Acrisius was born to King Abas of Argos and his wife Aglaea, though some call her Ocalea. He had a twin brother named Proetus, and the two were said to have quarrelled even in their mother's womb. When Abas died, the brothers waged war for the kingdom, and in the course of that war they were said to be the first mortals ever to invent shields, bucklers of bronze and leather that turned aside spear-thrusts and changed the face of battle forever. Acrisius won the war and drove Proetus into exile. His brother fled to Lycia, the kingdom on the southern coast of Asia Minor, where he married Stheneboea, the daughter of King Iobates. With an army of Lycians at his back, Proetus returned to Argos, but neither brother could defeat the other. They divided the kingdom instead. Acrisius kept Argos and the western lands, while Proetus took Tiryns and the coast, a city the Cyclopes were said to have fortified with blocks of stone so huge that no mortal could lift them.

Acrisius married Eurydice, the daughter of Lacedaemon, though some call his wife Aganippe. She bore him at least one daughter, Danae, a princess of legendary beauty, and possibly a second daughter named Evarete. But Acrisius had no sons, and in his anxiety about the succession he travelled to Delphi, the most famous oracle in Greece, where the priestess of Apollo spoke from a tripod in a temple built over a chasm in the earth. The oracle gave him a chilling answer: not that he would have no heir, but that the son of his daughter Danae would grow up to kill him. Acrisius returned to Argos in terror. He did not dare to kill Danae, for the murder of kin was the most terrible crime in Greek eyes and would summon the Erinyes, the avenging spirits of blood-guilt, to torment him without rest. Instead he built a bronze chamber beneath the earth, a room of metal sunk into the ground, and locked his daughter inside it with guards at the only door. No man would ever see her. No suitor would ever approach. The prophecy would die in the dark.

But Zeus, the king of the gods, whose power no bronze door could withstand, desired Danae. He transformed himself into a shower of gold that streamed through the roof of the bronze chamber, fell upon the sleeping princess, and filled her womb with a child. Nine months later Danae gave birth to a son she named Perseus. When Acrisius heard the sound of a baby crying from within the sealed room, he broke down the door and found his daughter nursing an infant. He refused to believe that a god was the father. Some say he suspected his own exiled brother Proetus of seducing her, which would explain the old hatred between the twins. But whatever he believed, the child was alive and the prophecy stood. Acrisius still could not bring himself to kill them. Instead he fashioned a wooden chest large enough for a woman and a baby, placed Danae and Perseus inside it, and carried it to the shore. He cast the chest into the sea and watched it drift away on the tide. If the waves killed them, he told himself, his own hands were clean.

The chest did not sink. Zeus guided it across the Aegean to the island of Seriphos, where a humble fisherman named Dictys found it washed up on the beach. He broke the lid open and discovered Danae alive, clutching her son. Dictys took them to his brother Polydectes, the king of Seriphos, and the two were given shelter. Perseus grew to manhood on that island, strong and proud, until Polydectes fell in love with Danae and sent Perseus on a quest to fetch the head of Medusa, the Gorgon whose face turned all who looked upon it to stone, hoping the hero would never return. But Perseus, aided by Athena and Hermes, succeeded. He beheaded Medusa, saved the Ethiopian princess Andromeda from a sea monster, and returned to Seriphos to turn Polydectes and his entire court to stone with the Gorgon's severed head.

When Perseus set out for Argos to claim his grandfather's kingdom, Acrisius heard that the son of Danae was coming. The old king, still terrified of the oracle, abandoned his city and fled to Larissa in Thessaly, where he sought refuge with King Teutamides. But fate does not need an invitation. Perseus, travelling through Thessaly, heard that funeral games were being held in Larissa for the father of Teutamides, or in some tellings for a king named Amyntor. He entered the contests as any young hero might, eager to prove his strength. In the discus throw, Perseus hurled the heavy bronze disc with all the force of his divine blood. It flew true at first, then caught a gust of wind, veered sideways, and struck an old man sitting in the crowd. The man was Acrisius. He died where he sat, his skull shattered by his own grandson's hand, and the prophecy was fulfilled not in battle but in sport, not by design but by the whim of a breeze.

Perseus was ashamed. He had not meant to kill the king of Argos, yet the blood was on his hands. He refused to take the throne of the man he had slain. Instead he travelled to Tiryns and exchanged kingdoms with his cousin Megapenthes, the son of Proetus. Perseus became king of Tiryns and went on to found the great city of Mycenae, while Megapenthes ruled over Argos. In another version of the tale, told by the Roman poet Ovid, Perseus visited the court of Polydectes with the Gorgon's head and turned his uncle Proetus to stone as well, though this contradicts the older Greek tradition in which Proetus died long before. Either way, Acrisius was dead, his bronze chamber and his wooden chest and his flight across Greece all undone by a single discus at a funeral game.