According to Hesiod and Apollodorus, the Gorgons were daughters of the primordial sea-god Phorcys and the sea-monster Ceto, and the sisters of three other daughters of Phorcys and Ceto, the Graeae.^[3] However according to Hyginus, they were daughters of "the Gorgon", an offspring of Typhon and Echidna, and Ceto,^[4] while Euripides, in his tragedy Ion, has "the Gorgon" being the offspring of Gaia, spawned by Gaia to be an ally for her children the Giants in their war against the Olympian gods.^[5]

Dwelling place edit

Where the Gorgons were supposed to live varies in the ancient sources.^[6] According to Hesiod, the Gorgons lived far to the west beyond Oceanus (the Titan, and world-circling river) near its springs, at the edge of night where the Hesperides (and the Graeae?) live.^[7] The Cypria apparently had the Gorgons living in Oceanus on a rocky island named Sarpedon.^[8] Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound places them in the far east "across the surging sea" on the "Gorgonean plains of Cisthene", where the Graeae live, while his lost play Phorkides (another name for the Graeae) apparently placed them at "Lake Tritonis", a mythological lake set somewhere in westernmost North Africa.^[9] And the poet Pindar has Perseus, apparently on his quest for the Gorgon head, visit the Hyperboreans (usually considered to dwell in the far north). However, whether Pindar means to imply that the Gorgons lived near the Hyperboreans is unclear.^[10]

Petrification edit

Pherecydes tells us that Medusa's face turned men to stone, and Pindar describes Medusa's severed head as "stony death".^[11] In the Prometheus Bound, it says that no mortal can look at them and live.^[12] According to Apollodorus, all three of the Gorgons could turn to stone anyone who saw them.^[13]

Perseus and Medusa edit

Stheno and Euryale were immortal, whereas Medusa was mortal.^[14] According to Apollodorus' version of their story, Perseus was ordered by Polydectes (his enemy) to bring back the head of Medusa. So guided by Hermes and Athena, he sought out the sisters of the Gorgons, the Graeae who had only one eye and one tooth which they shared. Perseus managed to steal their eye and tooth, and refused to return them, unless they would show him the way to the nymphs, which they did. Perseus got from the nymphs, winged sandals, which allowed him to fly, and the cap of Hades, with made him invisible. He also received an adamantine sickle (harpē) from Hermes. Perseus then flew to Oceanus, found the Gorgons asleep. And when Perseus managed to behead Medusa by looking at her reflection in his bronze shield, Stheno and Euryale chased after him, but were unable to see him because he was wearing Hades' cap of invisiblity. When Perseus brought back the Gorgon head, as ordered, with averted eyes he showed the head to Polydectes who was turned to stone. Perseus returned the things he had acquired from the nymphs and Hermes, but gave the Gorgon head to Athena.^[15]

Athena's Gorgon aegis edit

According to Apollodorus, after Peseus gave the Gorgon head to Athena, she "inserted the Gorgon's head in the middle of her shield",^[17] apparently a reference to Athena's aegis. In the Iliad, the aegis is a device, usually associated with Athena, which was decorated with a Gorgon head.^[18] Athena wore it in battle as a shield which neither Apollo's spear, or even Zeus' thunderbolt could pierce.^[19] According to the Iliad, Hephaestus made the aegis for Zeus, while according to a Hesiod fragment, Metis made it for Athena, before Athena was born. However, Euripides, in his tragedy Ion, has a character say that Athena's aegis was made from the skin of the Gorgon, the offspring of Gaia, who Gaia had brought forth as an ally for her children the Giants and who Athena had killed during the Gigantomachy.^[20] In vase-painting, Athena is often shown wearing her aegis, fringed with snake-heads.^[21]

The name derives from the Ancient Greek word gorgós (γοργός), which means 'grim or dreadful', and appears to come from the same root as the Sanskrit word garjana (गर्जन), which means a guttural sound, similar to the growling of a beast,^[22] thus, possibly originating as an onomatopoeia.

