Gorgons, female monsters depicted as having snakes on their head instead of hair, and sometimes described as having tusks, wings and brazen claws. One of the earliest representations is on an electrum stater discovered during excavations at Parium. —Homer Medusa is a character in Hesiod and Homer's myth. If anyone were to gaze directly into Medusa's eyes, they would be turned to stone. [19][16](4.627) He also used the Gorgon against Cetus (when saving Andromeda) and a competing suitor, Phineas, Andromeda's cousin. While descriptions of Gorgons vary, the term most commonly refers to three sisters who are described as having hair made of living, venomous snakes and horrifying visages that turned those who beheld them to stone. With snakes for hair—hatred of mortal man—, While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as having monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the fifth century began to envisage her as being beautiful as well as terrifying. He believes that one reason for her longevity may be her role as a protector, fearsome and enraged. As well has having snakes for hair, she was given a serpent-like body and rattlesnake-like tail. Myths & Legends. Classic Medusa, in contrast, is an Oedipal/libidinous symptom. Gorgons occur in the earliest examples of Greek literature. Boreas (Aquilon to the Romans): the Greek god of the cold north wind, described by Pausanias as a winged man, sometimes with serpents instead of feet. It derives from the Greek word gorgons, which means "dreadful." According to other accounts, either he or Athena used the head to turn Atlas into stone, transforming him into the Atlas Mountains that held up both heaven and earth. According to Ovid’s telling in Metamorphoses, Medusa was a beautiful maiden who was transformed by Athena in a jealous rage. The name is Greek, being derived from "gorgos" and translating as terrible or dreadful. "[22], In issue three, Fall 1986 for the magazine Woman of Power an article called Gorgons: A Face for Contemporary Women's Rage, appeared, written by Emily Erwin Culpepper, who wrote that "The Amazon Gorgon face is female fury personified. An image of a Gorgon holds the primary location at the pediment of the temple at Corfu, which is the oldest stone pediment in Greece, and is dated to c. 600 BC. That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C. Elworthy's "A Solution of the Gorgon Myth", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Gorgon&oldid=1007173291, Short description is different from Wikidata, Articles containing Ancient Greek (to 1453)-language text, Articles containing Sanskrit-language text, Articles with unsourced statements from March 2020, All articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases, Articles with specifically marked weasel-worded phrases from October 2020, Articles with unsourced statements from November 2014, Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with Wikisource reference, Wikipedia articles incorporating text from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 16 February 2021, at 20:38. The multi-headed Lernaean Hydra, a fearsome, serpent-like creature, emerged from its lair and bore down on a waiting Heracles, the son of the Greek god Zeus. Gorgon – woman with hair made of living, venomous snakes, and eyes that turned men to stone (Greek): Medusa – once a human, Medusa and her sisters were cursed to be terrible monsters by Athena (Greek) Euryale – second eldest of the three vicious Gorgon sisters (Greek) Stheno – eldest of the Gorgon Sisters (Greek) Looking at forbidden mother (in her hair-covered genitals, so to speak) stiffens the subject in illicit desire and freezes him in terror of the Father's retribution. 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": Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged Where once she had a lovely mane of hair and a gorgeous face, there were now only snakes for locks and a visage that turned men instantly to stone. Stheno, most murderous of the sisters. She remained a priestess to Athena after her death and was risen with fresh hair. Lionesses or sphinxes are frequently associated with the Gorgon as well. 1285, see pictures below). In Greek mythology, the Gorgon was a terrifying female creature. Heracles is said to have obtained a lock of Medusa’s hair (which possessed the same powers as the head) from Athena and to have given it to Sterope, the daughter of Cepheus, as a protection for the town of Tegea against attack. The gods were well aware of this, and Perseus received help. Some classical references refer to three Gorgons; Harrison considered that the tripling of Medusa into a trio of sisters was a secondary feature in the myth: A number of early classics scholars interpreted the myth of Medusa as a quasi-historical – "based on or reconstructed from an event, custom, style, etc., in the past",[11] or "sublimated" memory of an actual invasion.[12][13]. Much later stories claim that each of three Gorgon sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, had snakes for hair, and that they had the power to turn anyone who looked at them to stone. The blood of Medusa also spawned the Amphisbaena (a horned dragon-like creature with a snake-headed tail). The three Gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were all children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys (or "Phorkys") and his sister Ceto (or "Keto"), chthonic monsters from an archaic world. The oldest oracles were said to be protected by serpents and a Gorgon image was often associated with those temples. Gorgoneia (figures depicting a Gorgon head, see below) first appear in Greek art at the turn of the 8th century BC. In this regard Gorgoneia are similar to the sometimes grotesque faces on Chinese soldiers’ shields, also used generally as an amulet, a protection against the evil eye. According to Ovid,[16] a Roman poet writing in 8 AD, who was noted for accuracy regarding the Greek myths[according to whom? In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion. In Freud's interpretation: "To decapitate = to castrate. an actual historic rupture, a sort of sociological trauma, which has been registered in this myth, much as what Freud terms the latent content of a neurosis is registered in the manifest content of a dream: registered yet hidden, registered in the unconscious yet unknown or misconstrued by the conscious mind. Since you are already here then chances are that you are looking for the Daily Themed Crossword Solutions. "And she's not deadly. [23], Elana Dykewomon's 1976 collection of lesbian stories and poems, They Will Know Me by My Teeth, features a drawing of a Gorgon on its cover. When Perseus beheaded her, Pegasus, a winged horse, and Chrysaor, a giant wielding a golden sword, sprang from her body.