Gorgons were dread monsters with terrifying eyes who instilled fear in any who saw them. A Gorgon head was displayed on
Athena's
aegis, giving it the power both to protect her from any weapon, and instill great fear in any enemy. Gorgon blood was said to have both the power to heal and harm.
Representations of full-bodied Gorgons and the disembodied Gorgon face, called a gorgoneion (pl. gorgoneia), were popular subjects in Ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman iconography. While Archaic Gorgons and gorgoneia are universally depicted as hideously ugly, over time they came to be portrayed as beautiful young women.
Family
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.[4] However according to
Hyginus, they were daughters of "the Gorgon", an offspring of
Typhon and
Echidna, and Ceto,[5] 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.[6] Medusa had two offspring by
Posiedon, the winged-horse
Pegasus and the warrior
Chrysaor.[7]
Mythology
Dwelling place
Where the Gorgons were supposed to live varies in the ancient sources.[8] 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.[9] The Cypria apparently had the Gorgons living in Oceanus on a rocky island named Sarpedon.[10]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.[11] And the fifth-century BC 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.[12]
Petrification
Pherecydes tells us that Medusa's face turned men to stone, and Pindar describes Medusa's severed head as "stony death".[13] In Prometheus Bound, it says that no mortal can look at them and live.[14] According to Apollodorus, all three of the Gorgons could turn to stone anyone who saw them.[15]
Stheno and Euryale were immortal, whereas Medusa was mortal.[17] 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, which 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,
Pegasus and
Chrysaor sprang from Medusa's neck, and 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.[18]
Athena's Gorgon aegis
According to Apollodorus, after Perseus gave the Gorgon head to Athena, she "inserted the Gorgon's head in the middle of her shield",[20] 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.[21] Athena wore it in battle as a shield which neither
Apollo's spear, or even
Zeus' thunderbolt could pierce.[22] 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.[23] In vase-painting, Athena is often shown wearing her aegis, fringed with snake-heads.[24]
Gorgon blood
In some accounts, the blood of "the Gorgon" (any Gorgon?) was said to have both the power to heal and harm.[25] According to Euripides' Ion, Athena gave two drops of blood from the Gorgon she slew for her aegis to
Erichthonius, one of which "wards off diseases and nourishes life", while the other "kills, as it is poison from the Gorgon serpents".[26] While according to Apollodorus, Athena gave
Asclepius some of the blood the Gorgon, "and while he used the blood that flowed from the veins on the left side for the bane of mankind, he used the blood that flowed from the right side for salvation, and by that means he raised the dead."[27]
Etymology
The name 'Gorgon' is associated with the Ancient Greek adjective gorgós (γοργός), which, of an eye or look, means 'grim, fierce, awesome, dazzling',[28] and is thought to derive from the
Sanskrit stem garğ.[29] The stem has connotations of noise, and Germanic and Romance languages have many derivatives from this stem referring to the throat (e.g. 'gorge') or the guttural sounds produced in the throat (e.g. 'gargle', 'gurgle').[30] It has been understood as meaning to growl, roar or howl,[31] while Thalia Feldman suggests that the closest meaning might be the
onomatopoeicgrrr of a growling beast.[32]
Literary descriptions
The earliest literary accounts of Gorgons occur in works by
Hesiod and
Homer (c. 700–650 BC).[33] Hesiod provides no physical description of the Gorgons, other than to say that the two Gorgons, Sthenno, and Euryale did not grow old.[34]Homer mentions only "the Gorgon" (otherwise unnamed) 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".[35] 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".[36] 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".[37]
The Hesiodic Shield of Heracles (c. late seventh–mid sixth century BC) 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.[38]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".[39] The Gorgon's reputation for ugliness was such that the Athenian comic playwright
Aristophones could, in 405 BC, ridicule the women of the Athenian
demeTeithras by referring to them as Gorgons.[40]
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".[41]
