Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Anaxarete.
The gallery
Iphis and Anaxarete
Unknown (after Ovid / NGV), 17th–18th century
National Gallery of Victoria print of Ovid's Cypriot tale: proud Anaxarete watches Iphis hang himself — before Venus turns her to stone at the funeral.
Iphis and Anaxarete
Virgil Solis, c. 1563
Solis' Metamorphoses woodcut: Anaxarete at the window of scorn — the Salaminian maiden as Renaissance emblem of hardness of heart.
Anaxarete Seeing the Dead Iphis
Antonio Tempesta (after), 1606
MET Metamorphoses plate: Anaxarete looks on Iphis' corpse and stiffens into stone — Venus' revenge as print culture. Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Anaxarete and Iphis
Unknown (Dutch Metamorphoses series), c. 1600–1650
Rijksmuseum Ovid print: the funeral procession that petrifies Anaxarete — Vertumnus' warning tale to Pomona restaged for Dutch readers.
In play
Anaxarete
Proud maiden of Teucer blood on Cyprus who mocks Iphis and is turned to stone — Ovid's exemplum of hard-heartedness.
Metamorphoses (Iphis and Anaxarete)
Ovid
Ovid Met. 14: Vertumnus tells Pomona how Anaxarete watched Iphis die and became a statue in Salamis.
Pomona
The nymph who hears Anaxarete's tale from Vertumnus — the frame that keeps the Cypriot warning alive in Latin poetry.