Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(25)

And she has a pretty unhappy existence even before we consider the end of it. It’s not always clear that Medusa is a monster from the outset, though perhaps one could argue that the offspring of a sea-god and a sea-monster was always likely to have monstrous leanings. Several ancient authors, from Hesiod to Ovid, suggest something different though: Medusa began her life as a beautiful woman. Things only change after the sea god Poseidon seduces Medusa ‘in the soft, damp meadow’, as Hesiod puts it.4 This phrase has precisely the same double meaning in Greek as it does in English: Hesiod might mean that the god and the Gorgon had sex in an actual damp meadow, or the damp meadow might be a euphemism for Medusa’s vagina (you will have to insert your own joke about being turned to stone here, as I am far too mature). The gods are usually capable of seducing whoever they choose (with a few exceptions), and it seems likely then that at this stage in her life, at least, Medusa is beautiful. Certainly, she is in the lyric poet Pindar’s twelfth Pythian Ode. He describes her as euparaou – ‘with beauteous cheeks’.5

This sexual encounter with Poseidon is a recurring feature of Medusa’s story, but the mood and location of their encounter vary, as do the consequences (we’ll come to her offspring later on). What is presented by Hesiod as consensual and idyllic is given a far darker spin by Ovid. In his Metamorphoses, Medusa is clarissima forma – ‘most beautiful in her appearance’. She has multiple suitors attempting to woo her: this is not the snaky monster we have come to expect. This glorious woman has no feature more eye-catching than her gorgeous hair (I discovered this, says Ovid’s narrator, from someone who said he’d seen it). But then Medusa is raped by Poseidon in a temple of Athene.6 Ovid uses a brutal word – vitiasse7– which means to injure, defile or damage. Athene shields her eyes to avoid the sight of her temple being profaned. As we might expect from a goddess who so rarely favours women and so often favours men, Athene takes her revenge on the wrong person. Rather than punish Poseidon (which may be beyond her: he is at least as powerful as she is), she instead punishes Medusa, turning the Gorgon’s hair into snakes. It is the perfect illustration of Athene’s clever cruelty that she destroys the feature of which Medusa must have been most proud. For modern readers, this disfiguration might bring to mind the French women whose heads were shaved after the Second World War because they were perceived to have collaborated with the Nazis. The punishment for having been considered beautiful by the enemy is to be turned into something less beautiful, as viciously as possible.

There is an interesting feminist reading of this part of Medusa’s story, which suggests that we might see Athene’s transformation of Medusa as an act of sisterly solidarity. In this interpretation, Athene saves Medusa from further sexual assault by making her undesirable to male gods who can and do force themselves on her. Medusa is also armed against attackers, because she has the power to turn them to stone. But it isn’t at all clear from Ovid’s telling of the story that Medusa’s petrifying appearance is a gift from Athene, or indeed that it post-dates her snaky conversion. The only metamorphosis that Ovid mentions is the changing of her hair into snakes. It is perfectly possible that Medusa was always able to turn living creatures to stone: her immortal sisters seem unaffected by this, so perhaps Poseidon is similarly impervious. There is a second, greater difficulty with this interpretation: anyone who spends time with Athene in almost any story told about her will struggle to see her as a cheerleader for other women. Her most enduring fondness is not for a woman at all, but for Odysseus. And he is hardly the hero you would wish your sister to marry, unless your sister had bullied you relentlessly as a child.

In this metamorphosis, the focus of Ovid’s attention – and ours – is on the head of the Gorgon. There is no description of her body being transformed into a monstrous shape. Even before Medusa is decapitated by Perseus, we are drawn to her head, rather than the whole of her. Unless, of course, her head is the whole of her.

The earliest visual representations of Gorgons are highly stylized images, which we’ll look at shortly. Earlier still, we find gorgoneia: monstrous heads, which probably reflect the fears of the societies that created them. They are perhaps also connected to Humbaba, a divine monster of earlier Mesopotamian myth, who first terrorizes and then is beheaded by Gilgamesh.8 The gorgoneia are incredibly strange: huge mouths full of teeth, protruding tongues and tusks, often beards. They can be found carved onto the pediments of temples, decorating armour or sometimes on one side of a coin. In the Iliad, Homer says that Athene has a terrible Gorgon head on her aegis, or breastplate, to unnerve her enemies.9 Agamemnon also has a grim-faced Gorgon head on his shield,10 so mortal and goddess alike use the Gorgon head to provoke fear. And it clearly works: Homer also mentions a Gorgon head in the Odyssey. And this one is not a decoration on a shield, but is an actual creature which apparently lives (or maybe ‘dwells’ would be the more appropriate verb) in the Underworld, doing the bidding of Persephone.11 After a trip down to Hades to commune with the dead, Odysseus makes a hasty retreat in the fear that Persephone might send this head after him. Odysseus is made of stern stuff – he has made the journey to the Underworld, for a start – yet he is scared of even the possibility of seeing this disembodied head. But then, who wouldn’t be scared of a hovering Gorgon head? Its reputation is clearly formidable and far-reaching. Visitors to the Archaeological Museum in Olympia can see a wonderful example of a gorgoneion, which dates to the first half of the sixth century BCE. This shield decoration is a circle surrounded by three large wings. In the centre is a hideous face: bulbous nose above distended mouth, its thick tongue outstretched. A garland of twisting snakes surrounds her.