Actaeon in Greek mythology, son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, was a famous Theban hero. Like Achilles in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron.
He fell victim to Artemis’ fatal wrath, but the surviving details of his transgression vary: “the only certainty is what Actaeon suffered, his pathos, and what Artemis did: the hunter became the hunted; he was transformed into a stag, and his furious dogs, struck with a ‘wolf frenzy’ (Lyssa), tore him to pieces as if he were a stag.”
This is the iconic motif by which Actaeon is recognized, both in ancient art and in Renaissance and Renaissance representations.
1. The plot
Among others, John Heath has observed: “The unalterable core of the story was the transformation of a hunter into a stag and his death at the jaws of his hunting dogs. But the authors were free to suggest different motives for his death.” In the version offered by the Hellenistic poet Callimachus, which has become the standard scenario, Artemis was bathing in the forest when the hunter Actaeon stumbled upon her, seeing her naked.
He stopped and stared, amazed by her dazzling beauty. Once seen, Artemis took revenge on Actaeon: she forbade him to speak; if he tried to speak, he would be turned into a stag. For the unfortunate desecration of the mystery of her virginity. Hearing the call of his hunting party, he shouted to them and was immediately transformed. At this, he fled deep into the forest, and as he did so, he came upon a pond and, seeing his reflection, groaned.
His own hounds turned on him and chased him, not recognizing him. In an effort to save himself, he raised his eyes (and would have raised his arms if he had had them) toward Mount Olympus. The gods paid no attention to his plea, and he was torn to pieces. An element of the earlier myth made Actaeon the well-known hunting companion of Artemis, not a stranger.
In an embroidered extension of the myth, the dogs were so angry at the death of their master that Chiron made a statue so lifelike that the dogs thought it was Actaeon.
In François Clouet’s Bath of Diana (1558-59), Actaeon dies on horseback on the left, and the stag on the right is incidental to the three naked women.
Other materials have been lost, including fragments belonging to Hesiodic’s Catalogue of Women and at least four Attic tragedies, including a Toxotides by Aeschylus.
Diodorus Siculus (4.81.4), in a variant of Actaeon’s arrogance that has been largely ignored, says that Actaeon wanted to marry Artemis. Other authors say that the hunting dogs belonged to Artemis; some lost elaborations of the myth seem to have given them all names and narrated their adventures after their loss.
According to the Latin version of the story told by Roman Ovid, who accidentally saw Diana (Artemis) on Mount Cithaeron while she was bathing, she turned him into a stag, and he was chased and killed by her fifty dogs.
Death of Actaeon by Titian
In the 2nd century AD, the traveler Pausanias was shown a spring on the road from Attica to Plataea from Eleutherae, a little beyond Megara “and a little further on a rock. It is called the bed of Actaeon, because it is said that he slept on it when he was tired from hunting and that during this spring he looked while Artemis was bathing in it.”
Parallels in Akkadian and Ugaritic poems
In the standard version of the Epic of Gilgamesh (tablet vi) there is a parallel, in the series of examples Gilgamesh gives Ishtar of his mistreatment of his serial lovers:
“You loved the shepherd, the shepherd, and the chief shepherd, who was always piling up the glowing ashes for you, and cooking sheep for you every day. But you beat him and turned him into a wolf, his own shepherds hunt him. And his dogs tear him from his hips.”
Actaeon, torn apart by dogs incited by Artemis, finds another parallel in the Near East in the Ugaritic hero Aqht, torn apart by eagles incited by Anath who wanted his hunting bow.
The virginal Artemis of classical times is not directly comparable to Ishtar of the many lovers, but the myth of Artemis shooting Orion was linked to her punishment of Actaeon by TCW Stinton; the Greek context of the mortal’s reproach to the love goddess is translated into the episode of Anchises and Aphrodite. Daphnis was also a shepherd loved by a goddess and punished by her: see Theocritus’ First Idyll.
2. Symbolism
In Greek mythology, Actaeon is considered by many, including Hans Biedermann, to symbolize ritual human sacrifice in an attempt to please a god or goddess. In the case of Actaeon, the dogs symbolize the sacrificers and Actaeon symbolizes the sacrifice. Actaeon may also symbolize human curiosity or irreverence.
The myth is seen by Jungian psychologist Wolfgang Giegerich as a symbol of spiritual transformation and/or enlightenment.
3. Depicted in Art
The two main scenes are Actaeon surprising Artemis/Diana, and his death. In classical art, Actaeon is usually shown as completely human, even when his dogs 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 at the moment he is killed, he has at least this head and has often been completely transformed into the form of a deer.
Aeschylus and other tragic poets made use of the story, which was a favorite subject in ancient works of art. There is a well-known small marble group in the British Museum illustrating the story, in gallery 83/84. Two paintings by the 16th-century painter Titian (Death of Actaeon and Diana and Actaeon).
Percy Bysshe Shelley suggests a parallel between his alter ego and Actaeon in his elegy for John Keats, Adonais, stanza 31 (‘[he] had beheld the naked beauty / like Actaeon, and now fled by evil ways. And his own thoughts, along that steep path, / Pursued, like mad dogs, his father and his prey. The aria “She often visits this lonely mountain” from Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas was first performed in 1689 or earlier.
In canto V of Giambattista Marino’s poem “Adone,” the protagonist goes to the theater to see a tragedy depicting the myth of Actaeon. This episode foreshadows the violent death of the protagonist at the end of the book.
In Act I, Scene 2, of Jacques Offenbach’s Orpheus in the Underworld, Actaeon is the lover of Diana (Artemis), and it is Jupiter who turns him into a stag, causing Diana to stop hunting. His story is abandoned at this point in favor of the other plots.
Ted Hughes wrote a version of the story in his Ovid’s Tales.
In Alexandre Dumas’ novel, Queen Margot, Charles IX of France, a hunting enthusiast, has a beloved and doomed hunting dog named Actaeon.
Diane and Actaeon Pas de Deux from Marius Petipa’s ballet Le Roi Candaule, to music by Riccardo Drigo and Cesare Pugni, which was later incorporated into the second act of La Esmeralda (ballet).
Actaeon and his dogs appear in Diana Wynne Jones’ novel The Game, in which the main character encounters various mythological figures while traveling through the mythosphere.
In Matthew Barney’s 2019 film Redoubt, set in the Sawtooth Mountains in the US state of Idaho, and in an accompanying traveling art exhibition originating at the Yale University Art Gallery, the visual artist and filmmaker recount the myth through avenues of his own design.
4. Myth of Artemis and Actaeon
The huntress goddess Artemis roamed the forests of Greece. Artemis was the original badass lady with a bow and arrow, and boy did she kick ass. Not only did she have impressive outdoor survival skills and a fierce gang of nymphs, but she never let anyone get the better of her, especially guys who tried to beat her up.
Unfortunately, this independent goddess also had a bad temper, which occasionally got the better of her and led to some cruel misunderstandings. And that’s where we find ourselves in the myth of Artemis and Actaeon.
When a young hunter named Actaeon accidentally sees Artemis bathing in her secret outdoor grotto. She was so angry that she turned him into a stag. He was then quickly devoured by his own hunting dogs.
Ovid retells the myth of Artemis and Actaeon in Book 3 of Metamorphoses, and comes out strongly in defense of Actaeon.
Shakespeare was more than a little obsessed with the myth of Artemis and Actaeon. In Twelfth Night, Duke Orsino identifies himself as a “stag” (also known as a male deer) who is being pursued by the “cruel hounds” of his desires.
