Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Butes.
The gallery
Ulysses and the Sirens
John William Waterhouse, 1891
Waterhouse's Siren lure — the song that in Apollonius' Argonautica pulls Butes son of Teleon overboard while Orpheus sings against it. National Gallery of Victoria.
Odysseus and the Sirens (the "Siren Vase")
Siren Painter, c. 480–470 BC
Attic red-figure name-vase of the Siren episode — the same peril Butes alone fails among the Argonauts, saved by Aphrodite at Lilybaeum.
The Birth of Venus
Sandro Botticelli, c. 1485
Botticelli's Venus — the goddess who, in Apollonius, lifts drowning Butes from the Sirens' sea and sets him ashore in western Sicily.
In play
Butes
Athenian Argonaut, son of Teleon, who leapt toward the Sirens and was saved by Aphrodite — not Butes son of Pandion, the Erechtheid priest.
Argonautica
Apollonius of Rhodes
Apollonius' voyage: Orpheus out-sings the Sirens while Butes alone jumps — the Athenian as the crew's single failure of will.
Jason and the Argonauts
Don Chaffey / Ray Harryhausen
Harryhausen's screen Argonautica keeps the Siren peril in popular memory — Butes' leap as the literary twin of that danger.