MEDUSA
Name: Medusa
In Greek mythology, Medusa ((Medousa), "guardian, protectress")
was a monstrous chthonic female character; gazing upon her would turn onlookers
to stone. She was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as
a weapon until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In
classical antiquity and today, the image of the head of Medusa finds expression
in the apotrope known as the Gorgoneion.
The three Gorgon sisters ( Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale ) were children of
Phorcys and Ceto, or sometimes, Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic
monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters,
the Graeae, as in Aeschylus's Prometheus Unbound, who places both trinities of
sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":
"Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
With snakes for hair hated of mortal man
While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her
sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the
fifth century began to envisage her as a being both beautiful as well as
terrifying. In an ode written in 490 BCE Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked
Medusa". In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid
(Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, "the jealous
aspiration of many suitors," priestess in Athene's temple, but when she was
raped by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged goddess
transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and she made her face so terrible to
behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone. Perseus describes
Medusa's punishment by Athena as just and well-deserved.
Perseus with the Head of Medusa, by Benvenuto Cellini, installed 1554
In the majority of the versions of the story, while Medusa was pregnant by
Poseidon, she was beheaded in her sleep by the hero Perseus, who was sent to
fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus. With help from Athena and Hermes,
who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, a sword, and a
mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest. The hero slew Medusa by looking at
her reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned
into stone. When the hero severed Medusa's head, from her neck two offspring
sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became
the hero wielding the golden sword.
Jane Ellen Harrison argues that "her potency only begins when her head is
severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a
body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual
mask misunderstood." (Harrison 1922:187). In Odyssey xi, Homer does not
specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa,
"lest for my daring Persephone the dread :From Hades should send up an awful
monster's grizzly head"
Harrison's translation states "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the
terror out of the Gorgon (Harrison 1922: 187, note 3).
According to Ovid, in North-West Africa Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who
stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone. In a similar manner,
the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood
spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore
during his short stay in Aethiopia where he saved and wed his future wife, the
lovely princess Andromeda. Furthermore the poisonous vipers of the Sahara, in
the Argonautica 4.1515, Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.770 and Lucan's Pharsalia 9.820,
were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood.
Perseus then flew to his mother's island where she was about to be forced into
marriage with the king. He cried out "Mother, shield your eyes", and everyone
but his mother was turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa's head.
Then he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis.
Some say the goddess gave Medusa's magical blood to the
physician Asclepius, that which was from the left-side of the neck a deadly
poison, and the right-side had the power to raise the dead.
Name: Medusa
In Greek mythology, Medusa ((Medousa), "guardian, protectress")
was a monstrous chthonic female character; gazing upon her would turn onlookers
to stone. She was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head as
a weapon until giving it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In
classical antiquity and today, the image of the head of Medusa finds expression
in the apotrope known as the Gorgoneion.
The three Gorgon sisters ( Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale ) were children of
Phorcys and Ceto, or sometimes, Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic
monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters,
the Graeae, as in Aeschylus's Prometheus Unbound, who places both trinities of
sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":
"Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
With snakes for hair hated of mortal man
While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her
sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the
fifth century began to envisage her as a being both beautiful as well as
terrifying. In an ode written in 490 BCE Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked
Medusa". In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid
(Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, "the jealous
aspiration of many suitors," priestess in Athene's temple, but when she was
raped by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged goddess
transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and she made her face so terrible to
behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone. Perseus describes
Medusa's punishment by Athena as just and well-deserved.
Perseus with the Head of Medusa, by Benvenuto Cellini, installed 1554
In the majority of the versions of the story, while Medusa was pregnant by
Poseidon, she was beheaded in her sleep by the hero Perseus, who was sent to
fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus. With help from Athena and Hermes,
who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, a sword, and a
mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest. The hero slew Medusa by looking at
her reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned
into stone. When the hero severed Medusa's head, from her neck two offspring
sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became
the hero wielding the golden sword.
Jane Ellen Harrison argues that "her potency only begins when her head is
severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a
body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual
mask misunderstood." (Harrison 1922:187). In Odyssey xi, Homer does not
specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa,
"lest for my daring Persephone the dread :From Hades should send up an awful
monster's grizzly head"
Harrison's translation states "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the
terror out of the Gorgon (Harrison 1922: 187, note 3).
According to Ovid, in North-West Africa Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who
stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone. In a similar manner,
the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood
spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore
during his short stay in Aethiopia where he saved and wed his future wife, the
lovely princess Andromeda. Furthermore the poisonous vipers of the Sahara, in
the Argonautica 4.1515, Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.770 and Lucan's Pharsalia 9.820,
were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood.
Perseus then flew to his mother's island where she was about to be forced into
marriage with the king. He cried out "Mother, shield your eyes", and everyone
but his mother was turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa's head.
Then he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis.
Some say the goddess gave Medusa's magical blood to the
physician Asclepius, that which was from the left-side of the neck a deadly
poison, and the right-side had the power to raise the dead.