Selene and Endymion

Selene and EndymionA print of Selene and Endymion one of the quiet and romantic subjects of Greek mythology, the moon goddess who descends nightly to the cave of her sleeping mortal lover. Endymion was a shepherd of Mount Latmos in Caria whose beauty caught Selene's eye. In most versions of the myth, Selene asked Zeus to grant him eternal sleep so that he would never age and she could return to him night after night, unchanging, through all her phases. The couple's

and it has been used for performances more or less continuously from antiquity to the present

second only to Jupiter in official cult

His reign lasted forty years and shaped the political architecture of the Roman Empire for centuries after

He worked almost always out of doors

Today the whole island is an open-air archaeological site

beautiful young man sits chained

Other Perseus plates in this series: Gorgons' Lair and Triumphant

Heracles and Perseus

blocked one of the two entrances

A print of Walter Crane's Strangers: Gods Entertained — an illustration from Nathaniel Hawthorne's A Wonder Book for Girls and Boys (Houghton Mifflin

Across the empire

the signature Pompeii red — come forward as pure surface