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".[42] 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.[43]
Iconography
Gorgons were a popular subject in ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman art,[44] with over six hundred representations cataloged in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC).[45] 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.[46] The earliest representations of both types are found from roughly the same time period, the mid seventh century BC.[47]
Archaic Gorgons typically have snaky hair either with snake-like curls (Figs. 7, 8), or actual snakes protruding from their heads (Figs. 2, 5, 6, 9). The faces of Archaic Gorgons are particularly distinctive, typically with large menacing eyes, tripartite scroll-like (
volute) noses, wide mouths with rictus-like grins or grimaces, lolling tongues, fangs and/or tusks (Figs. 4, 5, 6), and sometimes beards (Figs. 3, 4, 12, 14).[48] In addition to its monstrousness, another distinctive feature of archaic representations of Gorgons is that her face is always turned frontally (en face) with its large fierce eyes glaring directly at the viewer.[49]
Consistent with the change in literary descriptions seen in the works of Pindar and Ovid mentioned above, beginning in the fifth century BC, representations of Gorgons and gorgoneia transition from hideous monsters to beautiful young women, with such representations becoming typical in the fourth century BC.[50] One of the earliest such "beautiful" Gorgons (mid fifth century BC) is a red-figure
pelike (Fig. 10), which shows Perseus, with head turned away, about to behead a sleeping Medusa.[51] While gorgoneia continue to be ubiquitous through the end of antiquity, after the fourth century BC full-bodied Gorgons ceased to be represented.[52]
Full-bodied Gorgons
Full-bodied Gorgons are usually shown in connection with the Perseus-Medusa story.[53] The earliest representations (mid seventh century BC) of such Gorgons are a
Boeotianreliefpithos (Fig. 1), which depicts Perseus, with head turned away, decapitating a Gorgon, and the
Eleusis Amphora (Fig. 2), which shows two Gorgons chasing Perseus fleeing with a severed Gorgon head. 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.[54] Of particular interest is the famous Medusa pediment (early sixth century BC) from the
temple of Artemis in
Corfu (Fig. 6), which shows a winged-Medusa in the characteristic Knielauf (kneeling-running) position, with two snakes wrapped around her waist, like the Gorgons described in the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles.[55]
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, such as depicted on the Medusa pediment, become typical.[56] Unlike the depictions of gods and heroes, which are usually shown in profile,
Archaic Gorgons, even when their bodies are presented in profile (usually running), as noted above, their heads are turned frontally to display their full face, directly gazing at the viewer.[57]
Fig. 1. Horse-bodied Gorgon (Medusa) being decapitated by Perseus with averted gaze;
Boetianreliefpithos, Louvre CA 795 (mid seventh century BC[58]
Fig. 2. Two wingless cauldron-headed Gorgons with wasp-shaped bodies chase Perseus (on the body of the vase below the neck);
Eleusis Amphora,
Eleusis,
Archaeological Museum 2630 (mid seventh century BC)[59]
Fig. 5. Two winged snake-haired Gorgons with volute nose, wide mouth, tusks/fangs, tongue (center and right) chase Perseus, with a headless Gorgon (left);
Dinos of the Gorgon Painter,
Louvre E874 (early sixth century BC)[62]
Fig. 7. Winged curl-haired Gorgon (Medusa) being decapitated by Perseus aided by Athena; fragment of ivory relief plaque from the
Heraion of Samos Archaeological Museum of Samos E 1 (sixth century BC)[64]
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.[68] As with full-bodied Gorgons the earliest representations are found from the mid sixth century BC. The earliest example of a "beautiful" gorgoneion is the
Medusa Rondanini (Fig. 16), which is thought to be a Roman copy of a Greek original dated to either the fifth-century BC or the
Hellenistic period.[69]
Fig. 15. Gorgoneion;
Attickylix cup, Paris, Cabinet des Medailles 320 (late sixth century BC)[74]
Fig. 16. "Beautiful" gorgoneion, with small head wings and two snakes twined under her chin; the
Medusa Rondanini, Munich,
Staatliche Antikensammlungen GL 252 (first-second century AD, Roman copy of a Greek original?)[75]
Possible origins
