Aktaion's death as revenge for orion's death (or vice versa)

Alejandro

Active Member
There's this story about the young hunter Aktaion [Actæon], who owned a pack of fifty hunting-dogs, stumbling upon the hunting-goddess Artemis in a state of undress out deep in the woods and being immediately transformed into a stag which summarily got ripped to shreds by the hunter's own pack of dogs.

I've always found it curious that Aktaion's being a close relative of Artemis didn't help his case upon his innocently blundering into her outdoor [un]dressing-room. Artemis' reaction in this story is also so assertive that it makes it seem like she'd always expected that one day some dude might lose his way in the woods and surprise her before she puts her khakis back on, and that in the event that that should happen, he's sure gonna wish he had become a waiter in the restaurant where the venison he was hunting was going to be served instead of having taken up this perilous profession!

The Latin writer Hyginus tells us an interesting story, which I don't believe appears anywhere else, quoting the Greek historian Istros saying that Artemis actually once fell in love: with a handsome young giant hunter named Orion, no less. Artemis' twin brother Apollon [Apollo] didn't like where this was going, presumably because Artemis had sworn, thousands of years before then, to remain a virgin forever, and rebuked her severally for her intentions to soon update her Facebook info from Interested in: Nothing But Hunting, Fool! to "My boyfriend can hunt and walk on water, too. (Pretty neat, huh?)" (Oh, by the way, yeah, Orion could walk on water as though on terra firma [according to Hesiodos and Apollodoros].) His rebukes seemingly falling upon deaf ears, Apollon resorted to tricking Artemis into shooting Orion dead, ostensibly in an attempt to prove that she was as good an archer as was claimed.

Based on the chronology we can calculate from related events, Aktaion and Orion should have been each other's contemporaries. Aktaion's aunts Semele (mother of the wine-god Dionysos) and Ino lived about one generation before the time of Herakles [Hercules] and the Argonauts; and Herakles' squire Hylas, who himself was an Argonaut, was a maternal grandson of Orion.

Well, what d'you think? Aktaion being a grandson of Apollon means that he was Artemis' own great-nephew. Couldn't they have quietly discussed this mishap and come to a less brutal understanding, or did Artemis possibly intend revenge upon this poor mortal hunter's grandfather (assuming that Apollon cared about Aktaion at all) for Orion's death? Or did Artemis somehow know that Aktaion couldn't be discreet about this incident? Or is it that such an occurrence required such grievous consequences in that culture at that time?

Or maybe it was the other way around, depending on who between Aktaion or Orion died first. Apollon was bitter about his grandson's gruesome death and so he had to get even with his twin sis by gorily ending her potential illicit love affair?

(Granted that there are other versions of the deaths of both of the victims in question, but this is the only combination I can think of which provides fairly reasonable motives/motivations [in my assessment] for the behaviour of the twin deities in either story.)
 

Myrddin

Well-Known Member
If Aktaion was killed first by Artemis, prompting Apollo to have Orion killed, what would have Artemis' motivation been then? Possibly? I can understand her motivation when it's the other way around (Orion first, then Aktaion by her hand). And, of course, we've already got Apollo's possible motivations on either count. And why wouldn't these deaths just start a vicious circle?
 

Caburus

Active Member
The Pseudo-Hyginus says that in revenge for Apollo tricking her into killing Orion, Artemis caused the death of Koronis, one of Apollo's lovers and the mother of Asclepius.
Aktaion and Orion were both hunters who became the hunted. You would think Artemis would be a benefactor of Aktaion as the patroness of hunting. But I guess seeing a goddess naked, intended or not, was a pretty serious problem - whose to say she didn't have some embarressing blemish which, if known about, would lessen her goddess image?Aphrodite certainly had no problem with being seen naked, and when Tiresias saw Athena naked she blinded him but still left him capable of telling people what he had seen. Maybe Artemis was the perpetual virgin because she hated they way she looked - and not from any proto feminist stance.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Oh. But I thought that Hyginus (or rather Pseudo-Hyginus/ whoever wrote the Fabulæ) says that Apollon, outraged by Koronis cheating on him with a mortal man, killed her himself. And Pindar introduces Artemis to the story by saying that Apollon sent her to perform the assassination. At any rate it's an interesting angle I hadn't considered as a factor. Moreover the connection to Orion is interesting because one of the commonest versions of Asklepios' [Asclepius'] death has it that Zeus killed him when he was on the point of resurrecting the dead Orion (or when he had already done so). An obscure version of the story of Orion's blinding by King Oinopion identifies Asklepios as the dude who restored the giant's sight to him. Also, two of Orion's daughters were called the Koronides, and after their death a pair of twin chaps named the Koronoi sprang from their ashes.

