Danaë

Princess of Argos and mother of Perseus. When her father Acrisius heard from the Pythia that his daughter's son would kill him, he locked her in an underground bronze chamber with only a single skylight-slot for air — in Horace's variant (*Odes* 3.16.1–8) a bronze tower with stout doors guarded by dogs and watchmen, in Sophocles (*Antigone* 944–950) a tomb-like vault bound with bronze within the palace — and set a watchman to guard her. Zeus came to her as a shower of gold through the slot and lay with her, and from that visit Perseus was born (Pindar *Pythian* 10.31–32; Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 2.4.1; Hyginus *Fabulae* 63). When the birth was discovered Acrisius did not believe her story of a divine visitation; he nailed mother and infant into a wooden chest and pushed it into the sea, trusting Poseidon to do the killing he could not bring himself to do. The chest drifted to Seriphos, where the fisherman Dictys took them in and raised the boy alongside his own brother the king (Apollod. *Bibl.* 2.4.2; Pherecydes fr. 11 Fowler). She remained on Seriphos until Perseus returned with the Gorgon's head, and went home with him to Argos — and in some traditions to Italy, where the people of Ardea claimed her as founder of their city (Virgil *Aeneid* 7.371–372; Servius *ad Aen.* 7.372).

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