Characters
- Acrisius — casts Danaë and Perseus into the sea in a chest
- Artemis — named by Danaë as father; disbelieved by Acrisius (carry-over motive for the exposure)
- Danaë — exposed with her child; rescued and sheltered on Seriphos; later object of Polydectes’s desire
- Dictys — fisherman (Pherecydes: son of Peristhenes); rescues and fosters mother and child
- Peristhenes — father of Dictys (Pherecydes)
- Perseus — infant cast adrift; reared by Dictys to manhood
- Polydectes — brother of Dictys; king of Seriphos; desires Danaë
Places
- Argos — departure point of the chest
- Seriphos — island where the chest lands; home of Dictys and realm of Polydectes
- Troy — path of the floating chest
Themes
Narrative
After discovering the birth of Perseus and refusing Danaë’s claim that Zeus was the father, Acrisius put his daughter and the infant into a chest and cast it into the sea. The chest drifted until it came ashore on the island of Seriphos.
There Dictys took up the boy and reared him. Pherecydes’s fuller account says Dictys son of Peristhenes was fishing with a net when he drew the chest from the sea; Danaë begged him to open it; learning who they were, he led them home and cared for them as if they were his own kin. Apollodorus’s compressed notice keeps the same rescue: Dictys salvages and raises Perseus on Seriphos.
Polydectes, brother of Dictys, was then king of the island. When Perseus had grown to manhood, Polydectes fell in love with Danaë but could not approach her freely while her grown son stood in the way. That desire and the ruse by which Polydectes rid himself of Perseus open the next entry; this unit closes with the sea-journey, the Seriphean landing, Dictys’s fosterage, and the presence of Polydectes as king and unwanted suitor.