Bath-Time Extremity

Diana: selfie with Actaeon

Well, after you've turned someone into a stag for stumbling across your bath-time, and then had him torn to pieces by his own pack of hounds, you're going to want to show off your handiwork, aren't you? Heh, what am I like? Gorgeous, that's what! And maybe a little savage. Check it out, immortals!

I'm pretty sure the swivel-eyed Roman below is not Ovid, but he's got the look, hasn't he? "The poet's eye, in fine frenzy rolling" and all that.

They hem him in on everie side, and in the shape of Stagge,

With greedie teeth and griping pawes their Lord in peeces dragge.

So fierce was cruell Phoebes wrath, it could not be alayde,

Till of his fault by bitter death the raunsome he had payde.

Much muttring was upon this fact. Some thought there was extended

A great deale more extremitie than neded. Some commended

Dianas doing : saying that it was but worthely

For safegarde of hir womanhod.

Ovid, Metamorphoses, Book 3 (trans. Arthur Golding, 1567)

Ars Poetica