Actaeon

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For the Charpentier opera please see Actéon.

Actaeon and his dogs

In Greek mythology, Actaeon (or Aktaion), son of Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero, trained by the centaur Cheiron, who suffered the fatal wrath of Artemis (or her Roman counterpart Diana).

[edit] The plot

Artemis was bathing in the woods near Boeotian Orchomenos when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her, thus seeing her naked. He stopped and stared, amazed at her ravishing beauty. Once seen, Actaeon was punished by Artemis: she forbade him speech — if he tried to speak, he would be changed into a stag — for the unlucky profanation of her virginity's mystery. Upon hearing the call of his hunting party, he cried out to them and immediately was changed into a stag. His own hounds then turned upon him and tore him to pieces. The hounds were so upset with their master's death, that Chiron made a statue so lifelike that the hounds thought it was Actaeon.

There are various other versions: Apollodorus states that his offense was that he was a rival of Zeus for Semele (who was also his aunt), while in Euripides' Bacchae he boasts that he is better hunter than Artemis.

ὁρᾷς τὸν Ἀκτέωνος 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.

Diodorus Siculus has it that Actaeon wanted to marry Artemis. Other authors say the hounds were Artemis' own.

According to the Latin version of the story told by the Roman Ovid (Metamorphoses iii. 131; see also Apollod iii. 4), 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. This version also appears in Callimachus' Fifth Hymn, as a mythical parallel to the blinding of Tiresias after he sees Athena bathing.

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.

Actaeon by Titian

[edit] Actaeon in art

Aeschylus and other tragic poets made use of the story, which was a favourite subject in ancient works of art.
There is a well-known small marble group in the British Museum illustrative of the story.
A painting by Titian (16th c.).
Actéon, an operatic pastorale by Marc-Antoine Charpentier.
the aria "Oft she visits this lone mountain" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas, first performed in 1689.