In Greek legend, the daughter of Acrisius, king of Argos.
After an oracle warned her father that she would bear a son by whom he would be slain, he confined Danaë in a tower. Zeus visited her in the form of a shower of gold, and she gave birth to Perseus . Mother and child were then placed in a wooden box and cast into the sea, and they drifted ashore on the island of Seriphus. Perseus grew up there, and when the island's king, Polydectes, desired Danaë , he sent the young hero off in pursuit of the Medusa . Perseus later rescued his mother and took her to Argos.