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| Pietro della Vecchia Tiresias transformed into a Woman ca. 1675 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes |
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| Henry Fuseli Ixion and the false Nephele 1809 drawing Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand |
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| Nikolaus Knüpfer Pyramus and Thisbe ca. 1640 oil on panel Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau |
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| David Dick Circe punishing Glaucus ca. 1692-95 gouache on vellum Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Ancient Greco-Roman Culture Hunt of the Calydonian Boar AD 150-170 marble (sarcophagus panel excavated in Patras) National Archaeological Museum, Athens |
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| François Perrier Castor and Pollux (antique sculpture group now at the Prado) 1638 etching Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| David Ryckaert III Baucis and Philemon hosting Jupiter and Mercury ca. 1640-50 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau |
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| Domenicus van Wijnen Medea rejuvenating the Nurses of Bacchus ca. 1680 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne |
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| Andrea Locatelli Latona transforming the Lycian Peasants into Frogs ca. 1730 oil on canvas Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne |
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| Wilhelm Böttner Icarus and Daedalus 1786 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Cornelis van Haarlem Fall of Icarus 1588 engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Giorgio Ghisi after Teodoro Ghisi Venus and Adonis ca. 1570 engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Giulio Romano Cephalus grieving for Procris ca. 1530 drawing Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| Luigi Garzi Polyphemus and Galatea ca. 1690 oil on canvas Staatsgalerie Stuttgart |
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| Jean-François de Troy Pan and Syrinx in a Landscape 1720 oil on canvas Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
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| Jacopo Vignali Orpheus and Eurydice ca. 1625-30 oil on canvas Musée de Tessé, Le Mans |
"The story of the Danaids exists in dozens of variants. Their common core is that a quarrel between the brothers Danaus and Aegyptus, great-grandsons of Zeus and Io of Argos, lead to Danaus and his fifty daughters fleeing from Egypt to Argos, their ancestral home, pursued by Aegyptus and his fifty sons, who desired to take their cousins in marriage regardless of the Danaids' or their father's wishes. The conflict is seemingly resolved when Danaus agrees to the marriages taking place, but he secretly supplies weapons to his daughters, and all but one of them kill their bridegrooms on the wedding night. This survivor, Lynceus, in many versions seeks and gains revenge upon Danaus; at any rate, he and his wife, Hypermnestra, regularly become the founders of a new royal line of Argos and the ancestors of such heroes as Perseus and Heracles. Hypermnestra's sisters are in some versions punished (sometimes eternally), in others new husbands are found for them."
"Suppliants only covers one small section of this story – the arrival and reception of the Danaids and their father at Argos, and the Argive refusal of a demand for their surrender, resulting in a declaration of war by the herald speaking in the name of the sons of Aegyptus. Its references to earlier events are scanty and vague (we are told far more about Io than we ever are about the past history of Danaus, his brother and their families), and while some things said in Suppliants are clearly designed to foreshadow the coming mass murder, hardly any further information about Aeschylus' treatment of the later part of the story can be safely inferred from the text of the surviving play. As a result of this, and of the survival of only two significant fragments from the companion tragedies, we cannot even say with confidence whether Suppliants was the first or the second play of its trilogy."
– Aeschylus, from the introduction to Suppliants (ca. 470-460 BC), edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)