Diana and Actaeon spring. Outraged and embarrassed that he had seen her naked, she punished him by destroying his power of speech and turning him into a stag, with antlers and a shaggy coat. In deer form, he was torn to pieces by his own hunting dogs, whipped into a raging fury by Artemis. In 1935, Agrippina Vaganova staged a new production of "La Esmeralda" for the Kirov Ballet in Leningrad, as the company and the city were then known. She created a new, bravura "pas de deux" for Diana and Actaeon, joining the names of the modest Roman goddess and the hapless
Pygmy (Greek mythology) Pygmy (Greek mythology) The Pygmies ( "Pygmaioi", from the adjective πυγμαῖος from πυγμή "pygmē", "the length of the forearm") were a tribe of diminutive humans in Greek mythology. According to the Iliad, they were involved in a constant war with the cranes, which migrated in winter to their homeland on the southern shores of the earth-encircling river Oceanus. One story describes the origin of the age-old battle, speaking of a Pygmy Queen named Gerana who offended the goddess Hera with her boasts of superior beauty, and was transformed into a crane. In art the scene was popular with little Pygmies