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
The Death of Actaeon a stag and he was attacked and killed by his own hounds. Both paintings belong to a group of large-scale mythological paintings inspired by the "Metamorphoses" and referred to by Titian himself as ‘poesie’, the visual equivalent of poetry, which he began producing for Philip II of Spain in 1551 and which also include "Danaë" (many versions, Philip's in the Prado, Madrid), "Venus and Adonis" (private collection, London, but also other versions), "Perseus and Andromeda" (Wallace Collection, London), "The Rape of Europa" (Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston), "Diana and Actaeon" and "Diana and Callisto" (shared by National Gallery of Scotland