Tragedy in Ovid's Metamorphoses of Actaeon is one of the first presented in the "Metamorphoses" that is very metatheatrical in nature. One of the first known appearances of this myth was in a tragedy written by Aeschylus in the 5th century BC, the "Toxotides", or the "Female Archers". The myth, as presented in the "Metamorphoses" shows Actaeon coming across the sight of Diana, or Artemis in the Greek tragedy, bathing herself. Upon being discovered, Actaeon is turned into a deer and eventually killed by his own pack of hunting dogs. Though the full text of Aeschylus' tragedy is lost to modern readers, it would
Greek mythology existing literary evidence. Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, it is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson has argued. The earlier inhabitants of the Balkan Peninsula were an agricultural people who, using Animism, assigned a spirit to every aspect of nature. Eventually, these vague spirits assumed human forms and entered the local mythology as gods. When tribes from the north of the