REIMAGINING MYTHOLOGY

MEDUSA

Medusa was one of several monstrous children born to the primordial sea deities Phorcys and Ceto. Her siblings included the other Gorgons, Stheno and Euryale; the snake-woman hybrid Echidna; the dragon Ladon; and the Graiae, a trio of women who shared a single eye and tooth. In some accounts, such as Ovid’s Metamorphoses (written about 8 ce), Medusa was not born hideous and was, in fact, renowned for her beauty and most admired for her hair. Her loveliness became her undoing when she was pursued by an enamored Poseidon, who violated her in the very refuge to which she had fled—a temple to Athena, whom Medusa served as a priestess. (In some versions, Poseidon’s seduction of Medusa was consensual, rather than an assault.) Enraged by the desecration of her sacred space and the breach of custom—as a priestess, Medusa was required to remain chaste—Athena meted out a cruel punishment: a curse that left the once beautiful woman with a head of snakes instead of hair and a face that turned all those who looked at it into stone.

Perseus found Medusa asleep with her Gorgon sisters, surrounded by the frozen forms of humans and animals who had gazed at her. Looking at her reflection in the polished shield, Perseus decapitated her with the sickle. From the blood that spurted from the slain Medusa’s neck sprang the warrior Chrysaor and the winged horse Pegasus, her two sons by Poseidon.