Poseidon tempted her into having sexual intercourse with him in a temple to Athena. When Ovid wrote her story in Metamopheses, he claimed that she was born beautiful before becoming a snake-haired creature and retained her looks over the years. The stories about Medusa in Greece are unique because they changed quite a bit over the years. He claimed that both groups of sisters were monsters. They also had another group of sisters called the Graeae who appeared in Prometheus Bound written by Aeschylus. Though both were marine deities, their children were chthonic monsters. The two had three daughters, including Euryale and Stheno. Also known as Phorkys, he lay with his sister Ceto. Legend says that Medusa was one of three children born to Phorcys. Herodotus found some evidence that she appeared in Berber mythology where she was a major part of their religion. Dionysios Skytobrachion wrote about her during the second century and claimed that she both lived and died in an area of Libya. They claim that she spent most of her life in Sarpedon, which was close to Cisthene with her Gorgon sisters and also died there. Thence, by Athena’s curse anyone she looked upon turned to stone.īoth Aeschylus and Hesiod mention Medusa in some of their early stories. From then on she roamed, shamed, shunned and loathed by everyone. Her pure white milky skin turned a scary green hue. The once lovely hair was morphed into poisonous, dangerous snakes. She turned Medusa into an ugly creature by making her eyes bloodshot and raging and her face haglike. She went against her vow and married him.įor this Athena punished her hideously. She vowed to be celibate her entire life as a priestess of Athena until she fell in love with Poseidon. She was a beautiful maiden with golden hair. One of the most popular monsters of Greek Mythology is Medusa. All analyzes around this mythological figure, whether from philosophy, psychoanalysis, feminism or artistic representations, will coincide in the symbolic transcendence of that famous head cut off from a woman with snake hair.Greek Mythology is known for its many fearsome beasts such Mantikhoras and Cyclopes. Viewed as a conjunction of concepts and approaches that have constituted its image, Medusa's head, undoubtedly setting it above the rest of the character, has acquired an undeniable value for each of these perspectives. When he beheaded the Gorgon, her murderer possesses it, and by giving him nothing more than Athena's head for the latter to use as a shield, it is proof that it is only the head of Medusa that constitutes his power and his decapitation the only way to acquire it. The beheading of Medusa is a sacrifice in so much of its death two mythological personages are born, children of Poseidón. It is a multiple death, it is his Achilles heel, because with his head, Perseus also takes away the power, the monstrosity, the femininity and masculinity of the violated beast. She could have died for different causes, but the only way to metaphorically destroy the Gorgon was through decapitation. In this way, the beheading of Medusa becomes a fundamental element for the constitution of her character. Without it, the symbolic significance of Medusa would no longer make sense. All the powers that constitute the character of Medusa are born from her head.
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