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Medusa

Discoverer · ages 10+Adapted from Wikipedia
A carved stone panel from Temple C at Selinunte, made around 2,500 years ago, showing the Greek hero Perseus with the goddess Athena. In the myth, Perseus defeats the monster Medusa. This relief is kept in the Archaeological Museum in Palermo, Sicily.

In Greek mythology, Medusa was also called Gorgo or the Gorgon. Her name comes from Ancient Greek and is often translated as 'guardian, protectress'. She was one of the three Gorgons. Medusa is generally described as a woman with living snakes in place of hair. Her appearance was so frightening that anyone who looked at her was turned to stone.

Medusa's Gorgon sisters, Euryale and Stheno, were usually described as daughters of Phorcys and Ceto. Of the three sisters, only Medusa was mortal.

Medusa was beheaded by the Greek hero Perseus. He then used her head as a weapon, since it could still turn onlookers to stone. Later, he gave it to the goddess Athena, who placed it on her shield. In classical antiquity, the image of Medusa's head appeared on an evil-averting device called the Gorgoneion.

According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, Medusa lived and died on Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene. The 2nd-century BC writer Dionysius Scytobrachion instead placed the Gorgons in modern-day Libya. Herodotus also linked the Gorgons with Libya, reporting traditions that located them there.

Mythology

An archaic Medusa, wearing the belt of the intertwined snakes, a fertility symbol, as depicted in an altar from Gela. She embraces her children, the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor.

The three Gorgons, Medusa, Stheno and Euryale, were described by Hesiod and Apollodorus as children of the sea-god Phorcys and his sister Ceto, though Hyginus names "Gorgon" and Ceto as their parents. Their family is linked with the Graeae, another group of sisters, in Aeschylus's play Prometheus Bound. In most versions, the hero Perseus was sent by King Polydectes of Seriphus to bring back Medusa's head, because the king wanted to marry Perseus's mother. The gods helped Perseus. Athena gave him a mirrored shield, Hermes gave him winged sandals, Hephaestus gave him a sword, and Hades gave him a helm of invisibility. Because Medusa was the only mortal Gorgon, Perseus could defeat her while looking at her reflection in the shield. Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, and when her head was cut off, the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor sprang from her body. Jane Ellen Harrison argued that the Gorgoneion was a cultus object, a ritual mask. In the Odyssey, Homer does not specifically mention Medusa.

Other stories add more details. In a version by Ovid, Perseus turned the Titan Atlas to stone, and the corals of the Red Sea were said to come from Medusa's blood. Perseus later saved and married Andromeda in Ethiopia. Similar stories say that the vipers of the Sahara, told of in the Argonautica, Metamorphoses and Pharsalia, and the Amphisbaena also came from her blood. Perseus gave the head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis. Early Greek artists showed Medusa as a monster, but by the fifth century BC she was also shown as beautiful, and Pindar wrote of "fair-cheeked Medusa." In Ovid's later version, Medusa was once a beautiful maiden, and Neptune mated with her in the temple of Minerva, who then turned her hair into snakes. Polygnotus drew Medusa as a sleeping woman, and Harrison noted that the idea of three Gorgons was a later addition, similar to the Horae, Charites and Semnai.

Coins of the reign of Seleucus I Nicator of Syria (312–280 BC)
Medusa, depicted as a centaur, is beheaded by Perseus, Boeotian pithos, c. 660 BC.

Modern interpretations

Some early scholars of ancient Greece thought the myth of Medusa might be based on a real event. Joseph Campbell wrote that the story of Perseus beheading Medusa could describe a time when the Hellenes overran the goddess's chief shrines and took away the Gorgon masks her priestesses wore to frighten away unwelcome people. Sigmund Freud's "Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head)" was published in 1940, after his death, and he linked Medusa's terror to fears a child may have about his mother. Modern archetypal literary criticism still finds psychoanalysis useful for studying the myth. Some writers have also used Medusa to represent scientific determinism and nihilism, the idea that the universe has no meaning. Jack London used her this way in his novel The Mutiny of the Elsinore, quoting De Casseres about "Medusa-Truth" and the human habit of avoiding hard facts.

