Aeschylus (?)

Prometheus Bound

790–800

When you have crossed the stream that bounds the two continents, toward the flaming east, where the sun walks,......

crossing the surging sea until you reach the Gorgonean plains of Cisthene, where the daughters of Phorcys dwell, ancient maids, [795] three in number, shaped like swans, possessing one eye amongst them and a single tooth; neither does the sun with his beams look down upon them, nor ever the nightly moon. And near them [the Graeae] are their three winged sisters, the snake-haired Gorgons, loathed of mankind, [800] whom no one of mortal kind shall look upon and still draw breath.

Apollodorus

1.2.6

And to Sea （ Pontus） and Earth were born Phorcus, Thaumas, Nereus, Eurybia, and Ceto. Now to Thaumas and Electra were born Iris and the Harpies, Aello and Ocypete; and to Phorcus and Ceto were born the Phorcides and Gorgons, of whom we shall speak when we treat of Perseus.

2.4.2

...Now Perseus having declared that he would not stick even at the Gorgon's head, Polydectes ... ordered him to bring the Gorgon's head. So under the guidance of Hermes and Athena he made his way to the daughters of Phorcus, to wit, Enyo, Pephredo, and Dino; for Phorcus had them by Ceto, and they were sisters of the Gorgons, and old women from their birth. ... And [Perseus] flew to the ocean and caught the Gorgons asleep. They were Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. Now Medusa alone was mortal; for that reason Perseus was sent to fetch her head. But 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; and they turned to stone such as beheld them.

2.4.3

So Perseus put the head of Medusa in the wallet （kibisis） and went back again; but the Gorgons started up from their slumber and pursued Perseus: but they could not see him on account of the cap, for he was hidden by it.

Euripides

Ion

986–991

Creusa

Listen, then; you know the battle of the giants?

Tutor

Yes, the battle the giants fought against the gods in Phlegra.

Creusa

There the earth brought forth the Gorgon, a dreadful monster.

Tutor

[990] As an ally for her children and trouble for the gods?

Creusa

Yes; and Pallas, the daughter of Zeus, killed it.

Herodotus

2.91.6

They told how he [Perseus] came to Khemmis, too, when he came to Egypt for the reason alleged by the Greeks as well—namely, to bring the Gorgon's head from Libya—and recognized all his relatives; and how he had heard the name of Khemmis from his mother before he came to Egypt. It was at his bidding, they said, that they celebrated the games.

4.178

Next to these along the coast are the Machlyes, who also use the lotus, but less than the aforesaid people. Their country reaches to a great river called the Triton,1 which empties into the great Tritonian lake, in which is an island called Phla. It is said that the Lacedaemonians were told by an oracle to plant a settlement on this island.

4.186.1

Thus from Egypt to the Tritonian lake, the Libyans are nomads that eat meat and drink milk; for the same reason as the Egyptians too profess, they will not touch the flesh of cows; and they rear no swine.

Hesiod

Theogony

270–282

And again, Ceto bore to Phorcys the fair-cheeked Graiae, sisters grey from their birth: and both deathless gods and men who walk on earth call them Graiae, Pemphredo well-clad, and saffron-robed Enyo, and the Gorgons who dwell beyond glorious Ocean [275] in the frontier land towards Night where are the clear-voiced Hesperides, Sthenno, and Euryale, and Medusa who suffered a woeful fate: she was mortal, but the two were undying and grew not old. With her lay the Dark-haired One¹ in a soft meadow amid spring flowers. [280] And when Perseus cut off her head, there sprang forth great Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus who is so called because he was born near the springs² of Ocean; ...

1 i.e.Poseidon.

2 pegae

The Shield of Heracles

229–237

Perseus himself, Danae’s son, was outstretched, and he looked as though he were hastening and shuddering. The Gorgons, dreadful and unspeakable, were rushing after him, eager to catch him; as they ran on the pallid adamant, the shield resounded sharply and piercingly with a loud noise. At their girdles, two serpents hung down, their heads arching forward; both of them were licking with their tongues, and they ground their teeth with strength, glaring savagely. Upon the terrible heads of the Gorgons rioted great Fear.

Homer

Iliad

5.738–742

About her shoulders she flung the tasselled aegis, fraught with terror, all about which Rout is set as a crown, [740] and therein is Strife, therein Valour, and therein Onset, that maketh the blood run cold, and therein is the head of the dread monster, the Gorgon, dread and awful, a portent of Zeus that beareth the aegis.

