Episode 153 Show Notes

Source: Greek Mythology

This week on MYTH, we’re going to cover one of the most famous stories from Greek mythology – Perseus and Medusa. You’ll discover that a wooden chest makes a dangerous boat, that heroing is all about the right accessories, and that prophecies are tricky. Then, in Gods and Monsters, no really, prophecy is very, very tricky. This is the Myths Your Teacher Hated podcast, where I tell the stories of cultures from around the world in all of their original, bloody, uncensored glory. Modern tellings of these stories have become dry and dusty, but I’ll be trying to breathe new life into them. This is Episode 153, “In Cold Blood”. As always, this episode is not safe for work.
With Season 2 of Percy Jackson and the Olympians coming this year, I figure it’s time to finally cover one of the most famous stories of Greek mythology – Perseus, namesake of the titular demigod hero. This one is a heavy-hitter, which means it’s a mish-mash amalgamation of a lot of different ancient Greek and Roman sources. For the sake of consistency, I’m going to mostly pull from my old reliable Edith Hamilton, but I’ll refer to other sources as necessary.
Long, long ago, before the days of Herakles or the Argonauts, Acrisius was king of Argos, a powerful city-state in southeastern Greece during the seventh century BC. King Acrisius had only one child, a daughter named Danae. As is so often the case in these kinds of stories, she was the most beautiful woman in that kingdom or any of its neighbors. Alas, the king was kind of a dick and he wasn’t happy about having a daughter – he needed a son to be his heir. Dissatisfied, he made the decision to journey to Delphi where the Pythia, the oracle of Apollo, gave her difficult to decipher prophecies. Those who came to seek her wisdom could ask only a single question, so they needed to consider carefully. The words she spoke to pilgrims were always true but often not in the way that listeners assumed. It was often – but not always – a self-fulfilling prophecy kind of situation where the attempts to avoid fate simply made that fate inevitable.
King Acrisius was ushered into the Pythia’s presence to ask his one question: was there any hope that he would one day have a son? And the Pythia responded lol, no. LMAO even. Not only would the king never have a son but his daughter would one day give birth to a boy who would go on to kill his grandfather. Well shit. That was super not the response that the king had been hoping for. Worse, it seemed pretty unambiguous with none of the wiggle room for a more favorable interpretation. So what to do about this dire prophecy?
The brutal but effective option would have been for Acrisius to execute his daughter himself by his own hand so that there was no chance of it going awry and coming back to bite him in the ass. Since we’re even telling this story, you can probably already guess that this isn’t the option he chose. Unfortunately, it wasn’t because he decided to be a super nice guy who was a great father and grandfather in the hopes that maybe he would grow old and infirm such that his grandson helped him pass on gently in his old age.
No, he decided to go the much crueler route of ordering her to be locked up in a house built of bronze with no doors or windows. It was sunk into the earth with the roof left open to the sky so that she wouldn’t simply suffocate. I need you to understand that, again, this was not because Acrisius had an abundance of fatherly affection for Danae. No, he was simply afraid of pissing off the gods. Shedding the blood of your kin was a grievous sin and one that was punished viciously by the gods (often at the clawed hands to the Erinyes, or the Furies, who we met way back in Episode 26O).
And there, all alone, Danae endured. She passed endless days of absolute isolation and boredom with nothing to do and nothing to see but the clouds passing overhead. And that’s where things start to go wrong for bad old King Acrisius because an incredibly beautiful woman trapped all alone and staring endlessly at the sky is one of the best ways to get the attention of Zeus, sky god extraordinaire. That’s right – as so often happens in Greek mythology, things are about to get complicated because Zeus can’t keep his dick in his divine cloud pants.
One day while Danae was admiring a particularly unusual and lovely cloud, she was suddenly drenched in a golden shower. No, really. Zeus literally and figuratively came upon this woman as a shower of gold because sky gods are assholes and also apparently pretty kinky. The liquid gold fell from the sky and filled her bronze chamber, getting her immediately pregnant because of course it did. The story doesn’t say how exactly Danae figured out that the father of the child she soon realized she was carrying belonged to Zeus but I’m guessing she just used the old noggin. If a virgin gets pregnant after getting showered on by a magical cloud, the odds are good that a sky god is behind it (and Zeus was already well-known for his wandering eye).
As the Pythia had predicted, the child she bore all alone in that subterranean prison was indeed a son whom she named Perseus. Danae did her best to hide the child from her father on his infrequent visits (it’s not clear if he’s the one bringing her supplies or if he’s just stopping by to assuage his nagging guilt), but the bronze room wasn’t terribly big and there weren’t exactly a lot of places to hide a baby. He figured it out pretty quickly and was, unsurprisingly, confused and enraged. “How did this happen? Who is the boy’s father?” “Zeus,” Danae answered honestly, but her father didn’t believe her. Or maybe he just didn’t want to believe her.
The baby going from a hypothetical risk to a literal child posed a massive upping of the stakes for King Acrisius. The Pythia had been very clear that this baby would one day kill Acrisius, which meant that the infant had to go bye bye. Of course, our resident bad dad was still caught between the rock and the hard place of not being able to kill his own child or grandchild without provoking the wrath of the gods. Doubly so if the child actually was the son of Zeus as his daughter insisted, no matter how preposterous that might be. He didn’t want to be on the run from the Furies, so he needed to find a way to kill them without actually killing them.
