![]() |
Eugène Fromentin Standard Bearer ca. 1860-65 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
![]() |
Marcantonio Raimondi after Raphael Standard Bearer ca. 1515 engraving Hamburger Kunsthalle |
![]() |
Georgi Selma Parade of Athletes in Red Square 1932 gelatin silver print Museum Ludwig, Cologne |
![]() |
Hans Kaufmann Aviation Competition (Prometheus attempting to restrain Icarus) 1914 lithograph (poster) Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
![]() |
Karl Mayer Prometheus rejecting Zeus's Messengers ca. 1837 oil on canvas Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
![]() |
Federico Bencovich Hercules freeing Prometheus ca. 1710 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
![]() |
Jean Raoux Vestal carrying the Sacred Fire ca. 1729 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
![]() |
Guido Reni Moses with the Tablets of the Law ca. 1621 oil on canvas Galleria Borghese, Rome |
![]() |
Edward Steichen Isadora Duncan in the Parthenon, Athens 1920 palladium print Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas |
![]() |
Giandomenico Tiepolo Triumph of Pulcinella ca. 1760-70 oil on canvas Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
![]() |
workshop of Balthasar Permoser Atlas with Celestial Sphere ca. 1700 ivory Bode Museum, Berlin |
![]() |
Jusepe de Ribera An Astronomer 1608 oil on canvas Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts |
![]() |
Jeff Wall Man in Street (Diptych) 1995 transparencies in lightbox Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands |
![]() |
Sebastian Stoskopff The Five Senses, or, Summer 1633 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg |
![]() |
James Sayers Sculptor Joseph Nollekens arranging a bust of Baron Grenville between busts of William Pitt the Younger and Charles James Fox 1808 etching Wellcome Collection, London |
![]() |
Michel Fourcade Conflictuelle 2 1979 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau |
Clytemnestra: Do as I ask! You are still the master, you know, if you yield to me of your own free will.
Agamemnon: Well, if that's what you want, let someone quickly take off my shoes, which serve like slaves for my feet to tread on; and as I walk on these purple-dyed robes, may no jealous eye strike me from afar! For I feel a great sense of impropriety about despoiling this house under my feet, ruining its wealth and the woven work bought with its silver. Well, so much for that. [His shoes having now been removed, he descends from the carriage, but does not yet step on the fabrics. He gestures towards Cassandra.] This foreign woman – please welcome her kindly. He who exercises power gently is regarded graciously by god from afar. No one wears the yoke of slavery willingly; and this woman has come with me as a gift from the army; the choice flower of its rich booty. Now, since I have been subjugated into obeying you in this, I will go, treading on purple, to the halls of my house.
– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)