This book discusses how Greek and South Italian vase paintings of the musical contest between Apollo and Marsyas became the model for Etruscan representations of Cacus ambushed by the Vibennae brothers, two Etruscan heroes of the sixth century B.C. The study demonstrates that the Etruscans knowingly adapted Greek iconographic forms to represent their own legends. Originally published in 1982. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Titian's great late painting of Apollo and Marsyas has been included in several recent exhibitions of Venetian painting in Europe and the United States. In this study, art historian Edith Wyss sheds light on the perception of the theme in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Renaissance artists knew several outstanding antique sculptures representing the myth and drew often on these prestigious models for inspiration. Only from the third decade of the sixteenth century onward did autonomous artistic interpretations of the myth assert themselves. Among the artists who devoted their skills to this myth are Perugino, Raphael, and several of his followers - Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Bronzino, Salviati, Tintoretto, and Titian. Wyss demonstrates that some depictions encode messages that transcend the obvious exhortation against pride. Taking their cue from a popular edition of the Metamorphoses, some patrons and artists viewed the myth as an allegory of the revelation of truth. Others, following Pythagorean teachings, perceived the sun god's lyre music as the music of the spheres. In this perception, Apollo's victory assures the continued harmonious functioning of the universe, and Marsyas's defiance of the sun god's authority called for the severest retribution. In a few instances the author demonstrates that the Pythagorean allegorical reading of the myth was borrowed for political ends, with Apollo's victorious lyre standing as metaphor for the supposedly harmonious government of the ruling power. The discussion allows the Marsyas myth to unfold in a theme of extraordinary richness and depth and touches on issues that were at the core of the Renaissance culture.

For Annemarie Austin, Marsyas is an exemplary figure whose horrible death in myth turns into a transformation. He gradually frees himself from the rich background of Titian's picture, moving through a series of vividly conceived poems until, in 'Marsyas in Hell', 'he strides as an underworld immortal in the flames.'

Focusing on Mary Sidney Herbert and Mary Sidney Wroth’s use of the figures of origin, descent, and inheritance in their poetry and prose, this book examines how these central women writers situated themselves in terms of early modern England’s rich ancestral cultures, employing these and other genealogical concepts to talk about authorship, family, selfhood, and memory. In turn, both Sidney Herbert and Sidney Wroth also shaped their works in relation to the ways in which writers within their familial communities and literary coteries constructed them as Sidneys, heirs, descendants, and future ancestors, in genres ranging from the patronage dedication and pastoral eclogue to mythographic genealogia and georgic poetry. In the intersection of ancestry, death, sexuality, and reproduction, the book contends that Sidney Herbert and Sidney Wroth develop their authorship within the simultaneous rigidity and flexibility of their world’s genealogical discourses.