His solution would have done any James Bond villain proud. The king commissioned the building of an enormous wooden chest and had the mother and son locked inside it. This he had carried out to the beach and cast into the ocean. The chest, being made of wood, served as a very terrifying and claustrophobic boat for the moment but it was only a matter of time before the open ocean smashed them to pieces. That way, it would technically be Poseidon who killed the two innocents and not the king, which is a hell of a technicality.
The sun set and darkness fell as Danae floated along in the little wooden box with her son. She did her best to hold back her own tears as she rocked Perseus gently to sleep. “Rock-a-bye baby on the wine-dark sea. Wrapped in your red cloak, leave the worrying to me.” There was no rest for his mother however as she held her baby against the crashing of larger and larger waves around their floating box, praying to the gods to save them. The waters always seemed on the verge of swamping the makeshift boat and drowning them both but they never quite did. Maybe Poseidon had heard her prayers and decided to be kind to mother and child for reasons of his own. Perhaps Zeus had decided to be less of a deadbeat dad and actually did the smallest fucking thing possible for his own damned son. However it happened, the pair floated safely across the sea and wound up on the beach of a little island called Seriphos. Being on dry land was good, but Danae and Perseus were still very much locked inside the wooden chest with no way out. It was only a matter of time before they died of exposure.
Once again, the Fates or perhaps Zeus intervened and sent a poor but kind-hearted fisherman named Dictys (which means fishing net) out along the shore that morning. He saw the great wooden box washed up on shore and was understandably curious about what was inside. It’s not every day that a treasure chest out of the Legend of Zelda appears on your beach. Grabbing a large rock, he broke off the lock and opened it up. I don’t know what Dictys was expecting to find inside, but it certainly wasn’t a beautiful young woman and her infant son. These poor bedraggled things were clearly in need of help, so Dictys took the pair home with him to his wife, who was every bit as kind as he was. I bet you thought that he was going to marry this foundling, as so often ends up being the case in folklore and mythology, but no. Dictys is just a legitimately good guy.
Dictys and his wife had never been able to have any children of their own, so they were thrilled to have not only an adopted daughter but an adopted grandson to spoil as well. Danae and Perseus lived there in that humble fishing village for many years and were quite happy. As the boy grew, he soon followed his grandfather into the family trade and became a fisherman. Danae would have been content to live out the rest of her days in this simple but enjoyable life but once more the Fates intervened.
The ruler of this small island where the four lived was a king named Polydectes, whose name means he who welcomes many. He just so happened to be the older brother of Dictys. Unfortunately, the younger brother seemed to have gotten all of the compassion and basic human decency in the family – Polydectes (whose name was clearly ironic) was as cruel and ruthless as Dictys was kind and generous. The king didn’t usually have much time for his poor, insignificant kid brother but he did make the occasional obligatory visit. It was on one of these that he first laid eyes on Danae, who was still as beautiful and regal as ever.
Polydectes fell head over dick in lust with her and decided that he needed to have her. Not marry her you understand – she was a poor nobody – he just wanted to ravish her and discard her. Danae had some very strong opinions on the matter and her now-grown son Perseus, strong and lean from years of hauling in fishing nets, stood beside his mother as her defender. He’d heard enough words of caution from his grandfather over the years to not trust his great uncle’s intentions. The king was not used to being denied and he found he didn’t like it, not one bit. Thus he immediately began to scheme of a way to rid himself of the pesky Perseus and have his rapey way with Danae.
His solution was to throw a great banquet and invite everyone from far and near to attend. Pretending to be begrudging about it, he also invited his brother and his family to the party. Each guest was expected to bring a gift befitting a king in exchange for attendance. Specifically, he asked everyone to bring him a horse (which were highly prized and incredibly expensive at the time especially on an island), claiming that he was gathering a bridal gift to try and win the hand of Hippodamia, daughter of Oenomaus. As the grandson of a poor fisherman, kingly uncle or no, Perseus naturally had no horse to offer. He was not willing to be shamed by his great uncle nor was he willing to let his mother go to the banquet alone.
Thus, Perseus offered another gift instead. “Uncle, name your desire, anything in my power, and I shall grant it to you without hesitation.” We’ve seen time and time again that making such open-ended promises is a recipe for trouble and so it was here. Grinning cruelly, Polydectes pretended to consider what he wanted. “I know just the thing. On a distant island live three sisters, hideous monsters all with snakes for hair, sharp fangs and claws, wings of gold, and a terrible gaze that turns men to stone with but a look. They are the Gorgons: Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa. The first two are immortal, but Medusa alone may be slain. Go there, defeat Medusa, and bring me back her head as proof of your deed. This is the gift I desire.”
In another version of the story, Polydectes spends the weeks before the feast dropping hints as subtle as bricks about wanting the head of Medusa more than anything in the world but not being able to go and fetch it. He then calls the feast exactly the same way, but it is Perseus, shamed at being the only man in attendance without a gift to offer, who declares that he shall retrieve the head of Medusa as his gift. In both cases, the cruel king is manipulating the rash, prideful young man but I tend to prefer the version where Polydectes traps Perseus with a naively given open-ended promise. Anywho.
