Abstract

The story of Actaeon of Corinth is a slight, rationalized, romantic version of the original Boeotian myth, and as such has occasionally received a brief notice. In the Corinthian story Melissos his father had rescued Corinth from an attack by Pheidon of Argos, and was therefore held in great honour by the Corinthians. The boy Actaeon was torn to pieces not by his dogs but by bis drunken Bacchiad admirers, and after the murder Melissos, unable to get legal redress from the Corinthians, cursed them publicly at the Isthmian festival and jumped over a cliff. Plutarch and Diodorus name the Bacchiad Archias as the chief culprit, and Plutarch ends with Archias' departure to found Syracuse and his eventual death there. The story has an historical not a mythical setting, and has attracted some slight attention from historians, either in the hope of light on the obscure question of Pheidon's relations with Corinth, or because of the chronological implication that Pheidon reigned a generation or more before the foundation of Syracuse. In neither aspect has its evidence been rated high, and that is not surprising, especially since attention has been concentrated mainly on Plutarch's story. I believe, however, that we can distinguish an earlier version, and that the historical implications of this original are less disreputable.