Chapter 2: The Olympians
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♠ Stesichoros fr 236 PMG – Poetae Melici Graeci, p. 124, ed. D. L. Page. Oxford 1962.
Paus. ix 2. 3, iii 4 Sp.
For those traveling from Megara there is a spring on the right, and for those who go a little farther there is a rock. They call it the bed of Actaion, claiming that on this rock Actaion slept when he met with disaster while hunting, and they say that he looked towards the spring when Artemis was bathing in it. Stesichoros of Himera wrote that the goddess threw the skin of a stag around Actaion to procure for him death from his dogs so that he would not take Semele a his wife. (Transl. E. Bianchelli)
♠ Akousilaos FGrH 2F33 – Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker 1, pp. 55-56, ed. F. Jacoby, 2d ed. Leiden 1957.
[APOLLODOR.] Bibl. III 30: The son of Autonoe and Aristaios was Actaion who, having been bred by Chiron, learned to hunt and then afterwards was devoured by his own dogs on Kithairon. He perished in that way, as Akousilaos says, because Zeus was angry at him for wooing Semele; but, as most say, this happened because he saw Artemis bathing. (Transl. E. Bianchelli) Greek Text
♠ Hes fr 163 MW – Hesiod, Heoiai (Catalogue of Women): Fragmenta Hesiodea, pp. 79-80, ed. R. Merkelbach and M. L. West. Oxford 1967.
♠ Kallimachos, Hymn to Athena 5.107-18
How many burnt offerings shall the daughter of Cadmus burn in the days to come? How many Aristaeus? – praying that they might see their only son, the young Actaeon, blind. And yet he shall be companion of the chase to great Artemis. But him neither the chase nor comradeship in archery on the hills shall save in that hour, when, albeit unwillingly, he shall behold the beauteous bath of the goddess. Nay, his own dogs shall then devour their former lord. And his mother shall gather the bones of her son, ranging over all the thickets. Greek Text
♠ Hel 381-83 – Euripides, Helen
and also the one whom Artemis once drove from her chorus, as a deer with horns of gold, the Titan girl, daughter of Merops, because of her loveliness. Greek Text
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Edited by Elena Bianchelli, Retired Senior Lecturer of Classical Languages and Culture, Univ. of Georgia, February 2021