Everyone knew that this task was a suicide mission, even Perseus. Still he had given his word and Dictys had taught him to be a man of honor. He would do what he had sworn to do or die trying. The latter option seemed a lot more likely, especially since no one was even sure where exactly these terrible monsters lived. He did have an idea of where he might be able to find out that information though: the Oracle at Delphi, where this whole mess had started. Leaving the feast and climbing on his ship without saying goodbye to Danae (who he knew would try to talk him out of the foolhardy quest), he sailed for mainland Greece praying to the gods as he did so for aid and guidance.
After waiting his turn in the long line to see the Pythia, Perseus was finally able to ask her where he could find the Gorgons. Her answer was even more cryptic and infuriating than usual. “Seek out the land where men eat not of Demeter’s golden grain but only of acorns.” It wasn’t a terribly helpful answer but it did at least give him a clue as to where to go next – Dodona, the land of oak trees. Located in northwestern Greece, it was the site of an oracle of Zeus, the talking trees who declared the will of the king of the gods. It was also where a group of people known as the Selli lived, taking care of the trees and making their bread from acorns instead of wheat.
Dodona seemed like the clear answer to the Pythia riddle, but when he asked the Selli where he could find the Gorgons, they didn’t know. The trees were silent on the matter, saying only that Perseus was under the protection of the gods, which was nice but not exactly helpful in the moment. Despondent, he thanked the Selli for their answers and wandered on with no real idea of where he was going. As he walked, he prayed to the gods again for guidance and aid. If he was truly under a god’s protection, then maybe they would help him out.
High on Olympus, it was none other than Zeus himself who was watching out for his son. About time, dad. You haven’t done shit for your kid since he was a baby (assuming that really was Zeus’ intervention), but now that there’s a cool quest happening, you want to make up for lost time. Cool cool cool. I mean look, it’s better than just throwing him to the wolves, sure, but Zeus still isn’t winning any dad of the year awards. He didn’t intervene personally because he’s too much of an absentee parent, but he did send two gods in his place to check on their half-brother. And while I’m still a little in my feels about Zeus farming out the work of parenting here, he at least picked the two best gods for the job.
As Perseus wandered, lost and forlorn, he was met by a pair of radiant beings, one young and carefree with a smile that said he knew a joke you didn’t, the other calm and wise with gray eyes that took your measure with a single glance. The young man carried a golden wand wrapped with a twining pair of golden snakes and topped with golden wings known as the caduceus. On his head, he wore a winged helmet and on his feet were winged sandals. There could be no doubt that this was Hermes, god of thieves, tricksters, and crossroads, guide to the lost. The woman was beautiful but in that imperious way that the owl is beautiful – still, quiet, and deadly. She was dressed in magnificent armor that had clearly seen use in battle and bearing a large bronze shield known as the aegis. This then could only be Athena, goddess of wisdom and warfare, bearer of keen insight and shrewd advice.
Their presence filled the empty glade Perseus met them in with golden light that warmed his tired heart. His prayers had been answered. Help had been sent. Hermes spoke first. “Hey there, bro. Heard you’re off to face Medusa, yeah? Bold move, I like it, but surely you can’t mean to go on an epic quest without having the proper gear?” He took a bright, wickedly sharp harpe sword out of a sheath on his hip. “Here, take my sword. It’s forged by Hephaestus so it won’t bend or shatter on the hard scales of the gorgons.” Perseus took it with reverence and awe but also a little doubt. This was a gift worthy of a hero to be sure, but he wasn’t honestly sure how much good it would realistically do. What use was a sword when a single gaze from Medusa could turn its wielder to stone on the spot?
As if sensing the questions in his heart (and given her divine skillset, I wouldn’t rule it out), Athena stepped forward and held out the shield on her arm. “Take this with you as well, hero. Its surface has been polished to a mirror’s sheen. When you come upon Medusa and her sisters, use their reflection in this shield to approach and attack without meeting her gaze. Only by doing so can you avoid her deadly power.” Perseus took this armor and strapped it onto his own arm with gratitude. “I thank you both for your incredibly generous gifts. Armed and armored with these, I actually stand a fair chance against the monster now. Of course, I still don’t actually know how to find the gorgons. The Pythia’s words led me here, but I don’t know where to go from here.”
Hermes smiled. “Don’t worry about that, bro. I got you. I’ll be your personal guide far to the north to seek out the abode of the nymphs – they have something you’ll need to defeat Medusa. You’ll first need to find the home of the Graeae, the Gray Women. Only they can tell you how to find the secret home of the nymphs.” Perseus had heard stories of the Graeae. If you’ve seen Disney’s Hercules or the Percy Jackson show, then you might remember the Gray Women. In the animated movie, they were combined with the three fates but their appearance as a trio of ancient, withered old women with only a single eye and a single tooth between them is that of the Graeae. In the latter, they are the three cantankerous old women who drive the cab to Camp Halfblood and spend the whole ride fighting over their single shared eye.
We actually met these ancient goddesses (who are said to be of such incredible age that even the idea of a childhood is inconceivable for them, who were ancient and gray-haired from birth) back in Episode 26L. I promised way back then that we’d come back to this story and we finally have. As I mentioned then, Hermes taught Perseus the trick to dealing with these ancient, immortal crones – trickery. With Hermes, it’s always trickery. Since they all shared a single eye, they had to pass it between them so that each could get a turn with it. The young hero needed to wait until one of them had plucked the eye from their forehead, rendering all three temporarily blind, and then rush forward to snatch it away from them. Then, he could hold the eye hostage until they agreed to tell him the way to the secret home of the nymphs and the treasure they kept away from the world.
