Medusa

Medusa was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. She was beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon. The image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion.

About Medusa in brief

Summary Medusa Medusa, also called Gorgo, was one of the three monstrous Gorgons, generally described as winged human females with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Those who gazed into her eyes would turn to stone. Medusa was beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion. According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, she lived and died on an island named Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene. She remained a priestess to Athena after her death and was risen with fresh hair. The three Gorgon sisters were all children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys and his sister Ceto, chthonic monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graeae, as in AesChylus’s Prometheus Bound, which places both trinities of sisters far off on Kisthene’s dreadful plain. In the Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention Medusa: Lest for my daring Persephone the dread,From Hades should send up an awful monster’s grisly head. In a late version of the Medusa myth, by the Roman poet Ovid, Medusa is originally a beautiful maiden, but when Poseidon had sex with her in Minerva’s temple, Athena punished her by transforming her beautiful hair into horrible snakes.

She was the mother of the beautiful princess Andromeda, who was the most beautiful woman in the world at that time. Furthermore, Ovid’s Metamorphoses 4.8.15 and Lucan’s Pharsalia 9.9.15, were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood on the shore of the Red Sea, where he saved and wed his future wife, Amphisbaena. Then, in northwest Africa, Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone when he tried to attack him. He then flew to Seriphos, where his mother was forced into marriage with the king, Polydectes, who turned into stone by the head, and was then turned into the king’s wife, who flew to the Argonautica, where her blood was spilt into the petrifying Red Sea. The Red Sea was said to be formed of corals of blood spilled from Medusa’s blood when he stayed on the shores of Ethiopia during his short stay in Ethiopia, and to stay there until he married Andromeda.