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| Barthel Beham Vanitas 1540 oil on panel Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Madeleine Boullogne Vanitas Still Life ca. 1690 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse |
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| Arsen Savadov and Alexander Khartjenko Untitled 1997 C-print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| François Perrier Chronos devouring the Belvedere Torso 1638 etching (frontispiece to Perrier's illustrations of antique sculpture) Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| attributed to Jacopo Ligozzi Allegory with Severed Head and Book ca. 1600-1610 oil on panel Amsterdam Museum |
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| Anonymous French Artist Revolutionary Allegory ca. 1790 oil on canvas Musée Carnavalet, Paris |
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| Nicolas-Henri Jeaurat de Bertry Revolutionary Allegory (with portrait of Jean-Jacques Rousseau) 1794 oil on panel Musée Carnavalet, Paris |
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| Anonymous Venetian Artist Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins ca. 1550 oil on canvas Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Domenico Fetti Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard ca. 1619-21 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden |
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| Domenico Fetti Parable of the Lost Sheep ca. 1619-21 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden |
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| Ian Hamilton Finlay Paris is the Sink of all Vices 1988 screenprint Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| Morten Krohg The People's Art? 1972 screenprint KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo |
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| Cristofano Robetta Allegorical Scene in a Landscape ca. 1520 etching and engraving Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Henry Fuseli Satan and the Birth of Sin (scene from Milton's Paradise Lost) ca. 1799 oil on canvas Dallas Museum of Art |
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| John Singer Sargent Figure Study for Heaven ca. 1903-1916 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Marthe Elise Stramrud These Flowers Never Fade 2017 C-print KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo |
[Clytemnestra comes out of the palace and addresses Cassandra, who is still seated in the carriage.]
Clytemnestra: You come along inside too – I mean you, Cassandra – since Zeus, far from being angry with you, has enabled you to share the lustral water of this house, standing round the altar of Zeus Ktesios among many other slaves. [Cassandra remains motionless.] Come down from this carriage, don't be so proud; they say, you know, that even the son of Alcmene was once sold, and brought himself to touch the coarse food of the slave. If it should fall to one's lot to be forced to endure such a fate, one has much reason to be grateful if one has masters who are of ancient wealth. Those who have reaped a rich harvest quite unexpectedly are cruel to their slaves in every way and in particular . . . [missing text] . . . ; but we will deal fairly with you in all respects, and you will have from us precisely the kind of treatment that custom prescribes. [Cassandra remains motionless.]
Chorus [to Cassandra]: She's just been talking to you, you know, and she's spoken very clearly. You've been captured, caught in a deadly net;* you should obey her, if you're going to – but perhaps you won't. [Cassandra remains motionless.]
Clytemnestra [to Chorus]: Well, unless she has some unintelligible barbarian language like the swallows do, what I say is getting inside her mind and my words are persuading her. [She makes as if to go inside. Cassandra remains motionless.]
Chorus [to Cassandra]: Follow her. Do as she tells you is the best choice available. Leave your seat in this carriage, and comply with her words. [Cassandra remains motionless.]
– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)
*They mean the net cast over Troy, whose capture meant the death of almost its entire male population; but we, and Cassandra, know that she has now been brought into another death-trap which will be fatal for her.