With his newfound guide to show the way, Perseus left his aimless wanderings and headed north in search of the Graeae. It was a treacherous journey over the great river Oceanus that encircles the world and up to the very border of the land of the dread Cimmerians. Not the ones from Conan the barbarian, who are based on the Celts, but a deadly people who lived in what is now Russia and Ukraine. With Hermes, the god of the wandering road, as his guide however, he made it safely past the dangers.
As they neared, the land became blasted and desolate, the sky perpetually dim and shrouded in twilight. No ray of sunlight had ever shone on that forsaken landscape or any beam of pale moonlight. It was a dismal place, a gray place and thus well suited to be home to the Gray Sisters. In some version of the story, they are simply incredibly withered old women with a single eye in their foreheads (or an empty socket for the two without the eye). In others, the ancient witches, daughters of the primordial sea gods Phorcys and Ceto, were a terrible mix of human and swan with human heads tucked under swan wings with human hands. Either way, they were strange and terrible to behold.
It’s worth noting that they are also (at least in some versions) the sisters of the Hesperides (the nymphs of the west or the daughters of the evening) who tended to Hera’s orchard where golden apples grow – including the apple of discord that kicked off the Trojan War back in Episode 26A. Both groups are also said, in some versions, to be the sisters of the gorgons themselves. Like with so much of Greek mythology, it’s all interconnected and often loops back on itself in strange and interesting ways.
Exactly as he and Hermes (mostly Hermes) had planned, Perseus crouched in hiding and waited until the sister with the eye plucked it out to pass on in the world’s most cursed blunt rotation. When the moment came, he sprang out and seized the eye, holding it high overhead in a particularly cruel game of keepaway. “Give us back our eye!” they shrieked, but Perseus held fast. “I will, but only after you tell me where to find the nymphs of the north.” They begged and pleaded and threatened, but Perseus refused to yield until they gave up the information he sought. And at last they did. They would have agreed to anything to get their eye back.
Returning to his divine guide, Perseus set out for his next destination, which turned out to be the fabled land of the Hyperboreans in what is now northern Asia and Europe.This was said to be beyond Boreas, the North Wind, and was a blessed country where people lived in ease and comfort. Basically, a land where they rock and roll all night and party every day. A pretty sweet place but also all but impossible to reach since it is said that neither by ship nor by land shall one find the wondrous road to the land of the Hyperboreans. Luckily, our boy Perseus had the god of travelers and thieves on his side so there was no secret place they couldn’t reach.
As you might expect from a people who have never really known any trouble, they met these travelers with open arms, hosting a feast in their honor. I mean, they hosted a feast pretty much every day anyway, but this one was still dedicated to Perseus and the disguised Hermes. As musicians played beautifully and dancers swayed and leapt gracefully, the three magical items were brought out and presented to Perseus: a pair of winged sandals like the ones Hermes wore that allowed the user to fly, a magical silver bag that always became the right size for the thing it was meant to carry (basically an ancient bag of holding for you D&D nerds), and a magical cap of darkness that made the wearer invisible.
In some versions of the story, the sandals are not just like the ones that Hermes wears, they literally are the ones that the god wears, gifted to Perseus. The magical sack, a kibisis (an ancient Greek word that basically means wallet or knapsack) was a gift from Athena along with her polished mirror shield. And the helm of darkness was gifted by Hermes but it didn’t belong to him. If you’ve seen Percy Jackson and the Olympians or read The Lightning Thief, then you probably already recognize it as the Helm of Darkness that belongs to Hades, lord of the Underworld. And yes, Hermes totally stole it – god of thieves and tricksters and all that. Whichever way it went down, Perseus now had all of the gear he needed to finally confront the dread Medusa.
Their home on Sarpedon was known, especially to Hermes who knows all roads (and I suspect could have brought Perseus to Hyperborea without resorting to tricking the Graeae but that was essentially a test for the budding young hero). On their winged sandals, the pair flew back south and over Oceanus once more and headed for the lair of the Gorgons. And now that we’ve come to one of the most famous monsters of all mythology, it’s time to address the elephant in the room: just who the hell was Medusa anyway?
The subject of Medusa’s background can get quite contentious online, with different people insisting that ‘in the original version’ X or Y happens. The problem of course is that, as with a lot of mythology, there really is no clear ‘original’ version. There are a lot of conflicting versions from writers of different times that often refer back to earlier writings that have been lost to time. Thus, we only know they exist at all because of these references or maybe from a few surviving fragments and can’t trace these tales back farther. There simply is no original version because these stories were not really authored. They come from the earlier oral tradition stretching back to the Bronze Age. Those stories evolved to better reflect the changing world of the audience, often drawing upon elements of other stories or straight up combining them when different cultures met. The Romans had a habit of assuming that every culture’s gods were just the Roman gods with different local names. When they found a story (or sometimes a whole new god), they would incorporate it into their own mythology, retconning older versions.
This is the case with the gorgon Medusa. In the oldest surviving version, which comes from Hesiod’s Theogeny, Medusa is one of three gorgon sisters (Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale), who were in turn sisters to the Graeae as I previously mentioned. The word ‘gorgon’ comes from a Greek word meaning grim, fierce, and terrible, while Medusa’s name derives from the word meaning ‘to guard’ or ‘to protect’. In Hesiod’s version of the story, Medusa is born a snake-haired monster, with massive tusks, bronze hands, golden wings, and a gaze that turns people to stone, but a mortal one, unlike her two sisters who are immortal and ageless (but have all the same monstrous characteristics). She caught the eye of Poseidon and they had a fling, but having the favor of a god wasn’t enough to save her from the mythological Perseus. You’ll notice that Athena is nowhere in that backstory.
