Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Cepheus.
The gallery
Heracles and the gathering of the Argonauts (calyx-krater, Louvre G 341)
The Niobid Painter, c. 460-450 BC
This Attic red-figure calyx-krater, attributed to the Niobid Painter and found at Orvieto (ancient Volsinii), shows on its principal side an assembly of armed heroes traditionally read as the gathering of the Argonauts around Heracles. Cepheus of Tegea has no securely identified portrait in ancient art, but he belongs to precisely this company: the Argonaut catalogues of Apollonius (Argonautica 1.161-171) and Apollodorus (Bibliotheca 1.9.16) list him, son of Aleus and king of Tegea, among the heroes who answered Jason's summons. The krater, some 54 cm tall, is one of the earliest and most ambitious vase paintings of the assembled crew and now stands in the Louvre (accession G 341).
The Argo (Escape of the Argonauts from Colchis)
Lorenzo Costa, c. 1490-1500
A small tempera panel by the Ferrarese painter Lorenzo Costa (1460-1535) depicting the legendary ship Argo crowded with its heroic crew, the vessel on which Jason and his companions sought the Golden Fleece. The image stands for the entire Argonautic enterprise rather than any single figure; among the named crew was Cepheus, son of Aleus and king of Tegea, who according to Apollonius (Argonautica 1.161-171), Apollodorus (Bibliotheca 1.9.16) and Hyginus (Fabulae 14.3) sailed from Arcadia with his brother Amphidamas. The panel is held in the Civic Museums of Padua.
The Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea
Unknown (photograph), 2006 (temple built c. 4th century BC)
The ruins of the great Doric temple of Athena Alea at Tegea in Arcadia, the religious heart of the city Cepheus ruled. Pausanias (Description of Greece 8.47.5) records that at a sanctuary of Athena here Cepheus, son of Aleus, received from the goddess a boon that Tegea should never be captured: Athena cut off a lock of Medusa's hair and gave it to him as a charm of defence, the lock later entrusted to his daughter Sterope (Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 2.7.3). The temple, rebuilt in marble in the fourth century BC after a fire, anchors Cepheus's defining myth in a real surviving place.