8.349

But Hector wheeled this way and that his fair-maned horses, and his eyes were as the eyes of the Gorgon [Γοργοῦς] or of Ares, bane of mortals.

11.32–37

And he took up his richly dight, valorous shield, that sheltered a man on both sides, a fair shield, and round about it were ten circles of bronze, and upon it twenty bosses of tin, [35] gleaming white, and in the midst of them was one of dark cyanus. And thereon was set as a crown the Gorgon, grim of aspect, glaring terribly, and about her were Terror and Rout.

Odyssey

11.630–37

And I should have seen yet others of the men of former time, whom I was fain to behold, even Theseus and Peirithous, glorious children of the gods, but ere that the myriad tribes of the dead came thronging up with a wondrous cry, and pale fear seized me, lest [635] august Persephone might send forth upon me from out the house of Hades the head of the Gorgon, that awful monster. “Straightway then I went to the ship and bade my comrades themselves to embark, and to loose the stern cables.

Nonnus

Dionysiaca

13.77–78

Mycalessos with broad dancing-lawns, named to remind us of Euryale’s throat^c

^c Euryale, a Gorgon; Nonnos derives the town’s name from the monster’s roar, μυκηθμός, μυκάομαι.

25.53–58

Perseus fled with flickering wings trembling at the hiss of mad Sthenno’s hairy snakes, although he bore the cap of Hades and the sickle of Pallas, with Hermes’ wings though Zeus was his father; he sailed a fugitive on swiftest shoes, listening for no trumpet but Euryale’s bellowing

30.265–266

Have you seen the eye of Sthenno which turns all to stone, or the bellowing invincible throat of Euryale herself?

40.227–233

The double Berecyntian pipes in the mouth of Cleochos drooned a gruesome Libyan lament, one which long ago both Sthenno and Euryale with one many throated voice sounded hissing and weeping over Medusa newly gashed, while their snakes gave out voice from two hundred heads, and from the lamentations of their curling and hissing hairs they uttered the “manyheaded dirge of Medusa.”^a

^a Pindar, Pyth. xii. 23 gives this origin of the tune called πολυκέφαλος—πολλᾶν κεφαλᾶν νόμον, the tune of many heads.

Pausanias

3.17.3

There are also represented nymphs bestowing upon Perseus, who is starting on his enterprise against Medusa in Libya, a cap and the shoes by which he was to be carried through the air. There are also wrought the birth of Athena, Amphitrite, and Poseidon, the largest figures, and those which I thought the best worth seeing.

Pindar

Phythian

10.46–48

...[Perseus] killed the Gorgon, and came back bringing stony death to the islanders, the head that shimmered with hair made of serpents.

12.6–20

... that art [flute playing] which once Pallas Athena discovered when she wove into music the dire dirge of the reckless Gorgons which Perseus heard [10] pouring in slow anguish from beneath the horrible snakey hair of the maidens, when he did away with the third sister and brought death to sea-girt Seriphus and its people. Yes, he brought darkness on the monstrous race of Phorcus, and he repaid Polydectes with a deadly wedding-present for the long [15] slavery of his mother and her forced bridal bed; he stripped off the head of beautiful Medusa, Perseus, the son of Danae, who they say was conceived in a spontaneous shower of gold. But when the virgin goddess had released that beloved man from those labors, she created the many-voiced song of flutes [20] so that she could imitate with musical instruments the shrill cry that reached her ears from the fast-moving jaws of Euryale.

Bremmer, Jan N. (2006)

Brill's New Pauly

s.v. Gorgo 1

Female monster in Greek mythology. According to the canonical version of the myth (Apollod. 2,4,1-2), Perseus must get the head of Medusa, the mortal sister of Sthenno and Euryale (Hes. Theog. 276f.; POxy. 61, 4099), the daughters of Phorcys and Ceto (cf. Aeschylus' drama Phorcides, TrGF 262). The three sisters live on the island of Sarpedon in the ocean (Cypria, fr. 23; Pherecydes FGrH 3 F 11), although Pindar (Pyth. 10,44-48) located them among the Hyperboraeans ( Hyperborei). Their connection to the sea is still apparent in Sophocles (TrGF 163) and Hesychius (s.v. Gorgides). The Gorgos' terrifying shape (snake hair, fangs) transforms into stone whoever looks at them (their ugliness was so notorious that Aristoph. [Ran. 477] referred to the women of the Athenian deme Teithras as Gorgones). In the divine battle against the Titans, Athena also kills a G., whose blood was later attributed with the power to heal as well as to poison (Eur. Ion 989-991; 1003ff.; Paus. 8,47,5; Apollod. 3,10,3). With the aid of Athena, Hermes, and the Nymphs, who equipped him with winged sandals, Hades' helmet of invisibility, and a sickle (hárpē), Perseus is able to decapitate Medusa in her sleep (Pherecydes FGrH 3 F 11). From her neck rise Chrysaor [4] and the winged horse Pegasus. Perseus is pursued by Medusa's sisters, but he escapes and, in the end, turns his enemy Polydectes to stone by using G.'s head.

