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| Adriaen van der Werff after Peter Paul Rubens Jupiter and Callisto ca. 1675 oil on copper Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Johann Spillenberger Diana and Callisto 1676 oil on canvas Národní Galerie, Prague |
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| Ugo da Carpi after Parmigianino Diana and Callisto ca. 1530 chiaroscuro woodcut Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Pietro Liberi Diana and Callisto ca. 1670 oil on canvas Landesmuseum Hannover |
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| Cornelis Bisschop Mercury preparing to slay Argus ca. 1670 oil on canvas Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands |
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| Marco Sammartino Mercury and Argus ca. 1650-70 etching Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Hendrik van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Elder Marriage of Peleus and Thetis before 1625 oil on copper Národní Galerie, Prague |
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| Noël Coypel Combat of Hercules and Acheloüs ca. 1675 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen |
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| Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée Pygmalion with his Statue 1777 oil on canvas Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki |
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| Bernaert de Ryckere Diana and Actaeon 1582 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Hans Rottenhammer Diana and Actaeon 1597 oil on copper Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart |
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| Anonymous Artist working in Rome Diana and Actaeon 1711 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Friedrich Christoph Steinhammer Diana and Actaeon 1615 oil on copper Národní Galerie, Prague |
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| Joachim Wtewael Diana and Actaeon 1607 oil on panel Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
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| Sebastiano Ricci Contest between Pan and Apollo judged by King Midas ca. 1685-87 oil on canvas Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Gillis van Coninxloo II (landscape) and Karel van Mander the Elder (figures) Judgment of Midas 1598 oil on panel Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden |
Chorus of the daughters of Danaus:
May Zeus make all be well in very truth!
The desire of Zeus is not easy to hunt out:
the paths of his mind
stretch tangled and shadowy,
impossible to perceive or see clearly.
It falls safe, not on its back,
when an action is definitively ordained by the nod of Zeus.
It blazes everywhere,
even in darkness, with black fortune
for mortal folk.
He casts humans down
from lofty, towering hopes to utter destruction,
without deploying any armed force.
Everything gods do is done without toil:
he sits still, and nevertheless somehow
carries out his will directly
from his holy abode.
Let him look on this human
act of outrage, on the kind of youthful stock that is sprouting:
the prospect of marriage with me makes it bloom
with determination hard to dissuade;
it has frenzied thoughts
that goad it on implacably,
having had its mind transformed to love a ruinous delusion.
Such are the sad sufferings that I speak and cry of,
grievous, keening, tear-falling sufferings –
ié, ié! – made conspicuous by loud laments:
I honour myself with dirges while I still live.
I appeal for the favour of the hilly land of Apia –
you understand well, O land, my barbaric speech* –
and I repeatedly fall upon my Sidonian veil,
tearing its linen to rags.
– Aeschylus, from Suppliants (ca. 470-460 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)
*although, in accordance with the conventions of tragedy, the words that actually come out of the Danaids' mouths are Greek, we are expected to imagine that they are speaking Egyptian (just as e.g. we are expected to imagine that the performers' linen masks are human faces)