Aeneas has been rowed through the Straits of Messina, avoiding the rock pinnacle that Scylla had been transformed into. From there he heads north-west until he meets a fierce northerly storm that blows him and his crew south to the city of Carthage, on the Libyan coast. Ovid breezes through what takes Virgil almost a whole book in the Aeneid, in a brief summary of the affair between Aeneas and Dido, Queen of Carthage. This ends with him abandoning her to fall upon the sword he had given her, and her body to be consumed on her funeral pyre.

Pierre-Narcisse Guérin’s Aeneas tells Dido the misfortunes of the City of Troy, painted in about 1815, is probably the standard work showing the beginnings of their romance. Unfortunately it doesn’t give any clues to its tragic outcome.

In about 1875, when Paul Cézanne was still experimenting with narrative genres, he first drew a compositional study, then painted Aeneas Meeting Dido at Carthage. The queen is at the left, surrounded by her court. The warrior figure of Aeneas stands to the right of centre, and to the right of him is the shrouded spectre of Aeneas’ wife, Creusa, who had been abandoned by Aeneas as the family fled the burning city of Troy.

Normally titled The Death of Dido, Tiepolo’s painting from 1757-70 shows an odd composite scene in which Aeneas, packed and ready to sail with his ship, watches on as Dido suffers the agony of their separation, lying on the bed of her funeral pyre. A portentous puff of black smoke has just risen to the left, although it’s surely far too early for anyone to think of setting the timbers alight.

Dido’s spectacular death is shown best in what is perhaps Henry Fuseli’s most conventional history painting, known simply as Dido (1781). Dido has just been abandoned by Aeneas, has mounted her funeral pyre, and is on the couch on which she and Aeneas made love. She then falls on the sword Aeneas had given her, and that rests, covered with her blood, beside her, its tip pointing up towards her right breast. Her sister Anna rushes in to embrace her during her dying moments, and Jupiter sends Iris (shown above, wielding a golden sickle) to release Dido’s spirit from her body. Already smoke seems to be rising up from the pyre, confirming visually to Aeneas that she has killed herself, as he sails away from Carthage.

After a close call with the Sirens, Aeneas reaches the land of the Cercopes, who had been transformed into apes by Jupiter because of their treachery. The ship continues to the north-west along the coast of Italy, passing Naples.

This has been shown only by those like Antonio Tempesta who engraved for illustrated editions of the Metamorphoses. Tempesta’s Jupiter Changing the Cercopians into Monkeys from around 1600 shows Jupiter at the right, accompanied as ever by his huge eagle, with the transformed monkeys.

Once past Naples, Aeneas and his crew land at Cumae to visit the Sibyl there in her cave. He needs her assistance to go to the underworld to speak to the ghost of his father Anchises. The Sibyl reassures Aeneas that he will achieve his goals, and to that end she takes him to Proserpine’s sacred glade. Finding a golden bough there, she tells Aeneas to break that from the tree. The two of them travel to the underworld bearing that golden bough, make contact with the ghost of Anchises, and return safely.

During their walk back, Aeneas thanks the Sibyl for her help and guidance, and offers to build a temple to her, assuming she is a goddess. The Sibyl points out that she is no goddess, and explains how she had once been offered immortality if she were to let the god Apollo take her virginity. When Apollo had invited her to wish for anything, she had pointed to a pile of sand, and asked to live as many years as there were grains, but forgot to wish for eternal youth to accompany that.

Apollo offered her eternal youth as well, but she declined and remained a virgin. After seven hundred years, with another three hundred still to go, she is well into old age, infirm, and steadily vanishing as her body wastes away until only her voice will remain. With that, the pair reach Cumae, and Aeneas sets sail.

This is depicted in one of Claude Lorrain’s most wonderful coastal landscapes, his Coast View with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl from about 1645-49. Although their figures are small, Apollo on the left is holding his lyre in his left arm, trying to persuade the seated Sibyl, to the right, to let him take her virginity. Around them are the ruins of classical buildings and a stand of tall trees, as the land drops away to an idealised view of the coast of Italy. In the small bay immediately below them are some ships, which may be a forward reference to Aeneas’ future visit, although that would have been seven centuries later according to the Sibyl’s account.

