“. . . Zeus in the form of a swan consorted with Leda . . . “

Apollodorus

“The King’s daughter began to cry, for she was afraid of the cold frog which she did not like to touch, and which now was to sleep in her pretty, clean little bed. But the King grew angry and said: “He who helped you when you were in trouble ought not afterwards to be despised by you.” So she took hold of the frog with two fingers, carried him upstairs, and put him in a corner, but when she was in bed he crept to her and said: “I am tired, I want to sleep as well as you, lift me up or I will tell your father.” At this she was terribly angry, and took him up and threw him with all her might against the wall. “Now will you be quiet, odious frog!” said she. But when he fell down he was no frog but a king’s son with kind and beautiful eyes . . . “

The Brothers Grimm

“Diana . . . told him so: ‘Tell people you have seen me, Diana, naked! Tell them if you can!’ She said no more, but on the sprinkled forehead horns of the long-lived stag began to sprout, the neck stretched out, the ears were long and pointed, the arms were legs, the hands were feet, the skin a dappled hide, and the hunter’s heart was fearful . . .”

Ovid

“. . . my task is fixed: as quickly as I may

To kill my children, and start away from this land,

And not, by wasting time, to suffer my children

To be slain by another hand less kindly to them.

Force every way will have it they must die, and since

This must be so, then I, their mother, shall kill them.”

Euripides

Darkness!

Horror of darkness enfolding, resistless, unspeakable visitant sped by an ill wind in haste!

Madness and stabbing pain and memory of evil deeds I have done!

Sophocles

Cadmus: Whose head are you holding?

Agave: A lion’s . . .

Cadmus: Look right at it.

Agave: What am I seeing?

Cadmus: Look carefully.

Agave: I see horror. I see suffering. I see grief.

Cadmus: Does it still look like a lion?

Agave: No, Pentheus: I am holding his head.

Cadmus: Yes, now you know, I mourn Pentheus.

Agave: Who killed him? Why is he in my hands?

Cadmus: You killed him. With your sisters.

Euripides

No shame, I think, in the death given

this man. Did he not

first of all in this house wreak death

by treachery?

The flower of this man’s love and mine,

Iphigeneia of the tears

he dealt with even as he has suffered.

Let his speech in death’s house be not loud.

With the sword he struck,

with the sword he paid for his own act.

Aeschylus

The saga begins in hope and anticipation, but . . .

Some conflict emerges . . .

Makeup sex

Good times (and some bad) . . .

Catastrophe

They arrived at the place of which God had told him. Abraham built an altar there; he laid out the wood; he bound his son Isaac; he laid him on the altar, on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son. Then an angel of the Lord called to him from heaven: “Abraham! Abraham!” And he answered, “Here I am.” And he said, “Do not raise your hand against the boy, or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son, your favored one, from Me.”

Genesis

Being blessed with children, Niobe said she was more blessed with children than Latona. Stung by the taunt, Latona incited Artemis and Apollo against them, and Artemis shot down the females in the house, and Apollo killed all the males together as they were hunting on Cithaeron . . . Niobe herself quitted Thebes and went to her father Tantalus at Sipylus, and there, on praying to Zeus, she was transformed into a stone, and tears flow night and day from the stone.

Apollodorus

The goddess came forth, lovely, much revered,

And grass grew up beneath her delicate feet.

Her name is Aphrodite among men

And gods, because she grew up in the foam,

. . . Eros is her companion; fair Desire

Followed her from the first, both at her birth

And when she joined the company of the gods.

From the beginning, both among gods and men,

She had this honor and received this power:

Fond murmuring of girls, and smiles and tricks,

And sweet delight, and friendliness, and charm.

Hesiod

Song, as you teach it, is not desire,

not suing for a thing at last attained;

song is existence. Easy for the god.

But when do we exist? And when will he

turn toward us the earth and the stars?

It’s not, young man, when you’re in love, even if

then your voice thrusts open your mouth, - learn

to forget you once lifted yourself in song. That doesn’t last.

True singing is a different kind of breath.

A breath about nothing. A gust in the god. A wind.

Rilke

When Acrisius inquired of the oracle how he should get male children, the god said that his daughter would give birth to a son who would kill him. Fearing that, Acrisius built a brazen chamber under ground and there guarded Danae. However . . . some say that Zeus had intercourse with her in the shape of a stream of gold which poured through the roof into Danae’s lap.

Apollodorus

Danae, shut up behind stout doors in her tower of bronze, and protected by fierce, unsleeping watchdogs would have been fortified well enough against adulterers by night

if Jupiter and Venus had not laughed at her frightened guard Acrisius - access to the maiden’s hiding place would be safe and easy if the god turned into the fee.

Gold loves to slip through sentries and breaks down stone walls more effectively than a flash of lightning.

Horace

“La commedia e finita!”

“Pietà, Signori, pietà . . .”

The Lord said to Abraham, “Go forth from your native land and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you . . . “