Medusa Background InformationThe st

Medusa Background Information
The story of Medusa, as with all myths and legends, changed over the centuries, even way back in Ancient Greece. When we first meet her, she is purely a Gorgon, a monster, whose head is borne on the shield of Athene (Homer’s Iliad , circa 9th century BCE)

Later, according to Hesiod (in his poem Theogony written about 700BCE), she is one of three sisters, children of Phorkys (Phorcys) and Keto (Ceto). Their grandparents were Gaea (mother Earth) and Oceanus (the oceans). The girls (Sthenno, Euryale, and Medusa) were all hideously ugly, had wings, snakes for hair and hated mortal men and could turn them to stone with one glance. However, Medusa was different, she was mortal (could die) whereas her sisters were immortal. They lived, far away by the Hesperides beyond Oceanus, near their other sisters, the Graiai. (This is the version of Medusa used in our story of Perseus and Medusa. )

By the time of Pindar, In an ode written in 490 BC, he speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa". Medusa had become beautiful but still terrible!

In the Bibliotheca (Pseudo-Apollodorus) written in the 1st/2nd centuries BCE, at the end of retelling the story of Medusa’s beheading by Perseus, it says that some people say Medusa was beheaded for Athena’s sake – that the Gorgon had matched her beauty to that of Athena!

The Roman poet, Ovid, (20 March 43 BC – AD 17/18), sets out the story of the dispute between Medusa and Athena that is mostly commonly known today:

Medusa once had charms; to gain her love
A rival crowd of envious lovers strove.
They, who have seen her, own, they ne'er did trace
More moving features in a sweeter face.
Yet above all, her length of hair, they own,
In golden ringlets wav'd, and graceful shone.
Her Neptune saw, and with such beauties fir'd,
Resolv'd to compass, what his soul desir'd.
In chaste Minerva's fane, he, lustful, stay'd,
And seiz'd, and rifled the young, blushing maid.
The bashful Goddess turn'd her eyes away,
Nor durst such bold impurity survey;
But on the ravish'd virgin vengeance takes,
Her shining hair is chang'd to hissing snakes.
These in her Aegis Pallas joys to bear,
The hissing snakes her foes more sure ensnare,
Than they did lovers once, when shining hair.