From the Vault: Medusa, Part 1

it's Halloween in April. I'm so excited because we decided it's got to be monster time here on Stuff to Blow your Mind, even though it's not October yet. You know, we we can't put all the monsters in October. There's too much monster. Yeah, what would we talk about the rest of the year if we didn't occasionally check in with the monstrous denizens of the dark. And we have a great one here for a couple of episodes. Because there's there's just so much about it, so much about her.

We're going to be talking about the Gorgon, the most famous of the three Gorgons, Medusa. Now Medusa is just fascinating and enthralling figure, often above and beyond the source material. But perhaps it's the perfect balance of the sort of counterintuitive aspects in her being, or or sort of the the shadow archetypes that seemed to resonate behind her. But she is a long burning monstrosity in the minds of humanity. Oh yeah, I mean this is I'm so excited about

this pair of episode. So just to give you a little bit of a roadmap, I think in this first episode here we're going to be mostly discussing the ancient Greek myths of Medusa the origins of those myths, and then later on in in part two, we're going to explore more of the later interpretations of Medusa and how she might apply to some interesting scientific and cultural topics. But this, this is such rich territory. I don't know if there is a richer monster out there than Medusa,

other than maybe the vampire archetype. Indeed, this is this is fertile soil. And we we've talked about doing an episode on Medusa for years. Uh it's one we've kind of uh kicked around, but this time we're covering it because uh, my son urged me to do it. So here we are he's about to turn eight years old, and since we couldn't actually go anywhere for spring break due to the pandemic, we did kind of a makeshift camp here at the house. We did a myth and

mushrooms camp. So my wife did a lot of mushroom related crafts and activities with them, mushroom growing kid and going out and you know, looking for mushrooms. And then, uh, we both partook of a lot of mythology with him, given the boy's recent enthrallment with it due to the Percy Jackson novels by Rick Ryerdon I've heard of those, but I don't know anything about them. So they have something to do with with great myth. Oh yeah, they're

They're full of Greek myth. You know. It's it's sort of a post Terry potter um world where you have a you know, a boy, a young boy slash teen by the name of Percy Jackson who is Percy Us and he's encountering all the gods and monsters you would expect. And yeah, it's the book seemed to be a lot of fun, uh for the kids. And more to the point it it gets them into mythology. I was talking with Alison louder Milk about it and she said there her son had gone through a phase of being just

super into Greek mythology because of it. Um, so, uh, you know, we were, you know, we really got into the mythology and Medusa really stood out to him. So of course we watched the original nineteen eight one Clash of the Titans, which features a very memorable Medusa sequence. We also watched the nineteen nineties series Jim Hinson's The Storyteller Greek Myths, which is excellent and features an episode about the Gorgon's actually just watched this last night at

your recommendation. It's uh, it's streaming right now on the Yeah. The episode about Perseus and the gorgon medusas is just wonderful and it has great narration by Michael Gambon. Is that Yeah, he plays the storyteller in this one. Uh. Yeah, all four episodes are as of this recording anyway on Amazon Prime. So yeah, they're they're they're wonderful, fun you get what. Orpheus is one of the episodes of the Minotaur and uh and Icarus and Datalus and of course

you know. With with my son, we also were reading a lot of Carol Rose, one of my favorite monster chroniclers and Folklori's and the boy himself absolutely demolished Deal Larry's Book of Greek Myths, that nineteen sixty two illustrated book that I know a lot of us grew up with. So there's something I always wonder about with with ancient mythology, including Greek myth and and that's that I I since a couple of things are intention when you're you're exposing

children to them. Uh. One is that I feel like kids are naturally drawn to mythology, like they just eat it up, they love it. But at the same time, a lot of ancient myths are just full of obscene cruelty and stuff that like, uh, you know, the stuff that that I don't always remember from the tellings of those myths that I got when I was a kid, I must have gotten some kind of sanitized versions of them. Often do you find that a lot of that is

going on? And oh, yeah, yeah, Because on one hand, some of the versions that he's he's reading, you know, they they've sanitized it to a certain extent. You know, certainly with Percy Jackson. Uh, certainly with this this really cool comics series called The Olympians that I also recommend um and then also the Book of Greek Myths does

that as well. But that he'll also come up and he'll he'll tell me about some just awful detail from a myth where somebody, you know, killed their parents or their sign or something, and I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah, Greek myths, Uh, a lot of horrible stuff happens in them, and and a lot of these tales are are tragic.

And then of course one of the ironies of these episodes is that, uh, as we really dive into the origin story in the varied origin stories of Medusa, like some of them are just very brutal in in a way where I probably can't let him listen to these episodes. Yeah, and I understand that. I mean, I think we'll try not to dwell on the most obscene and cruel aspects of these myths, but they are ancient myths. A lot of ancient myths have obscene in cruel elements, So do

be prepared that kind of thing is coming. Yeah, So if you're listening with children at cetera, Yeah, I know that this is it's going to get into some really dark territories, so you might want to scout it out first, is all I'm saying. Yeah, now, you know we've mentioned Jim Hinson Clash of the Titans. These are examples. Will come back to it again and again because a lot of times these are these are introductions to these worlds. Percy Jackson uh is often an introduction to Greek mythology,

for for for younger folks these days. Um, Dungeon and Dragons is another big one. Medusa has long resided within the Monster Manual, where she's sort of she sort of becomes a species unto herself. Oh, can you play as a Medusa? I'm I'm sure somebody there's I'm sure there have been some homebrew rules at some point, or even some official rules for playing a gorgon. Yeah, but um,