There has been considerable and wide-ranging speculation concerning the possible origins of the story of Perseus and the Gorgons, as well as gorgoneia, the representations of Gorgon faces.[77] The origins of the Perseus-Gorgon story, and gorgoneia, even with respect to each other, are uncertain. The Perseus-Gorgon story might have come first inspiring the development of gorgoneia, or gorgoneia might have come first, in which case the Perseus story might have served an etiological function, as an
origin myth, developed as a way to explain where gorgoneia had come from. It is also possible that the Perseus story and gorgoneia developed independently, but later converged. Since the earliest literary and iconographic evidence of both the Perseus story and gorgoneia are roughly contemporaneous, such evidence seems unable to definitively distinguish between any of these three scenarios.[78]
It is possible that the mythology and/or the iconography of Gorgons were subject to
Near-Eastern influence.[79] In particular elements of full-bodied Gorgon iconography seem to have been borrowed from that of the
MesopotamianLamashtu.[80] Mesopotamian depictions of
Gilgamesh slaying
Humbaba, may have influenced the Perseus-Gorgon story, while gorgoneia may be connected to images of Humbaba.[81]
Perseus and the Gorgons
The Gorgon as
Mistress of Animals, in the Medusa pediment from the
temple of Artemis in
Corfu (Fig. 6) shows affinities with images of Lamashtu.[83] As
Walter Burkert has noted, Lamashtu has several characteristic iconographic elements which include an animalistic head atop a humanoid body, often in the Knielauf (kneeling-running) position, with the presence of snakes, a horse or ass, animal offspring, and sometimes in the
Mistress of Animals configuration. All of these elements are present, for example, in the Medusa pediment.[84]
Images which show Perseus, with head turned away, decapitating Medusa (Fig. 1), resemble Mesopotamian depictions of
Gilgamesh slaying the wild man
Humbaba. Such depictions can show Gilgamesh with head turned away looking behind him for a goddess to pass him a weapon.[85] This suggests the possibility that Greeks misinterpreted or reinterpreted these Mesopotamian images, giving rise, through a process that Burkert has described as a "creative misunderstanding", to the myth of the Gorgon's petrifying gaze.[86]
The gorgoneion
The consensus among classical scholars seems to be that the function of a gorgoneion was
apotropaic, as a device (an apotropaion) to ward away unwanted things, and which was in origin a dancer-worn mask.[87] The classic formulation of this view is that of
Jane Ellen Harrison, the gorgoneion as a "ritual mask misunderstood":[88]
... in her essence Medusa is a head and nothing more; her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended. The primitive Greek knew that there was in his ritual a horrid thing called a Gorgoneion, a grinning mask with glaring eyes and protruding beast-like tusks and pendent tongue. How did this Gorgoneion come to be? A hero had slain a beast called the Gorgon, and this was its head. Though many other associations gathered round it, the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood. The ritual object comes first; then the monster is begotten to account for it; then the hero is supplied to account for the slaying of the monster.[90]
That gorgoneia were used as apotropaic shield devices, at least, seems evident from Agamemnon's gorgoneion-shield, which Homer describes in the Iliad as displaying "the Gorgon, grim of aspect, glaring terribly, and about her were Terror and Rout".[91] Supporting the view that gorgoneia originated as masks, are two groups of seventh-century BC terracotta gorgonion-like masks: a group of wearable helmet masks from
Tiryns, and another group of non-wearable votive masks from the
Sanctuary of Orthia at
Sparta, which share some features with the typical earliest representations of Gorgon faces. If such masks were in fact intended to represent the face of a Gorgon, then they would show that Gorgons or gorgoneia played a role in some kind of ritualistic or dramatic practice or performance.[92]
The gorgonesque votive masks from Sparta have deep S-shaped furrows on either side of wide-mouthed grimaces. Such features resemble those on the much earlier terracotta plaques depicting
Humbaba.[93]
^Fowler 2013, p. 252; Hard 2004,
pp. 59–60; Gantz, p. 20.
^Fowler 2013, p. 254; Gantz, p. 20;
Hesiod, Theogony274–282. As to whether Hesiod means to include the Graeae as also living there, Fowler reads Hesiod as including the Graeae, while Gantz does not. Compare with
Apollodorus,
2.4.2, which has Perseus fly to "the ocean" [i.e Oceanus] to find the Gorgons.
^Bremmer 2006,
s.v. Gorgo 1; Hard 2004,
p. 60; Ganz, p. 20; West 1966, p. 246 line 274 πέρην κλυτοῦ Ὠκεανοῖο; West 2003,
Cypria fr. 30 West [= fr. 24 Allen = fr. 32 Bernabé].
