Editing Actaeon (section)

==Story==
[[File:Actaeon Caserta (cropped).jpg|thumb|Actaeon, sculpture group in the cascade at [[Caserta Palace|Caserta]]|left]]

Among others, John Heath has observed, "The unalterable [[mytheme|kernel 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."<ref>Heath, "The Failure of Orpheus", ''Transactions of the American Philological Association'' '''124''' (1994:163-196) p. 194.</ref>  In the version that was offered by the [[Hellenistic]] poet [[Callimachus]],<ref>Callimachus, ''Hymn v''.</ref> which has become the standard setting, Artemis was bathing in the woods<ref>Callimachus gives no site: a glen in the foothills of [[Cithaeron|Mount Cithaeron]] near Boeotian [[Orchomenus (Boeotia)|Orchomenus]], is the site according to [[Euripides]], ''[[Bacchae]]'' 1290-92, a spring sanctuary near [[Plataea]] is specified elsewhere.</ref> 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: she [[Taboo#In religion and mythology|forbade him speech]] – if he tried to speak, he would be changed into a [[Deer (mythology)|stag]] – for the unlucky profanation of her virginity's mystery.<ref>{{cite book |title=Chasing Immortality in World Religions |chapter=Ancient Greece: Defining Immortality in an Age of Gods and Mortals |first=Deborah M. |last=Coulter-Harris |date=2016-07-29 |isbn=978-0-7864-9792-8 |page=60 |publisher=McFarland Inc. |url={{GBurl|id=eNPIDAAAQBAJ}}}}</ref><ref>{{cite book |title=The Everything Classical Mythology Book: Greek and Roman Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters from Ares to Zeus |chapter=Artemis: The Thrill of the Hunt |first=Nancy |last=Conner |date=2010-02-10 |isbn=978-1-4405-0240-8 |page=140 |publisher=Adams Media |url={{GBurl|id=gsSnDgAAQBAJ}}}}</ref>

[[File:Jean Mignon - The Transformation of Actaeon - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|''The Transformation of Actaeon'', [[etching]] by [[Jean Mignon]], 430 x 574&nbsp;mm, 1550s?, without its very elaborate frame. Actaeon is shown three times, finally being killed by his hounds.

[[:File:The Metamorphosis of Acteon MET DP366444.jpg|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, that [[Chiron]] made a statue so lifelike that the hounds thought it was Actaeon.<ref>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 Studies'' '''110''' (1990:26–42) p. 30 note 32, p. 31 note 37.</ref>

There are various other versions of his transgression: The Hesiodic ''[[Catalogue of Women]]'' and pseudo-Apollodoran ''[[Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus)|Bibliotheke]]'' state that his offense was that he was a rival of [[Zeus]] for [[Semele]], his mother's sister,<ref>Thus potentially endangering the future birth of [[Dionysus]], had he been successful. [[Pausanias (geographer)|Pausanias]] referred (9.2.3) to a lost poem by [[Stesichoros]] 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 (Greek mythology)|Ino]] and [[Melicertes]], and [[Pentheus]].</ref> whereas in [[Euripides]]' ''Bacchae'' he has boasted that he is a better hunter than Artemis:<ref>This [[mytheme]] would link him with [[Agamemnon]] and [[Orion (mythology)|Orion]] (Lacy 1990).</ref>
{|
|-
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:{{lang|grc|ὁρᾷς τὸν Ἀκταίωνος ἄθλιον μόρον,}}
:{{lang|grc|ὃν ὠμόσιτοι σκύλακες ἃς ἐθρέψατο}}
:{{lang|grc|διεσπάσαντο, κρείσσον' ἐν κυναγίαις}}
:{{lang|grc|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.
|}
[[File:François Clouet - The Bath of Diana - WGA5069.jpg|thumb|right|In [[François Clouet]]'s ''Bath 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 Hesiodic ''Catalogue of Women'' and at least four Attic tragedies, including a ''Toxotides''  of [[Aeschylus]], have been lost.<ref>Lacy 1990, emphasizing that the central core is lost, covers the literary fragments, pp 26-27 and copious notes.</ref> [[Diodorus Siculus]] (4.81.4), in a variant of Actaeon's ''[[hubris]]'' 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 goddess [[Lyssa]] in the scene, infecting his dogs with [[rabies]] and setting them against him.<ref>{{cite book | first1 = Anna A. | last1 = Lamari | first2 = Franco | last2 = Montanari | first3 = Anna | last3 = Novokhatko | title = Fragmentation in Ancient Greek Drama | date = August 10, 2020 | publisher = de Gruyter | isbn = 978-3-11-062102-0 | pages = 213–215 | url = https://books.google.com/books?id=B773DwAAQBAJ}}</ref>

According to the Latin version of the story told by the Roman [[Ovid]]<ref>Ovid, ''Metamorphoses'' iii.131; see also pseudo-Apollodorus' ''Bibliotheke'' iii. 4</ref> having accidentally seen Diana (Artemis) on [[Mount Cithaeron]] while she was bathing, he was changed by her into a stag, and pursued and killed by his fifty hounds.{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} This version also appears in Callimachus' Fifth Hymn, as a mythical parallel to the blinding of [[Tiresias]] after he sees Athena bathing.
<!--a confusion with Aristaeus, apparently:His statue was often set up on rocks and mountains as a protection against excessive heat. The myth itself probably represents the destruction of vegetation during the fifty [[Dog Days]].-->
The literary testimony of Actaeon's myth is largely lost, but Lamar Ronald Lacy,<ref>Lacy, "Aktaion and a Lost 'Bath of Artemis'" ''The Journal of Hellenic Studies'' '''110''' (1990:26-42).</ref> deconstructing the [[Mytheme|myth 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 to [[Semele]],<ref>Pausanias (ix.2.3) reports that "[[Stesichorus]] of [[Himera]] 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.</ref> a classical Actaeon boasting of his hunting prowess and a Hellenistic Actaeon glimpsing Artemis' bath.<ref>Lacy 1990:27f.</ref> Lacy identifies the site of Actaeon's transgression as a spring sacred to Artemis at [[Plataea]] where Actaeon was a '' [[Greek hero cult|hero archegetes]]'' ("hero-founder")<ref>[[Plutarch]]. ''Aristeides, [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0009%3Achapter%3D11%3Asection%3D3 11.3] & [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Plut.+Arist.+11.4&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2008.01.0009 4].''</ref> The righteous hunter, the companion of Artemis, seeing her bathing naked in the spring, was moved to try to make himself her consort, as [[Diodorus Siculus]] noted, and was punished, in part for transgressing the hunter's "ritually enforced deference to Artemis" (Lacy 1990:42).