The myth was already known to Hesiodus (Theog. 270-282) and shows oriental influences: the iconography of the G. has borrowed traits from Mesopotamian Lamaštu. Perseus saves Andromeda in Ioppe-Jaffa (Mela 1,64), and an oriental seal shows a young hero holding a hárpē and seizing a demonic creature [1. 83-87]. In Etruria, Perseus' adventure was already popular in the 5th cent. [3]. Roman authors like Ovidius (Men. 4,604-5,249) ─ who change Medusa into a stunningly beautiful young girl ─ and Lucan (9,624-733) focussed in particular on the frightening head of Medusa [cf. 4].

In Mycenae, Perseus was seen in the context of initiation. His killing of Medusa reflects the testing of young warriors [2]. In fact, the descriptions of G.'s head recall certain elements of the archaic battle vehemence: the horrifying appearance, broad grin, grinding teeth, and powerful battle screams [6]. The popularity of G.'s head, the Gorgoneion, as attested on Athena's aegis and on warriors' shields (as early as Hom. Il. 5,741; 11,35-37) as well as in Aristoph. Ach. 1124, indicates the frightening effect and the protection of the Delphic omphalós (Eur. Ion 224) and the Delian thēsaurós (thesauros: IG XIV 1247) by the Gorgos. The myth of Perseus and Medusa is therefore an important example of the complex interrelation of narrative and iconographic motifs between Greece and the Orient during the archaic period.

Bremmer, Jan N. (2015)

Oxford Classical Dictionary

s.v. Gorgo/Medusa

Female monsters in Greek mythology. According to the canonical version of the myth (Apollod. 2. 4. 1–2) Perseus (1) was ordered to fetch the head of Medusa, the mortal sister of Sthenno and Euryale; through their horrific appearance these Gorgons turned to stone anyone who looked at them. With the help of Athena, Hermes, and nymphs, who had supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, and a sickle (harpē) Perseus managed to behead Medusa in her sleep; from her head sprang Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus. Although pursued by Medusa's sisters, Perseus escaped and, eventually, turned his enemy Polydectes to stone by means of Medusa's head.

Fowler

p. 254

As often with the mythical geography of the edges of the world, there is confusion about the location of [Perseus' encounter with the Gorgons]. In He's. Th. 270-5, the Graiai, Gorgons, and Hesperides all live in the west, near Okeanos' springs (πηγαί, whence Pegasus, 282).

Gantz

p. 20

Unlike the Graiai, the Gorgons are from the beginning (in Hesiod) three in number (Th 274-83). Hesiod names them Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, and places them toward the edge of night, beyond Okeanos, near the Hesperides, in other words to the far west (he does not say whether the Graiai lived near them). Of the three, steno and Euryale are immortal and ageless, but Medousa is mortal (Hesiod offers no explanation of this odd situation). She alone mates with Poseidon (assuming Kyanochaites is here as elsewhere, an epithet of the sea god), and after her beheading by Perseus, Chrysaor and the horse Pegasos spring forth from her neck. ...

In contrast ... The Aspis offers a typically garish portrait: Gorgons with twin snakes ... wrapped around their wastes ... and possibly a vague reference to snakes for hair (Aspis 229-37). Snaky locks are in any case well attested by Pindar (Py 10.46-48; 12.9-12), and here again Medousa's head lithifies, while Euryale's lament becomes the model for the song of the flute. In Pythian 10, we also see Perseus journeying to the land of the Hyperboreans in the far north on his quest for the head; the Gorgons may or may not have been located there. For Aeschylus, we must again be content with the description in Prometheus Desmotes, since there are no relevant fragments from the Phorkides. As noted above, his Gorgons live near their sister Graiai to the far east; they have wings and snaky hair, and no mortal can look upon them and live (PD 798-800). This last detail suggests that Aeschylus believed all three sisters could turn men to stone, but he may be exaggerating for effect, or perhaps he refers to their generally ferocious character. The tale that Medousa was once beautiful, and fell prey to Athena's anger by mating with Poseidon in the goddess' temple, first appears in Ovid (Met 4.790-803); something of the same sort also surfaces in [cont.]

p. 21

Apollodorus, who says that Medousa wished to rival Athena in beauty (ApB 2.4.3). Such an idea may have developed at some late point in time to dignify Posiedon's union with the Gorgon; certainly it will not explain the equally hideous condition of her two sisters.

