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| Auguste Renoir Odalisque 1870 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Henri Matisse Two Odalisques 1928 oil on canvas Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant The Favorite of the Emir ca. 1879 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Max Beckmann Woman with Irises reading a Book 1931 oil on canvas Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Luca Giordano Leda and the Swan ca. 1675 oil on canvas Museo di Capodimonte, Naples |
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| Édouard Manet Reclining Woman in Spanish Attire 1862-63 oil on canvas Yale University Art Gallery |
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| Johann August Nahl the Younger Cupid removing a Thorn from the foot of Venus (The Origin of the Red Rose) ca. 1816 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Théo van Rysselberghe The Ray of Light 1906 oil on canvas Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands |
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| Jean-François Colson Le Repos 1759 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon |
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| Adolph Menzel Study of Model posed with Sword and Shield 1850 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Francis Bacon Reclining Figure 1958 oil on canvas Kunstmuseum Bochum |
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| Anonymous German Artist Resting Hercules ca. 1600 drawing Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| William Brymner Model on Divan 1915 oil on canvas National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa |
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| Gianlorenzo Bernini St Lawrence 1617 marble Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence |
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| Jakob Gabriel Mollinarolo after Georg Raphael Donner Reclining Nymph ca. 1740-50 bronze Harvard Art Museums |
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| Asger Jorn Repose 1953-59 oil on canvas Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
Darius came, a fugitive, to his own palace and threw himself on the floor, wailing and tearfully lamenting for himself, having lost so huge a number of soldiers and having emptied the whole of Persia. In the grip of such calamities, he mourned to himself, saying: "Darius, so great a king, with so many nations under my control and all the cities subject to me, I who shared the thrones of the gods and rose with the Sun – now I am a solitary fugitive. It is a fact that no one plans securely for the future: Fortune only needs a slight tilt, and it raises the lowly above the clouds and draws those in the heights down to Hell.
Darius, then, lay bereft of men, he who had been the king of so many nations. Recovering a little, standing up, and regaining his composure, he wrote a letter and sent it to Alexander. Its contents were as follow:
Darius to my master Alexander, greetings:
He who showed me the light of glory, in haughtiness of mind, conceived a great passion to invade Greece, unsatisfied with the gold and other riches that we have inherited from our ancestors. He died after losing much gold and silver and many tents, though he had been richer than Croesus of Lydia, and he did not escape the death that awaited him. So, Alexander, you in your turn, as you have observed luck and its nemesis, set aside grandiose thoughts. Pity us who come to you for refuge, by Zeus of Suppliants and our common descent from Perseus, and give me back my wife, mother, and children, recalling to your mind the hopes a father has. In return for this I undertake to give you the treasures that our ancestors deposited in the earth in the land of Minaia and at Susa and in Baktria. I also undertake that you may be lord of the lands of the Persians, Medes, and the other nations for all time.
Farewell.
– Pseudo-Callisthenes, from The Alexander Romance (2nd-4th century AD), translated from Greek by Ken Dowden (1989)