ON AIRTerminal of Terror

🐍 Medusa

The snake-haired Gorgon whose gaze turns anyone who meets it to stone

Also known as Gorgon, The Gorgon

📺 "Tonight's guest has a fabulous head of hair and a habit of silencing her critics permanently. Please do not make eye contact, and keep the mirrors covered."

💀 Facts

  • Hesiod names three Gorgons, Sthenno, Euryale and Medusa, and only Medusa was mortal
  • In Ovid's Metamorphoses she was a beautiful woman until Minerva turned her hair to snakes
  • Perseus cut off her head while watching her reflection in a bronze shield
  • The winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor sprang from her severed neck
  • Her head kept its power after death, and Perseus used it to turn his enemies to stone
  • Athena fixed the head to her shield, and Greek warriors painted it on theirs as a charm against evil
  • The Gorgon's head appears on the flag of Sicily and in the logo of the Versace fashion house

📜 Legend

Hesiod, writing around 700 BCE, lists three Gorgons, Sthenno, Euryale and Medusa, daughters of the sea gods Phorcys and Ceto, living beyond the edge of the Ocean near the Hesperides. Only Medusa was mortal, which is why the hero Perseus was sent for her head. He went well equipped: winged sandals, a bag for the head and the cap of Hades that makes its wearer invisible, lent by the nymphs; a curved blade from Hermes; and a polished bronze shield from Athena, in which he watched her reflection so that he never met her eyes. From her severed neck sprang the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor, her children by Poseidon. Her head kept its power, and Perseus used it to turn his enemies to stone before giving it to Athena, who set it on her shield. Archaic Greek art made Medusa a grinning, tusked, tongue-lolling face, the gorgoneion, painted on shields and temple roofs to scare off evil. By the classical period she had become beautiful, and in 8 CE Ovid's Metamorphoses explained why: she was a lovely young woman, famous for her hair, until Neptune assaulted her in Minerva's temple and the goddess punished her by turning that hair to snakes. Caravaggio painted her screaming head on a shield in 1597, Cellini cast Perseus holding it aloft in Florence in 1554, and in 1981 Ray Harryhausen gave her a rattlesnake's tail and a bow for Clash of the Titans, the Medusa most people now picture.

🎬 The Film

TitleClash of the Titans (1981)
StudioMGM
DirectorDesmond Davis
StarringA stop-motion model animated by Ray Harryhausen

🎞️ Harryhausen's Medusa, with a rattlesnake's tail and a bow, is the image most people now picture.

🎭 Myth vs Movie

True or false? Make your guess, then click a card (or press r) for the verdict.

  • Medusa was always a monster.

    ✘ FALSE

    Not in Ovid. In the Metamorphoses she is a beautiful woman, famous for her hair, until Minerva turns it to serpents to punish her after Neptune assaults her in the goddess's temple. Hesiod, seven centuries earlier, simply lists her among the Gorgons.

  • Perseus used a mirror-like shield so that he never looked at her directly.

    ✔ TRUE

    Ovid says he watched her reflection in the bronze shield on his left arm, and Apollodorus has Athena guide his hand while he looks away.

  • Perseus killed all three Gorgons.

    ✘ FALSE

    Only Medusa was mortal. Her sisters Sthenno and Euryale chased him, but he escaped in the cap of Hades, which made him invisible.

  • Medusa's head lost its power once she was dead.

    ✘ FALSE

    It worked just as well in a bag. Perseus used it to turn the sea monster, the king Polydectes and a wedding hall full of enemies to stone before giving it to Athena.

  • In the original myth Perseus used her head to kill the Kraken.

    ✘ FALSE

    The Kraken is a Norse sea monster. In the Greek story Perseus saves Andromeda from a sea monster called Cetus; the Kraken was borrowed by the writers of Clash of the Titans (1981).

🕯️ Quotes

“Medusa who suffered a woeful fate: she was mortal, but the two were undying and grew not old.”

Hesiod, on the three Gorgons, Theogony, Hugh G. Evelyn-White's 1914 translation

Lines come only from public-domain texts.

🃏 Stat Card

Strength
6
Speed
5
Cunning
7
Dread
9

⚡ Powers

  • A gaze that turns the living to stone
  • A head of venomous snakes
  • A face that frightens off evil even when painted on a shield
  • Blood that can kill or, in the right hands, raise the dead

🧄 Weaknesses

  • A polished shield
  • The cap of Hades, which makes its wearer invisible
  • A curved blade borrowed from Hermes
  • Being the only mortal sister

Stats power the Monster Mash: terminal-of-terror mash medusa

🎞️ Legacy

  • Cellini's bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1554), still standing in Florence
  • Caravaggio's Medusa (1597), painted on a ceremonial shield
  • Clash of the Titans (2010), with Natalia Vodianova as a serpent-tailed Medusa
  • Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (2010), with Uma Thurman running a garden-gnome emporium
  • The Medusa head on the flag of Sicily and the logo of the Versace fashion house

⌨️ h l previous / next · 1–7 sections · r reveal · g gallery, just like the terminal.