Actaeon (/ækˈtiːən/; Ancient Greek: Ἀκταίων Aktaiōn),[1] in Greek mythology, was the son of the priestly herdsman Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, and a famous Theban hero. Through his mother he was a member of the ruling House of Cadmus. Like Achilles, in a later generation, he was trained by the centaur Chiron.
He fell to the fatal wrath of Artemis (later his myth was attached to her Roman counterpart Diana), but the surviving details of his transgression vary: "the only certainty is in what Aktaion suffered, his pathos, and what Artemis did: the hunter became the hunted; he was transformed into a stag, and his raging hounds, struck with a 'wolf's frenzy' (Lyssa), tore him apart as they would a stag."[2]
The many depictions both in ancient art and in the Renaissance and post-Renaissance art normally show either the moment of transgression and transformation, or his death by his own hounds.
- ^ 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.