sec. II a.C.
PAUSANIA, Descrizione della Grecia
Traduzione da: Jones W.H.S., Litt D., Ormerod H.A., Pausanias Description of Greece, Harvard University Press, 1918
IX, 2, 3-4
This road leads to Plataea from Eleutherae. On the road from Megara there is a spring on the right, 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. Stesichorus of Himera says that the goddess cast a deer-skin round Actaeon to make sure that his hounds would kill him, so as to prevent his taking Semele to wife.
My own view is that without divine interference the hounds of Actaeon were smitten with madness, and so they were sure to tear to pieces without distinction everybody they chanced to meet. Whereabouts on Cithaeron the disaster befell Pentheus, the son of Echion, or where Oedipus was exposed at birth, nobody knows with the assurance with which we know the Cleft Road to Phocis, where Oedipus killed his father (Mount Cithaeron is sacred to Cithaeronian Zeus), as I shall tell of at greater length when this place in my story has been reached.
IX, 38, 5
About Actaeon the Orchomenians had the following story. A ghost, they say, carrying a rock was ravaging the land. When they inquired at Delphi, the god bade them discover the remains of Actaeon and bury them in the earth. He also bade them make a bronze likeness of the ghost and fasten it to a rock with iron. I have myself seen this image thus fastened. They also sacrifice every year to Actaeon as to a hero.
X, 30, 5,
Beyond these is Maera sitting on a rock. About her the poem Returns says that she was still a maid when she departed this life, being the daughter of Proetus, son of Thersander, who was a son of Sisyphus. Next to Maera is Actaeon, son of Aristaeus, together with the mother of Actaeon; they hold in their hands a young deer, and are sitting on a deer's skin. A hunting dog lies stretched out beside them, an allusion to Actaeon's mode of life, and to the manner of his death.
