Danaë
（
Δανάη).
1.
The daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos, by Eurydicé, daughter of Lacedaemon.
Acrisius inquired of the oracle about a son; and the god replied that he would himself have
no male issue, but that his daughter would bear a son, whose hand would deprive him of life.
Fearing the accomplishment of this prediction, he framed a brazen subterranean chamber, in
which he shut up his daughter and her nurse, in order that she might never become a mother.
(The Latin poets call the place of confinement a brazen tower.) But Zeus had seen and
loved the maiden; and, under the form of a golden shower, he poured through the roof into her
bosom. Danaë became, in consequence, the mother of a son, whom she and her nurse
reared in secrecy until he had attained his fourth year. Acrisius then chanced to hear the
voice of the child at play. He brought out his daughter and her nurse, and, putting the
latter instantly to death, drew Danaë privately, with her child, to the altar of
Hercean Zeus, where he made her answer on oath whose was her son. She replied that he was the
offspring of Zeus. Her father gave no credit to her protestations. Enclosing her and the boy
in a coffer, he cast them into the sea, at the mercy of the winds and waves, a circumstance
which has afforded a subject for a beautiful lyric by the poet Simonides. The coffer was
carried to the little island of Seriphus, where a person named Dictys drew it out in his nets
(
δίκτυα); and, freeing Danaë and Perseus from
their confinement, treated them with the greatest kindness. Polydectes, the brother of
Dictys, reigned over the island. He fell in love with Danaë; but her son Perseus,
who was now grown up, was an invincible obstacle in his way. He had, therefore, recourse to
artifice to deliver himself of his presence; and, feigning that he was about to become a
suitor to Hippodamia, the daughter of Oenomaüs, he managed to send Perseus, who had
bound himself by a rash promise, in quest of the head of the Medusa, which he pretended that
he wished for a bridal gift. When Perseus had succeeded, by the aid of Hermes, in slaying the
Gorgon , he proceeded to Seriphus, where he found that his mother and Dictys had been obliged
to fly to the protection of the altar from the violence of Polydectes. He immediately went to
the royal residence; and when, at his desire, Polydectes had summoned thither all the people
to see the head of the Gorgon , it was displayed, and each became a stone of the form and
position which he exhibited at the moment of the transformation. Having established Dictys as
king of Seriphus, Perseus returned with his mother to Argos; and, not finding Acrisius there,
proceeded to Larissa in Thessaly, whither the latter had retired through fear of the
fulfilment of the oracle. Here he inadvertently killed Acrisius. See
Acrisius;
Perseus.
There was a legend in Italy that Ardea, the capital of the Rutulians, had been founded by
Danaë (
Verg. Aen. vii. 372Verg. Aen., 410). It was probably caused by the similarity of
sound in Danaë and Daunia. Daunus is the father of Turnus.
