Poor wretch! Already a numbness that loosed his limbs was stealing beneath his skin, and a thick mist was spreading over his eyes. And Medea and her handmaids fled in terror but Canthus bravely felt the bleeding wound for no excessive pain harassed him. Now Mopsus stepped on the end of its spine, setting thereon the sole of his left foot and it writhed round in pain and bit and tore the flesh between the shin and the muscles. For when godlike Perseus Eurymedon (for by that name his mother called him) flew over Libya - bearing to the king the Gorgon’s head newly severed, all the drops of dark blood that fell to the earth, produced a brood of those serpents. But into whatever of all living beings that life-giving earth sustains that serpent once injects his black venom, his path to Hades becomes not so much as a cubit’s length, not even if Paean, if it is right for me to say this openly, should tend him, when its teeth have only grazed the skin. Now there lay in the sand, avoiding the midday heat, a terrifying serpent, too sluggish of his own will to strike at an unwilling foe, nor yet would he dart full face at one that would shrink back. And then, on the same day, a pitiless fate seized Mopsus too, son of Ampycus and he did not escape a bitter doom by his prophesying for there is no way to escape death. In his epic about the adventures of Jason and the Argonauts, Apollonius of Rhodes explains the origin of the deadly vipers in the Libyan desert. These were the offspring of Poseidon’s rape of Medusa.įor further discussion and art of Perseus and Medusa, see chapter 21. When Perseus cut off Medusa’s head, the winged horse Pegasus and the monster Chrysaor sprang from her bleeding neck. Assisted by Athena and Hermes, Perseus found Medusa in a cave and cut off her head, which Athena showed him using her reflective bronze shield as a mirror. He was sent to kill her by King Polydectes of Seriphos, under the assumption that he would fail, leaving nobody to object to Polydectes marrying Perseus’ mother, Danae. Medusa was killed by the Greek hero Perseus. Kline © Copyright 2000 All Rights ReservedĬonflict and Death Perseus beheading Medusa, red-figure pelike, ca. And now, to terrify her enemies, numbing them with fear, the goddess wears the snakes, that she created, as a breastplate.” So that it might not go unpunished, she changed the Gorgon’s hair to foul snakes. Jupiter’s daughter turned away, and hid her chaste eyes behind her aegis. They say that Neptune, lord of the seas, violated her in the temple of Minerva. Of all her beauties none was more admired than her hair: I came across a man who recalled having seen her. She was once most beautiful, and the jealous aspiration of many suitors. The guest replied, “Since what you ask is worth the telling, hear the answer to your question. Next one of the many princes asked why Medusa, alone among her sisters, had snakes twining in her hair. In this version of Medusa’s myth, recounted in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, she becomes a Gorgon after being raped by Poseidon. In a variation on this version of the myth, Athena turns Medusa into a gorgon not because she was raped by Poseidon, but because she claimed to be as beautiful as Athena. As retribution for the violation of the virgin goddess’ shrine, Athena caused Medusa to be turned into a gorgon and to join the other two gorgons living at the edge of the world. Taken from: Athena, Poseidon, and Medusa Īccording to another version of Medusa’s myth, she was once a beautiful young woman who was raped by the god Poseidon in a temple of Athena. But when Perseus had cut off the head of Medusa, there sprang from her blood great Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus so named from the springs ( pegai) of Ocean, where she was born. Poseidon, he of the dark hair, lay with one of these, in a soft meadow and among spring flowers. They are Sthenno, Euryale, and Medusa, whose fate is a sad one, for she was mortal, but the other two immortal and ageless both alike. These the gods who are immortal and men who walk on the earth call Graeae, the gray sisters, Pemphredo robed in beauty and Enyo robed in saffron, and the Gorgons who, beyond the famous stream of Ocean, live in the utmost place toward night, by the singing Hesperides. And to Phorcus, Ceto bore the Graeae, with fair faces and gray from birth. She has sex with Poseidon in a meadow, and the relationship appears to be consensual, which conflicts with other versions of the myth. In this very early version of the myth from Hesiod’s Theogony, Medusa is born, along with her sisters, from the union of Phorcus and Ceto.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |