In Greek mythology, Actaeon, or Aktaion was a son of Aristaeus and Autonoe in Boeotia, a hunter who endured the wrath of Diana.
Diana was bathing nude in the woods near Boeotian Orchomenos when the hunter Actaeon stumbled across her. He stopped and stared, amazed at her ravishing beauty. When she saw him, Diana changed him to a stag, for his unlucky profanation of her virginal mysteries, and set his own hounds to kill him. He was torn apart. However, the hounds were so upset with their master's death, Chiron made a statue so lifelike that the hounds thought it was Actaeon.
Ovid III, 193, Hyginus, Fabulae, 181.
Actaeon in art