but I'm not aware of them offhand. It would be It's one of those things would be kind of hard to h if you really have petrifying gaze, Like how do you run like that in a tavern? I'm a

gorgon bard So all these audiences hate me. So all of these are very much downstream versions of the myth of Medusa, and some of you might, you know, you might have have this sort of instinct to criticize any discussion of the mythic creature, to begin with via such recent pop culture expressions like Percy Jackson or Clash of the Titans, which you know at times certainly plays fast

and loose with the myth. But one thing we have to keep in mind is that pretty much all versions of Medusa or any mythological tale are a downstream product, the result of centuries upon centuries of oral tradition, various tellings and retellings, various written accounts and references, cross references, continually and perpetual reshaping the myth and the monster itself to tell better stories, to impart specific cultural ideas, or

to merge with other tales or other belief systems. So yes, while watching Clash of the Titans, which uh, you know that was that was big for me, introducing me to a lot of mythological ideas because it was always on td S or T and T back in the day. But but watching that it can be frustrating because we inevitably recoil from you know, at the tale being told

one way and not another. Of liberties being taken the influence of modern ideas and narratives like Star Wars, uh, you know, obviously being in play in the creation of this movie. But to a large extent, this was always the way with myths. This there is often this illusion of solidarity with the Greek, with Greek mythology, because all these various tales come to be largely canonized within certain major works uh, such as those of say Hesiod and Ovid who will discuss us and then much later in

key modern mythology books. So much in the same way that there is no one unchanging you. There is no single unchanging Medusa. It is a creature that spans the ages, altering its form along the way, sometimes slightly, sometimes in major ways, while retaining certain aspects that resonate with us on a on a truly universal level. Yeah, I mean, uh,

it's a very good point. The same way that modern authors are sometimes cleaning up myths for you to make them more palatable to children, or to make them more acceptable to the morals of the day, or even not not even just the moral Sometimes myths I think are altered just to sort of make them more acceptable to the narrative logic that's dominant within a within an era um that was going on back then too. Yeah, So it's just all I think, always something to keep in mind. Boy.

It's a hard thing to explain to to a young person though, because like my son really wants he wants the cannon version of the tail and he's they're into correcting, uh, film adaptations and all, and I have to kind of explain to them. It's like, well, you know, there's not really just one story. There's no you know, there's this this, This is a great point. I feel like children are

naturally cannon pedants? Why is that? Why is it that when you're I was when I was a little kid, and now I abhor that kind of thinking, but that's absolutely how I was when I encounter all kinds of mythology as a child, with Star Wars, with you know, with everything. Why why are kids obsessive about cannon and

turn always turned to cannon pedantry? I guess A part of a big part of it is, you know, you look to your parents and authority figures you know, adjacent to your parents, as as being the providers of truth

of telling you how the world works. And it's it's only later that you really begin to understand that it's not so cut and dry that your parents didn't have it all figured out, that you have to figure some out the stuff out for yourself, and something are beyond figuring out or just sort of amorphous, like uh, you know,

the true nature of a mythological being. And then certainly if they're if they're really into something like say Harry Potter, like there is one version of Harry Potter, you know, I mean, it is, it is, it is whatever J. K. Rowling says it is. You know. So, um, it's hard to compare. You can't really compare that to Greek myth. Well, so maybe the place that we should start with here is to try to give a basic retelling of the main myths of the Gorgon, the main myths and Medusa

and Perseus um. What with the understanding that there are a lot of different versions of these myths, and different things will come in that we can explain as we go on, but it probably makes sense to start with a coherent version of the story. Absolutely, yeah, what uh? What? Author David A. Limming in Medusa in the Mirror of Time two thousand eighteen book referred to as quote, what can reason to be called a canonical myth of Medusa. Yeah,

I think that's a decent way of putting it. And that David Lemming book you mentioned Medusa in the Mirror of Time, that that's going to be one of our main sources over the course of these episodes. That's that's a great, short, succinct book that captures a lot of what's interesting about the Medusa myth. Uh, And so we'll be referring to him a lot throughout these episodes. Yeah.

David A. Lemming is a Narritus Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, and he's an author of various works on myth. Yeah, and his his this book is is well worth checking out. Before we do that, however, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back. All right, we're back, So it's time to tell the story of Medusa. Now. Of course, as we said earlier, there are a lot of versions

of the Medusa story. This is a theme that evolves over time, and we'll discuss the shifting canon as we go on, but at the beginning here, it would probably be best to start with the most commonly received version of the myths of Medusa and Perseus. And I'll try to summarize the story as best I can, um, relying a lot on on work by David Lemming that we mentioned earlier, but also with a bit of poetic color

from Ovid's telling in the Metamorphoses, the Garthen Dryden translation. Uh. That we should note that though Ovid's telling is far from the earliest, it's where some of the best known

aspects of the story come from today. Absolutely, And Uh, one other thing I want to point out that will become obvious is that, you know, we tend to refer to this story is that of of Perseus and Medusa, and that it is you know, that is that the key conflict, uh, that we tend to focus on, and it's the conflict that is brought out in these various cinematic adaptations. But I think in some respects it's almost more fair to consider it the story of Athena and