JMW Turner didn’t tackle the first part of this story until 1823, when he painted The Bay of Baiae, with Apollo and the Sibyl. His view appears to have been loosely based on Claude’s, but is set at Baiae, in the Bay of Naples. Apollo is again on the left, with his lyre, but the dark-haired Sibyl has adopted an odd kneeling position. She is holding some sand in the palm of her right hand, asking Apollo to grant her as many years of life as there are grains.

When Claude was painting his coastal view, François Perrier was painting a more conventional figurative account of Aeneas and the Cumaean Sibyl (c 1646). Aeneas, stood to the left of the incense burner, appears to be offering to burn incense in honour of the Sibyl, who stands at the right in front of her cave, and is just about to tell him her life-story. Behind Aeneas is a queue of people, including a king, bearing gifts and waiting to consult with the Sibyl. At the top left corner is a temple, and in the clouds above it the god Apollo, I believe.

JMW Turner’s first version of this later scene is thought to have been his first mythological painting, in about 1798. This second version, Lake Avernus: Aeneas and the Cumaean Sybil, dates from 1814 or 1815, and is both an improvement on the original and in better condition. True to the spirit of Claude’s landscape, this too is a mythological landscape showing the beautiful setting of Lake Avernus, near Pozzuoli, to the west of the city of Naples. In the distance are Baiae and the cliffs of Cape Miseno. The Sibyl, who doesn’t show her years, holds aloft a golden sprig rather than a bough, and Aeneas stands with his back to the viewer, as if he too is enjoying the view.

Turner’s last account is The Golden Bough, exhibited in 1834. It shows well how much his style had changed, although it retains compositional features from his earlier paintings. The Sibyl stands on the left, radiant in white light, and holding aloft a more substantial golden branch, with the golden sickle used to cut that branch, in her right hand. Down towards Lake Avernus are the Fates, dancing around a white glow. A couple of female companions of the Sibyl rest under the tree, but Aeneas is nowhere to be seen, although he might be in the middle of the Fates, perhaps. In the right foreground is a snake, a symbol of the underworld.

By the end of Book 13 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Aeneas is on the island of Sicily. Scylla has been combing Galatea’s hair, listening to her tell the tragic story of the death of her lover Acis. Ovid resumes the narration for the tale of Scylla, which doesn’t conclude until the start of the next book.

Scylla is walking naked along the beach when the figure of Glaucus suddenly breaks the surface of the water. He’s immediately enchanted by her, and tries to engage her in conversation to stop her from running away. But Scylla runs away in terror, and climbs a nearby cliff. There, she gets her breath back, and tries to work out whether he’s a god or monster with long hair and fishy scales below the waist.

Glaucus assures her that he’s a sea-god. He had once been an ordinary mortal, and fished with nets, and rod and line. One day, the fish that he had caught started to move when he had laid them out on the grass, and one by one they escaped back into the water. He couldn’t understand how that had happened, so chewed stems of the plants they had rested on. He was then transformed and swam off in the sea to visit the gods Tethys and Oceanus for removal of the last remains of his mortal form.

Scylla runs away, leaving Glaucus angry, so he makes his way to the sorceress Circe.

Bartholomeus Spranger painted his version of Glaucus and Scylla in 1580-82. Although the artist hasn’t followed Ovid’s distinctive colour scheme for his body, Glaucus is clearly pleading his case before the beautiful young woman. In the next book, Ovid will describe how Scylla was turned into a rock, and Spranger provides that link forward in the story in his background.

In the middle of the seventeenth century, Salvator Rosa makes Glaucus more of a beast, roughly mauling Scylla’s fair body and giving her good cause for her flight to the cliff.

A little later, probably in the late seventeenth century, Nicola Vaccaro is more sympathetic in his Glaucus fleeing from Scylla. Glaucus may be a bit rough, but arouses more pity. Scylla is accompanied by three Cupids as she flees not to the top of a cliff, but to the goddess Diana above.

The most interesting and unusual depiction of this story is surely JMW Turner’s from 1841, just a decade before his death.

Turner’s Glaucus and Scylla (1841) would perhaps have looked more at home among paintings made fifty or even eighty years later.