So where does the other very well-known version come from, the one that both the Percy Jackson show and books refer to? Well, it comes from the more famous but much later version by the Roman poet Ovid. According to him, Medusa wasn’t born a monster but instead a beautiful human maiden, and her hair was said to be her most lovely feature. Ovid is the first time this origin is mentioned, but there is precedent for Medusa being beautiful instead of a hideous monster like her sisters. In this version, she was in a temple to Minerva (the Roman equivalent of Athena) when she caught the eye of Neptune (the Roman version of Poseidon). He descended to the temple and, as the show version of Medusa said, he assaulted her – and the story doesn’t even mince words the way the old stories sometimes do. Ovid comes right out and says he violated her. He raped her. Horrified by the defilement of her temple, Minerva hid her eyes behind her shield, the aegis. Such an act couldn’t go unpunished but (as we often see with Hera and Zeus) she couldn’t punish Poseidon so it was the innocent mortal woman who suffered further. Medusa’s treasured hair was turned to writhing snakes, her beautiful face became monstrous, and her gaze could now turn men to stone.
In both versions of the story though, one thing is definitely constant: Medusa is a victim. Even in Hesiod where her fling with Poseidon was mutual and consensual, she is painted as a monster purely for her appearance and powers. Nowhere in the story does it say that Medusa or her sisters are an actual threat to anyone who leaves them alone. Kind of like Jason Voorhees in a lot of the Friday the 13th movies, she only kills those who intrude on her domain, usually despite her victims knowing full well the stories of the doom that awaits there. Other stories have their monsters rampaging through cities and killing innocent villagers or lurking along the highways to prey on and devour unwary travelers. Not so with Medusa. She is made a target purely because she is dangerous and Polydectes wants to use her as a patsy to get Perseus out of the way. For his part, Perseus has no animosity towards Medusa and is just trying to protect his mother the only way he knows how. And yeah, his pride got away from him but he was also being manipulated by a cunning, cruel older man.
So back to the story. Hermes led Perseus to Sarpedon and they crept up on the dwelling place of the three sisters. By great good fortune (another boon of traveling with the god of luck and gamblers), they found all three sisters asleep. Hovering just above the ground on his winged sandals, the young hero crept up towards them backwards, watching the sleeping gorgons in the shield’s reflection. Seeing them in all their reptilian glory, their wings tucked tight around their golden scaled bodies as the twining serpents on their heads snoozed along with them, he realized that the sisters were identical. Athena (who may have been with them the whole time but more likely had other shit to get done and only popped in when she was needed) whispered into Perseus’ ear, indicating which was the mortal Medusa.
Drawing the razor-sharp harpe sword, he sliced through her neck with one well-placed swing. Before it could roll across the sand and wake Stheno and Euryale, he swooped low and snagged it out of the air, again without looking at it except in the mirror. He dropped it inside the waiting bag, locking away its deadly gaze. And here we have an example of a hero finally passing the test of not looking back. It’s the one that Orpheus failed back in Episode 68, damning Eurydice to Hades, one that heroes in folklore and mythology often fail. Perseus was made of stronger mettle and so he survived the deadly encounter unscathed.
In the most famous version, as the dead Medusa’s blood touched the earth, her two children by Poseidon sprang forth from her spilt life essence. One was a winged horse named Pegasus (meaning ‘he who sprang’) and a giant named Chrysaor (meaning ‘he who bears a sword of gold’). The latter doesn’t really do much besides fathering a monster who will show up in the stories of Heracles, but the former has literally become synonymous with all winged horses even though, in the myth, he is one of a kind and not one of a species called pegasi. You might expect them to become hero bros and fly around doing hero shit like the animated version does with Hercules, but alas no. Perseus already has a way to fly so he doesn’t need wings with a mind of their own.
Even as swiftly as he had retrieved the head however, it hadn’t been fast enough to avoid waking the two surviving gorgons. They shrieked in despair and fury as they saw their sister’s headless corpse bleeding out onto the sand beside them and rose to hunt down her killer. Luckily, Perseus had the Helm of Darkness handy and, as he placed it on his head, he vanished from their senses and became utterly untraceable. Despite all their desperate searching, they could discover no trace of Perseus as he made his escape back to Seriphos.
On his way back, he stopped well short of the Greek isles to rest. According to Polyidus and Ovid, Perseus sought shelter with Atlas. In the former story, he was a humble shepherd; in the latter, he was a powerful king. In either case, Atlas refused in direct and flagrant violation of the rules of guestright. As we’ve seen on numerous occasions, breaking the laws of guestright had dire consequences and so it was here. In Ovid’s version, Atlas had heard a prophecy that a son of Zeus would come to steal the golden apples from his orchard, which is why he refused. Yes, the very same golden apples in the garden of Hera guarded by the Hesperides who were sisters to the gorgons. I told you, wheels within wheels. In response, Perseus drew out the severed head of Medusa and turned the king to stone. He became not just a mountain but an entire mountain range: his head the tallest peak, his shoulders the lower ridges, and his hair the woods that grew along it. As it so happened, the son of Zeus in the prophecy was actually Heracles and not Perseus at all. How this jives with Atlas still being very much not stone when Heracles comes by later, I don’t begin to understand. Maybe he got better? Maybe this is just an alternate version from the one where Atlas is condemned to hold up the sky as punishment for his role in the Titanomachy way, way back in Episode 1A?
