Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Arethusa.
The gallery
Arethusa
Benjamin West, 1802
West's High Museum canvas isolates the Sicilian spring-nymph — Arethusa after Artemis opened the earth beneath her, risen on Ortygia as the fountain that still bears her name.
Alpheus and Arethusa
Carlo Maratta, late 17th century
Maratta's Baroque pursuit shows the river-god closing on the Naiad — Ovid's chase that ends only when Arethusa dissolves into the Sicilian spring.
Alpheus and Arethusa
Jean Restout the Younger, 1720
Restout stages the metamorphosis mid-flight: Arethusa and Alpheus as French academic bodies — the Elian river and the Ortygian fountain still one story.
Arethusa Pursued by Alpheus in a Wooded Landscape
Unknown, 17th–18th century
A wooded landscape print returns to the same Ovidian chase — Arethusa fleeing through trees before the earth opens and Syracuse receives her as a spring.
In play
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Ovid's Arethusa tells Ceres her own flight from Alpheus — the Naiad's voice rising from the Sicilian spring that later reveals Persephone's fate.
Arethusa (nymph)
The Naiad who fled Alpheus beneath Elis and rose as a fountain on Ortygia — Syracuse's mythic spring.