Why medusa is important

Become a Member ». The earliest portrayals of Medusa show a grotesque part human, part animal creature with wings and boar-like tusks. By the fifth century BCE, that figure from Greek myth began to morph into an alluring seductress, shaped by the idealization of the body in Greek art.

Her writhing hair of serpents became wild curls, with maybe a couple of serpents beneath her chin to hint at her more bestial origins. Today Medusa, with her snake hair and stare that turns people to stone, endures as an allegorical figure of fatal beauty, or a ready image for superimposing the face of a detested woman in power.

Jonathan P. Rosen, On a BCE terracotta stand, Medusa is comically hideous, and fully bearded, sticking out her tongue between two tusks. Meanwhile, a rotation of s Versace fashions presents Medusa as a modern luxury logo. The story of Medusa shifted over time along with her visage. She had long, golden locks of hair, and is described as being exceptionally beautiful. Medusa, however, was the only mortal and the most attractive of the three. She was also the most powerful, killing more men than either of her sisters, which also made her the most threatening and the most feared.

As the Medusa myth is retold in a patriarchal and male-dominated society, the fact that she was a victim of rape is overshadowed by her terrifying appearance and ability to turn men into stone. This retelling sweeps the original violence against Medusa under the rug to center the violence she commits against men.

The portrayal of Medusa as a monster becomes the central sexist device of the myth, used to scare women off from casting a harsh gaze on their oppressors for fear of seeming monstrous as well. In examining the myth of Athena and Medusa further, the story also seems to be a suggestive fable, slyly teaching women how to look out for and protect one another in a society dominated by men, where rape is a constant threat. After all, Athena gave Medusa the ultimate power against men: the power to both punish and avoid the male gaze regardless of the rank or status of the man daring to look at her.

It is exhausting to constantly probe through these male-dominated ideas, but these myths are so much more entrancing when we can. There are other Greek myths in which women covertly help protect each other—and in almost all of them, it is after a woman has been raped. Medusa had been pregnant by Poseidon when she was beheaded and Pegasus and Chrysaor were the offspring of their relationship.

He turned the king to stone with Medusa's head and then gave the head to Athena. Athena placed Medusa's head on her shield, called the Aegis. Medusa's image has been used in modern day culture. The fashion empire Versace uses Medusa as a logo. Alexander the Great had the image of Medusa on his breastplate. Leonardo da Vinci painted an oil on canvas painting called Medusa. The most common interpretation of Medusa suggests she is an apotropaic symbol used to protect from and ward off the negative, much like the modern evil eye.

She represents a dangerous threat meant to deter other dangerous threats, an image of evil to repel evil. A close look at her role in Greek mythology and art reveals a nuanced and complex character with multiple iterations and implications. Medusa is best known for having hair made of snakes and for her ability to turn anyone she looked at to stone, literally to petrify.

Multiple works by ancient sources, such as Homer, the eighth-century B. The best known myth recounts her fateful encounter with the Greek hero Perseus.

A dishonorable king demanded that he bring him an impossible gift: the head of Medusa. Perseus set out with the aid of the gods, who provided him with divine tools. On his travels, he used the head to turn his enemies to stone and rescue the princess Andromeda from a sea monster After hearing their anguished and furious cries, Athena was inspired to invent the flute to mimic them.

When the goddess played the flute, however, she discarded it after seeing her reflection; her face distended and became ugly as she played While she purposefully and successfully mimicked the wails of the Gorgons, she also unwittingly imitated their wide and dreadful features. The snake-haired Medusa does not become widespread until the first century B.

The Roman author Ovid describes the mortal Medusa as a beautiful maiden seduced by Poseidon in a temple of Athena.

While these stories sound fantastical today, to the ancient Greeks they were quasi-historical. Myths, as well as the stories recorded by Homer and Hesiod, were considered part of a lost heroic past when men and women interacted with heroes, gods, and the supernatural. Tales from this period were repeated in every medium; the evidence from Greece presents a world saturated with heroes and monsters in poetry, prose, and art.

As such, Medusa was not just a fantastical beast, but part of a shared past and present in the minds of ancient viewers.

She signified a historical menace—the story of Perseus vanquishing and harnessing her energy was not just a story, but a chapter in the shared allegorical and historical record of the Greeks. Just as Medusa exists in multiple types of stories in the mythological record, she is also portrayed in multiple ways in ancient art. Her appearance changes drastically through the centuries, but she is always recognizable due to her striking frontality.

It is rare in Greek art for a figure to face directly out, but in almost all representations of Medusa, despite style and medium, she stares ahead and uncompromisingly confronts the viewer. The term gorgoneion refers to the head and face of Medusa, which was used often as a decorative motif. It is a prolific symbol of her particular power that appears in architecture , vase painting , and metalwork. The gorgoneion was a pervasive image in temple decoration of the Archaic period ca. Perhaps the largest example comes from Temple C built ca.

In Sicily, southern Italy, and mainland Greece, temples were decorated with numerous antefixes ornamental terracotta roof tile covers that bore gorgoneia