Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Guided by Hermes and Athena, Perseus came to the daughters of Phorcus—Enyo, Pephredo, and Dino—born to Phorcus by Ceto, sisters of the Gorgons, and old women from birth. The three shared a single eye and a single tooth, which they passed among themselves in turn. Perseus seized the eye and the tooth. When the Graeae begged them back, he refused until they showed him the way to the nymphs who kept the gear he needed. They told him; he restored eye and tooth; and going to the nymphs he received the winged sandals, the kibisis, and the cap of Hades. Fitting the sandals to his ankles, slinging the kibisis about him, and setting the cap on his head, he became unseen by others while seeing whom he pleased. Hermes also gave him the adamantine sickle. Thus equipped, he flew toward Ocean and the sleeping Gorgons. Aeschylus’s tragic geography places these ancient swan-like sisters beyond the stream that bounds the continents, toward the flaming east, on the Gorgonean plains of Cisthene—neither sun nor moon looks upon them—and sets their three winged Gorgon sisters nearby. Hesiod’s theogonic catalogue anchors the same family: Phorcys and Ceto beget both the Graeae and the Gorgons. Apollodorus’s narrative is the working quest version of that genealogy.