Hesiod provides no physical description of the Gorgons, other than to say that the two Gorgons, Sthenno, and Euryale did not grow old.^[23] Homer mentions only "the Gorgon" giving brief descriptions of her, and her head. In the Iliad she is called a "dread monster" and the image of her head, which appears—along with several other terrifying images—on Athena's aegis, and Agamemnon's shield, is described as "dread and awful", and "grim of aspect, glaring terribly".^[24] Already in the Iliad, the Gorgon's "glaring" eyes were a notably fearsome feature. As Hector pursues the fleeing Achaeans, "exulting in his might" ... ever slaying the hindmost", Homer describes the Trojan hero as having eyes like "the eyes of the Gorgon".^[25] And in the Odyssey, Odysseus, although determined "steadfastly" to stay in the underworld, so as to meet other great men among the dead, is seized by such fear at the mere thought that he might encounter there the "head of the Gorgon, that awful monster", leaves "straightway".^[26]

The Hesiodic Shield of Heracles describes the Gorgons chasing Perseus as being "dreadful and unspeakable" with two snakes wrapped around their waists, and that "upon the terrible heads of the Gorgons rioted great Fear", perhaps a reference to snakes writhing about their heads.^[27] Pindar makes snakes for hair explicit, saying that Perseus' Gorgon head "shimmered with hair made of serpents", and that the Gorgons chasing Perseus also had "horrible snaky hair", so too in Prometheus Bound where all three Gorgons are described as "winged" as well as "snake-haired".^[28] The mythographer Apollodorus gives the most detailed description:

... the Gorgons had heads twined about with the scales of dragons, and great tusks like swine's, and brazen hands, and golden wings, by which they flew".^[29]

While such descriptions emphasize the hideous physical features of the Gorgon, by the fifth century BC, Pindar can also describe his snake-haired Medusa as "beautiful".^[30] And the Roman poet Ovid tells us that Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, but because of a sexual encounter with Neptune (the Roman equivalent of the Greek Poseidon) in Minerva's temple (Minerva being the Roman equivalent of the Greek Athena), Minerva punished Medusa by transforming her beautiful hair into horrible snakes.^[31]

Gorgons were a popular subject in ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman art, with over six hundred representations cataloged in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC).^[32] Some representations show full-bodied Gorgons, while others, called gorgoneia, show only the disembodied full-frontal face of a Gorgon, such as those described in the Iliad as appearing on Athena's aegis, and Agamemnon's shield.^[33] The earliest representations of both types are found from roughly the same time period, the mid seventh century BC.^[34] Full-bodied Gorgons are usually shown in connection with the Perseus-Medusa story, while the disembodied gorgoneia, thought to have had an apotropaic (protective) function, are often found on architectural elements such as temple pediments, and ornamental antefixes and acroteria, or decorating various round objects, such as shields, coins, and the bottoms of bowls and cups.^[35]

Archaic Gorgon faces, weather on Gorgons or gorgoneia, are particularly distinctive, with large menacing eyes, wide mouths with rictus-like grins, lolling tongues, and fangs and tusks protruding both up and down, a tripartite nose, and serpentine-curling hair, often with actual snakes.^[36]

The earliest representations of full-bodied Gorgons are a Boeotian relief pithos (Louvre CA 795), which depicts Perseus, with head turned away, decapitating a Gorgon, and the Eleusis Amphora, which shows two Gorgons chasing Perseus fleeing with a severed Gorgon head.^[37] That the Perseus, on the pithos, averts his gaze shows that already in these earliest images it was understood that looking directly at the Gorgon's face was deadly.^[38]

Although the Gorgon being beheaded on the Boeotian pithos is depicted as a female Centaur, with neither wings nor snakes present, and the Gorgons on the Eleusis Amphora, have wingless, wasp-shaped bodies with cauldron-like heads, by the end of the seventh century BC, humanoid bodies, with wings, and snakes around their head, necks, or waist, become typical.^[39] Unlike the depictions of gods and heroes, which are usually shown in profile, Archaic Gorgons, even when their bodies are presented profile (usually running), their heads are turned to display their full face, with their large bulging eyes glaring directly at the viewer.^[40]

Consistent with the change in literary descriptions seen in the works of Pindar and Ovid mentioned above, beginning in the fifth century BC, images of Gorgons and gorgoneia transition from hideous monsters to beautiful young women, with such representations becoming typical in the fourth century BC.^[41] One of the earliest such "beautiful" Gorgons (mid fifth century BC) is a red-figure Pelike (Metropolitan Museum of Art 45.11.1), which shows Perseus, with head turned away, about to behead a sleeping Medusa.^[42] While gorgoneia continue to be ubiquitous through the end of antiquity, after the fourth century BC full-bodied Gorgons ceased to be represented.^[43]

