Instead he ordered a cage to be buried underground, with thick walls of bronze and only a small hole in its top for the admission of just enough light, air, food, and water to keep a person alive. And yet even he did not quite dare to violate the gods’ proscription against filicide. Putting her to death was the obvious solution for one of his bent of mind. “Your daughter, however, will give birth to a grandson - one who will kill you.” No matter how much Acrisius pressed her, she would reveal no more - for this was all that Apollo had deigned to share with her.Īcrisius’s daughter, whose name was Danaë, was as warm-hearted as she was beautiful, but this counted for little with her cold-hearted father. “You yourself are not destined to have a son,” she said. When she returned to the impatient monarch some time later, she looked visibly shaken. I humbly beg the god Apollo” - the affectation of humility was rather unconvincing - “to tell me if and how I can continue my line.” I need a son upon whom to bequeath my throne. “I and my queen Eurydice are aging,” answered the king, “but we have only one daughter to show for our union. Knowing his reputation, and observing the lavish gifts he had come bearing, the people of Delphi rushed him in to see the oracle, who asked him in her usual simple way what he wished to know.

This King Acrisius was a proud, hard, rigid man, quick to feel a slight and equally quick to punish its perpetrator. But alas, they too would learn, as we’ll see, what fickle mistresses the Fates could be.

His branch of the family too had been chosen for great things by the Fates they too had made their way from the distant barbarian lands to the east to rule one of the greatest cities in Greece.

Acrisius was in fact a distant relation of Cadmus he could trace his ancestry back to the same union between Poseidon and a mortal woman, albeit he was five rather than two generations removed from that event. One day well after the time of the noble King Cadmus of Thebes, King Acrisius of Argos arrived in Delphi.

Acrisius death come true