Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Alpheus.
The gallery
Alpheus and Arethusa
Carlo Maratta, late 17th century
Maratta paints the river-god in pursuit — Alpheus of Elis hunting the Naiad whose spring on Ortygia he will still seek beneath the sea.
Alpheus and Arethusa
Jean Restout the Younger, 1720
Restout's academic canvas pairs the god and the nymph at the moment of flight — Alpheus as desire that will not stop at the shoreline of Sicily.
Alpheus and Arethusa
Unknown, 17th–18th century
A Metropolitan Museum print from the Metamorphoses cycle shows Alpheus closing on Arethusa — the river that Ovid says mingles with her Sicilian waters.
Arethusa Pursued by Alpheus in a Wooded Landscape
Unknown, 17th–18th century
The wooded chase again names the god: Alpheus as the hunter whose love drives the nymph underground and across the Ionian to Syracuse.
In play
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Ovid makes Alpheus the river who will not release Arethusa — the Elian god whose waters, the poets say, still seek her fountain under the sea.
Alpheus (deity)
River-god of Elis, son of Oceanus and Tethys — famed for his pursuit of Arethusa to Ortygia.