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| Hippolyte Berteaux Allegory of Science 1876 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes |
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| John Singer Sargent Studies for Personification of Science ca. 1921-25 drawing Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Simon Vouet Allegory of Prudence ca. 1645 oil on canvas Musée Fabre, Montpellier |
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| Pellegrino Tibaldi Allegorical Figure - Prudentia ca. 1545-50 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Anton Dominik Fernkorn Personification of Justice ca. 1853 terracotta statuette Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Lovis Corinth Innocentia ca. 1890 oil on canvas Lenbachhaus, Munich |
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| Giorgio Ghisi after Giulio Romano Allegory of Fate 1558 engraving Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo |
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| Jean-Baptiste Regnault Liberty or Death 1794-95 (Salon of 1795) oil on canvas Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Magnus de Quitter Allegory of Wisdom and Strength ca. 1740 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Jacques Callot Seven Deadly Sins - Pride ca. 1618-25 etching Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Jacques Callot Seven Deadly Sins - Wrath ca. 1618-25 etching Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio after Rosso Fiorentino Figure of Fury ca. 1539 engraving Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| attributed to Giacinto Brandi Personification of Poetry ca. 1675 oil on canvas Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne |
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| Louis Raemaekers The Effort Still to be Made ca. 1910 drawing Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims |
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| Marcantonio Raimondi Youth protected by Fortuna ca. 1506 engraving Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Giuseppe Maria Crespi Allegory of Ingenuity ca. 1695 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg |
Chorus:
Be sure that an end will come, and very soon,
to insatiable pursuit of fitness – disease
is a neighbour that presses hard on the party-wall;
and likewise the fortunes of a rich man,
while steering a straight course, can strike
on the unseen reef of disaster.
Still, if caution casts forth
part of the goods in his possession
from a sling of generous dimensions,
the whole house does not founder
when crammed too full in surfeit,
nor does he wreck the ship:
the gifts of Zeus are surely great, coming abundantly
from furrows teeming year after year
to destroy the plague of hunger.
But once the black blood of death
has fallen on the earth in front of a man,
who by any incantation can summon it back again?
Not even he who knew aright
how to bring men back from the dead
was permitted to do so by Zeus without coming to harm.
Were it not that one destiny, prescribed
by the gods, prevents another destiny
from getting more than its due,
my heart would be too quick for my tongue
and would be pouring all this out;
but as it is, it mutters in the darkness,
sore in spirit, without hope of ever
achieving anything timely:
my soul is aflame.
– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)