[7]. Medusa had copulated with Poseidon (Roman Neptune) in a temple of Athena after he was aroused by the golden color of Medusa's hair. Ultimately, he used her against King Polydectes. Through many of her iterations, Medusa pushes back against a story that seeks to place the male, Perseus, at its center, blameless and heroic. He received a mirrored shield from Athena, gold, winged sandals from Hermes, a sword from Hephaestus and Hades's helm of invisibility. In Greek mythology, the Gorgons were snake-women whose gazes would turn people to stone; they had serpents for hair, long claws, sharp teeth and scales covering their bodies. and usually ends at around the 9th Century. The skin of the dragon was said to be made of impenetrable scales. The mythical creatures found in folklore do a lot of different jobs, says Simon Young, a British historian of folklore and co-editor/co … The most influential depiction of Medusa in film is arguably the stop motion animation created by Ray Harryhausen for Clash of the Titans (1981). Beth Seelig analyzes Medusa's punishment from the aspect of the crime of having been raped rather than having willingly consented in Athena's temple as an outcome of the goddess' unresolved conflicts with her own father, Zeus. Then Aix became the goat Capra (Greek: Aix), on the left shoulder of the constellation Auriga. For other uses, see, A large part of Greek myth is politico-religious history. [32][33] In this interpretation of Medusa, attempts to avoid looking into her eyes represent avoiding the ostensibly depressing reality that the universe is meaningless. Transitions in religious traditions over such long periods of time may make some strange turns. "[22], Medusa's visage has since been adopted by many women as a symbol of female rage; one of the first publications to express this idea was a feminist journal called Women: A Journal of Liberation in their issue one, volume six for 1978. In one interview after another we were told that Medusa is 'the most horrific woman in the world' ... [though] none of the women we interviewed could remember the details of the myth. Gazing directly upon her would turn men to stone. According to myth, the Sirins lived "in Indian lands" near Eden or around the Euphrates River. Medusa is widely known as a monstrous creature with snakes in her hair whose gaze turns men to stone. ", "The Timeless Myth of Medusa, a Rape Victim Turned Into a Monster", Online version at the Perseus Digital Library, Online version at Harvard University Press, Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology, "Medusa in Myth and Literary History" – English.uiuc.edu, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Medusa&oldid=1008530519, Articles having different image on Wikidata and Wikipedia, Articles with unsourced statements from September 2020, Wikipedia articles with PLWABN identifiers, Wikipedia articles with SUDOC identifiers, Wikipedia articles with WORLDCATID identifiers, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License, This page was last edited on 23 February 2021, at 19:47. Perseus could safely cut off Medusa's head without turning to stone by looking only at her reflection in the shield. Welcome to our website for all Mythical creature from Greek mythology with venomous snakes as hair. Other sources say that each drop of blood became a snake. It is represented as tiny hairy creature with long sharp claws and long fur, which he stomps upon and yells in mixture of child's cry, scream and wolf's howling. She has the power to petrify anyone who looked at her. [9] 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 Ethiopia where he saved and wed his future wife, the lovely princess Andromeda who was the most beautiful woman in the world at that time. The terror of Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something. If you follow Hesiod's translation of the myth, Medusa and her sisters were born with snakes for hair and the power to turn anyone who gazed upon them to stone—a bit different from the Roman myth. She's beautiful and she's laughing. A marble statue 1.35 m high of a Gorgon, dating from the 6th century BC, was found almost intact in 1993, in an ancient public building in Parikia, Paros capital, Greece (Archaeological Museum of Paros no. "From Gorgon and Ceto, Sthenno, Euryale, Medusa". Euryale, whose scream could kill. Gorgons are often depicted as having wings, brazen claws, the tusks of boars, and scaly skin. The awkward stance of the gorgon, with arms and legs at angles is closely associated with these symbols as well. Edward Burne-Jones' Perseus Cycle of paintings and a drawing by Aubrey Beardsley gave way to the twentieth century works of Paul Klee, John Singer Sargent, Pablo Picasso, Pierre et Gilles, and Auguste Rodin's bronze sculpture The Gates of Hell.[36]. Perseus’s name should properly be spelled Perseus, ‘the destroyer’; and he was not, as Professor Kerenyi has suggested, an archetypal Death-figure but, probably, represented the patriarchal Hellenes who invaded Greece and Asia Minor early in the second millennium BC, and challenged the power of the Triple-goddess.