Artemis hounds. However, in some surviving versions, Actaeon is a stranger who happens upon her. According to the Latin version of the story told by the Roman Ovid having accidentally seen Artemis (Diana) on Mount Cithaeron while she was bathing, he was changed by her into a stag, and pursued and killed by his fifty hounds. Different tellings also diverge in the hunter's transgression, which is sometimes merely seeing the virgin goddess naked, sometimes boasting he is a better hunter than she, or even merely being a rival of Zeus for the affections of Semele. In some versions of the story
Dragons in Greek mythology Dragons in Greek mythology Dragons play a significant role in Greek mythology. The word dragon derives from the Greek δράκων (drakōn) and its Latin cognate draco. Ancient Greeks applied the term to large, constricting snakes. Daniel Ogden speaks of three ways to explain the origins of Greek dragon myths: as "vertical" evolution from (reconstructed) Proto-Indo-European mythology, as "horizontal" adaptation from Ancient Near Eastern mythology, or as sitting within "the cloud of international folktale". Regarding theories of vertical transmission, Ogden argues that they carry "an unspoken assumption that prior to such a transfer the Greeks' own myth-world was a "tabula rasa"",