A son of Magnes and brother of King Polydectes who took up the sea-chest of Danae and the infant Perseus when it washed ashore on Seriphus and reared the boy; the grown Perseus later made him king of the island.1
Dictys was a son of Magnes by a Naiad nymph and brother of Polydectes; the two of them colonized the island of Seriphus.2
When Acrisius shut his daughter Danae and her infant son in a chest and cast it into the sea, the waves carried it ashore on Seriphus. There Dictys took up the boy and reared him.3
Hyginus tells it likewise: the chest was borne by Jove's will to Seriphos, and when the fisherman Dictys found it and broke it open he discovered the mother and child. He brought them to King Polydectes, who married Danae and raised Perseus in the temple of Minerva.4
When Polydectes, king of Seriphus, lusted after Danae and grew violent, she and Dictys took refuge as suppliants at the altars. Returning from slaying Medusa, Perseus turned Polydectes and his fellow conspirators to stone with the Gorgon's head and appointed Dictys king of Seriphus in his place.5
His rescue was not forgotten in cult: among the Athenians, beside their precinct sacred to Perseus, stood an altar of Dictys and Clymene, who were called the saviours of Perseus.6
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