Gorgons
This article needs additional citations for verification. (January 2022) |
Part of a series on |
Greek mythology |
---|
Deities |
Heroes and heroism |
Related |
Ancient Greece portal Myths portal |
The Gorgons (
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.[2] However according to Hyginus, they were daughters of "the Gorgon", an offspring of Typhon and Echidna, and Ceto.[3]
Mythology
Dwelling place
Where the Gorgons were supposed to live varies in the ancient sources.
Descriptions
Hesiod provides no physical description of the Gorgons, other than to say that the two Gorgons, Sthenno, and Euryale did not grow old.[9] 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".[10] 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".[11]
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.[12] 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".[13] 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".[14]
Pherecydes tells us that Medusa's face turned men to stone, and Pindar describes Medusa's severed head as "stony death".[15] In the Prometheus Bound, it says that no mortal can look at them and live.[16] According to Apollodorus, all three of the Gorgons could turn to stone anyone who saw them.[17]
Perseus and Medusa
Stheno and Euryale were immortal, whereas Medusa was mortal.
Etymology
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,[20] thus, possibly originating as an onomatopoeia.
Depictions
Gorgons were a popular image in Greek mythology, appearing in the earliest of written records of
A marble statue 1.35 m (53 inches) high of a Gorgon, dating from the 6th century BC, was found almost intact in 1993, in an ancient public building in Parikia, Paros capital, Greece (Archaeological Museum of Paros no. 1285, see pictures below). It is thought originally to have belonged to a temple.
The concept of the Gorgon is at least as old in classical Greek mythology as Perseus and Zeus.
The large Gorgon eyes, as well as Athena's "flashing" eyes, are symbols termed "the divine eyes" by Gimbutas (who did not originate the perception); they appear also in Athena's sacred bird, the little owl. They may be represented by spirals, wheels, concentric circles, swastikas, firewheels, and other images. The awkward stance of the gorgon, with arms and legs at angles is closely associated with these symbols as well.
Some Gorgons are shown with broad, round heads, serpentine locks of hair, large staring eyes, wide mouths, tongues lolling, the tusks of swine, large projecting teeth, flared nostrils, and sometimes short, coarse beards. (In some cruder representations, stylized hair or blood flowing under the severed head of the Gorgon suggests a beard or wings.[21])
Some reptilian attributes such as a belt made of
-
Gorgon of Paros, marble statue at the Archaeological Museum of Paros, 6th century BC, Cyclades, Greece
-
Gorgon of Paros, marble statue at the Archaeological Museum of Paros, 6th century BC, Cyclades, Greece
-
Disk-fibula with a gorgoneion, bronze with repoussé decoration, second half of the 6th century BC (Louvre)
-
An archaic Gorgon (around 580 BC), as depicted on atemple of Artemis in Corfu, on display at the Archaeological Museum of Corfu
-
Winged goddess with a Gorgon's head, orientalizing plate, c.600 BC, fromKameiros, Rhodes
-
Mask of the Gorgon Medusa, with wings at the top of her head, c. 130 CE, Rome (Romano-Germanic Museum in Cologne)
Origins
A number of early classics scholars interpreted the myth of the Medusa as a quasi-historical, or "sublimated", memory of an actual invasion.[22][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)[24][b]
While seeking origins others have suggested examination of some similarities to the Babylonian creature,
Classical tradition
Transitions in religious traditions over such long periods of time may make some strange turns. Gorgons are often depicted as having wings, brazen claws, the
Of the three Gorgons in classical Greek mythology, only Medusa is mortal.
The
The Bibliotheca provides a good summary of the Gorgon myth. Much later stories claim that each of three Gorgon sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, had snakes for hair, and that they had the power to turn anyone who looked at them to stone. According to
According to Pseudo-Hyginus the "Gorgo Aix" (Γοργώ Aιξ), daughter of Helios, was killed by Zeus during the Titanomachy. From her skin, a goat-like hide rimmed with serpents, he made his famous aegis, and placed her fearsome visage upon it. This he gave to Athena. Then Aix became the goat Capra (Greek: Aix), on the left shoulder of the constellation Auriga. A primeval Gorgon was sometimes said to be the father of Medusa and her sister Gorgons by the sea Goddess Ceto. This figure may have been the same as Gorgo Aix as the primal Gorgon was of an indeterminable gender.
-
An Amazon with her shield bearing the Gorgon head image. Tondo of an Attic red-figure kylix, 510–500 BC
-
First century BCNaples National Archaeological Museum)
-
Gorgon in medaillon. Roman fresco from the House of the Vettii (VI 15,1) in Pompeii
Protective and healing powers
In Ancient Greece a
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.[27]
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.[28] Athena gave a vial of healing blood to Asclepius, which ultimately brought about his demise.
