Characters
- Artemis — receives Medusa’s head and fixes it in her shield
- Danaë — takes refuge at the altars; delivered by her son’s return
- Dictys — fellow refugee at the altars; appointed king of Seriphos
- Gorgons — instrument of the petrification; thereafter Athena’s shield-device
- Olympian gods — petrified with their king
- Perseus — returns with the head; petrifies the court; makes Dictys king; returns borrowed gear
- Polydectes — violent toward Danaë and Dictys; gathered with friends; turned to stone
- The Hours — receives back sandals, kibisis, and cap; restores them to the nymphs
- The nymphs — final keepers again of sandals, kibisis, and cap
Places
- Athena’s shield — final setting of the Gorgoneion
- Palace of Polydectes — scene of the mass petrification
- Seriphos — island of return; palace of Polydectes; altars of refuge
Themes
Narrative
Coming back to Seriphos, Perseus found that his mother Danaë and Dictys had taken refuge at the altars because of Polydectes’s violence. He entered the palace, where Polydectes had gathered his friends, and with face averted he showed the Gorgon’s head. All who beheld it were turned to stone, each frozen in the attitude he happened to hold.
Perseus then appointed Dictys king of Seriphos. He gave back to Hermes the sandals, the kibisis, and the cap; Hermes restored those things to the nymphs. The Gorgon’s head he gave to Athena, who set it in the middle of her shield (the averted face that wards enemies thereafter).
Pindar’s earlier lyric compresses the same revenge: Perseus brought destiny upon sea-girt Seriphos and its people and paid Polydectes a deadly wedding-gift for the long oppression of Danaë. Pherecydes’s staging differs in ceremony—Perseus has the king assemble the islanders as if to display proof of the quest—but the outcome, petrification by the head, is the same version line and is folded here under Editions rather than split into a second Seriphean file.