Actaeon heaping up the glowing ashes for you,<br> And cooked ewe-lambs for you every day.<br> But you hit him and turned him into a wolf,<br> His own herd-boys hunt him down<br> And his dogs tear at his haunches.<br><nowiki>"</nowiki>Actaeon, torn apart by dogs incited by Artemis, finds another Near Eastern parallel in the Ugaritic hero Aqht, torn apart by eagles incited by Anath who wanted his hunting bow. The virginal Artemis of classical times is not directly comparable to Ishtar of the many lovers, but the mytheme of Artemis shooting Orion, was linked to her punishment of Actaeon by T.C.W. Stinton; the
Diana and Actaeon the transformation still in progress; like many depictions the head is shown transformed, but most of the body remains human. Less often Actaeon is fully transformed when caught by his dogs. The story was popular on Italian Renaissance maiolica. The origins of the "Diana and Actaeon Pas de Deux," a "divertissement" created for a 1935 version of "La Esmeralda," lie in two earlier ballet productions. The first of these was "Tsar Kandavl" (aka "Le Roi Candaule"), premiered in 1868 by the Imperial Russian Ballet in Saint Petersburg. Based on a story told by Herodotus in his "Histories," this four-act ballet,