Cultural depictions
Gorgons, especially Medusa, have become a common image and symbol in Western culture since their origins in Greek mythology, appearing in art, literature, and elsewhere throughout history. In A Tale of Two Cities, for example, Charles Dickens compares the exploitative French aristocracy to "the Gorgon" — even devoting an entire chapter to this extended metaphor.
One of the more recent and famous uses of Gorgons comes from the book series
Another modern depiction of Gorgons is seen in the movie Clash of the Titans, a movie loosely based on the tale of Perseus.
In the Fate/stay night visual novel, Medusa appears as the Rider-class servant in her pre-transformation human form. Later installments of the franchise expand on her and introduce her sisters. In the Fate franchise's fictional universe, the three sisters were originally worshipped as chthonic deities before being exiled to their island by rival cults. Rumors of her monstrous nature eventually transformed Medusa against her will into the Gorgon, who then devoured Stheno and Euryale.
The 2023 book Medusa’s Sisters tells the story of the Gorgons from their perspective.
Notes
- ^ A large part of Greek myth is politico-religious history. Bellerophon masters winged Pegasus and kills the Chimaera. Perseus, in a variant of the same legend, flies through the air and beheads Pegasus’s mother, the Gorgon Medusa; much as Marduk, a Babylonian hero, kills the she-monster Tiamat, Goddess of the Seal. Perseus’s name should properly be spelled Perseus, ‘the destroyer’; and he was not, as Professor Kerenyi has suggested, an archetypal Death-figure but, probably, represented the patriarchal Hellenes who invaded Greece and Asia Minor early in the second millennium BC, and challenged the power of the Triple-goddess. Pegasus had been sacred to her because the horse with its moon-shaped hooves figured in the rain-making ceremonies and the installment of sacred kings; his wings were symbolical of a celestial nature, rather than speed. Jane Harrison has pointed out[22] that Medusa was once the goddess herself, hiding behind a prophylactic Gorgon mask: A hideous face intended to warn the profane against trespassing on her Mysteries. Perseus beheads Medusa: that is, the Hellenes overran the goddess’s chief shrines, stripped her priestesses of their Gorgon masks, and took possession of the sacred horses – an early representation of the goddess with a Gorgon’s head and a mare’s body has been found in Boeotia. Bellerophon, Perseus’s double, kills the Lycian Chimaera, that is: The Hellenes annulled the ancient Medusan calendar, and replaced it with another.
— R. Graves (1955)[23] - ^ We have already spoken of Medusa and of the powers of her blood to render both life and death. We may now think of the legend of her slayer, Perseus, by whom her head was removed and presented to Athene. Professor Hainmond assigns the historical King Perseus of Mycenae to a date c. 1290 B.C., as the founder of a dynasty; and Robert Graves – whose two volumes on The Greek Myths are particularly noteworthy for their suggestive historical applications – proposes that 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. And in every such screening myth – in every such mythology (that of the Bible being, as we have just seen, another of the kind) – there enters in an essential duplicity, the consequences of which cannot be disregarded or suppressed.
— J. Campbell (1968)[24]
References
- ^ Bremmer 2006, s.v. Gorgo 1; Bremmer 2015, s.v. Gorgo/Medusa; Gantz, p. 20; Grimal, s.v. Gorgons; Tripp, s.v. Gorgons.
- ^ Hesiod, Theogony 270–277; Apollodorus, 1.2.6, 2.4.2 (calling the Graeae the "Phorcides").
- ^ Tripp, s.v. Gorgons; Hyginus, Fabulae Preface 9, 35. Euripides, Ion 986–991, has "the Gorgon" being the offspring of Gaia, spawned by Gaia as an ally for her children the Giants in their war against the Olympian gods.
- ^ Fowler 2013, p. 252; Hard 2004, pp. 59–60; Gantz, p. 20.
- ^ Fowler 2013, p. 254; Gantz, p. 20; Hesiod, Theogony 274–282. 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 2006, 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; Hard 2015, p. 176 16 Tritonis; Sommerstein, pp. 260–261; Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound 790–800; Aeschylus fr. 262 [= Eratosthenes, Catasterismi 22 (Hard 2015, p. 16)]. For lake Tritonis, and the Gorgons being located in North Africa, see also: Herodotus, 2.91.6, 4.178, 4.186.1; Pausanias, 3.17.3.
