Autonoê, the third daughter of Kadmus, married the pastoral hero or god Aristæus, and was mother of Aktæôn, a devoted hunter and a favorite companion of the goddess Artemis. She however became displeased with him—either because he looked into a fountain while she was bathing and saw her naked—or according to the legend set forth by the poet Stesichorus, because he loved and courted Semelê—or according to Euripidês, because he presumptuously vaunted himself as her superior in the chase. She transformed him into a stag, so that his own dogs set upon and devoured him. The rock upon which Aktæôn used to sleep when fatigued with the chase, and the spring whose transparent waters had too clearly revealed the form of the goddess, were shown to Pausanias near Platæa, on the road to Megara.[627] [627] See Apollodôr. iii. 4, 3; Stesichor. Fragm. xvii. Kleine; Pausan. ix. 2, 3; Eurip. Bacch. 337; Diodôr. iv. 81. The old logographer Akusilaus copied Stesichorus. Upon this well-known story it is unnecessary to multiply references. I shall however briefly notice the remarks made upon it by Diodôrus and by Pausanias, as an illustration of the manner in which the literary Greeks of a later day dealt with their old national legends. Both of them appear implicitly to believe the fact, that Aktæôn was devoured by his own dogs, but they differ materially in the explanation of it. Diodôrus accepts and vindicates the miraculous interposition of the displeased goddess to punish Aktæôn, who, according to one story, had boasted of his superiority in the chase to Artemis,—according to another story, had presumed to solicit the goddess in marriage, emboldened by the great numbers of the feet of animals slain in the chase which he had hung up as offerings in her temple. “It is not improbable (observes Diodôrus) that the goddess was angry on both these accounts. For whether Aktæôn abused these hunting presents so far as to make them the means of gratifying his own desires towards one unapproachable in wedlock, or whether he presumed to call himself an abler hunter than her with whom the gods themselves will not compete in this department,—in either case the wrath of the goddess against him was just and legitimate (ὁμολογουμένην καὶ δικαίαν ὀργὴν ἔσχε πρὸς αὐτὸν ἡ θεός). With perfect propriety therefore (Καθόλου δὲ πιθανῶς) was he transformed into an animal such as those he had hunted, and torn to pieces by the very dogs who had killed them.” (Didot. iv. 80.)