Actaeon reconstruction opposes a too-pat consensus that has an archaic Actaeon aspiring to Semele, a classical Actaeon boasting of his hunting prowess and a Hellenistic Actaeon glimpsing Artemis' bath. Lacy identifies the site of Actaeon's transgression as a spring sacred to Artemis at Plataea where Actaeon was a " hero archegetes" ("hero-founder") The righteous hunter, the companion of Artemis, seeing her bathing naked in the spring, was moved to try to make himself her consort, as Diodorus Siculus noted, and was punished, in part for transgressing the hunter's "ritually enforced deference to Artemis" (Lacy 1990:42). Notes: In the second century AD,
Grünes Gewölbe is suspended in place of the shaft, while the bowl seems to float on the tips of the stag's antlers. This masterpiece depicts the mythological scene in which the unapproachable Diana changes the hunter Actaeon into a deer and has him torn to pieces by his own dogs for having watched her bathing. The base of the piece presents the forest floor, upon which lies the head of the stag Actaeon, with the dogs falling ravenously upon it. The inscription picked out in diamonds on the rim of the base reads, "DISCRETION SERT EFFRONTERIE PERD" ("Discretion is laudable, indiscretion unwise").