The naked Scylla is on the beach at the right, with a couple of cupids flying about. The inchoate form of Glaucus is emerging to the left of centre, holding his arms out towards Scylla. She will have none of it, though, and has already turned to run, and looks back over her shoulder towards him.

We look directly into the setting sun colouring the world a rich gold. In the right background the low coastal land rises to sheer cliffs with a temple on top. A tower atop a nearer pinnacle, or more distant lower red rocks, may be a reference to Scylla’s fate.

In the foreground are clues of the beach setting, with a crab, and several seashells. Turner has applied his paint in innovative and gestural ways, resulting in richly varied textures.

Turner had made an earlier and more traditional study in about 1810-15, but revised it almost completely by the time that he painted this in 1841. Its light appears influenced by the harbour landscapes of Claude, and its general lack of form anticipates Impressionism, perhaps even Abstract Expressionism in passages.

Rejected by the scared Scylla, Glaucus travels from Sicily to visit the sorceress Circe, whom he implores to use her dark arts to force Scylla to return his love. But Circe refuses, telling Glaucus to woo another: as she is in love with him, he could spurn Scylla and love Circe instead.

Glaucus rejects her, saying that nothing will change his love for Scylla. That annoys Circe, who cannot harm Glaucus because of her love for him, so turns her anger on Scylla instead. The sorceress prepares a magical potion from herbs, weaving her spells into it. Dressed in a deep blue robe, she then goes to a small bay where Scylla likes to bathe, and pours her potion into the water.

When Scylla wades into the water the lower half of her body is transformed into a pack of dogs. As Ulysses’ ship passes her, those dogs take some of its crew, but they allow Aeneas to pass safely. Scylla is finally transformed into a rock and becomes a famous hazard to navigation.

John William Waterhouse chose to portray the figure of Circe the sorceress in his Circe Invidiosa (1892). Despite its narrative limitations, this offers a marvellous insight into the character of Circe, as she pours her brilliant emerald green potion into the water, ready for Scylla to come and bathe.

John Melhuish Strudwick also chooses a moment early in Ovid’s story, which makes his painting of Circë and Scylla (1886) narratively rather thin. Circe, dressed in brown rather than blue, is sprinkling her potion into the water from within a small cave, as Scylla, at the left, walks down to bathe.

By far the most complete visual account is Eglon van der Neer’s Circe Punishes Glaucus by Turning Scylla into a Monster (1695). Circe takes the limelight, as she casts her potion from a flaming silver salver held in her right hand. Dripping onto that is the wax from a large candle, held in her left hand. In the water below, Scylla has already been transformed into a gorgonesque figure, with snakes for hair, and the grotesque Glaucus watches from behind. Above and to the right of Circe is a small dragon perched on a rock ledge.

Ary Renan’s Charybdis and Scylla (1894) shows Charybdis the whirlpool with its mountainous standing waves at the left, and the rocks of Scylla at the right.

This fragment of fresco by Alessandro Allori shows Odysseus’ ship passing Charybdis, depicted as a huge head vomiting forth the rough waters of the whirlpool at the right, and the dogs’ heads of Scylla, which have captured three of Odysseus’ crew.

Henry Fuseli’s Odysseus in front of Scylla and Charybdis (1794-96) is another vivid depiction of Odysseus passing the twin dangers. He stands on the fo’c’s’le of his ship, holding his shield up in defence as the oarsmen down below him struggle to propel the craft through the Straits of Messina.

As Ovid reaches the end of Book Twelve of his Metamorphoses, Nestor is still telling stories to the feast in honour of Achilles’ victory over Cycnus in the Trojan War. He has just completed the long and colourful story of the battle between the Lapiths and the Centaurs at the wedding of Pirithous and Hippodame.

Tlepolemus, the son of Hercules (Heracles), is offended that Nestor hasn’t mentioned his father in his stories, to which Nestor points out his hatred for Hercules. Nestor says that he’s the only survivor of twelve sons of Neleus, Hercules having destroyed all the others. Nestor then goes on to tell of the strange death of his brother Periclymenus, who had been given the power of shape-shifting by Neptune. After Periclymenus had torn the face of Hercules and had flown away as an eagle, Hercules’ arrow severed the sinews of his wings. When he fell to earth, the arrow was driven into his neck, killing him.

