Mnemosyne — Classical Greek Myth Library

Flying to Ocean, Perseus found the Gorgons asleep: Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. Of the three only Medusa was mortal, and for that reason he had been sent against her head alone. Their heads were twined with dragons’ scales; they had great tusks like swine, hands of bronze, and golden wings on which they flew; whoever looked on them was turned to stone. Perseus stood over them as they slept. Athena guided his hand while he looked aside into a bronze shield that showed the Gorgon’s reflected image; so aiming, he cut off Medusa’s head. From the severed neck sprang the winged horse Pegasus and Chrysaor, father of Geryon—children Medusa had conceived by Poseidon, as Hesiod already sings: when Perseus took her head, Chrysaor and Pegasus leapt forth; Pegasus left earth for the gods and dwells in Zeus’s house, bringing thunder and lightning. Perseus thrust the head into the kibisis and turned back. The surviving Gorgons woke and pursued him, but the cap of Hades hid him from their sight, and they could not catch him. Pindar’s lyric afterpiece belongs to the same deed: once Perseus had brought death to Seriphos with the head and repaid Polydectes, Athena, hearing the shrill lament from Euryale’s jaws and the hiss of snakes, invented for mortals the many-headed strain of the aulos. Apollodorus also records a minority motive: some alleged Medusa was killed for Athena because the Gorgon dared match the goddess in beauty—an aetiology for the head on Athena’s shield, kept here as an Editions enrichment of the same beheading, not a separate quest plot.