Waved by Circe and Medea, later in Tasso’s ‘Jerusalem Delivered’, and by Morgan le Fay in Arthurian legend. Paintings by Poussin, Waterhouse and others.
myth
Juno engages the Furies to drive Cadmus’ daughter Ino and her husband mad. With his dynasty ended, Cadmus and his wife end up as snakes.
When the nymph Salmacis falls in passionate love with the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, he resists, and they are joined together in single body.
The stories of Venus and Mars, caught in bed together by her husband Vulcan, and the unrequited loves of Leucothoë and Clytie for the Sun.
The earliest known story in the Western canon to end with the suicide of frustrated lovers, it was the precursor to Romeo and Juliet, and extensively depicted.
Pentheus pours scorn on the cult of the new god Bacchus, son of Semele. When interrupts revels, he is torn apart by his own mother and aunts, as foretold by Tiresias.
Linked stories of Tiresias, the trans-gender soothsayer, Narcissus who fell in love with himself, and Echo who could only repeat what others said.
The Lycians turned into frogs when they refused the goddess Latona a drink of water, and the sorceress Medea accompanied by toads.
One of Ovid’s weirdest tales, in which Juno convinces the pregnant Semele to demand her lover Jupiter reveals himself, resulting in her death, caesarian section and his surrogate pregnancy.
The grandson of the founder of Thebes happens into Diana’s sacred wood when out hunting, and sees the goddess naked. She changes him into a stag, with fatal consequences.
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