Ovid then jumps to the closing months of the Trojan War, writing that Neptune’s hatred of Achilles has not gone away. Seeing the Greeks are about to conquer the city, Neptune speaks with Apollo, seeking a way to kill Achilles at last. As Neptune cannot face him in combat, Apollo agrees to use his skills as an archer to bring about the warrior’s death.

Apollo goes down to the walls of Troy, where he finds Paris (Alexander), whose abduction of Helen had started the war, shooting arrows almost at random. The god reveals himself and offers to help him make his shots more effective by aiming them at Achilles. Apollo assists Paris and his arrow, to ensure that it reaches its target; Achilles falls, mortally wounded, as a result.

Of those who have painted this, it was Peter Paul Rubens who has told the story most vividly, in a series on Achilles that he completed between 1630-35, towards the end of his own career and life. This painting of The Death of Achilles is an oil sketch on a smaller panel.

Achilles, an arrow piercing straight through his right foot, is shown in the centre foreground, overtly moribund. But Rubens doesn’t place Achilles in battle, as does Ovid: he has been standing at a small altar to the goddess Diana, with her strong association with archery. At the door to the left, Paris is still holding the bow that loosed the arrow, and behind him is Apollo aiding and abetting in the killing.

Rubens’ finished painting of The Death of Achilles adheres faithfully to that sketch. Achilles’ face is deathly white, and this brings to life the supporting detail, particularly the lioness attacking a horse at the lower edge of the canvas, symbolising Paris’s attack on Achilles.

Much later, Alexander Rothaug’s undated Death of Achilles is true to the original accounts, with the arrow passing through the Achilles tendon. Paris, still clutching his bow above, looks mortified, and Apollo stands behind him.

Henry Fuseli’s Thetis Lamenting the Death of Achilles (1780) is less straightforward to read. In the foreground, Achilles’ body lies like a fallen statue on his shield, his great spear by his left side. There is no sign of any wound, arrow, or injury. At the water’s edge, his mother Thetis is waving her arms in lament for her dead son. Another deity is flying past in the distance, and is seen white against the dark and funereal sea and sky.

Ovid is quite vague as to how Achilles died, other than telling us it was from an arrow shot by Paris. Since that account in his Metamorphoses, a new myth has flourished, giving a more familiar explanation. When Achilles was a young child, his mother Thetis immersed him in the water of the river Styx, to make him invulnerable. However, she had to hold him by part of his body, the left heel, which was therefore left as his only weakness, hence his Achilles Heel. This was first recorded in the poetry of Statius, in the first century CE.

Rubens included this oil sketch in his Achilles series, showing Thetis Dipping the Infant Achilles into the River Styx (1630-35). This is taking place in the foreground, while in the middle distance Charon is seen ferrying the dead across the River Styx into the Underworld. Rubens complies with Statius’ story in making Achilles’ left heel the one left vulnerable.

Nearly thirty years after Rubens’ death, Jan-Erasmus Quellinus painted his version of Thetis Dips Achilles in a Vase with Water from the Styx (1668). It’s set not on the bank of the River Styx, but at a temple, where Achilles undergoes a baptismal procedure in a a huge pot, at the lower left. Thetis appears to be holding the infant, who is almost completely immersed, by his left foot, again in compliance with Statius. Quellinus has engaged in a little intentional Christianisation of this myth, which may also have made it seem more familiar to those who saw it.

Antoine Borel’s more traditional account of Thetis Immerses Her Son Achilles in Water of the River Styx was painted at least a hundred years later, in the late eighteenth century, and again has Thetis hold Achilles by his left foot.

Unusually for Rubens, though, his paintings of the death of Achilles show the arrow transfixing his right foot, not the left. That was a necessity by virtue of its composition, although Rubens could just as easily have reversed his drawing to achieve consistency with this detail.

With Achilles on his funeral pyre, Ovid closes the book as King Agamemnon calls his warriors to meet, to decide who should be awarded Achilles’ shield and arms, in the opening of book thirteen.