Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Achelous.
The gallery
The Banquet of Achelous
Peter Paul Rubens and Jan Brueghel the Elder, c. 1615
In this opulent Baroque collaboration, Rubens painted the figures and Jan Brueghel the Elder the lush still life and landscape. The river-god Achelous, reclining in his watery grotto, hosts Theseus and his companions to a feast and recounts his metamorphoses and his fateful wrestling match with Heracles. The cornucopia — the horn of plenty born from his broken bull's horn — spills fruit across the scene, and water-nymphs serve the banqueters, weaving Ovid's narrative from the Metamorphoses into a sensuous celebration of nature's abundance. Now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Heracles wrestling Achelous (Attic red-figure stamnos)
Attributed to Oltos, c. 525–475 BC
An Attic red-figure stamnos attributed to the vase-painter Oltos shows the climactic contest for the hand of Deianira at Calydon. Heracles grapples with Achelous, who has taken the form of a man-faced bull — the shape the river-god assumed to fight the hero, as told by Apollodorus and Ovid. The match ends with Heracles snapping off one of the god's horns, the trophy that tradition transformed into the cornucopia. Now in the British Museum, London.
Marble cult mask of Achelous
Unknown (Greek), c. 470 BC
This Early Classical marble mask renders Achelous in his characteristic hybrid guise: a bearded human face bearing the horns and ears of a bull, the iconographic shorthand by which Greek art identified the great river-god. Such masks reflect the widespread cult of Achelous as the personification of flowing fresh water and fertility, venerated across Greece. Now in the Antikensammlung, Berlin (inv. 141684).
Deianeira watching Heracles fight Achelous (Attic column krater)
Unknown (Attic vase-painter), c. 460–450 BC
On this Attic red-figure column krater, Heracles seizes the bull-bodied Achelous while Deianira, the bride at stake, looks on. The painter captures the decisive struggle between hero and river-god, the wrestling contest staged at her father Oeneus's court in Calydon. The defeat of Achelous and the loss of his horn won Heracles his bride and, in myth, gave the world the horn of plenty. Now in the Musée du Louvre, Paris (G365).