The death of Dirce is depicted in a marble statue, 1st Century AD Roman Copy of a 2nd century BC Hellenistic Greek original, known as the Farnese Bull, now in the collections of the National Archaeological Museum in Naples. The colossal piece was first excavated in the 16th century in the Baths of Caracalla. Some scholars identify it with the Dirce bull mentioned in Pliny’s Natural History.
This scene was apparently recreated in spectacles in the Roman arena. Clement, in his First Letter to the Corinthians, recounts how Christian women were martyred.
Pseudo-Hyginus, Fabulae 7
(Roman mythographer C2nd A.D.) :
“Antiopa, daughter of Nycteus . . . was embraced by Jupiter [Zeus]. But Lycus married Dirce. She, suspecting that her husband had secretly lain with Antiopa, ordered her servants to keep her bound in darkness. When her time was approaching, by the will of Jove [Zeus] she escaped from her chains to Mount Cithaeron, and when birth was imminent and she dsought for a place to bear her child, pain compelled her to give birth at the very crossroads. Shepherds reared her sons as their own, and called one Zetos … and the other Amphion . . . When the sons found out who their mother was, they put Dirce to death by bidning her to {the horns} ofan untamed bull…”
