Tisamenus

14.
Damasichthon

13.
Autesion

15.
Ptolemy

16.
Xanthos

Notes

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^He was sometimes called Actaeus (Ἀκταῖος), as in the poetic fragment quoted at Pseudo-Apollodorus,Bibliotheca 3.4.4: "then [they] killed Actaeus at Zeus's instigation",τότ' Ἀκταῖον κτεῖναι Διὸς αἰνεσίῃσι
^Walter Burkert,Homo Necans (1972), translated by Peter Bing (University of California Press) 1983, p 111.
^Heath, "The Failure of Orpheus",Transactions of the American Philological Association124 (1994:163-196) p. 194.
^Callimachus,Hymn v.
^Callimachus gives no site: a glen in the foothills ofMount Cithaeron near BoeotianOrchomenus, is the site according toEuripides,Bacchae 1290-92, a spring sanctuary nearPlataea is specified elsewhere.
^Coulter-Harris, Deborah M. (2016-07-29). "Ancient Greece: Defining Immortality in an Age of Gods and Mortals".Chasing Immortality in World Religions. McFarland Inc. p. 60.ISBN 978-0-7864-9792-8.
^Conner, Nancy (2010-02-10). "Artemis: The Thrill of the Hunt".The Everything Classical Mythology Book: Greek and Roman Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters from Ares to Zeus. Adams Media. p. 140.ISBN 978-1-4405-0240-8.
^Fragmentary sources for the narrative of Actaeon's hounds are noted in Lamar Ronald Lacy, "Aktaion and a Lost 'Bath of Artemis'"The Journal of Hellenic Studies110 (1990:26–42) p. 30 note 32, p. 31 note 37.
^Thus potentially endangering the future birth ofDionysus, had he been successful.Pausanias referred (9.2.3) to a lost poem byStesichoros also expressing this motif. The progressive destruction of the House of Cadmus to make way for the advent of Dionysus can be followed in the myths of its individual members: Actaeon,Semele,Ino andMelicertes, andPentheus.
^Thismytheme would link him withAgamemnon andOrion (Lacy 1990).
^Lacy 1990, emphasizing that the central core is lost, covers the literary fragments, pp 26-27 and copious notes.
^Lamari, Anna A.; Montanari, Franco; Novokhatko, Anna (August 10, 2020).Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama. de Gruyter. pp. 213–215.ISBN 978-3-11-062102-0.
^Ovid,Metamorphoses iii.131; see also pseudo-Apollodorus'Bibliotheke iii. 4
^^a ^b ^cChisholm 1911.
^Lacy, "Aktaion and a Lost 'Bath of Artemis'"The Journal of Hellenic Studies110 (1990:26-42).
^Pausanias (ix.2.3) reports that "Stesichorus ofHimera says that the goddess cast a deer-skin round Actaeon to make sure that his hounds would kill him, so as to prevent his taking Semele to wife"; the lines of Stesichorus have not survived.
^Lacy 1990:27f.
^Plutarch.Aristeides,11.3 &4.
^Apollodorus, 3.4.4.
^Ovid'sMetamorphoses (Book III, 206–235)
^HyginusFabulae 181
^In this list, Hyginus fails to correctly differentiate between masculine and feminine names
^See theIndex nominum in R. J. Tarrant (2004)P. Ovidi Nasonis Metamorphoses, Oxford, pp. 503-534
^Ovid.Metamorphoses,3 for the exact names of the dogs
^"Pausanias' Description of Greece, Vol. II., by Pausanias—A Project Gutenberg eBook".www.gutenberg.org. Retrieved2024-04-12.
^"Gilgamesh VI" inMyths from Mesopotamia... a new translation byStephanie Dalley, rev. ed.2000:79; note 60, p. 129: "This metamorphosis has been compared to the Greek myth of Actaeon."
^The comparison is made in Michael C. Astour,Hellenosemitica: an ethnic and cultural study of West Semitic impact on Mycenaean Greece (Leiden:Brill, 1965).
^Stinton "Euripides and the Judgement of Paris" (London, 1965:45 note 14) reprinted in Stinton,Collected Papers on Greek Tragedy (London, 1990:51 note 14).
^Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite.
^Jasper Griffin, "Theocritus, the Iliad, and the East",The American Journal of Philology113.2 (Summer 1992:189-211) esp. pp 205f.
^Biedermann, Hans (1989).The Dictionary of Symbolism. Facts on File.ISBN 0-8160-2593-2.
^Wolfgang Giegerich, The Soul’s Logical Life, (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 2001)
^Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd ed, 2010,s.v.
^John Stephen Farmer,Slang and Its Analogues Past and Present, 1903,s.v., p. 15.
^Gordon Williams,A Dictionary of Sexual Language and Imagery in Shakespearean and Stuart Literature, 2001,ISBN 0-485-11393-7, p. 8-9.
^"Rooms 83-84: Roman sculpture". British Museum. Retrieved2014-04-08.
^What Is Contemporary Art? Terry Smith. 10 August 2012. University of Chicago Press. p. 173-81, 186
^"The Scattering of the Son".The STRP Festival of eindhoven. January 2011.
^Farago, Jason (21 March 2019)."A Lighter Matthew Barney Goes Back to School, and Back Home".The New York Times. Archived fromthe original on 2022-01-01.
^Heaney, Seamus (1975).North. London:Faber and Faber. p. 45.ISBN 0-571-17780-8.