- ^ Fowler 2013, p. 254; Bremmer (2006), s.v. Gorgo 1; Gantz, p. 20 ; Pindar, Phythian 10.30–48. 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.
- ^ Gantz, p. 20; Hesiod, Theogony 276–277.
- ^ Homer, Iliad 5.738–742 (Athena's aegis), 11.32–37 (Agamemnon's shield).
- ^ Homer, Odyssey 11.630–37.
- ^ Gantz, p. 20; Shield of Heracles 229–237 (Most, pp. 18–21).
- ^ Gantz, p. 20; Pindar, Phythian 10.46–48, 12.10–14; Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound 799.
- ^ Apollodorus, 2.4.2.
- ^ Gantz, p. 20; Pherecydes fr. 11 Fowler (Fowler 2000, pp. 280–281) [= Scolia on Apollonius of Rhodes 4.1515a]; Pindar, Phythian 10.46–48.
- ^ Gantz, p. 20; Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound 800.
- ^ Apollodorus, 2.4.2.
- ^ Hesiod, Theogony 270–277; Apollodorus, 2.4.2.
- ^ Bremmer, s.v. Gorgo/Medusa (which calls Apollodorus' version "canonical"); Apollodorus, 2.4.2–3. See also Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound 798–800.
- JSTOR 20162978.
- ^ "Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Gorgo". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
- ^ ISBN 978-0691015149.
- ISBN 978-0241952740.
- ^ ISBN 978-0140194418.
- S2CID 191408685.
- ^ a b c d Chisholm 1911.
- ^ Steven Bonacorsi, President of the International standard for Lean Six Sigma (ISLSS) and Owner of the NGC Gorgon Coin Certified by NGC https://www.ngccoin.com/certlookup/5873659-131/NGCAncients/, and Purchased by PCS https://www.pcscoins.com/home
- ^ "Euripides, Ion, line 998". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
- ^ "Apollodorus, Library, book 2, chapter 7". www.perseus.tufts.edu. Retrieved 2023-04-26.
Sources
- .
- Aeschylus (?), Prometheus Bound in Aeschylus, with an English translation by Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph. D. in two volumes. Vol 2. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press. 1926. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- .
- Bremmer, J. N. (2006), s.v. Gorgo 1, in Brill’s New Pauly, Antiquity volumes edited by: Hubert Cancik and, Helmuth Schneider, English Edition by: Christine F. Salazar, Classical Tradition volumes edited by: Manfred Landfester, English Edition by: Francis G. Gentry, published online: 2006.
- Bremmer, J. N. (2015), s.v. Gorgo/Medusa, published online 22 December 2015, in the Oxford Classical Dictionary, edited by ISBN 978-0-19-938113-5.
- Euripides, Ion, translated by Robert Potter in The Complete Greek Drama, edited by Whitney J. Oates and Eugene O'Neill, Jr. Volume 1. New York. Random House. 1938. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- ISBN 978-0198147404.
- ISBN 978-0198147411.
- ISBN 978-0-8018-5362-3(Vol. 2).
- Grimal, Pierre, The Dictionary of Classical Mythology, Wiley-Blackwell, 1996. .
- Hard, Robin (2004), The Routledge Handbook of Greek Mythology: Based on H.J. Rose's "Handbook of Greek Mythology", Psychology Press, 2004, ISBN 9780415186360. Google Books.
- Hard, Robin (2015), Eratosthenes and Hyginus: Constellation Myths, With Aratus's Phaenomena, ISBN 978-0-19-871698-3.
- .
- Hesiod, Theogony from The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White, Cambridge, MA.,Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Homer, The Iliad with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, Ph.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1924. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Homer, The Odyssey with an English Translation by A.T. Murray, PH.D. in two volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1919. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Hygynus, Fabulae from The Myths of Hyginus translated and edited by Mary Grant. University of Kansas Publications in Humanistic Studies. Online version at the Topos Text Project.
- .
- Pausanias, Description of Greece with an English Translation by W.H.S. Jones, Litt.D., and H.A. Ormerod, M.A., in 4 Volumes. Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1918. Online version at the Perseus Digital Library.
- Sommerstein, Alan H., Aeschylus: Fragments, Edited and translated by Alan H. Sommerstein, .
- Tripp, Edward, Crowell's Handbook of Classical Mythology, Thomas Y. Crowell Co; First edition (June 1970). ISBN 069022608X.
- ISBN 0-19-814169-6.
- .
- Wilk, Stephen R., Medusa : Solving the Mystery of the Gorgon, Oxford University Press, New York, 2000. .
- public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Gorgon, Gorgons". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 257. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
- Additional material has been added from the 1824 Classical Dictionary.