The ancient Greek city of Thebes was one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, and once rivalled Athens and Sparta in its influence, and Troy in its rich and tragic history. This weekend I’m collating the myths and their paintings from Ovid’s Theban cycle, in his Metamorphoses, telling of the founding of the city of Thebes.

The city’s origins go back to the rape of Europa by Jupiter; after they had disappeared over the sea together, her brother Cadmus was sent on an unsuccessful mission to find her. He then consulted the oracle at Delphi, who told him to follow a cow he met in a lonely land, and where it settled, to found a city in Boeotia, in central Greece.

He did that, and kissed the ground in thanks for guidance to the site of his new city. Intending to make a ritual sacrifice to Jupiter, he sent his men off to find a spring to provide water for the purpose. Entering ancient forest, they found a cave with a spring occupied by a huge and fearsome draconian serpent, which started killing the men.

Cadmus was puzzled by the delay in their return, so entered the forest after them. He walked into their bodies, with the serpent towering proudly over them. Cadmus swore to avenge their deaths, and threw a huge rock at the serpent, which wasn’t even grazed by the blow. Cadmus then threw his javelin at the monster, impaling it against the trunk of an old oak. Driving the javelin deeper into its throat, Cadmus killed the serpent.

Cornelis van Haarlem’s Two Followers of Cadmus Devoured by a Dragon from 1588 shows a very dragon-like monster killing and eating two of Cadmus’ men. Look carefully into the distance and you’ll see the same beast impaled by Cadmus with his javelin, in multiplex narrative.

Francesco Zuccarelli’s A Landscape with the Story of Cadmus Killing the Dragon (1765) is a faithful depiction of the ancient woodland with its source of water, and Cadmus piercing the serpent’s throat against the trunk of the old oak.

Hendrik Goltzius’ Cadmus Slays the Dragon (1573-1617) is one of the best paintings I have seen of spirited dragon-slaying. While one of its three heads gets on with eating one of the men, Cadmus is thrusting his spear deep into the throat of another head.

A voice then uttered the prophecy that, one day, he too would be a serpent and would be stared at. Minerva, his tutelary goddess, appeared and told him to sow the dragon’s teeth in the soil, where they would grow into men.

Rubens’ workshop is credited with this fine oil sketch of Cadmus Sowing Dragon’s Teeth between 1610-90. Cadmus stands at the left, Minerva directing him from the air. The warriors are shown in different states, some still emerging from the teeth, others killing one another. Behind Cadmus is the serpent, dead and visibly edentulous.

Jacob Jordaens’ finished painting of Cadmus and Minerva appears to have been developed from that sketch.

The warriors transformed from the serpent’s teeth then fought one another in a miniature civil war, until just five were left, among them Echion. They and Cadmus proceeded to build the citadel of Cadmea, which became Thebes.

Ovid skips on to the story of one of Cadmus’ grandsons, Actaeon, who was at the centre of the first tragic event to strike Thebes.

Having enjoyed considerable success hunting earlier in the day, Actaeon called on his companions to stop when it grew hot. Unknown to Actaeon, Diana, the virgin goddess of the hunt, had a sacred wood nearby, in which she too had grown tired after her morning’s hunting. She had just reached a cave with her favourite pool where her companion nymphs could help her bathe.

Actaeon inadvertently entered the wood and, misguided by the Fates, stumbled across Diana, naked in the pool. The nymphs took fright, and shielded the body of the goddess with their own naked bodies. Wishing that her arrows were to hand, Diana then splashed water over Actaeon, who was transformed into a stag for his sin of seeing the goddess unrobed.

Camille Corot’s Diana and Actaeon (1836) captures the earliest moment, and a couple of centuries after multiplex narrative fell into disfavour, he uses it to good effect. He also achieves a perfect balance between his marvellous woodland landscape, of which Ovid would have been proud, and the figures.

Most prominent are those of Diana and her attendant nymphs, who are behaving like real people for once, climbing a branch bent over the water, and soaking up the sunshine. At the right, Actaeon and one of his hunting dogs is just about to run straight into them. Diana, appropriately crowned, stands pointing to the distant figure at the left, which is again Actaeon, antlers growing from his head as she transforms him into a stag.

At the end of his career, Eugène Delacroix was commissioned by the Alsacian industrialist Frederick Hartmann to make him four allegorical paintings of the seasons based on classical mythology. The Summer – Diana Surprised by Actaeon (1856-63) is another faithful depiction of Ovid’s story. Actaeon has just arrived from the right, accompanied by the dogs who would shortly turn on him. He faces Diana, who is marked out by the crescent moon on her diadem, as the attendant nymphs make haste to cover her body. Antlers are already growing from his head.

Darting back almost three hundred years, Joris Hoefnagel’s Diana and Actaeon (1597), finely executed in distemper and gold on vellum, uses a different composition with the same elements. However, he has been able to incorporate an additional and significant detail from the textual account, in that Diana is crouching low over the pool and splashing the approaching Actaeon with water, scooped up with her left hand.

Giuseppe Cesari’s Diana and Actaeon (1602-03) was almost contemporary with Hoefnagel’s. Cesari’s Diana and her nymphs don’t look as shocked and alarmed as they should, but Actaeon’s hounds are getting ready to pick a fight with him, as if they can tell what those growing antlers mean.

Fifty years before the advent of photography, Martin Johann Schmidt captures the splashed water in mid-flight in his Diana and Actaeon of 1785. He’s also one of the few artists to have heeded Ovid’s description of Diana’s great stature in comparison with the nymphs.

Transformed into a stag by the water that Diana splashed onto him, Actaeon turned to flee. As he stood wondering what to do, his own hunting dogs caught up with him, attacked, and inflicted wound after wound. Actaeon’s companions saw the dogs’ success in attacking their quarry, and called in vain to him as he lay dying.

Titian completed The Death of Actaeon (c 1559-75) shortly before his death, and it was never delivered to King Philip II of Spain. It’s a great painting, more strongly narrative than his earlier Diana and Actaeon, and the odd painting out. Here, Actaeon’s transformation is incomplete, and he’s shown as a man with a stag’s head. Nevertheless, his dogs are attacking him, and his death is inevitable. For some unaccountable reason, Diana is shown largely dressed, having just loosed an arrow at Actaeon, as if she had second thoughts and wished to hasten his death.