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| Louis Le Nain Bacchus and Ariadne ca. 1635 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Art d'Orléans |
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| Nicolas d'Ypres the Elder St Joachim and St Anne meeting at the Golden Gate ca. 1499-1500 oil on panel Musée Comtadin-Duplessis, Carpentras |
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| Franz Wiegele Nudes in the Forest 1910-11 oil on canvas Belvedere Museum, Vienna |
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| Andrea Schiavone after Parmigianino Minerva and the Muses on Mount Helicon ca. 1540 etching and drypoint Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Georg Oddner Sommarparken, Leningrad 1955 gelatin silver print Moderna Museet, Stockholm |
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| Duane Michals Paradise Regained 1968 gelatin silver prints Museum Ludwig, Cologne |
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| Domenico Puligo (Domenico Ubaldini) Virgin and Child with St Sebastian and St Roch ca. 1522-23 oil on canvas Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest |
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| Pierre Puvis de Chavannes La Source ca. 1869 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims |
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| Louis de Silvestre Angelica and Medoro (scene from Ariosto's Orlando Furioso) 1729-30 oil on canvas Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden |
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| Jean-Joseph Taillasson Liberty bringing Justice and Virtue to the People ca. 1794-95 oil on canvas Musée de la Révolution Française, Vizille |
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| Jacopo de' Barbari Figures of Victory and Fame ca. 1498-1503 engraving Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Erich Heckel Siblings 1913 woodcut Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo |
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| Henry Raeburn The Allen Brothers ca. 1790-92 oil on canvas Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas |
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| Antoine-Jean Gros Portrait of the Maistre Sisters 1796 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
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| Johann-Andreas Herrlein Maria Carolina and Heinrich Carl von Stein zum Altenstein 1769 oil on canvas Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel |
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| Johann Sperl Kindergarten ca. 1885 oil on canvas Neue Pinakothek, Munich |
We wine-drinkers will pour a libation to Bacchus the awakener of laughter, with the cups we will expel man-killing care. Let toiling rustics supply their bread-tolerating bellies with the mother of black-robed Persephone, and we will leave to wild beasts and birds that feed on raw flesh the copious and bloody banquets of meat of slain bulls. Let us surrender the bones of fish that cut the skin to the lips of men to whom Hades is dearer than the sun. But for us let wine the bountiful be ever food and drink, and let others long for ambrosia.
Death is a debt due by all men and no mortal knows if he shall be alive to-morrow. Take this well to heart, O man, and make thee merry, since thou possessest wine that is oblivion of death. Take joy too in Aphrodite whilst thou leadest this fleeting life, and give up all else to the control of Fortune.
As thin little Proclus was blowing the fire the smoke took him up and went off with him from here through the window. With difficulty he swum to a cloud and came down through it wounded in a thousand places by the atomies.
Epicurus wrote that all the world consisted of atoms, thinking, Alcimus, that an atom was the most minute thing. But if Diophantus had existed then he would have written that it consisted of Diophantus, who is much more minute than the atoms. Or he would have written that other things were composed of atoms, but the atoms themselves, Alcimus, of Diophantus.
The astrologer Diophantus told Hermogenes the doctor that he had only nine months to live, and he, smiling, said, "You understand what Saturn says will happen in nine months, but my treatment is more expeditious for you." Having said so he reached out his hand and only touched him, and Diophantus, trying to drive another to despair, himself gave his last gasp.
Cytotaris with her grey temples, the garrulous old woman who makes Nestor no longer the oldest of men, she who has looked on the light longer than a stag* and has begun to reckon her second old age on her left hand,** is alive and sharp-sighted and firm on her legs like a bride, so that I wonder if something has not befallen Death.
– from Book XI (Convivial and Satirical Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)
*stags were supposed to live four times as long as the long-lived crow
**the fingers of the right hand were used for counting hundreds and thousands, those of the left for decades and units – meaning that Cytotaris has reached a thousand and is now counting the years of the first century of her next thousand