Pherecydes also has the Gorgons living somewhere in Oceanus, see Gantz, p. 20; Pherecydes fr. 11 Fowler (Fowler 2000, pp. 280–281) [= Scolia on
Apollonius of Rhodes 4.1515a].
^Fowler 2013, p. 254; Bremmer (2006),
s.v. Gorgo 1; Gantz, p. 20 ;
Pindar, Phythian10.30–48. Although Bremmer reads Pindar as having located the Gorgons "among the Hyperboreans", Fowler does not conclude that Pindar did this, while Gantz says that Pindar "may or may not" have done so.
^Apollodorus,
3.10.3. Compare with Apollodorus,
2.7.3, which says that Heracles, who had received a lock of Medusa's hair from Athena, gave it to
Tegea for the city's protection from attack (according to
Pausanias,
87.47.5, the lock of hair was given to Tegea by Athena herself), see Gantz, p. 428.
^Krauskopf and Dahlinger,
p. 288 (351 entries); Krauskopf,
p. 331 (118 entries); Paoletti,
pp. 345–346 (206 entries).
^Homer, Iliad5.738–742 (Athena's aegis),
11.32–37 (Agamemnon's shield). For a comprehensive discussion of Gorgon and gorgoneion iconography see: Krauskopf and Dahlinger,
pp. 285–330 (images: LIMC IV-2,
pp. 163–188); Krauskopf,
pp. 330–345 (images: LIMC IV-2,
pp. 188–195); Paoletti,
pp. 345–362 (images: LIMC IV-2,
pp. 195–207. For other discussions see: Carpenter, pp. 134–139; Karoglou, pp. 4–25; Ogden 2013, pp. 93–94; Vernant, pp. 112–116.
^Ogden 2013, p. 93; Wilk, pp. 32–33; Gantz, p. 21.
^Vernant, pp. 112–113, identifies "two fundamental characteristics" in the archaic representations of Gorgons as "first frontality ... second, monstrousness". Ogden 2008, p. 35, describes this "direct frontal stare, seemingly looking out from its own iconographical context and directly challenging the viewer" as "a shocking and highly exceptional thing in the context of Greek two-dimensional imagery." See also Wilk, pp. 32–33.
^Ogden 2013, p. 96; Karoglou,
pp. 4–5, places this transition, along with similar transitions for other mythical female human-monster hybrids, in the larger context of "the idealizing humanism" of Greek art of the Classical period, "when ugliness was largely avoided"). For a discussion of this Iconographic transition see Karoglou, pp. 6–26, which traces Medusan iconography from the ancient to the modern.
^Ogden 2013, p. 93; Wilk, p. 33. For a discussion of the apotropaic function of gorgoneia, see Ogden 2008, p. 37. For gorgoneia in Greek architecture, see Belson 1981.
^Karoglou,
pp. 14, 16; Ogden 2013, p. 96; Krauskopf,
pp. 347–348, no. 25;
Digital LIMC25976. As Ogden notes, "it is disputed whether this is the product of the mid fifth century or the early Hellenistic period".
^Ogden 2013, pp. 94–95, fig. 2.3; Ogden 2008, pp. 32–40, fig. 3.2; West 1997, p. 454; Burkert, p. 86, fig. 6 (seal impression from
Nuzi c. 1450 BC); Carter, p. 361.
^Ogden 2013, p. 95; Ogden 2008, pp. 32–33; Burkert, p. 87.
^Mack, p. 572. See for example: Faraone,
p. 38; Vernant, pp. 111; Jameson, p. 27; Howe, p. 213.
^Ogden 2008, pp. 37–38. For the Tiryns masks see Carter, p. 360; Napier 1986, pp. 85, 86 Pl. 34. For the Spartan masks see: Rosenberg 2015; Carter 1987; Napier 1986, pp. 46–47, Pls. 9a-12b; Dickins,
pp. 163–186 (
Pls. XLVII–LXII).
^Ogden 2008, pp. 38–40; Carter, pp. 355, 357 fig. 2, 358 fig. 3, 360–366; Napier 1986, p. 49 Pls. 11a, 12b; Dickens,
pp. 166–167 (
Pls. XLVII–XLIX), which classifies these masks as "Old Women".
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