Anyway, after stoning Atlas, Perseus stopped over in Ethiopia, which Herodotus used to describe the parts of Africa south of Egypt and not the modern-day Ethiopia, as we’ve covered before. Here, Hermes left the young hero to his own devices and returned to his day job as messenger of the gods (if he hadn’t already left before Atlas in Ovid’s version since the titan doesn’t appear at all in Herodotus). There, Perseus came upon a strange and disturbing sight: a beautiful young woman chained naked to a rocky cliff beside the sea. This young maiden, he would learn later but we’re going to learn now, was Andromeda, daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia, rulers of Ethiopia.
The princess had been engaged to her Uncle Phineus which gross. There are references to a whole long saga about this whole thing in Euripides’ lost tragic play Andromeda, but only vague references to it survive. What we do know from Ovid is that he seems to have been motivated to marry his niece not from any real interest in her but from a desire to claim the throne as his own. Not sure that’s much better. None of that is why the poor young maiden found herself imprisoned naked on the beach though. That was actually her mother’s fault. Cassiopeia had bragged aloud that her daughter was more stunningly beautiful than the Nereids, the 50 daughters of the primordial sea god Nereus and the Oceanid Doris. These water nymphs just happened to be part of the entourage of the sea god Poseidon, who didn’t take kindly to a mortal slandering their beauty that way.
As the Greek gods often do he wildly overreacted and sent a sea monster named Cetus, who erupted from the sea and rampaged through the kingdom. Cepheus sought the advice of an oracle, as one does, and had gotten the very straightforward answer that the only way to appease the beast and end the destruction was to sacrifice his own daughter Andromeda to Cetus. He didn’t want to do that, but his people rose up and told him that if he didn’t they would along with him and his entire family. Left with no choice, Cepheus had his daughter chained to the rock to await the wrath of Cetus. And thus we’ve circled back around to where Perseus entered. Even as he was noticing the stunning nude woman in chains, Cetus exploded from the surf and surged towards his intended victim. Being a well-armed, flying hero, Perseus swooped out of the sky on his flying sandals and, with his harpe sword, beheaded the beast.
With a few sharp blows of that same sword, he freed the princess and wrapped her in his own cloak. Carrying her in his arms, he flew back to the palace of her father Cepheus who was elated to see his daughter alive and the bane of his city dead. You know who else was thrilled to see the princess still undevoured? Dear old gross Uncle Phineus. Or at least he was right up until Perseus announced that he had fallen in love with Andromeda during his thrilling heroics and their daring escape. For her part, she much preferred to marry the handsome, dashing young hero than her manipulative uncle.
As Perseus told the court this and recounted the tale of slaying the monster and rescuing the maiden, Phineus interrupted. “How dare you try to steal my bride, you asshole! She and I were betrothed and, since she hasn’t died, that means we still are!” At this bold declaration, King Cepheus stood to chastise his overzealous brother. “No, I don’t think your betrothal is still on. When the gods forced me to sacrifice my daughter to that foul beast, you did precisely jack and shit to save her. If this fine young man hadn’t happened along, my beloved Andromeda would be dead, no thanks to you, so he has my blessing. Get over it, brother.” Phineus was not the forgive and forget type, but even he wasn’t quite twisted enough to attack the man who was both his brother and his king, so he vented his fury on the upstart interloper. “This is all your fault! I come here as an avenger – your stupid little winged sandals won’t protect you from me! Not even Zeus can save your ass!” Drawing a spear, he hurled it at a surprised but agile Perseus, who brought Athena’s aegis to bear, blocking the strike.
“You’re going to wish you hadn’t done that.” Phineus ignored this warning and ordered his goons to attack the man he had failed to kill. A fierce battle ensued, but Perseus was a deadly foe, aided by the divine gifts he had been bestowed. Even so, it was difficult for one man to face off against a group. Luckily he had an ace up his sleeve. Or a severed monster head, anyway. Drawing Medusa’s head from the silver sack, he held it aloft towards his foes, turning all of them except for Phineus himself to stone. The cruel uncle managed to miss the initial gaze attack and then wisely averted his eyes once he saw what it had done to his lackeys. Dropping to his knees, he begged the furious hero to spare his life. Perseus is brave and just, but he isn’t overly forgiving as we already saw with Atlas. Stalking forward, Perseus wrenched Phineus’ head around and forced him to meet the gorgon’s terrible gaze, turning him to stone as well.
Having thus ended the short-lived threat against his relationship, Perseus boarded a ship and sailed for his home island. Or, according to Apollonius of Rhodes, he flew back with his sandals and dripped gorgon blood on the sands of Libya (modern day Libya, Tuniasia, Algeria, and Morocco). From these droplets sprang a race of venemous serpents who would turn up again with the Argonauts and the quest for the golden fleece. It’s unclear if Andromeda went with him at this point or if she followed along later.
