F10


F10

Pherekydes records in book 2 how Akrisios marries Eurydike daughter of Lakedaimon; and from them Danae is born. And the god at Pytho, when he was consulting it about a male child, prophesied to him that he would have no male child, but his daughter would have one, by whom he would be destroyed. And he goes back to Argos and makes a bronze chamber in the court of his house underground, where he takes Danae with a nurse, in which he guarded her so no child would be born from her. But Zeus desires the girl and flows from the roof as something like gold. And she receives him in her lap, and Zeus reveals himself and mixes with the girl. And Perseus is born from them, and Danae and the nurse raise him, concealing it from Akrisios. But when Perseus had turned three or four years old, he heard his voice when he was playing, and after calling back Danae with the nurse through his servants, he kills one woman, but carries Danae with the boy down to the altar of Zeus of the Courtyard, and alone he asks her where her son had been conceived from. And she said he was fathered by Zeus. And he doesn’t believe her, but sets her in a chest with the boy, and closes it and puts it out to sea. And they arrive by floating at the island of Seriphos and Diktys son of Peristhenes pulls them out, fishing with a net. Then Danae supplicates him to open the chest. And when he opens it and learns who they are, he brings them into his house and takes care of them for being relatives of his.