Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths(29)

The lament (or oulion thrēnon – ‘deadly dirge’, as Pindar would have it)28 is another largely forgotten aspect of the Gorgons. Those huge mouths and lolling tongues which we see in so many examples of Gorgons and of gorgoneia are not just distended for the visual effect of a monstrously large, animalistic mouth. They also convey the capacity to make noise, and discordant noise at that. Both Medusa’s sisters pursue Perseus, according to Pindar, before Athene rescues him. As mentioned above, Pindar also tells us Athene creates the flute (an instrument closer to pan pipes than a modern flute) to imitate the sound made by the swift jaws of Euryale. And later authors echo this: Gorgons make a grim noise. And if history has taught us anything, it is that women making a noise – whether speaking or shouting – tend to be viewed as intrinsically disruptive. Men are treated differently: the Greek hero Diomedes, for example, who fights against the Trojans in Homer’s Iliad. Like most Homeric heroes, he is usually described with one of several stock epithets. One of these phrases is ‘boēn agathos Diomedes’29 – which is usually translated as ‘Diomedes of the loud war cry’, although literally it means ‘Diomedes, good at shouting’, which is somewhat less poetic. However we choose to translate the phrase, it is clearly not a criticism. A war cry is an impressive part of Diomedes’ heroic character, just as speed is a crucial element in the skills of ‘swift-footed Achilles’. But the noise made by the Gorgons is always described negatively as deadly, baleful, a dirge. Is that because it’s discordant? Or is it because they are female and they’re making a loud noise? Diomedes’ cry is surely also baleful and deadly to any hapless Trojan who might be facing him. But his shout is seen as something positive and martial, whereas the Gorgons’ cry is something strange and terrible.

*

It is interesting to compare the relative fortunes of Medusa and another mortal who undergoes a divinely wrought transformation: Midas. Midas was king of Phrygia (now Turkey) and, like Medusa, he can claim divine parentage: in one tradition, his mother is the goddess Cybele. One day, Midas showed kindness to the satyr Silenus, who was a close friend of the god Dionysus. In return for this kindness, Dionysus granted Midas a wish, and was saddened when Midas chose to have everything he touched turn to gold. As Ovid tells the story, in Book Eleven of the Metamorphoses,30 Midas is at first delighted by his new power: he changes a twig, then a stone, a clod of earth, an ear of corn and an apple into gold. So far, so good. Things go wrong when he tries to eat and the bread, meat and wine he attempts to consume are converted into gold too. Midas begs Dionysus to remove his new power: like so many wishers in so many stories, he has realized that what seemed like a good idea at the time is a far from uncomplicated blessing. Dionysus is uncharacteristically forgiving, and tells Midas to bathe in a river at its source. The king obeys the god, and plunges his body into the river. The gold flows from him into the waters. Even though this happened long ago, Ovid reminds his readers, when the river floods now, tiny bits of gold still appear in the nearby fields. Nathaniel Hawthorne, when he tells the story of Midas, adds in the tear-jerking element of a daughter whom Midas turns to gold with his embrace. But for Ovid, it is simple survival rather than paternal guilt (or rather, gilt) which makes Midas seek to return Dionysus’ gift.

Midas doesn’t have his gilding power for very long, admittedly. But he does have to make the journey to the River Pactolus near the city of Sardis with it. And a well-informed and amoral adventurer might fancy some of Midas’ power for himself. It is clearly the case that owning one of his hands (or any body part, since wine turns to molten gold in his throat, as far as Ovid is concerned)31 would be less perilous than having the power yourself, so long as you had something like a kibisis or other divine object to contain it. Actually, a golden glove would presumably do it: even Midas can’t turn something to gold if it is gold already. And yet, it doesn’t seem to occur to any impecunious hero to kill Midas on his way to the river, or even to lop off a finger or a toe. The divine assistance required to achieve this minor amputation would surely be less than Perseus needs to behead Medusa. And the quest for a golden body part isn’t unknown in Greek myth: ask Jason, who set sail in the Argo to acquire a golden fleece (although this had already been removed from its original ovine owner). But Midas remains unmolested while Medusa is decapitated, even though he has displeased a god with his poor decision-making just as Medusa displeased Athene by being raped. Midas’ body remains whole, even if he later displeases a second god, Apollo, prompting the punishment of having his ears changed into those of an ass. At least he gets to keep them. Indeed, they might even improve his hearing. And certainly they would prove more efficient at shooing flies. Meanwhile, Medusa is objectified to such an extent that her head becomes nothing more than a tool. These two children of gods are treated in remarkably different ways.

The crucial difference is one of perspective. We are encouraged to imagine Midas’ story from his point of view. What must it be like, we imagine, as we follow his experiences in the Metamorphoses, to have everything we touch turn to gold? How would it feel to crack our teeth on golden bread? How would it taste to have liquid gold in our throats? We imagine the experience from the inside out. But with Medusa, we’re encouraged to see her from the outside: how do we attack her? How do we avoid her gaze? How can we use her decapitated head? We never stop to ask ourselves what it must be like to be her, possessed of a deadly gaze just as Midas is possessed of a deadly touch. And yet, just as Midas discovers with his temporary power, it must be incredibly isolating. Medusa cannot look at a friend, a person, even an animal without killing them. This perhaps explains why she lives in a cave, as a surviving fragment of an Aeschylus play, The Phorcides, tells us.32 Her sisters are either immune to her gaze or they are protected from it by the gloom of the cave, because they all live together without any risk of petrification. Yet her power is sufficient even after death to stop a sea-monster in its tracks, and to turn Atlas – a giant – into a mountain (Perseus petrifies him in a fit of pique, after Atlas refuses to welcome him into his home, having been given a dire warning from an oracle that a son of Jupiter would cause him harm. Oracles are often full of trickery, but in this instance, it has a point). So any visual contact with anything mortal – no matter how vast or powerful – is out of bounds to Medusa, unless she is prepared to destroy it. Her world must be one of darkness and statues.