Actaeon the traveller Pausanias was shown a spring on the road in Attica leading to Plataea from Eleutherae, just beyond Megara "and a little farther on a rock. It is called the bed of Actaeon, for it is said that he slept thereon when weary with hunting and that into this spring he looked while Artemis was bathing in it." In the standard version of the "Epic of Gilgamesh" (tablet vi) there is a parallel, in the series of examples Gilgamesh gives Ishtar of her mistreatment of her serial lovers: "You loved the herdsman, shepherd and chief shepherd<br> Who was always
Diana and Her Companions her tears", according to Wheelock. (Christ also kneeled before his disciples and washed their feet at the Last Supper.) Selena Cant believes Vermeer's contemporaries would have immediately drawn the association of foot-washing with the idea of Jesus washing feet. "[T]his maidservant steals the scene", according to Cant, who points out the "unusual brown-bronze bodice" worn by the servant. According to Wheelock, the painting "has [...] no obvious literary source". As a depiction of Diana, the painting is notable in part for what it does not depict—neither Actaeon catching sight of Diana and her nymphs bathing nor the actual moment when