Either way, it didn’t take long for Perseus to dock on Seriphos and hurry towards his childhood home. Only when he entered the house, it was empty. Dictys’ wife had died years before, but Dictys himself and Danae should both have been there. He asked around town and soon learned the ugly truth. His mother and adopted grandfather had been forced to flee from the cruel attentions of Polydectes. The king had refused to take no for an answer, especially with the strapping young son out of the picture. They had taken refuge in a temple, he was told, Danae still refusing to give in to the vile king. In some versions, he did want to marry her at this point, but she wasn’t into a creepy abuser who – as far as she knows – sent her son off to his doom.
The good news was that Polydectes was apparently hosting yet another banquet, this one for the men most loyal to him. Perseus smelled an opportunity. Strapping on his bright mirrored shield and his shining silver bag, he hurried over to the palace. Throwing open the doors with a hollow boom, the young man struck a very heroic figure that drew every eye in the room – which was the point. Before any could look away, he opened the magical bag and drew forth Medusa’s severed head. Every person in the room was immediately frozen into a stone statue, the king and all his servile courtiers, as a monument to the moment their doom entered the room.
With the tyrant very spectacularly dead, it was easy enough for Perseus to get word to Danae and Dictys that it was safe to emerge. There was now a vacancy on the throne, but Perseus had no interest in it. He hadn’t been trying to stage a coup, just to protect his mother. As such, it was the kind fisherman Dictys who was made king, which makes sense given that he was the dead king’s brother. If I had a nickel for every creepy royal brother of a major character related to Perseus who was turned to stone in this story, I’d have two nickels but it’s weird that it happened twice.
Anyway, the quest was over, so Perseus returned the magical gifts that had been loaned to him. Medusa’s head was also turned over as it was simply too powerful to be left in mortal hands. This Athena placed on the surface of her bright mirrored shield, the aegis of Zeus that she always bore for her father making it even more terrible and terrifying than ever. His days of heroing before him, Perseus decided to go with his new bride and his mother to visit the land of his birth. With so many years gone by, they hoped that maybe Danae’s father Acrisius would have mellowed out and regretted his past atrocity. It says a lot about their character that they have enough compassion to try this – I would have cut that fucker out of my life so fast.
They returned to Argos only to learn that Acrisius had been driven from his throne and forced into hiding. I guess building a terrifying prison for your only daughter and then locking her and her baby in a chest and hurling it into the sea doesn’t make you a beloved king. About that time, the king of Larissa, a city-state in eastern Greece, was holding a great contest of athletic prowess. Perseus thought that sounded like fun and with nothing better to do, he headed north to Larissa. When it came to be his turn to throw the discus, it hit a rock in the field as it landed, caught a bad bounce, and veered sharply towards the crowd. The heavy missile struck one of the spectators, an old man, in the head killing him instantly.
You can probably guess who the dead guy is – that’s right, it’s none other than King Acrisius who had come in secret to visit the king of Larissa. Thus had Apollo’s prophecy come true through sheer accident (or, more likely, fate). They never got to find out if the old king would have accepted his long lost daughter and grandson with open arms or not, but at least any guilt Perseus might have felt could be assuaged by both the force of prophecy and the fact that, you know, the guy had tried his best to murder him and his mother. And they lived happily ever after, which is not something I get to say at the end of Greek myths very often.
Perseus is one of those rare heroes who did everything right, passed every test, and was generally a pretty good guy (except for the whole Medusa thing, but that wasn’t seen as problematic by his contemporaries). There’s a reason he is considered to be one of the greatest of the pre-Heracles heroes of Greek mythology. In fact, Perseus is actually both the half-brother and great-grandfather of ol’ Herc himself. The former because they were both sons of Zeus, and the latter through his son Electryon. Perseus and Andromeda actually had seven sons and, through them, became an ancestor for a great number of the main characters of later mythology, including Heracles, Helen of Sparta, Castor and Pollux, Penelope, Orestes, Iolaus, and many other less-known figures.
Being the grandson of the now-dead king, he was next in line for the throne. Having just accidentally killed his grandfather though, he felt far too guilty to profit from it. Also, he may have been motivated by the very unyielding law of ancient Greek stories that the punishment for manslaughter is exile, no ifs ands or buts. Thus he turned over the throne to Megapenthes, the son of Proetus, and he himself took over the throne that Megapenthes had just vacated in Tiryns, supposedly founding the city of Mycenae as his capital. That sounds like profiting off of Acrisius’ death with extra steps to me, but it was genuinely an accident and the old bastard had it coming, so I don’t hold it against him. He ruled long and well with Andromeda beside him as his queen. And with all the loose ends tied up, it’s time for Gods and Monsters. This is a segment where I get into a little more detail about the personalities and history of one of the gods or monsters from this week’s pantheon that was not discussed in the main story. This week’s tragic beauty is Hippodamia.
The daughter of King Oenomaus of Pisa, Hippodamia’s story begins in a very similar way to our boy Perseus from the main tale. In fact, she was mentioned very briefly in the earlier story as a young woman that the cruel King Polydectes was pretending to be trying to woo with the gift of a horse. To the ancient audience, this little aside would have been immediately recognizable. Similar to King Acrisius, Oenomaus had received a prophecy from an oracle that he would one day be killed by his son-in-law. The king wasn’t willing to sink to the depths of having his daughter killed, so he devised a somehow even bloodier plan that seemed even less likely to work. Any suitor who wished to marry his daughter could only do so if they defeated him in a chariot race.
