Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Ascalaphus.
The gallery
Ascalaphus Turned into an Owl
Johann Ulrich Kraus, 1690
Baroque engraving for Ovid's Metamorphoses: Ascalaphus, the underworld witness of the pomegranate, becomes the screech-owl — Demeter and Persephone's punishment made visible.
Proserpina Turning Ascalaphus into an Owl
Antonio Tempesta (after); Wilhelm Janson, c. 1606
Tempesta's Ovid cycle (LACMA): Proserpina sprinkles the Phlegethon on the tale-bearer, and Ascalaphus rises as owl — the Metamorphoses episode that fixed his afterlife in print.
Proserpina and Ascalaphus as an Owl
Unknown (Netherlandish print), 16th–17th century
Rijksmuseum print: the Queen of Erebus and the owl that was Ascalaphus — the pomegranate witness under his Latin name.
In play
Metamorphoses
Ovid
Book 5 turns Ascalaphus into the owl after he alone saw Proserpina taste the pomegranate — the literary scene that later engravers kept illustrating.
Ascalaphus (son of Acheron)
Underworld witness of Persephone's seed — crushed under Demeter's rock in Apollodorus, owl in Ovid. Not the Minyan captain son of Ares.