I've never considered the motivation behind Artemis' and Athena's desire to remain virgins, beyond the facilitation of their functional deviation from the roles of women in ancient Greek society. And beyond the lameness of Hephaistos and the blindness of Ploutos, I'd never considered any of the Greek deities as bearing any physical flaws, since they are so often described as superlatively perfect in strength and beauty. But in the Dionysiaka, the Egyptian Nonnos makes a connection between Artemis' appearance and her career, as it happens. There was a Titan huntress named Aura who bore the misfortune of taunting the goddess of hunting by saying that Artemis, unlike the masculine Athena (which seems to be her own opinion), was too feminine in form to be a virgin. For this, Artemis sent Dionysos to rape her and the results were horrific, ending in her going insane after bearing the god's twin sons, swallowing one of them whole, and then being transformed into a stream by Zeus. Gosh.

And then your mention of Aphrodite reminds of another story relating to Apollon and revenge against a fellow deity!! Ptolemy Hephaestion, another Egyptian writer, is the source for this one, which makes it quite obscure, but according to him Apollon had a son named Erymanthos (both the other Erymanthoi of Greek myth are from Arkadia so perhaps we're supposed to locate this story there). Photios' recounting of Ptolemy's New History says: "Erymanthos, son of Apollon, was punished because he had seen Aphrodite after her union with Adonis, and Apollon, irritated, changed himself into a wild boar and killed Adonis by striking through his defenses." William Smith's Dictionary of Greek and Roman Mythology and Biography adds to this by saying that Erymanthos "had seen her in the bath." Neither source is very helpful in elaborating how Erymanthos came to be in the vicinity of a place where Aphrodite was bathing or doing her thing with Adonis, although in the latter case perhaps we are freer to presume that this could have been in some outdoor wilderness environment like that in which Aktaion acquired his unfortunate audience with Artemis. So the Dictionary would seem to disagree with your assertion about Aphrodite's lack of concern about being seen naked but then the New History rather makes the issue, possibly, a duplication of the incident in which Hephaistos busted Ares cuckolding him with Aphrodite, the difference being that neither Apollon nor Erymanthos was ever married to or in love with the goddess (at least not from any surviving story). The latter seems likeliest if we take into consideration the version of Adonis' death which has it that the wild boar which killed him was actually a jealous Ares in disguise.

If Aktaion was killed first by Artemis, prompting Apollo to have Orion killed, what would have Artemis' motivation been then? Possibly?
I've got nuthin', beyond Caburus' suggestions, and the different aspects or degrees of pride and convention that have generally been speculated upon in the past.

And why wouldn't these deaths just start a vicious circle?
Interesting point! Never thunk of it before. Maybe in narrative logic they should have but, from what I know, Istros' version of Orion's death is the single instance in Greek myth of any kind of conflict between these two deities, and Aktaion seems to be the only close relative of Apollon with whom Artemis dealt so severely (unless we count the giants Tityos, Otos and Ephialtes, the first of whom was a half-brother of these twins and tried to rape their mother, and the other two being their cousins, who had attacked all the gods; and Apollon cooperated with his sister in getting rid of all the above), hence my connection of those dots.
 

Caburus

Active Member
It is an odd comment by Ps-Hyginus to say Artemis killed Coronis, when it was all Apollo's idea. Maybe he saw it all as a plot by Artemis.
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As to the nakedness of Aphrodite; Erymanthos was killed by Aphrodite, after the death of Adonis, in revenge for having revealed her secret dalliance and causing the death of her lover, not for actually seeing her naked.
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But I do wonder if these punishments reflect the social laws of the time = a man seeing a woman naked without her permission is liable to severe punishment. They seem to bear some parallel with the wife of King Candaules of Lydia (C8th BC), who, when she finds out that Gyges (with Candaules permission) has been watching her undress, she threatens to have him killed unless he kills Candaules. Maybe there's evidence of changing attitudes when we get to Queen Vashti (C5th BC), who refused to show her beauty before the king and his guests - she had the ability to refuse, but the king then wrote a law forbidding such refusal. Perhaps the goddesses represent an earlier stage when being seen naked without permission was viewed as a violation. Are there any parallels with gods being naked? Noah being seen naked by his son Ham, and then Canaan being cursed is the first story that springs to mind (NOT a Greek myth of course, but wonder if the ideas behind it fit in somewhere).
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Hmmm... While I'm inclined to be skeptical about that reason for Erymanthos' punishment (and was this punishment really death?), the story makes much more sense now. Does this Erymanthos occur in another source?