Oenomaus was a great breeder of horses (Hippodamia’s name means ‘breaker of horses’), so you can see why suitors thought that the gift of a horse would be an appropriate one. The catch to this contest was that, if the challenger lost, he would be executed. The idea was to deter people from even risking becoming his son-in-law and, if Hippodamia never married, then no one could kill Oenomaus. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. Except that Hippodamia was widely regarded as a great beauty, so the suitors made the challenge anyway, which made this situation hard hard lemon hard instead.
Eighteen men challenged the king to a race. All eighteen lost. True to his threat, Oenomaus had them all executed and their severed heads mounted on wooden columns outside his palace as a warning. Clearly it didn’t work because the challengers just kept coming. The nineteenth man was Pelops, son of King Tantalus of Lydia. Yes, that Pelops and that Tantalus from Episode 26O. The short version is that Tantalus murdered Pelops and baked him into a pie that he fed to the gods. Horrified and outraged, they brought Pelops back to life and damned Tantalus to stand forever hungry and thirsty in Tartarus. He has a pool of water up to his neck that drains away whenever he stoops to drink and a bunch of grapes before his face that blow just out or reach whenever he tries to snatch them.
Maybe having already died once made Pelops less afraid of the challenge. But, like, still cautious about it. Having made his challenge, he began to worry that he was in over his head. His anxiety led him down to the shore where he offered a prayer to Poseidon, Pelops’ former lover. That’s right – our boy Pelops is a bisexual king. Anyway, Poseidon was very fond of Pelops even after their affair ended and so he answered. Smiling, he emerged from the ocean in a chariot drawn by winged horses (none of whom was Pegasus though this would have been around the same time, based on genealogy).
Still worried that even this would not be enough, Pelops went to speak with Myrtilus, a son of Hermes and King Oenomaus’ charioteer. Given that his father is the god of liars and tricksters, he readily agreed to betray his king but only if the price was right: half of the kingdom of Pisa and the first night in bed with Hippodamia. Desperate, Pelops agreed. Satisfied with this promise, Myrtilus went to assemble the king’s chariot but replacing the usual bronze linchpins that held the wheels on the axle with fake ones made from hardened beeswax. That’s a bold strategy, Cotton. Let’s see if it pays off for him.
The next day, the race began on the usual track. It was more common at the time for such races to use chariots that carried only a single driver but Oenomaus was apparently used to war chariots. As we saw in the Iliad, these carried a driver and a spear-armed warrior who was usually in charge. Pelops pulled out in front early, his winged horses unnaturally fleet of foot but Oenomaus and Myrtilus were a hell of a team and were closing quickly. Going into the final turn it was anyone’s race when the beeswax pins finally gave way. The driver was prepared for this and so he was able to leap free, ducking and rolling to safety. Oenomaus was caught flat-footed and he clung on for dear life as the chariot collapsed beneath him. He got tangled in the traces and was dragged by the terrified horses to a grisly death.
Myrtilus, having survived the ordeal with only relatively minor injuries, went to Pelops that night to claim his reward. He intended to fuck Hippodamia that very night. It seems like Pelops had been betting on Myrtilus not surviving the race because he was absolutely not comfortable with someone else bedding his newlywed wife and he certainly hadn’t cleared this deal with her first. To be fair, the sport was incredibly dangerous even without sabotage. Panicking, he threw Myrtilus off of the cliff where they had met to discuss their victory and into the raging sea below. The son of Hermes had dodged death once that day, but his father didn’t swoop down on his winged sandals to save him. Maybe he was busy helping Perseus. Myrtilus crashed into the rocky waves below and was killed. As he fell though, he used his last breath to curse Pelops and Hippodamia for their betrayal. It was really only Pelops who had betrayed him, but it’s hard to argue with a dead man.
For years, it seemed like the curse had missed them as Pelops and Hippodamia had a happy marriage with 14 children. It turns out that the curse had just been waiting for the right time to strike. Instead of attacking the couple actually at fault in any way, it struck their children and grandchildren, especially the house of Atreus. That’s right, these two are the grandparents of Agamemnon, Menelaus, and Orestes. And yes, that’s the same Orestes who is a descendant of Perseus as well. Wheels within wheels.
That’s it for this episode of Myths Your Teacher Hated. Keep up with new episodes on our Facebook page, on iTunes, on TuneIn, on Vurbl, and on Spotify, or you can follow us on Instagram as MythsYourTeacherHatedPod, on Tumblr as MythsYourTeacherHated, on Bluesky as MythsPodcast, and on Mastodon as MythsYourTeacherHated. You can also find news and episodes on our website at myths your teacher hated dot com. If you have any questions, any gods or monsters you’d want to learn about, or any ideas for future stories that you’d like to hear, feel free to drop me a line. I’m trying to pull as much material from as many different cultures as possible, but there are all sorts of stories I’ve never heard, so suggestions are appreciated. The theme music is by Tiny Cheese Puff.
Next time, we’re traveling to ancient Sumer for another story of their goddess of beauty and destruction Inanna AKA Ishtar. You’ll see that inventing something doesn’t necessarily make you any good at it, that collective punishment is wrong, and that some men have always used the ‘boys will be boys’ excuse, but even in the first city, it wasn’t valid. Then, in Gods and Monsters, a chaos god from Warhammer will start a war with Hell. That’s all for now. Thanks for listening.