Strife - I

Domenico Beccafumi
Firing a Cannon
(illustration to Agricola's De Re Metallica)
ca. 1540-50
woodcut
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Wolfgang Hieronymus Bömmel
Mounted Soldiers firing Pistols
1695
engraving
(template sheet for goldsmith's work)
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Anonymous Italian Artist
Cain slaying Abel
16th century
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Marco Dente after Giulio Romano
Entellus and Dares
(scene from the Aeneid)
ca. 1520-25
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Augustin Hirschvogel after Agostino Musi
Sabines slaying Tarpeia
(scene described in Livy and Plutarch)
1545
etching
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Priam and his Family slain by the Greeks
ca. 1775-85
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Caspar Luyken
Scene of Assassination
ca. 1700
engraving (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Monogrammist HP
Battle Scene
1537
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Hans Baldung
Horses fighting in a Forest
1534
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Italian Artist after Guido Reni
Fall of the Giants
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Hans Sachs
Turkish Siege of Vienna in 1529
printed ca. 1566
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress (broadside)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Francesco Allegrini
Scene from Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata
ca. 1640
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Sassetta (Stefano di Giovanni)
The Betrayal of Christ
ca, 1437-44
tempera on panel (predella fragment)
Detroit Institute of Arts

Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder
Hercules battling Amazons
1598
oil on panel
Bildgalerie von Sanssouci, Potsdam

Anonymous French Artist
Insurrection at Frankfurt
ca. 1850
stencil-colored lithograph
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

James Ensor
The Tribulations of Saint Anthony
1909
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

The boy was crowning his stepmother's funeral stele, a tall column, thinking that in changing life for death she had changed her character. But it came down on the tomb and killed him. Stepsons, avoid even the tomb of your stepmother.

Stepmothers are always a curse to their stepchildren, and do not keep them safe even when they love them. Remember Phaedra and Hippolytus. 

A stepmother's spite is ever mordant, and not gentle even in love. I know what befell chaste Hippolytus. 

Hermes, ye shepherds, is easily contented, rejoicing in libations of milk and honey from the oak-tree, but not so Hercules. He demands a ram or fat lamb, or in any case a whole victim. But he keeps off the wolves. What profits that, when the sheep he protects if not slain by the wolf is slain by its protector?

Hera, tortured by the beauty of Ganymede, and with the soul-consuming sting of jealousy in her heart, once spoke thus: "Troy gave birth to a male flame for Zeus; therefore I will send a flame to fall on Troy, Paris the bringer of woe. No eagle shall come again to the Trojans, but vultures to the feast, the day that the Danai gather the spoils of their labour."

The dolphins, the fish-eating dogs of the sea, were sporting round the ship as she moved rapidly on her course. A boar-hound, taking them for game, dashed, poor fellow, into the sea, as he would have dashed on land. He perished for the sake of a chase that was strange to him; for not all dogs are light of foot in the sea.

– from Book IX (Declamatory and Descriptive Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)