•  
  Perseus, with averted gaze, decapitating Medusa (depicted here as a female centaur); Boetian relief pithos, Louvre CA 795 (mid seventh century BC)^[44]
•  
  Two Gorgons chase Perseus (on the body of the vase below the neck); Eleusis Amphora (mid seventh century BC)^[45]
•  
  Winged Gorgon, large-eyed, lolling tongue, running right with head turned facing out; name vase of the Nessos Painter, Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1002 (late seventh–early sixth century BC)^[46]
•  
  Two Gorgons (center and right) chase Perseus, with a headless Gorgon (left); Dinos of the Gorgon Painter, Lourve E874 (early sixth century BC)^[47]
•  
  Gorgon with snakey hair, and belt of snakes; pediment from the temple of Artemis in Corfu, Archaeological Museum of Corfu (early sixth century BC)^[48]
•  
  Perseus decaptitating the Gorgon; fragment of ivory relief plaque from the Heraion of Samos Archaeological Museum of Samos E 1 (sixth century BC)^[49]
•  
  Gorgon; relief terracotta antefix, Temple of Athena at Syracuse, in the Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi of Syracuse, Sicily (late sixth century BC)^[50]
•  
  Disk-fibula with a gorgoneion, bronze with repoussé decoration, second half of the 6th century BC (Louvre CA 1371)^[51]
•  
  Winged goddess with a Gorgon's head, orientalizing plate, c.600 BC, from Kameiros, Rhodes
•  
  Gorgoneion; Attic kylix cup, Paris, Cabinet des Medailles 320 (late sixth century)^[52]
•  
  Gorgon (detail); amphora, Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen 2312 (Early fifth century BC)^[53]
•  
  Perseus about to behead a "beautiful" sleeping Medusa; Pelike, attributed to Polygnotos, Metropolitan Museum of Art 45.11.1 (mid fourth century BC)^[54]

A number of early classics scholars interpreted the myth of the Medusa as a quasi-historical, or "sublimated", memory of an actual invasion.^[55][a]

The legend of Perseus beheading Medusa means, specifically, that "the Hellenes overran the goddess's chief shrines" and "stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks", the latter being apotropaic faces worn to frighten away the profane.

That is to say, there occurred in the early thirteenth century B.C. 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.
      — J. Campbell (1968)^[57][b]

While seeking origins others have suggested examination of some similarities to the Babylonian creature, Humbaba, in the Gilgamesh epic.^[58]

In Ancient Greece a Gorgoneion (a stone head, engraving, or drawing of a Gorgon face, often with snakes protruding wildly and the tongue sticking out between her fangs) frequently was used as an apotropaic symbol and placed on doors, walls, floors, coins, shields, breastplates, and tombstones in the hopes of warding off evil. 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. Likewise, in Hindu mythology, Kali is often shown with a protruding tongue and snakes around her head.

The Ancient Silver Gorgon Coin is a hemidrachm that was struck in the Greek city of Parium in the 5th century B.C. Parium was a major coastal cite in the Mysia region on the Hellespont, the peninsula now known as the Dardanelles in western Turkey. The city was close to the Greek region of Lydia, which produced the first coins in about 650 B.C. The Gorgon coin from Parium was issued only a few generations later, making it one of the world's earliest coins. Ancient Greek coins usually feature images of specific Gods or symbols that represented the issuing city or state, and it is likely that the Parium had a connection to the legends of the Gorgons. The ancient Greeks believed that the Gorgons lived in the west, near the setting sun, and since Parium was near the western limits if the known Greek world, it was an appropriate place for the Gorgon Coin to be issued.^[59]

In some Greek myths, blood taken from the right side of a Gorgon could bring the dead back to life, yet blood taken from the left side was an instantly fatal poison.^[60] Athena gave a vial of healing blood to Asclepius, which ultimately brought about his demise.

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,^[61] the daughter of Cepheus, as a protection for the town of Tegea against attack. According to the later idea of Medusa as a beautiful maiden, whose hair had been changed into snakes by Athena, the head was represented in works of art with a wonderfully handsome face, wrapped in the calm repose of death.^[62]

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•   This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gorgon, Gorgons". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 257.
• Additional material has been added from the 1824 Lemprière's Classical Dictionary.