Actaeon

Chiron brought up Actaeon, the son of Aristaeus and Autonoe, and trained him as a hunter. Actaeon learned the hunter’s art under the centaur’s instruction and became highly skilled. He later hunted on Mount Cithaeron with a pack of fifty dogs.

On a hot day, Actaeon fell asleep beside a spring and awoke to find Artemis bathing there with her attendants. In the most widely told account, he saw the goddess and approached the place. Artemis became angry, sprinkled him with water, and changed him at once into a deer. She then drove his fifty dogs into a frenzy. The hounds chased their master, attacked him, and devoured him without recognising him. Actaeon died by the mouths of the dogs that had hunted beside him.

After Actaeon’s death, the dogs searched for their master and howled as they went. Their search brought them to Chiron’s cave. Chiron made an image of Actaeon, and the image ended the dogs’ grief. In another telling, Acousilaos said that Zeus caused Actaeon’s death because Actaeon courted Semele. Stesichorus gave a different account. He said that Artemis threw a stag’s hide around Actaeon and arranged for his own hounds to kill him, so that he would not take Semele as his wife.