Throughout the text of the “Dionysus” section the universal theme I found is that the characters were punished by fate for no apparent reason. At a crucial moment in each story, the innocent character loses free will and from then on is governed by a merciless fate. In the myth of Diana and Actaeon, Actaeon has not committed any crime but is punished as if he had. The fact that he saw Diana bathing was the work of fate. As a matter of fact, Hughes reinforces this belief in the first paragraph of the story when he states, “Fate, not guilt, was enough for Actaeon. It is no crime to get lost in the dark forest” (Hughes 97). It is perfectly clear that it was purely fate that drove this story. Actaeon was “driven by a ruthless fate, the pulls of which he felt only as waves of curiosity” (Hughes 99). At this point we see that Actaeon has completely lost free will. It is no longer his decision whether to go further into the cave. From here on, destiny takes control of his life. The only character who gained any form of justice from this encounter is Diana. By eliminating Actaeon, she regained her purity, the essence of her virginity. She had lost this purity when Actaeon saw her unmasked. Her only means of regaining chastity is to get rid of Actaeon. In comparison, there is no justice in this tale for Actaeon. He was simply a victim of fate, which put him in the wrong place at the wrong time. The strongest moral of the myth of Diana and Actaeon is that fate has no preferences. Actaeon committed no crime; he did nothing to anger the gods. Destiny reaches all people regardless of how they choose to live their lives. Ovid could have used this myth as a basis to explain to his people why even the innocent suffer in life. However, I have found that the moral of this myth is like beauty in the eyes of an observer. For example, another possible moral that came to mind is that the hunter becomes the hunted. Diana, being the goddess of the hunt, had the power to show Actaeon what it meant to be prey. This is brutally demonstrated when Actaeon's own dogs, so peculiarly described (practically the entire page 101 is dedicated to the description of these dogs), hunt down Actaeon and ravenously tear him to pieces..