Midas was a king of Phrygia, who asked Bacchus to turn anything he touched into gold. Midas quickly discovered this turned even the food and wine he tried to consume into lumps of metal and asked Bacchus to reverse the gift. Later, Apollo turned Midas’s ears into those of a donkey as punishment for the king choosing Pan over Apollo in a musical contest.

Aesculapius was the son of a mortal woman, Coronis, and Apollo. When Apollo discovered Coronis had betrayed him with a mortal man, he killed her (or had her killed), snatching up the child she was pregnant with and delivering him to the wise Centaur Chiron to raise. His skill in healing was unsurpassed, but he drew the gods’ displeasure by thinking “thoughts too great for man”: He raised a man from the dead (398). Zeus struck him down with a thunderbolt, and Apollo avenged his son’s death by killing alternately the Cyclopes or their sons. Zeus punished Apollo by enslaving him to king Admetus. Despite his missteps with the gods, Aesculapius “was honored on earth as no other mortal” (398). His temples drew the sick, who would pray and offer sacrifices for healing.

The Danaids were the 50 daughters of Danaus, a descendant of Io who lived near the Nile.