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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres (figures) and Alexandre Desgoffe (background) Venus at Paphos ca. 1852 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Romulus, victorious over Acron, carries the Spoils into the Temple of Jupiter 1812 oil on canvas École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris |
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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Romulus, victorious over Acron, carries the Spoils into the Temple of Jupiter (detail) 1812 oil on canvas École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, Paris |
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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Apotheosis of Homer 1827 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres Apotheosis of Homer (detail) 1827 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
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| Dominique Papety Dream of Happiness ca. 1843 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Hector Leroux Herculaneum, 23 August, AD 79 1881 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Édouard Sais Excavation at Pompei ca. 1865 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Émile Lévy Death of Orpheus 1866 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Henri-Léopold Lévy Death of Orpheus ca. 1870 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Gustave Moreau Orpheus 1865 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Gustave Moreau Hesiod and the Muse 1891 oil on canvas Musée d'Orsay, Paris |
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| Auguste Couder The Four Elements - Water Achilles battles Scamander and Simoeis (River Gods) 1819 oil on canvas, mounted on ceiling vault Rotonde d'Apollon, Musée du Louvre |
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| Auguste Couder The Four Elements - Earth Hercules and Antaeus 1819 oil on canvas, mounted on ceiling vault Rotonde d'Apollon, Musée du Louvre |
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| Jean-Léon Gérôme Chariot Race 1876 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
The Spoilers and the Spoil
the night too struggled to escape this pitted field.
the whole night long night waited for us to fail,
while all night's forces muttered in their retreat
as the fires poured over us, melting our shield wall.
the glue of our sinews melted, our joints rained
little meteors down, a hail of melting stones,
knucklebone, ankle and thigh, though the field had been gained,
it gained nothing from us, and the marrow of our bones
ran clear in the turning currents of suns. when we woke,
the sound of the mortars gone, and the mortars of stars
melted, that joined those weightless blocks of black
eternal zero home to us, we fixed on, as hard,
neither our wills nor our fates. what we had taken
for our world was death without grief and all holds broken.
– Judith Johnson Sherwin (1978)