Medusa featuring Perseus. And we'll get into that as we go. Yeah, And it's weird how Perseus can, sometimes, even though he's ostensibly the hero of the story, feel kind of like a little like Paul on or game piece that's being moved around by various powers. Yeah, we're just a character of chaos that is just occasionally nudged in different directions by more powerful entities. Yeah. Okay, So, according to some of the most ancient sources of the actual Medusa myth

as opposed to just sort of like the imagery of Medusa. Um, this will be especially the Greek poet Hesiod, who would have been writing in the seventh or eighth century b c. E. Medusa was originally descended from a family of primordial gods and monsters. The original being in this lineage of gods and monsters was Gaya, who is the personification of the Earth itself. And at first Guya was without a mate, so she conceived a son parthenogenetically meaning virgin birth, much

like an island stranded komodo dragon. And this son that she gave birth to was no as Pontus, and he became her counterpart. She was the personification of the Earth and Pontus was the personification of the ocean. Yeah, and this is the sort of thing is not uncommon among primordial mythic beings. Uh. So, then together Guya and her son Pontus conceived more children, including the two figures who

would become the parents of Medusa. And these figures were focus the sea god, who Homer called the Old Man of the Sea. He's sometimes depicted with claws. He was generally kind of a fishman, crab person type thing. So it's kind of like the Crabby character on a SpongeBob basically. I'm actually not familiar with SpongeBob canon. I can't go in there, but there's a fishman, crab person monster. Yeah. The character is Mr Crabs who runs um runs a restaurant.

And he's voiced by Clancy Brown. Oh wow, Clancy Brown. He was on SpongeBob. Oh yeah, he's he's a major part of it. Well, I'm glad to hear he's doing voicework. Yeah. Yeah, he has a great voice. It's a great to see that. You know, he lends it to a number of different projects. Okay, so we gotta focus the Old Man of the Sea.

And then on the other hand, we've got Ketto or Keto, which is where we get our classic terminology for whales, the idea of the ketas or the SETAs, and and Keto was a giant sea monster and together focus and Ketto produced a whole mess of monsters from their union. So first of all, you've got the gray and this is a set of triplets who were all born with

gray hair. They're described as hags who share one eye and one tooth between the three of them, and their gray hair was believed to embody the foam of heavy seas during a storm. Yeah. They are often depicted in TV and film adaptations of them De Deuce's story. You see them in Clash of the Titans, Hintson, Percy Jackson and others. My son is really into them, and the other day he quizzed me on what their names were, at which I had no idea, uh, but then he

spouted them off. They are Dino, Inyo and the Fredo. When there are three anyway, so in some tellings there are only two. Yeah, and I think their names I don't recall exactly what they translate to, but they have something to do with the qualities of the sea. Their names translate to things like depth and terror and stuff. Now, another offspring of this union of of Forcus and Kato or Quito is Thusa, who became the mother of Polyphemus. Polyphemus of course, is the Cyclops in the Odyssey who

discus stabs in the eye. Uh. And then you've got a kidna, the she Viper. This is a woman who was half snake. Yeah. And sometimes she's credited as being the mother of Monsters and other tellings, mother of Medusa even and I guess you know, there's a little bit of a kidna in the recreation of of of the gorgon Ian Clash of the Titans Ray Harry Housen's fabulous sequence.

Oh is she half snake in that? Yeah? She's she's depicted as being um a snake from the waist down, you know, having been kind of a serpentine centaur uh and and then being more traditionally a gorgon from the waist up, but without the wings. Okay. So another one of the offspring here is one that's familiar to us, is going to be Scilla, the the sea monster with many heads, who swallowed sailors who came too close to

her rocks. And she's classically the counterpart of Charybdis. Right, So you've got this pair of hazards in the ocean that is difficult to thread a pathway through. Charybdis of course, is like a whirlpool. Yeah, and then, of course, finally you've got the Gorgons, and the Gorgon's are a trio of sisters whose name comes from the word gor ghos, which means frightening or terrifying. Medusa is one of the

three Gorgon sisters. The names of the other two are Thinno and Urially, and curiously, we are told by multiple ancient sources that while the other two Gorgon sisters are immortal, tragically, Medusa is not immortal. Hes He had writ specifically that her fate was a sad one, for she was mortal, though it's I'm not sure if it's ever explained anywhere why specifically she and only she was mortal. Yeah, nothing ever seems, at least in anything I've read, seems to

be really made of that fact. Like it's not like, oh, well, that means that Perseus is forever hounded by these immortal gore guns or anything like that. It's just kind of here's the facts. It seems like one of those things that might have been when people were trying to stitch together disparate versions of a of a myth cycle that that had incompatible facts. You might just paper that over by inserting a little like, by the way, she was mortal for some reason. Yeah, yeah, if someone was like,

well I thought they were immortal. No, No, she was mortal, so she's dead. She was the only one though. Yeah. Anyway, according to a fragmentary document called the Shield of Heracles, the three Gorgon sisters would talk about with serpents hanging from their girdles. So imagine a kind of Batman utility built, but all the pouches are replaced with snakes, and the belt snakes would lear and they would flick their tongues

that anyone who beheld them. Yeah, and I have to say depictions of this are cooler and grizzly are looking than it sounds, because that sounds cool enough for you. Well, yeah, I know it doesn't sound cool when I read it initially, because it's like, oh, and that she had they had snakes for belts. That just sounds kind of, I don't know,

kind of lame. But then you see an image and it's like these snakes you're hanging off and you know, and maybe writhing a bit, and there's there's perhaps a sense of the we won't get into this until the second episode. But uh, you know, you get into some of these Freudian concepts of what Medusa is all about, and you look at an image like that and you can you can see it. But again, more on that

in the second episode. Yeah, it should not come as a surprise that some people, especially Freud, read a lot of genital sygnificance into the depiction of the snake bearing sisters. Here now, writing of the three Gorgon sisters, Apollodorus says that their heads were twined about with the scales of dragons, and that they had golden wings or I've also seen it said sometimes bronze wings, and also great tusks, like a swine's tusks. Yeah, those wings are often forgotten in

art and you know, other depictions, cinematic or otherwise. I think in part because that's just one more thing you have to try and bring to life, either with effects or otherwise. Though Hinson does have the wings in his version. I think also sometimes, as with the Clash adaptation, there's an attempt to focus more on those serpentine details, you know, like people want hybrid city, but they don't want to deal with a chimera um uh, you know, generally speaking, chimera.

Of course, for the most part, you don't see a lot of like cinematic adaptations of the mythical chimera either. We want half and half, we don't want uh you know, three different types of animal physiologies merged together. Well, yeah, I mean, I want, at what point do you start pushing from minimally counterintuitive into just like too complicated, too weird? Yeah, yeah, I think that's a big part of it too. Yeah. So anyway, you've got these three terrifying sisters, all with

snakes of England. They've got scaly dragon heads, they've got wild boar tusks and huge metal wings. And in this telling, Medusa is quite clearly a primordial monster, right, She's ancient. She springs from a line of beings with deep roots

in the earth and sea and natural forces. And it's in this version of Medusa it's easy to see similarities here with other primordial monster gods who embody or spring from embodiments, especially of the sea, right like Tia Mott, the saltwater dragon of ancient Babylonian myth, particularly in the Uma a leash who spits poison and death upon the world to create. It's creatures that are kind of xenomorph

like in that they have acid for blood. Yeah. And I think in all this to remembering the salt water origin of these creatures, we have to remember the you know, the importance of sailing and fishing in the Mesopotamian and in the know, the Greek world that we're discussing here, like the terror of the sea, the risks of the sea, the unknown depths of the sea, you know, all of these impacting the psyche and the creativity of of of

early people. Well, I think it's no coincidence that Poseidon is maybe the most like cruel and capricious and bad tempered of all the Olympian gods, right because the sea is a place of great bounty and promise, but it's also full of chaos and death and and it can't be it can't necessarily be predicted. The sea itself is bad tempered. Yeah. Yeah, it really cannot be trusted. Uh. And you see that with with arguably with the gods

in general, but especially with Poseidon. But Okay, that's the version of Medusa where she she's from this primordial lineage of ancient creatures and monsters there are other tellings in which it seems like Medusa was once maybe a human

or at least something more vaguely humanoid like. One of the main examples is the version of the Medusa myth that we get presented in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is probably the most familiar version of the myth to us today, probably the most canonical version, and in this it says that Medusa was once a beautiful young woman with many suitors. She was widely admired for her beauty and her glamorous hair.

Um Avid writes, quote, Medusa once had charms to gain her love a rival crowd of envious lovers strove they who have seen her own they ne'er did trace more moving features in a sweeter face. Yet above all her length of hair they own in golden ringlets, waved and graceful shown. So the this goes very much against like the the version of Medusa we were just talking about, who's like this, uh, you know who, who's sort of

monster to the core and monster from the beginning. But in this version of the story, tragically Medusa catches the attention of the cruel and violent god Poseidon, the lord of the sea, the commander of natural disaster is like earthquakes and storms. And in Avid's telling, Poseidon comes down to the earth and he rapes Medusa in the midst of the temple of Pallas Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom.

And this attack represents a desecration of Athena's temple. And so because her sacred home is defiled, Athena becomes furious. And you, you, of course, do not want to be on Athena's bad side. After the attack is over, Athena takes out her revenge horribly, not on her uncle Poseidon, but on Medusa. Yeah, it's as if Poseidon is is kind of untouchable and us, Yeah, based one of the Big Three after all. And uh, you know, I think Arachne would remind us that the gods as a whole

are cruel and violent. You might remember, listeners, Arachne was turned into a spider for disrespecting the gods, namely Athena, of whom she lost a weaving contest to um. But yeah, this, this, this particular telling of god and possibly mortal interactions really

smacks of cruelty. I should note a couple of things here, now, Uh, Ovid chiefly contributes or at least records, the sexual assault aspect of this story in the classical tradition, while Hesiod and uh Apahollodorus keep it at lay with you know, they lay together, and and uh and that offended Athena, while others tellers of the tale have described the union

as an act of seduction, such as folklore Carol Rose. Now, I don't know how much of that is just sanitizing it again, a little bit like we've said, you know, you don't taking some of the more horrific details out of the story for specially younger readers. Um, but uh, I just I thought that was important to note. Apollodorus, however, added the wrinkle that Medusa had previously claimed that her

beauty matched that of Athena. So we get into territory where from the point of view of the gods, this is just mortals paying for their vanity one more time, so that it's not just Athena is blaming the victim for the crime, but Athena also has it in for the victim because she previously had the gall to say that she was on Athena's level. Yeah, exactly, And and so Athena, she turns her fury against Medusa. Here of it again, writes the bashful goddess that's talking about Athena.

The bashful goddess turned her eyes away nor during such bold impurity survey. But on the ravished virgin vengeance takes her shining hair is changed to hissing snakes. These in her aegis Palace joys to bear the hissing snakes, her foes more sure and snare than they did lovers once when shining hair. It's interesting that he describes Athena as bactful. Uh,

it's not great first description when it comes to mind. Yeah, well, I mean there's this weird thing the way Athena is depicted as I mean, it's often emphasized that she is like there's something pure about her, that she is the virgin goddess, they say, um and so, so that's sometimes described as this weird quality of like shyness or something. But of course we know that Athena is quite bold and quite powerful and has great uh wisdom and strength

and rage and you do not want to be her enemy. Yeah. I hope she didn't listen to the podcast. I don't know if we're really portraying her in the best light here. Now, not a lot of the gods come out of this looking great. Um. But so anyway, this is how Medusa becomes a monster. Athena transforms her into this hateful mockery of her former self. She's once known for her beauty,

you know, her curly locks of hair. Now she's a creature with slithering snakes for hair, a creature so hideous that anyone who looks upon her would instantly be turned to stone. Yeah, it's it's a it's a weird and dark origin story, but you know, here we are. But so beyond her tragic origin story, Medusa is probably best known as the monster, the sort of dragon figure of the Perseus myth, And so I think maybe now we

should turn to the myth of Perseus's journey. And one of my main sources here, of course, is going to be that book by David Lemming, which provides an excellent overview of and synthesis of the different sources on the story. Like a great many heroic narratives, the story of Perseus actually begins with a miraculous conception under dire circumstances. So, once upon a time, and the ancient Greek city of Argos,

which is on the eastern end of the Peloponnese. It's often said to have been the oldest Greek city or

one of the oldest Greek cities. The city was ruled by a fish and paranoid king named a Chrysis, and a crisis had a daughter named Danny, but a Chrysis he longs to have a son to carry on his line, and one day a Chrysis visits an oracle to ask whether he will ever be able to father a son, and instead, the oracle warns him that he will not have a son, but his daughter Danny will, and the boy she gives birth to will one day murder him. Now how many Greek stories start with an oracle and

then they turn out good? Yeah, it's like, why would you visit an oracle at all? It just never works out, right, I mean, it's always some like ironic point about trying to avoid faith. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's really a story we continue to tell to this day. You know, just the idea that if you, yeah, you don't really want to know what's coming, because it's only going to make things worse. You're not going to be able to really duck fate or you're ye're just gonna, you know,

double down on the horrors to come. Uh yeah, it's I mean, it's it's it's one of these stories resonate so strongly with us. Yeah. Uh So, of course, a Chrysis, being selfish and kind of paranoid, he fears for his own life, so he resolves to prevent the prophecy from ever coming true. And he says, Okay, Danny right now is childless at the time he gets the warning, she doesn't have a son yet, and so the Chrysiest figures he can escape his fate if he just locks her

in a prison cell forever. I've seen the prison characterized in different ways. Sometimes it's a tower. I've seen it elsewhere characterized as like some kind of subterranean dungeon, or even a box of bronze. But anyway, So, of course, the crisis believes that by imprisoning his daughter like this,

she will stay childless forever. But Zeus, the king of the gods who reigns in the sky, he sees the young woman locked away in her prison cell, and he comes down to her in the form of a shower of gold from the clouds, and Danny conceives a child. This is her child as a boy, and she gives him the name Perseus. Uh. This part is yet another recurring theme in Greek mythology. Of course, God coming down and having sex with a mortal woman to father a child to become a type of demigod or a son

of God. Here. Yeah, that's this is also one of the key plot points in those Percy Jackson books is that all the the the young characters are the children of the gods that have been in the modern world created sired the same way and kind of you know left uh, you know, none of them have any real connection with their divine parents and have a lot of mixed up feelings concerning them. Well yeah, I mean, the gods do not tend to be very good parents here.

So like, so you Perseus, Now, this boy is half human and he's half king of the gods. And so Perseus begins to grow up in this prison cell with his mother, and at some point a Chrisius discovers this boy and prison with Danny and crisis. Of course, is still in fear for his life, and so he says, okay, I've got to I've got to be more more extreme even now. So he has Danny and the young Perseus locked inside a box and tossed into the ocean to die.

It's interesting. Living describes this box as quote a sort of arc as in the Ark of the Covenant, and indeed that's often how it is depicted, including in the Clash of the Titan and also in that Jim Hinson adaptation. Yeah, the strategy is often presented as a kind of indirect murder method. It's like, hey, I didn't kill them, I just left them to their fate. Uh. It seems like a kind of weird moral sensibility that makes a real distinction there. But he a lot of characters in Greek

cultures seem to think along these lines. Yeah. It's as if to say, for legal purposes, the ocean is the one that will murder you, right, um. Yeah, But of course Danny and Perseus didn't die. Instead, while they're floating around in this box, they are rescued by a fisherman named Dictus, who is the brother of Polydectes, the king of the island of Seraphos. And there on the island of Seraphos, Danny and Perseus come under the protection of

Polydectes court under under the protection of his house. Now eventually the king Polydectes here. He turns out to be a pretty wicked king too. He decides that he wants to marry Danny, but she refuses him, and Perseus supports his mother in her refusal of the king's hand. So Polydectes what he wants a way to get rid of young Perseus, to sort of get him out of the picture, to improve his chances of of wedding Danny. And a great opportunity actually presents itself. Let's send Perseus out on

a suicide mission. Polydectes sends Perseus out with the task of killing the mom Sir Medusa, who is of course one of the dreaded Gorgon sisters, and to bring back her severed head. Now, this version that you just said, this makes the most sense, right, Like Percy's wants to protect his mother, Polydectes wants to marry her, and he's like, sure, I'll leave your your mother alone if you bring me

the head of the Medusa. Ha ha. But and the typical version of the story is that Polydectes just demands some fine horses, like, oh, I need some just ridiculously nice horses. Uh, let's see you get those. And then Perseus just leaps up like a final bidder in a Hollywood auction scene, you know, where they just outrageously outbid everybody by like a million dollars and gives himself the

suicide mission. He's like, I'll tell you what, I'll bring you the head of a gorgon, and um In Polydectes is like, okay, um, you know, I was thinking about trying to send you on a suicide mission, but if you just want to propose one, go for it. Um. So he's He's of course delighted and accepts. Yeah. But but it's like Percy's who's just who comes up with the idea in in most of these tellings where it's

just like, i'll kill the gorgon. How about that? Yeah? So, actually, I think the way it works as Polydectes he tries to ruse where he says, actually, I'm not going to marry your mom. Don't worry about it. Chill out. I'm gonna marry some other woman. But if I marry this other lady, I'm gonna need some good Mayor's as a wedding present. And of course Perseus what he doesn't have any money to go out horse trading and get horses for a wedding present, so what does he have to offer.

Basically just has his courage, so he's like, hey, hey, I know I'll go find a prime primordial snake lady. I'll kill her. I'll bring you her head. And again, of course this works out great for Polydectes because Polydectes knows that the gaze of Medusa turns men into stone. So this is an easy way to be rid of Perseus. Here's one less pesky kid getting in the way of his his dating game. I mean, I criticized Perseus because hey, it's really easy to hate perseus um based on all

the details of the story. But but I guess you can see this as being really clever on his part because he chooses something, He chooses a task that is difficult enough or even seemingly impossible enough that Polydectes agrees to it. But also he has he has enough confidence that he can somehow pull it off, right. I mean, I think again, one of the most common personality traits we see in these heroes of old is just kind

of like endless confidence. You know, you should have no reason to think that you can kill the gorgon Medusa, but he just, yeah, I can do it. Yeah, I'll figure it out. Stuff just kind of falls into my lap. That's how it works. But but either way you kind of look at it. Medusa is not even the adversary that is thrust upon him by a cruel king, which is which is what we see like saying the Labors

of Hercules. She is instead just out there on the edge of the world, minding her own business, already punished harshly, when percy Is simply decides that killing her would be an ideal feet to accomplish his ends. Yeah, she's not doing anything. It's not it's not like Baowolf, like she's raiding the hall or something. She's just on the other

side of the world. Yeah, Like Clash of the Titans, Like, one of the things it does is it retrofits the story where the head of the Medusa is the thing we need to overcome some other adversary or to get through some some great horror that's coming um, which you know, I think makes it a little more palpable to to modern audiences. But again, looks like you said, we have to we have to think about what the model of

the hero is that we're dealing with in these ancient versions. Right, all right, we need to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more than and we're back. So Percius sets out on his quest, and along the way he's given aid by the god Hermes, who is of course the messenger of the gods who flies between worlds on his winged sandals, and of course also by Athena popping back up in the story yet again to

to just never stop spitting calamity in Medusa's direction. Yeah, as if Medusa hadn't suffered enough for angering Athena, the gray a had goddess instantly jumps into help Perseus out in his quest to murder her. Right, Uh, And it's worth considering that there are sort of double alliances here. Like, first, yes, it really does seem just kind of like Athena hates Medusa and is always making things worse for her. But second,

also Perseus is Athena's demi god half brother. Right, they both share Zeus as a father, and both were conceived in these unconventional mythological ways Athena springs from the head

of Zeus. H So, I think you could see Perseus as a kind of champion or representative of the interests of the Olympian pantheon down here on Earth, like the Zeus administration has as an agent on Earth Perseus, and you're kind of going to see that in the way that he fights against and causes trouble for these other primordial non Olympian beings, Like the enemies of the Zeus

administration will just get endless grief from Perseus. Like Perseus, I need you to go on Network News this evening, just make all the rounds and just verbally attack all of my enemies, all the all the Titans, all the monsters. You just let them have it, right, anybody from the line of Guia, any Titans out there, Yeah, just go

at them. But anyway, Percy, so he goes on this journey with multiple stops, so we don't have to get into all the stops on the journey right here, there's some that are more Germane to what we're talking about than others. I think, Yeah, but if we were to make a montage on it, basically Perseus needs to I d the Gorgon's he needs to gear up with magical weapons to fight them, find out where they are exactly, and of course travel there. Right. That's that's a good summary.

So at one point Perseus does encounter the three gray sisters, the gray haired hags who share the one eye and the one tooth between them and perseus strategy here is quite clear, for he steals their one eye. Just seems which just I mean, he sounds just like such a bully. There's like three hags who share one eye, and he takes their one eye, and he uses the eye to get leveraged basically to leverage information out of them, specifically about how to acquire some pieces of magic equipment that

he needs. Yeah, he's direct and to the point. Now, I and I love how in some versions of the tale Perseus returns their eye and tooth, because sometimes he takes the tooth as well afterwards, and other times he just keeps them right. And some modern tellings find a middle ground by having him return the eye but just like throwing it into the room somewhere where they have to like scramble for it, So he's not being you know, a complete meaning about it, like he's not just gonna

keep the eye forever, squash it or whatever. But he doesn't just hand it back like okay, business concluded. I don't know something about it just seems like so classically bullysh It's like the bully stealing the kids glasses. It's like, oh,

four uys need his glasses. Yeah. Anyway, so we know he's got to get this magical equipment, so we has to go to the realm of the Nymphs to get some of it, and he ends up acquiring a number of powerful objects and tools to to help him in his quest, including a pair of winged sandals, a leather bag that's known as a kipsist, sometimes translated as a wallet, but I think this is best understood as like a sack of some kind, a helmet from hades that confers

the power of invisibility, a magic sickle made of unbreakable adamantine, and a shield that is so well polished that its face is as a mirror. I mean, he really gears up for this quest, and the thing is like, if these are magical items, if this was dungeons and dragons, I don't think he'd even be able to attune to this many items. I think there's like a three attunement limit. Uh. And he's just like just just geared up to the gills, which high power magical items in video game terms. I

was thinking this might be described as over leveling. Yes, but anyway, once he has all the weapons he needs, uh, and once he discovers where he needs to go, percy As uses the winged Sandals to fly to the dwelling place of the Gorgon's which is someplace out at the edge of the world. Yeah. I love how Limbing describes this place is a quote a kind of underworld at

the end of the ocean. Yeah. In more rationalist accounts, it's described as a place kind of far out to the west, like a series of islands in the Atlantic Ocean.

But wherever this otherworldly places. Once he gets there, Perseus knows he remembers in advance that he cannot look at Medusa or he will be turned to stone, so he uses the mirror faced shield to see her as he sneaks up upon the sisters while they're sleeping, And they're sleeping among a garden of stones that are currently the remains of men and animals who once looked Medusa in the eye. Yeah, and this is a haunting uh setting

that that is really brought to wonderful life. And in some of these adaptations again that the clash of the Titans uh sequence with Perseus and Medusa is just uh so wonderfully brought to life totally though. One of the things that again it's like how it gets adapted to our modern sensibilities. Modern adaptations tend to make it some

kind of heroic fight against this threatening enemy. I mean in the story, he sneaks up on the sisters while they're sleeping, you know, they're they're taking a nap, and Perseus comes up to Medusa and uses the magic sickle to chop off her head and then put it in a leather sack. Yeah, and then run before the other two Organs can really do much about it. Which, yeah, it doesn't. It's not very cinematic, it's not very um,

it's not intense. You know. The the Ray Harry House and sequence, for instance, makes it where it's more like Perseus is hunted by the monster because that ultimately creates more tension you know, for our for us is as viewers and resonates more with with our our modern expectations. Uh, but but not so much with like the role of the Greek hero. Yeah. So Strangely, when Medusa has killed, it's noted that a couple of mythical beings just sort

of erupt out of her dead body. One of them is the winged horse Pegasus, and the other is a warrior known as Chris or Yeah, who, by the way, would himself go on to father the three headed monster. Garon. The Limbing notes that there's some indication that Medusa somehow unnaturally birthed these creatures via the parentage of Poseidon. Fair enough, I mean, we're up to our waist in a in a pretty weird story. That doesn't really make it too

much weirder, uh to imagine that. For some reason, when I was reading about this, I was reminded so much of the ending of The Fly Too, where where like the monster is kind of defeated and you end up with like two entities emerging from it. Though in that like one is pure and one is monstrous, and this one like both are beautiful, Like it's a seemingly normal humanoid hero and a beautiful flying horse. So I don't know, you know, the original Fly, I just realized would fit

in quite well with a of its metamorphoses. Right, It's a story about a change in the body brought on by Hubris. Oh man, that's perfect anyway. So back to Perseus a Medusa. So Medusa is dead, head chopped off. Perseus has got it, and he crams the head into the bag into the Kivisus and now Medusa's Gorgon's sisters thin Oh and your Reality. They are awakened, and of course they become enraged because they see their sister dead, and they give chase, trying to kill the boy. But

fortunately Perseus still has some gear. He uses the helm of invisibility and the winged Sandals to escape them. Now Medusa is dead, and the story is far from over. On the journey home with the Gorgon's head in the sack, Perseus stops to take part in several other adventures. A major one that we're not going to get into in depth is uh this part of the story where he rescues a princess named Andromeda from a dragon and ends up marrying her, but also as part of the story

where where the head of Medusa becomes very relevant. Perseus comes across Atlas Atlas is of course a a Titan. You know, he was one of the original race of Titans that were defeated in a war by the gods led by Zeus, and so now he's the sort of like defeated prisoner of war type figure who is tortured after losing this war by the gods by being forced to hold up the sky for eternity. And when Perseus arrives in Atlas's lands, Atlas is obviously not a fan

of course. First of all, Atlas is suffering after his people lost this war to Zeus, and Perseus claims Zeus is his father. Second, like, who is this kid with a bloody leather bag? But uh so, because he feels not welcomed by Atlas, Perseus pulls the severed head of Medusa out of the bag and shows it to Atlas. Atlas looks on the head and he turns to stone, and in this form, Atlas becomes a mountain range that

holds up the sky. Then, when Percy has finally arrives back home with his bride Andromeda, he uses Medusa's head to turn the wicked king Polydectes and his servants into stone, and he sets his mother free. So really, Percy's is just going on a freaking rampage with the Gorgon's head, just petrifying anyone he likes, even a Titan before finally, uh, you know, eventually handing it back, in which we'll get

to uh fun fact um. Atlas shows up in that Hintson adaptation and played by none other than Pat Roach. Oh yeah, Pat Pat Roach of course played the bald Nazi that Indiana Jones fights uh in front of the uh the airplane and Greater the Lost Art gets turned into propeller soup. Yeah, yeah, he plays uh. Oh, he's in like Conan the Barberry and well no, he's encoding

the Destroyer. Uh, he's in that. Um. He is also in Clash of the Titan where he plays the Festus and of course his background was British professional wrestling, so he's quite an interesting fellow. Now in the hints And version of the story, they change it so they don't they don't make Percy is so vindictive, and they don't make it like Petrofaction murder. Right. It's portrayed that Atlas

is weary of this. You know, he's tired from having to hold up the sky and it's like, uh, Perseus takes pity on him and turns him to stone to uh, you know, I guess to save him his burden. Oh sweet,

it was. It was a mercy petrofaction. There was another interesting fact that Limming mentions in his book, and that's that the petrofaction of Polydectes and his followers might be a type of ideological myth, the myth explaining, you know, an origin or feature of something, and in this case, it would be a known circle of standing stones on the island of Seraphos. That you know, it's like, oh, here's you know, Polydectes and his followers who were turned

to stone once. But anyway, at the end of the story, here's where we get into some really interesting territory. Perseus doesn't just like, you know, keep the head as a trophy. He gives the head of Medusa to Athena and it

becomes the emblem of Athena's breastplate or shield. Now, of course, in addition to being the goddess of wisdom, Athena was sometimes styled to say goddess of warfare, and this, of course becomes part of the very interesting tradition of the aegis, the idea that both Athena and Zeus had this object that's mentioned in ancient Greek literature all over the place, but exactly what it is is sort of unclear. Now,

it's called an aegis. It's sometimes translated as a shield or a breastplate or piece of armor, or some kind of animal skin like a goat skin. Whatever it is, it's it's some kind of protection device or some kind of covering that the gods can hide behind or can shield themselves with. And it has this power that's described both as protective and as frightening, which is very interesting.

Like normally you might think of a weapon as terrifying, but this is a terrifying shield or a terrifying covering or piece of armor. And in many depictions, the central visual feature of the aegis of Athena and of Zeus becomes the head of Medusa, or at least the image

of the head of Medusa. Yeah, and this is really one of those points where the story does seem to just come back around to being all about Athena's rage against Medusa, as as she accepts the whole head of the gorgon and absorbs it into her shield or makes her shield out of it. The less harsh interpretation of this is that, you know, via the creation of the Gorgon's Athena unleashed a powerful weapon on the world, and now she has taken it back and claimed it as

her own. But I also can't help but think of Medusa as is still being alive in some fashion, you know, in the same way that the snakes continue to writhe in the cinematic and artistic um depictions of Medusa's head. So you know, it's there's even this idea that perhaps the head is still alive as its essence is infused into a thenis shield. And if so, it just seems like another level of just you know, horrible God inflicted fate.

You know, speaking of fate as a coda to the story, I should mention, of course, Perseus, Denny, and Andromeda eventually do return to uh Denny and Perseus's home city of Argos. And when Perseus shows back up, a Crisius remember him from the beginning, the king didn't want to be murdered by his grandson. Well he's just like dude, I am done,

and he just flees. He goes to another city to hide, and later on in the city where the king goes into hiding, Perseus just happens to show up and he takes part in some funeral games or funeral games are a feature of a lot of stories back then, remember the funeral games at the death of Patroclus and the Iliad. Funeral games include things like the throwing of the discuss.

So Perseus is like, yeah, I'll play. So he decides to throw the discus and he accidentally hurls the discus into his grandfather's head, killing him and proving the oracle's prophecy true. And it has like nothing to do with the the the adventure with the Gorgon or anything. He just accidentally throws a disk and hits him, almost as if someone said, storyteller, what about that that oracle and the prophecy that you mentioned at the beginning. Oh, yeah, he he threw a discus at a funeral game and

it hit hit him in the head. He died, after all, he died, after all, we kid. But again, this guy's come back to the you know, sort of the nature of myth about like converging and uh in the absorption of different stories and the continuing uh, you know, retinkering of the tay ole in the myth as we as we as we experience it. Uh So, you know, sometimes I think there are elements like that where things don't

maybe completely come together. There's some little plot holes that emerge that you know, sometimes other storytellers come around and try to fill them or smooth and out. I feel like it would be more conventional and make more sense if like Perseus, I don't know he got out the

Medusa will say he still had the Medusa head. Maybe he gets it out of the bag every now and then to clean it or something, and you know, he gets it out of the bag right at the moment that a crisis accidentally walks into the room and sees it and then turns to stone. You know that seems like that would be more more connected in a holistic way. Yeah, but you know, instead that would be nice and tragic, would have an air of tragedy to it to a

certain extent. I mean, but then also not that much, because the grandfather did lock his mother up in a prison, and that's what he's a bad guy. Yeah, so yeah, there's not you know, what what can you say is the disc ascending supposed to be funny. Maybe it is maybe, or you know it, it also kind of sounds like to me, this is just me spitballing here. This is nothing that lembiting argues. But it also has the smack of, say,

a story that originally didn't have any of that middle stuff. Like, let me tell you the story about a king who heard that his grandson would kill him. So he, uh, he didn't let his daughter out of a box. She had a son anyway, so he threw him in another box, threw him in the ocean. They and they were lost for years and years. Then they came back. He was in a funeral game through a discus and he died. I mean, it's not I'm not saying that's a great story, but at least it's it gets to the end a

little quicker. But instead we have this whole additional story that ends up sandwiched in the middle. You know, it actually forms a very similar kind of bracket to the bracketing in the narrative of Jason and the Argonauts, right where like, you know, he goes on a journey in the middle, but then comes back to the court situation at the end, and and there's sort of you know,

vengeance happens or fate is delivered. Yeah, at any rate, it does bring us to the end of this particular mythological story, and it brings us to the end of this episode, but not the end of our discussion of Medusa. Yeah, it looks like we need to call part one here. But next time we'll be able to come back and

explore so many more fascinating angles on this myth. Uh. We'll get to talk about possible origins and aperture, pic magic, Uh, sort of backwards development of myths that can sometimes happen. We'll talk about reception history, you know, all throughout cultures and in different time periods. We'll talk about art, we'll

talk about science. I'm very excited, absolutely all right. So in the meantime, if you want to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, and we have done quite a few episodes about monsters and myths over the years, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts, wherever that happens to be. Help us out by rating, reviewing, and subscribing. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio

producers Seth Nay Chillis Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, or just to say hi. You can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.