Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Ceto.
The gallery
Keto Battling the Giants (Gigantomachy Frieze, Pergamon Altar)
Unknown (Hellenistic sculptors of Pergamon), c. 166–156 BC
On the great Gigantomachy frieze of the Pergamon Altar, the sea-goddess Keto (Ceto) joins the cosmic battle against the Giants, fighting beside her father Pontus among the assembled marine deities of the south frieze. Carved in deep high relief, she is rendered not as a monster but as a stately, beautiful woman with finely modelled features and an ornate coiffure — a reminder that this 'mother of monsters' was herself named 'fair-cheeked' by Hesiod. This is the only securely identified depiction of Ceto surviving from antiquity, her name preserved by the inscribed labels that ran beneath the frieze. The marble panels, today reassembled in the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, rank among the supreme achievements of Hellenistic relief sculpture.
Phorcys, Ceto and Triton (Mosaic from the Baths of Acholla)
Unknown (Roman mosaicist), Early 2nd century AD
This late Roman floor mosaic from the Trajan Baths at Acholla (in modern Tunisia) presents three deities of the deep: at the right is Ceto, beside her brother-husband Phorcys at the centre, with Triton — or, by another reading, her brother Thaumas — at the left. The sea-gods are pictured in their fearsome marine aspect, with fish-tails, spiky crustacean skin and crab-claw forelegs, fitting for the divine couple who in Hesiod's Theogony begot the Gorgons, the grey Graeae and the apple-guarding serpent Ladon. The mosaic, now in the Bardo National Museum in Tunis, is among the very few ancient images to name and pair Ceto with Phorcys, illustrating the watery genealogy of monsters that runs through Greek myth.