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Pablo Picasso Harlequin 1923 oil on canvas Museum Ludwig, Cologne |
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Palma il Vecchio Salvator Mundi ca. 1518-22 oil on panel Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg |
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Lütfi Özkök Portrait of poet Tomas Tranströmer ca. 1965 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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Amedeo Modigliani Portrait of writer Beatrice Hastings 1914 oil on canvas High Museum of Art, Atlanta |
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Jean Fautrier Visage Violet 1947 color etching Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli) Portrait of a Young Man (the so-called Broccardo Portrait) ca. 1508-1510 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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Joshua Reynolds Portrait of Captain William Hamilton ca. 1762 oil on canvas Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio |
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Henri Doucet Young Woman ca. 1910 oil on canvas Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo |
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Henry Goodwin Greta Garbo 1926 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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Louis Kolitz Study of a Young Woman wearing an 18th-century Wig ca. 1895 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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Bertold Löffler Portrait of artist Melitta Feldkircher ca. 1910 oil on canvas (unfinished) Leopold Museum, Vienna |
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Giuseppe Signorini Boy in Rome ca. 1880 watercolor on paper Morgan Library, New York |
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George Minne Bust of Model 1910-11 painted plaster Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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Oscar Gustave Rejlander Lord Elcho with his Son ca. 1860 albumen print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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Laurits Andersen Ring The artist's son Ole at the Window 1930 oil on canvas Randers Kunstmuseum, Denmark |
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Thomas Gainsborough Portrait of Mrs Charles Purvis ca. 1775-80 oil on canvas Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio |
While King Antiochus was perpetrating these atrocities, a very wealthy young man of Tyrian stock, named Apollonius, arrived by ship in Antioch. He set out to the king and saluted him thus. "Greetings, my lord, King Antiochus." And he said: "Because you are a dutiful father, I have hurried here to comply with your will. I am descended from a royal family, and I seek your daughter's hand in marriage." When the king heard these unwelcome words, he gave the young man an angry look and said to him, "Young man, do you know the conditions of marriage?" He said, "I know them, and I saw them on the city gate." The king said: "Listen to the riddle, then: I ride on crime; I feed on a mother's flesh; I seek my brother, my mother's husband, my daughter's son; I do not find them."*
After hearing the riddle, the young man left the king for a short time. By subjecting the riddle to his intelligent consideration he found the solution to it by the grace of God. He set out to the king and spoke thus. "My lord king, you set a riddle for me; therefore, hear its solution. When you said 'I ride on crime,' you did not lie: look to yourself. When you said 'I feed on a mother's flesh,' you did not lie about this either: look to your own daughter."
The king realized that the young man had found the solution to the riddle and spoke to him thus: "You're wrong. Nothing you've said is true. You'll surely earn a beheading for yourself, but you have thirty days: think some more. When you return with the solution to the riddle, you'll have my daughter's hand in marriage." The young man was greatly disturbed. He boarded the ship that he had been keeping in readiness and set sail for his native Tyre.
*None of the story's riddles is invented by the author; all are found elsewhere in antiquity (or late antiquity), which was fond of such puzzles.
– from The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre, after anonymous Latin manuscripts of the 5th-6th century AD translating a lost Greek text of the 2nd-3rd century AD, and translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989)