and Theocritus discuss the Endymion myth at some length, but reiterate the above to varying degrees. The myth surrounding Endymion has been expanded and reworked during the modern period by figures like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and John Keats (in his 1818 narrative poem Endymion). The satirical author Lucian of Samosata records an otherwise unattested myth where a fair nymph named Myia becomes Selene's rival for Endymion's affections; the chatty nymph would endlessly talk to him when he slept, waking him up. This annoyed Endymion, and enraged Selene, who transformed the girl into a fly. In memory of Endymion, the fly still grudges all sleepers their rest. Background No explicit narrative has survived. In Argonautica (iv.57ff) the "daughter of Titan," the Moon, was witness to Medea's fearful night-time flight to Jason, and "rejoiced with malicious pleasure as she reflected to herself: 'I'm not the only one then to skulk off to the Latmian cave, nor is it only I that burn with desire for fair Endymion'" she muses. "But now you yourself it would seem, are a victim of a madness like mine." Lemprière's Classical Dictionary reinforces Pliny's account of Endymion's attachment to astronomy and cites it as the source of why Endymion was said to have a relationship with the moon as she passed by. The mytheme of Endymion being not dead but endlessly asleep, which was proverbial (the proverb—Endymionis somnum dormire, "to sleep the sleep of Endymion") ensured that scenes of Endymion and Selene were popular subjects for sculpted sarcophagi in Late Antiquity, when after-death existence began to be a heightened concern. The Louvre example, discovered at Saint-Médard-d'Eyrans, France (illustration above), is one of this class. Some believe that he was the personification of sleep, or the sunset (most likely the last one as his name, if it were Greek rather than Carian can be construed from "to dive in" [Greek en (ἐν) in, and duein (δύειν) dive], which would imply a representation of that sort. Latin writers explained the name from somnum ei inductum, the "sleep put upon him".) The myth of Endymion was never easily transferred to ever-chaste Artemis, the Olympian associated with the Moon. In the Renaissance, the revived moon goddess Diana had the Endymion myth attached to her. Notes Citations References Ancient Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica; with an English translation by R. C. Seaton. William Heinemann, 1912. Apollodorus. Apollodorus, The Library, with an English Translation