Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Idas.
The gallery
Idas and Marpessa Separated from Apollo by Zeus (Attic red-figure psykter)
Attributed to the Pan Painter, c. 480 BC
On this Attic red-figure psykter (wine-cooler), the Messenian hero Idas grips the Aetolian princess Marpessa, whom he has carried off in his chariot, while Zeus intervenes to part the rivals from the god Apollo, who also desired her. The vase crystallizes the climax of the myth: ordered by Zeus to choose, Marpessa picked the mortal Idas over the deathless Apollo, fearing the god would abandon her when age came. Painted around 480 BC and attributed to the Pan Painter, it survives among the Staatliche Antikensammlungen in Munich (inv. 2417), one of the earliest images to set the mortal suitor against the sun-bright Olympian.
Idas and Marpessa (illustration for A Book of Myths)
Helen Stratton, 1915
Helen Stratton's Edwardian pen-and-ink plate, made for Jean Lang's A Book of Myths (1915), pictures Idas with his hard-won bride Marpessa. Stratton renders the Messenian prince in the flowing Art Nouveau line of the period's golden-age book illustration, drawing not the violence of the abduction but the tender aftermath of Marpessa's choice. The image accompanies the chapter retelling how Idas defied Apollo and dared even to draw his bow against the god before Zeus stepped in to settle the contest in the mortal's favour.
The Judgment of Jupiter
Samuel Finley Breese Morse, 1814–1815
Painted in London while Morse trained under Benjamin West, this Neoclassical oil stages the divine arbitration at the heart of the Marpessa myth. Jupiter (Zeus) presides as judge between the radiant Apollo and the mortal prince Idas, who contend for Marpessa; she will choose Idas, the man who can grow old beside her. Morse, later famous as the inventor of the telegraph, composed the picture as a grand history painting; it is now held by the Yale University Art Gallery (acc. 1941.117) and remains a rare large-scale treatment of Idas as a hero bold enough to rival a god in love.