Diana and Actaeon the role of the Satyr, with Lydia Ivanova as Diana and Nicholas Efimov as Endymion. In 1886, Petipa incorporated a new "pas de deux," set to music by Riccardo Drigo, into his production of Pugni's "La Esmeralda" for the Maryinsky Ballet, as the Imperial Russian Ballet had come to be called. This "pas de deux" was based on the Greek myth of Artemis (predecessor to the Roman Diana), in her aspect of virgin goddess of the hunt, and Actaeon, a Theban hero. According to Ovid's "Metamorphoses," Actaeon, out on a hunt, stumbled upon Artemis while she was bathing at a
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