Head of Medusa by Godfried Maes, 1680

In the 20th century, feminists reassessed Medusa in literature and modern culture. Many women adopted her as a symbol of female rage, and the magazine Women: A Journal of Liberation used an image of Medusa on its 1978 cover. Feminist writer Hélène Cixous argued in "The Laugh of the Medusa" that men had turned Medusa into a monster because they feared female desire, and that the phallogocentric system should be challenged. She wrote that Medusa "is not deadly. She's beautiful and she's laughing." Other thinkers, such as Griselda Pollock, Adriana Cavarero, and Bracha Ettinger, have also explored Medusa's meaning, while Elana Dykewomon placed a Gorgon on the cover of her 1976 collection of lesbian stories and poems. Medusa's story has also been read as an example of victim blaming, and artist Judy Takács connected it to the #metoo movement. Writers have even compared Medusa to Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election, and the name "Medusa" is often used today to connote danger or harshness.

Art

Main article: Cultural depictions of Medusa and Gorgons

An embossed plaque in the Art Nouveau style from 1911
Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1554), Benvenuto Cellini

Medusa has been shown in many works of art, including:

Medusa (c. 1597), by Caravaggio

Medusa stayed a popular subject in the nineteenth century, when her myth was retold in Thomas Bulfinch's Mythology. Artists such as Edward Burne-Jones with his Perseus Cycle of paintings, and Aubrey Beardsley with a drawing, later gave way to twentieth-century works by Paul Klee, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, Pierre et Gilles, and Auguste Rodin's bronze sculpture The Gates of Hell.

Municipal coat of arms of Dohalice village, Hradec Králové District, Czech Republic

Medusa's head also appears on some regional symbols. It is part of the flag and emblem of Sicily, together with the three-legged trinacria. Her presence in the center is meant to show the protection of the goddess Athena, who wore the Gorgon's likeness on her aegis. Medusa also appears on the coat of arms of Dohalice village in the Czech Republic.

Science

Medusa is honored in the following scientific names:

Main articles: Cultural depictions of Medusa and Gorgons and Greek mythology in popular culture

Myth sources

Many ancient Greek and Roman writers told stories about Medusa. Some of the main early sources are Hesiod's Theogony, Apollodorus's The Library, Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, and the Roman poet Ovid's Metamorphoses.

Medusa also appears in other works from the same time. These include Homer's The Iliad and The Odyssey, Euripides' Ion, Apollonius Rhodius's Argonautica, Virgil's Aeneid, Lucan's The Civil War, and Valerius Flaccus's Argonautica.

Pictures

A carved stone head of Medusa, turned upside down, inside the Basilica Cistern in Istanbul, an ancient underground water storage space built in the Byzantine era.
A Roman mosaic from about 1,800 years ago showing the head of Medusa, a Gorgon from Greek myths, with snakes for hair and small wings on her brow. It is on display at the Archaeological Museum of Sousse in Tunisia.
A decorative Roman appliqué showing the Gorgon Medusa, made in the 2nd century and found at Sarmizegetusa in Romania. Gorgon faces like this were often used to protect people and places from harm.
A carved Roman gemstone from about 1,800 years ago, made of sardonyx, showing the head of Medusa, a snake-haired monster from Greek myths.
A roof ornament shaped like Medusa's head, made by the Etruscans in Italy in the 6th century BCE. It is now on display at the National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh.
Medusa, an oil painting by the German artist Arnold Böcklin from 1878, showing the snake-haired monster from Greek mythology.
Oil painting by artist Judy Takács (2018) that reimagines the Greek myth of Medusa in response to the #MeToo movement, which spoke out against sexual harassment and abuse.

Keep exploring

Phorcys
Athena
Aegis
Gorgons
Hesiod
Aeschylus

This article is a child-friendly adaptation of the Wikipedia article on Medusa, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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