Artistic representations of Gorgons are much too abundant to list in detail here, ... On a Boiotian relief amphora of c. 650 B.C., a figure in traveling garb cuts off the head of a female represented as a Kentauros (Louvre CA 795).²⁵ The attitude of the beheader, with face averted from his victim, seems not only to guarantee that this is an early Medousa, but to offer our earliest evidence for the Gorgon's perilous qualities. On the contemporary Protoattic Eleusis Amphora, the sisters appear as monstrous (albeit shapely) inset-faced creatures with no wings but distinct snakes around their heads (Eleusis, no #). By the time of the name vases of Nessos and Gorgon Painters of Athens (end of the seventh century: Athens 1002, Louvre E874), canonical features, such as the tripartite nose and lolling tongue (perhaps developed in Corinthian painting), are basically in force; for the wings and snakes there is also a slightly earlier ivory relief from Santos depicting the decapitation (Samos E 1).

Tripp

s.v. Gorgons

Three Snaky-haired monsters, named Steno, Euryale, and Medusa. Euripides says that Ge brought forth "the Gorgon" to aid her children, the Giants, in their war with the gods. Others claim that the Gorgons were among the brood that sprang from the union of the ancient sea-god Phorcys and his sea-monster sister, Ceto; these offspring included Echidna, Ladin, and the Graeae. The Gorgons had brazen hands and wings of gold; red tongues lolled from their mouths between tusks like those of swine; and serpents writhed about their heads. Their faces were so hideous that a glimpse of them would turn man or beast to stone. Of the three, only Medusa was mortal. She was killed by Perseus. [Hesiod, Theogony, 270-283. See also references un der PERSEUS.]

West

Cypria fr. 30 West [= fr. 32 Bernabé]

30 Herodian. περὶ μονήρους λέξεως 9(ii. 914.15 L.)

30 Herodian, On Peculiar Words

And Sarpedon in the special sense of the island in Oceanus, where the Gorgons live, as the author of the Cypria says:

And she conceived and bore him the Gorgons, dread creatures, who dwelt on Sarpedon on the deep-swirling Oceanus, a rocky island.

• Neer, Richard T., Greek Art and Archaeology c.2500 – c.150 BCE, New York : Thames & Hudson, 2012. ISBN 9780500288771. Internet Archive

Eleusis Amphora

• Gantz, p. 21

On the contemporary [c. 650 B.C] Protoattic Eleusis Amphora, the sisters appear as monstrous (albeit shapely) inset-faced creatures with no wings but distinct snakes around their heads (Eleusis, no #).

• Near, p. 107

On the body, Perseus flees with the head of the Gorgon Medousa, her two monstrous sisters in hot pursuit. The convention for representing a Gorgon is still not quite settled: the painter evidently at a loss, used a cauldron with protomes as a model for heads.

fig. 4.24

Middle Protoattic amphora from Eluesis. On the neck, Odysseus and his men blind the Cyclops Polyphemus; on the shoulder, a lion attacks a boar; on the body Gorgons chase Perseus. Ceramic; third quarter of the 7th century BCE. ...

Louvre CA 795

• Gantz, p. 21

On a Boiotian relief amphora of c. 650 B.C., a figure in traveling garb cuts off the head of a female represented as a Kentauros (Louvre CA 795).²⁵ The attitude of the beheader, with face averted from his victim, seems not only to guarantee that this is an early Medousa, but to offer our earliest evidence for the Gorgon's perilous qualities.

• Perseus Medusa Louvre CA795

Louvre Museum, Paris, France

Artist/Maker Unknown

Perseus (left, wearing a hat, winged boots and the kibisis slung over his shoulder) averts his gaze as he kills Medusa, figured here as a female centaur. Detail from an orientalizing relief pithos. Terracotta with stamped and cut decoration, Cycladic artwork, ca. 660 BC. From Thebes, Boeotia.

Credit line Purchase, 1897

Accession number CA 795

Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, Denon, lower ground floor, room 1

Samos, Vathy Museum E 1

• Hard, p. 60, Figure 2.6

• Gantz, p. 21

• Gantz, p. 305

• Perseus, aided by Athena, with the head of the Gorgon Medusa; fragment of ivory relief plaque from the Heraion at Samos.