Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Leucippus.
The gallery
The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus
Peter Paul Rubens, c. 1617–1618
Rubens's celebrated Baroque canvas depicts the moment that defined Leucippus in art: the abduction of his daughters, the Leucippides Phoebe and Hilaeira, by the divine twins Castor and Pollux (the Dioscuri). Though Leucippus himself, the Messenian king, is absent from the frame, the painting turns his family's catastrophe into a swirling diagonal of straining horses, rearing riders, and the luminous flesh of the two abducted brides. Painted in Antwerp around 1617–1618 (with the landscape attributed to Jan Wildens), it hangs today in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and remains the single most famous visual rendering of the Leucippus myth.
Sarcophagus relief: Castor and Pollux seizing the Daughters of Leucippus
Unknown (Roman), c. 160 CE
On this carved marble Roman sarcophagus of about 160 CE, the Dioscuri, Castor and Pollux, are shown carrying off the daughters of King Leucippus, Hilaeira and Phoebe, the legendary brides whose seizure binds the house of Leucippus to the twin gods. The dense, high-relief composition, with its tangle of horses and grasping figures, shows how popular the abduction story was in Roman funerary art, where scenes of carrying-off symbolized the soul's passage. The piece is preserved in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore.