Gorgons

Caburus

Active Member
There were three gorgons, Euryale, Stheno and Medusa, daughters of Phorkys and Keto, cursed with ugliness by Athena because Medusa had sex with Poseidon in Athena's temple.
Medusa was the only one that was mortal. When Perseus cut off her head, Pegasus and Chrysaor, her children by Poseidon, sprang from her neck.
So what happened to the Euryale and Stheno? Are they still wandering around Libya? Did later travellers fear their encounter?
 

Alejandro

Active Member
According to Alexandros of Myndos, during their campaign against King Jugurtha of Numidia, in what is now Algeria (but in more ancient times was called Libya), towards the end of the 2nd century BC, the army of the Roman general Gaius Marius reported encounters with a deadly wild beast with very heavy hair hanging over its eyes. When some of them attacked it with their swords, it shook aside its hair and blasted them dead with its sheer gaze. After several companies of the soldiers had charged against the creature and met their deaths in the same manner, Marius sent some Numidian horsemen to set an ambush a distance away from it and they succeeded in shooting it dead with javelins. They then carried the beast's carcass to Marius, who sent its skin, together with those of other beasts, to Rome, where no one could identify what animals they had come from. The Roman soldiers who lived to tell the tale of their Numidian monster called it a "Gorgon," but they also said that the local people called it a katōblepos, or at least that's how it was translated into Greek. The description Alexandros gives of this animal, however, differs significantly from the ancient Greek picture of the three Gorgons. The only similarities seem to be that it was hard to kill, it had a perpetual weird-hair-day, and the sight of it was lethal. Also, if we believe the more ancient Greeks about the immortality of Sthenno and Euryale, then it can't have been either of them. Moreover Pliny the Elder and Aelian, who wrote in the 1st and 2nd centuries AD, some two to three hundred years after Marius' Numidian campaign, describe the Catobleps or Catoblepas as a significantly different creature from the ancient Gorgon. Pliny himself thought that the Gorgons were a race of swift and savage hair-covered women.

Maybe all travellers who might have reported back to us about Sthenno and Euryale were too petrified to return to tell the tale ;) I'm actually surprised no one's made a horror movie about them, or at least written a book; I think they're much scarier than their sister Medusa: Gorgons who cannot die :eek:! Perseus killed Medusa easily enough, while all three triplet sisters were sleeping! Not to mention Athena's hand guiding his own as he delivered the killing-blow since he couldn't look at her directly. But the two that you can't kill? Wow.... Maybe they, and the other immortal monsters in the mythology, eventuallly went to live on the borders of the Underworld? We know that their great-nephew the ogre Geryones, and their great-great-nephew the double-headed hellhound Orthos, who served as Geryones' watchdog until both of them were killed by Herakles, lived in Hesperia (supposedly someplace in Spain), at the western border of the Underworld. Menoites, the herdsman of Haides (Hades), shared an adjoining pasture with Geryones. Or they could've gone to camp out with their brother the Colchian dragon in Russia, on the eastern edge of the world. They could always have gone to hide out in the Garden of the Hesperides on Mt Atlas, Morocco... :rolleyes: maybe some years after Herakles had done some damage there and killed their brother Ladon. Or they retreated into the Mediterranean Sea to chill in there with their parents Phorkys and Keto? Hmmm... In that case one wonders what happened to their three Grey sisters (the Graiai) after their encounter with Perseus, coz they too were immortal.

Aaron Atsma says that:
The poet Hesiod seems to have imagined the Gorgones as reef-creating sea-daemones, personifications of the deadly submerged reefs which posed such a danger to ancient mariners. As such he names the three petrifiers [the] daughters of dangerous sea-gods. One also bears a distinct[l]y marine name, Euryale, "she of the wide briny sea". Later writers continue this tradition when they speak of reefs being created where Perseus had set the Gorgon's head and where he had turned a sea monster to stone.

In other motifs, the Gorgon Medousa was portrayed as a storm daemon whose visage was set upon the storm-bringing aigis-shield of Athene. The two ideas were probably connected, with sea storms driving ships to destruction upon the reefs.
 

Caburus

Active Member
I reckon Perseus must have been working through his dating issues with women. He first took the eye of the Graeae, then the head of Medusa, then finally the whole body of Andromeda!
I'd heard about the Catoblepas from Mediaeval bestiaries - looks like a scaly bull that needs a haircut. Always thought it a very sad creature, because it knows its power and hangs its head in shame. I didn't kmow about the classical references to it though. Thanks, it was very interesting, and I'll take a further look..
I like all your suggestions of where the gorgons went. But perhaps they finally got to China, and had a look at the Emperor's army (aka the Terracotta Soldiers), before moving on to Easter Island (via the Great Barrier Reef, of course)!
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Shame, I'd say Perseus at least treated Andromeda pretty good :)
Maybe, rather than sad, the Catoblepas was being kind, just generally trying to avoid using its power against others, saving it as a last resort?
Here're Pliny's and Aelian's quotes about the creature, by the way>> http://www.theoi.com/Thaumasios/Katoblepones.html
LOL! I think that your suggestions about the Gorgons are inspired!
 

Myrddin

Well-Known Member
Shame, I'd say Perseus at least treated Andromeda pretty good :)
He did! He was the best hero of all of them, in Greek. He rescued Andromeda from the sea serpent he turned to stone, and married her. All the other heroes, as far as I can remember, treated women like crap (i.e. Jason, Theseus, etc).
 
I like all your suggestions of where the gorgons went. But perhaps they finally got to China, and had a look at the Emperor's army (aka the Terracotta Soldiers), before moving on to Easter Island (via the Great Barrier Reef, of course)!
LOL!!! this one makes me laugh so hard! :D
 

Caburus

Active Member
According to Pindar, when Medusa was slain by Perseus, the laments cried by her sister Euryale, and the noise of her snake-hair, inspired Athena to imitate the sounds through her flute that she had recently invented, calling it "the tune of many heads".
 

Myrddin

Well-Known Member
According to Pindar, when Medusa was slain by Perseus, the laments cried by her sister Euryale, and the noise of her snake-hair, inspired Athena to imitate the sounds through her flute that she had recently invented, calling it "the tune of many heads".
I'd be interested to know what "The tune of Many Heads" would sound like :confused:?
 

Alejandro

Active Member
Maybe someone's played it on a flute and y'already dunn hurrd it B4 :p. I think it's probably just a reference to the variations of sounds produced from the different holes in the instrument.

Xcuse this spot of >cough< shameless >cough< self-promotion :rolleyes: but it's still on-topic, non? :D >>
From my gallery on deviantArt: http://pyrotekhnologos.deviantart.com/gallery/
(This's a mini-version of the full shebang & there's also a little story of my own that I've thrown in there. May enjoyment be thine ;))

Medusa & Relations.jpg
Medusa is the notorious monster from Greek mythology who [literally!] petrified anyone who looked upon her face. The reason that you haven't turned to stone just by looking at this painting is because an image (or reflection) of the creature is/was apparently powerless to harm its viewer. Besides which (if you believe the oldskool mythographers) the monster's been dead for thousands of years, having been polished off by an ancient superhero named Perseus.

Medusa did however, have triplet sisters, namely Sthenno and Euryale, who should still be alivesince the same mythographers, though they offer no reason for this, tell us that the other two sisters, unlike Medusa, were born immortal, with Medusa's same fatal power. They are depicted flying in the background as their sister Medusa levitates in the fore, heavily pregnant with the twin sons of her cousin the sea-god Poseidon. These twins, at her death, will be born as the winged horse Pegasos and the gigantic triple-bodied sea-monster Khrysaor. One writer, Apollodoros, says that Medusa, Sthenno and Euryalethe three Gorgons, "Terrible Ones," as they were calledeach had bronze, claw-like hands and golden wings, while another writer, Aiskhylos, says that it is the wings which were bronze (but take your pick). The design of her face here is based on ancient Greek artwork (q.v. here> http://www.theoi.com/Gallery/P23.1B.html), depicting a rather different character design from what you've seen if you've watched either rendition of Clash of the Titans (in which, as it so happens, no Titans actually ever appear).

Medusa's father Phorkys was an ancient sea-god, who appears here as a rocky water-giant rising from the depths of his own father Pontos, the Sea. All the Astra (Stars) of the Sky were great-nephews of Phorkys, since they were the grandsons of Phorkys' sister Eurybia. (The Astra's father, the Titan Astraios, was a son of Eurybia.) The Astra's appearance here represents a fictitious tradition of Greek mythology, which I thought up while doing this painting: During Titanomakhia, the "Titans' War," when Zeus was fighting to overthrow his father Kronos, most of the Titans actually sided with Zeus against their own fathers, Kronos' brothers. The Stars joined Zeus' side, but some of the oldest, most powerful Astra, who were jellyfish-shaped, comet-like beings, sided with Kronos, who was, however, eventually defeated together with them.

As Zeus ascended the throne of the universe to become the new king of the gods, he meted out punishments upon all those who had opposed him in the war. While the Astra who sided with Zeus were honoured with positions to shine in the Night Sky forever, the ones who had opposed the now-new king received the most severe punishment: execution. After their death, they were dumped into the waters of their great-grandfather Pontos, the Sea, where they were received by Pontos' children, one of whom was Phorkys. No one really knows what happened to the bodies thereafter: if they were buried by the Astra's great-uncle, or if there is any truth to the rumour that Zeus, since then, ran an underground operation using the corpses of these powerful beings to create his lightning-bolts.
 
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