Zeus and the Tortoise

[4] During the Renaissance it was retold in a mixture of Greek and Latin poetic lines by Barthélemy Aneau in his emblem book Picta Poesis (1552)[5] and by Pantaleon Candidus in his Neo-Latin fable collection of 1604.

[7] Earlier, however, an alternative version of the story about the tortoise had been mentioned by the late 4th century CE author Servius in his commentary on Virgil's Aeneid.

There it is a mountain nymph called Chelone (Χελώνη, the Greek for tortoise) who did not deign to be present at the wedding of Zeus.

It relates how, when the animals were invited to ask gifts of Zeus at the dawn of time, the snail petitioned for the ability to carry her home with her.

In that story, Momus criticized the divine invention of a house as a gift to mankind because it did not have wheels so as to avoid troublesome neighbours.