Then why should we not save them? We can put the chest into those fishermen’s nets, look and then of course they will be hauled in, and come safely to shore. No the chest has carried them safely so far it is by Seriphus. I am beginning again, at the memory of it.
She never said a word against her own sentence she was ready to submit: but she pleaded hard for the child’s life, and cried, and held him up for his grandfather to see and there was the sweet baby, that thought no harm, smiling at the waves. And then her father found out about it-he is a horrid, jealous old man-and he was furious, and thought she had been receiving a lover and he put her into the chest, the moment the child was born. And-I don’t know whether it’s true-but they say that Zeus turned himself into gold, and came showering down through the roof, and she caught the gold in her lap,-and it was Zeus the whole time. And, as she was so pretty, he shut her up in an iron room. Her father, Acrisius, wanted to keep her from marrying. Oh, sister, but why? What was it all about? Did you hear? THETIS: Oh, Doris, I have just seen a lovely girl thrown into a chest by her father, and her little baby with her and he gave the chest to some sailors, and told them, as soon as they were far enough from the shore, to drop it into the water he meant them to be drowned, poor things. According to Lucian’s account, it is Doris and Thetis who take action to rescue the mother and baby from drowning. In the second century CE, the Greek satirical writer Lucian of Samosata envisioned a conversation between the sea nymphs Doris and Thetis (mother of Achilles) about Danae and Perseus shut up in the chest. Dictys gave Danae a home and raised Perseus. The chest washed ashore on the island of Seriphos, where is was found by a fisherman, Dictys, the brother of the king of the island, Polydectes. When Danae gave birth a boy, Perseus, Acrisius put her and her son into a wooden chest and set them out to sea, counting on them to drown. He changed himself into a shower of gold and rained down into the chamber, impregnating Danae. However, Zeus saw Danae locked in the chamber and lusted after her. In this way he hoped to keep her from ever having sex and giving birth to a child. To prevent the oracular prophecy from coming true, Acrisius locked his daughter up in a chamber with only a small opening at the top to let in some light and air. The oracle told him that he would not have a son, but that his daughter would, and he would be killed by his own grandson. Acrisius asked the oracle of Delphi whether he would ever have a son.
The hero Perseus was the son of Zeus and and Danae, a mortal woman and the only child of King Acrisius of Argos.