The only instance which comes to mind of a male deity being surprised naked in the mythology is the all-seeing Helios espying Aphrodite's affair with Ares; his telling on the two lovers to Hephaistos; Hephaistos contriving a net in which to catch the lovers red-handed; and subsequently Ares, together with his mistress, being exposed in bed to all the other Olympioi. Otherwise the male deities generally seem to have even less of a problem with being seen naked than does Aphrodite, which likely reflects ancient Greek culture, in which male athletes, e.g., publicly participated in sports while in their birthday-suits. This distinction between the male and female divinities is perhaps best expressed in the temples of Apollon and Artemis on Aigina Island, which were built very close to each other, each deity having a wooden statue of him\herself in his/her temple. Artemis' statue was clothed while Apollon's was naked.

The power dynamics between men and women (almost universally, in every era) are undoubtedly also a factor: the implications of a man being discovered in this situation by a woman have generally tended to be different than the other way around. In Greek mythology, as far as I can tell, all the perpetrators of rape are male, and the insinuation of rape in the story of Aktaion and Artemis is more explicit in other versions, in which this is exactly what the young hunter attempts to do to the goddess when they meet, both at this location and under different conditions in the differing versions.

It seems to be only some parts of the Midrash which interpret the command of Vashti's husband to appear before his guests as meaning necessarily arriving at the party unclad. Vashti's disobedience is otherwise focused on her lack of any appearance at all. The story of Noah, Ham and Canaan, based on the laws in the Torah concerning the decorum with which children were supposed to treat their parents, seems to be more about a son disrespecting his father than about Noah's nakedness per se. But then again, also, in ancient Hebrew culture, nakedness/clothing was an even bigger deal than it was in Persia, Arabia and Asia Minor. The Book of Leviticus refers to committing incest as one "uncovering the nakedness" of his own close relative.
 

Caburus

Active Member
Erymanthos doesn't seem to appear anywhere else, unless his name relates to Erymanthia, where Artemis was said to hunt, and the home of the Erymanthian boar.
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Re power dynamics. I do tend to imagine the god +woman/goddess relationship as one of genuine love, or rape by the male. But the goddess Eos was notorious for abducting men to be her lovers (meant to be a curse from Aphrodite for sleeping with Ares), and the Naiads kidnapped Hylas in Mysia due to his beauty, and I expect there are other cases that are not classed as 'rape', but as 'abduction due to love'. Perhaps these myths need readdressing?
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Ah, touché! I retract my statement about all the perpetrators of that crime being male. I now remember reading on a different forum a question about what exactly the nymphs who abducted Hylas were doing with him (and one of the answers went so far as to claim that they raped him to death :eek:). And his grandfather Orion is in fact one of the males whom Eos is said to have abducted (at least that is the sort of language that Apollodoros uses to describe her taking him to Delos).

Further thought about Orion in relation to Artemis and Apollon: it is incidentally in Hyginus' version (as in a few others') that Orion is a son of Poseidon and Euryale, which on his father's side would make him (like Otos and Ephialtes) a cousin of the twin deities, and on his mother's side a great-nephew of Artemis, just like Aktaion. (It seems to be a general trend that giant sons of Zeus and Poseidon don't get on well with Apollon and Artemis, and [in every other version apart from Istros', in which Orion almost becomes Artemis' boyfriend], neither does Orion.)
 

Caburus

Active Member
In posting on another thread, just a thought. The judgement of Paris was between Aphrodite, Hera and Athena, each claiming to be the fairest goddess. Strange how Artemis seems to have capitulated on the competition entirely. Maybe more evidence that she had a negative body-image?
 

Caburus

Active Member
I've often thought it odd that Athena was in this trio. As a martial goddess with no known lovers, it seems unlikely she would have cared much if she were judged beautiful by a mortal man. It can only bee for allogorical reasons - Paris has to choose between love, success in war, or wealth (he chose love, and therefore caused but also lost the Trojan War, and his future kingdom). But interestingly there seems to have been an earlier rivalry between these three goddesses. Pseudo-Hyginus says that Athena, when she invented the flute, played before an assembly of the gods. But Hera and Aphrodite made fun of her because she was grey-eyed and puffed out her cheeks, and called her ugly. Athena later saw herself reflected in a pool of water, and threw the flute away in disgust.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
I concur. I do see Athena bickering with a Kolophonian teenage girl about who between the two of them is a better weaver, but fighting with Hera and Aphrodite over a golden bauble produced by the goddess of strife and discord just seems way out of character. Unless it was Athena's half-sister Atē causing this uncanny behaviour. Atē, the personification of folly, and daughter of Zeus and Eris, had been banished forever from Olympos by Zeus a short while before the wedding of Peleus and Thetis. But since the wedding was taking place on Earth, and we are indeed told that all of the immortals were present except for Eris, that suggests the presence of Atē, who bore influence over the gods as well as human beings. Moreover, in the overarching story of Troy, she is supposed to be ultimately responsible for the destruction of the city (which was founded on the hill upon which she hit the ground when her father cast her out of heaven), which destruction in a way begins at this wedding.

As for Artemis' lack of participation in this caper, maybe she especially despised Aphrodite and didn't want to be involved in anything connected to her realm (since the latter was the goddess of beauty). Maybe she was terrified of her stepmother Hera, who we know hated her, her brother Apollon and their mother Leto. In the sequel to this episode, when the Akhaioi have laid siege to Troy, Hera and Artemis do get into it, but the net result for Artemis is that she gets her ears boxed by Hera and has to run crying to Mother for comfort. Maybe the war was the first instance in which Artemis had courage to face Hera in open confrontation. But I actually prefer your hypothesis about insecurity: internal antagonists are the most interesting type [of antagonist], in my opinion.
 

Myrddin

Well-Known Member
But the goddess Eos was notorious for abducting men to be her lovers (meant to be a curse from Aphrodite for sleeping with Ares), and the Naiads kidnapped Hylas in Mysia due to his beauty, and I expect there are other cases that are not classed as 'rape', but as 'abduction due to love'. Perhaps these myths need readdressing?
Sounds like they do need to be readdressed.
 

Myrddin

Well-Known Member
Pseudo-Hyginus says that Athena, when she invented the flute, played before an assembly of the gods. But Hera and Aphrodite made fun of her because she was grey-eyed and puffed out her cheeks, and called her ugly. Athena later saw herself reflected in a pool of water, and threw the flute away in disgust.
Poor Athena. She's one of my favourite goddesses, maybe the favourite in Greek. Too bad Hera and Aphrodite got her all self-conscious.:(
 

Argus

New Member
Very interesting to think orions death was brought about by vengence. Id always seen it that Apollo tricked Artemis into shooting Orion to save his sister from breaking her vow of chastity, presumably on the river styx. Tho when you think about it, he didnt need to be that cruel , having her shoot him and then to let her swim out and see what she had done. Does sound like revenge.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Hmmm... I could be wrong but I always thought that Artemis made her chastity vow before Zeus instituted the statute of the Styx River. Chronologically he would have done that at the beginning of the Titans' War, by which time Artemis would already have made her vow. She was full-grown during the war but is described (at least by the poet Kallimakhos) as a little girl when she was sitting on her dad's knees making this request. Since she, her half-sister Athena and her aunt Hestia all had specifically to ask Zeus to grant them the right to retain their virginity, it seems like it was more a privilege than a hindrance to them. I'm presuming therefore that they could relinquish this right at some point later on if so they chose. Maybe that's why the Ephesian Artemis was a wife- and mother-goddess and Athena occurs in some obscure myths as bearing three sons to her half-brother Hephaistos.
 

krugos

New Member
That association of Orion and Actaeon's stories was very interesting (as well as the following discussion in this thread).
In the webcomic I've been developing I put Actaeon's death in the very near past, the characters run into a statue of Actaeon's made by Chiron, and someone tells the tale of his fate. I found Artemis punishment and Actaeon's terrible fate may end making the goddess look bad (something I don't want) for readers who aren't familiar with the myths; it seems kind of too much. So I made him first anger the goddess with his hubris, by saying he was a better hunter (which I think was in some variation of the myths, can't remember), so she forgives him once. Later, after seeing her naked, he is overwhelmed and can't control himself and tries to rape her, so now the punishment is better justified. The character telling the story, however, points out that watching the goddess naked was a big offence by itself.
In my webcomic's chronology (I'm still adjusting, long and difficult work... and my knowledge limited) Orion is not dead yet, because his important tales happens about two generations later. At the time my story begins, Dionysus has yet to meet Ariadne, which he does very early in the story. So we have to wait for their son Oenopion to be born, marry, have children, and his daughter Merope be old enough for Orion to be interested in her.
 

Alejandro

Active Member
No, you're absolutely right: there is indeed a version of the story in which Aktaion's fate is punishment for claiming to best the goddess at her own game. And I really like that you're combining this with the version in which he attempts to assault her. If you need or want precedent for that from the original mythology it certainly is there.

As for chronology, yep, it would seem that you've got your work cut out for you: Ariadne's sons are quite the contradiction when it comes to the characters with whom they interact, mainly because of the association of Ariadne with Theseus, which Athenian prince she is supposed to have met shortly before dying and/or marrying Dionysos. Theseus was a contemporary of Herakles and the Argonauts, and in some lists Theseus occurs as one of the Argonauts himself. Theseus would somehow have to have lived about one generation more (after his abandonment of the Cretan princess) before participating in the Argonautic expedition since among his fellow voyagers would have been Dionysos' and Ariadne's sons Eurymedon, Phanos, Philasos and Staphylos. Additionally, Queen Hypsipyle of Lemnos, who bore children to the Argonaut leader Iason [Jason], was a granddaughter of Dionysos and Ariadne, being the daughter of Thoas, who was yet another son of Dionysos and Ariadne. (Iason was also incidentally Hypsipyle's cousin, and their uncle Iphitos was also an Argonaut.)

But that isn't as big a problem as Hypsipyle's cousin Merope being wooed by Orion (whose grandson Hylas was also an Argonaut) since Orion should have died a couple of generations before then. So it's back to the original dilemma you brought up: Where do we find the time for Merope's father Oinopion [Oenopion] to have been born, grown up and had a child... before his own parents have even met? We could eliminate Theseus from the equation altogether, except that I don't see his story working without Ariadne. Also Ariadne would now need a different reason to end up languishing on the island where she met Dionysos in the first place. Alternatively we could save ourselves all that trouble by going with whichever list of Argonauts does not have any of Ariadne's sons on it; not having the Argonauts meet Hypsipyle at all; and imagining either that Hylas is not Orion's grandson or that Oinopion and his family never encountered Orion. Seems the only other alternative would be time-travel :eek:
 

krugos

New Member
Time-travel would fix many of my problems, lol. Trying to make sense of these stories into one coherent chronology has been a pain to do, but at the same time it's fun connecting the dots or forcing them into place. Sadly there are parts where it's just not possible and I have to make changes, ignoring genealogy, moving the order of some events, or just ignoring some facts and leave it at that without giving explanations.
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Hypsipyle is one case where I had to change her genealogy, she's still Thoas' daughter but they're not related to Dionysus. In my story after Theseus abandons Ariadne, Dionysus takes her to Lemnos where they are well received by Thoas, later Dionysus names his son after him, so there are two Thoas. I will have a story in the island at the time the women kill all the men, as a set up for that part of the argonauts journey which will happen just a few years later, I couldn't find a way to make Hypsipyle grand daughter of Dionysus-Ariadne but I still wanted to use her. There was an instance of Zeus making someone's son(s) grow up quickly, can't remember who, I thought about using something like that, but it doesn't feel right for the story.
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I did something similar with Medea. My story begins when Theseus is going to face the Minotaur, the problem is Medea married Aegeus after leaving Jason, but in my chronology the argonauts travel years after Aegeus' death. So how could Medea leave Jason before meeting him? Time travel!, haha. The Minotaur story is fundamental to my story (although I won't spoil why, other than my character was going to be sacrificed in Knossos), so I can't move it. And I don't want to skip the argonauts journey by placing it years before my story. So I simply made Medea, wife of Aegeus, a different character from Jason's Medea.
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I'm not using one source or another for my argonauts, instead I took all names from several lists and I'm picking 48 from that (my character Klea and her companion taking two places to have 50 argonauts), some I chose because they have to be in that journey, but most others were selected based on who I can introduce in the webcomic before the journey, so by the time the journey takes place readers don't have to deal with too many unfamiliar faces/names. My list is not complete, I've chosen 42 so far, it was 43 but later I decided to place Iphitos death a few years before the journey. I'm not including any of Dionysus sons in the Argo. As for Hylas, he won't be related to Orion.
 
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