Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Land and I'm Joe McCormick, and I was
Speaker 1: about to say it's Saturday, but it's not Saturday though.
Speaker 1: Today is a vault episode. Rob and I are out
Speaker 1: this week for spring break, so we are sharing with
Speaker 1: you an episode that originally published April. This is part
Speaker 1: one of our Medusa series. Yeah, this is a lot
Speaker 1: of fun. Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And hey,
Speaker 1: it's Halloween in April. I'm so excited because we decided
Speaker 1: it's got to be monster time here on Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind, even though it's not October yet. You know,
Speaker 1: we we can't put all the monsters in October. There's
Speaker 1: too much monster. Yeah, what would we talk about the
Speaker 1: rest of the year if we didn't occasionally check in
Speaker 1: with the monstrous denizens of the dark. And we have
Speaker 1: a great one here for a couple of episodes. Because
Speaker 1: there's there's just so much about it, so much about her.
Speaker 1: We're going to be talking about the Gorgon, the most
Speaker 1: famous of the three Gorgons, Medusa. Now Medusa is just
Speaker 1: fascinating and enthralling figure, often above and beyond the source material.
Speaker 1: But perhaps it's the perfect balance of the sort of
Speaker 1: counterintuitive aspects in her being, or or sort of the
Speaker 1: the shadow archetypes that seemed to resonate behind her. But
Speaker 1: she is a long burning monstrosity in the minds of humanity.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean this is I'm so excited about
Speaker 1: this pair of episode. So just to give you a
Speaker 1: little bit of a roadmap, I think in this first
Speaker 1: episode here we're going to be mostly discussing the ancient
Speaker 1: Greek myths of Medusa the origins of those myths, and
Speaker 1: then later on in in part two, we're going to
Speaker 1: explore more of the later interpretations of Medusa and how
Speaker 1: she might apply to some interesting scientific and cultural topics.
Speaker 1: But this, this is such rich territory. I don't know
Speaker 1: if there is a richer monster out there than Medusa,
Speaker 1: other than maybe the vampire archetype. Indeed, this is this
Speaker 1: is fertile soil. And we we've talked about doing an
Speaker 1: episode on Medusa for years. Uh it's one we've kind
Speaker 1: of uh kicked around, but this time we're covering it
Speaker 1: because uh, my son urged me to do it. So
Speaker 1: here we are he's about to turn eight years old,
Speaker 1: and since we couldn't actually go anywhere for spring break
Speaker 1: due to the pandemic, we did kind of a makeshift
Speaker 1: camp here at the house. We did a myth and
Speaker 1: mushrooms camp. So my wife did a lot of mushroom
Speaker 1: related crafts and activities with them, mushroom growing kid and
Speaker 1: going out and you know, looking for mushrooms. And then, uh,
Speaker 1: we both partook of a lot of mythology with him,
Speaker 1: given the boy's recent enthrallment with it due to the
Speaker 1: Percy Jackson novels by Rick Ryerdon I've heard of those,
Speaker 1: but I don't know anything about them. So they have
Speaker 1: something to do with with great myth. Oh yeah, they're
Speaker 1: They're full of Greek myth. You know. It's it's sort
Speaker 1: of a post Terry potter um world where you have
Speaker 1: a you know, a boy, a young boy slash teen
Speaker 1: by the name of Percy Jackson who is Percy Us
Speaker 1: and he's encountering all the gods and monsters you would expect.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it's the book seemed to be a lot
Speaker 1: of fun, uh for the kids. And more to the
Speaker 1: point it it gets them into mythology. I was talking
Speaker 1: with Alison louder Milk about it and she said there
Speaker 1: her son had gone through a phase of being just
Speaker 1: super into Greek mythology because of it. Um, so, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, we were, you know, we really got into
Speaker 1: the mythology and Medusa really stood out to him. So
Speaker 1: of course we watched the original nineteen eight one Clash
Speaker 1: of the Titans, which features a very memorable Medusa sequence.
Speaker 1: We also watched the nineteen nineties series Jim Hinson's The
Speaker 1: Storyteller Greek Myths, which is excellent and features an episode
Speaker 1: about the Gorgon's actually just watched this last night at
Speaker 1: your recommendation. It's uh, it's streaming right now on the Yeah.
Speaker 1: The episode about Perseus and the gorgon medusas is just
Speaker 1: wonderful and it has great narration by Michael Gambon. Is
Speaker 1: that Yeah, he plays the storyteller in this one. Uh. Yeah,
Speaker 1: all four episodes are as of this recording anyway on
Speaker 1: Amazon Prime. So yeah, they're they're they're wonderful, fun you
Speaker 1: get what. Orpheus is one of the episodes of the
Speaker 1: Minotaur and uh and Icarus and Datalus and of course
Speaker 1: you know. With with my son, we also were reading
Speaker 1: a lot of Carol Rose, one of my favorite monster
Speaker 1: chroniclers and Folklori's and the boy himself absolutely demolished Deal
Speaker 1: Larry's Book of Greek Myths, that nineteen sixty two illustrated
Speaker 1: book that I know a lot of us grew up with.
Speaker 1: So there's something I always wonder about with with ancient mythology,
Speaker 1: including Greek myth and and that's that I I since
Speaker 1: a couple of things are intention when you're you're exposing
Speaker 1: children to them. Uh. One is that I feel like
Speaker 1: kids are naturally drawn to mythology, like they just eat
Speaker 1: it up, they love it. But at the same time,
Speaker 1: a lot of ancient myths are just full of obscene
Speaker 1: cruelty and stuff that like, uh, you know, the stuff
Speaker 1: that that I don't always remember from the tellings of
Speaker 1: those myths that I got when I was a kid,
Speaker 1: I must have gotten some kind of sanitized versions of them.
Speaker 1: Often do you find that a lot of that is
Speaker 1: going on? And oh, yeah, yeah, Because on one hand,
Speaker 1: some of the versions that he's he's reading, you know,
Speaker 1: they they've sanitized it to a certain extent. You know,
Speaker 1: certainly with Percy Jackson. Uh, certainly with this this really
Speaker 1: cool comics series called The Olympians that I also recommend
Speaker 1: um and then also the Book of Greek Myths does
Speaker 1: that as well. But that he'll also come up and
Speaker 1: he'll he'll tell me about some just awful detail from
Speaker 1: a myth where somebody, you know, killed their parents or
Speaker 1: their sign or something, and I'm like, oh, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Greek myths, Uh, a lot of horrible stuff happens in them,
Speaker 1: and and a lot of these tales are are tragic.
Speaker 1: And then of course one of the ironies of these
Speaker 1: episodes is that, uh, as we really dive into the
Speaker 1: origin story in the varied origin stories of Medusa, like
Speaker 1: some of them are just very brutal in in a
Speaker 1: way where I probably can't let him listen to these episodes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and I understand that. I mean, I think we'll try
Speaker 1: not to dwell on the most obscene and cruel aspects
Speaker 1: of these myths, but they are ancient myths. A lot
Speaker 1: of ancient myths have obscene in cruel elements, So do
Speaker 1: be prepared that kind of thing is coming. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: if you're listening with children at cetera, Yeah, I know
Speaker 1: that this is it's going to get into some really
Speaker 1: dark territories, so you might want to scout it out first,
Speaker 1: is all I'm saying. Yeah, now, you know we've mentioned
Speaker 1: Jim Hinson Clash of the Titans. These are examples. Will
Speaker 1: come back to it again and again because a lot
Speaker 1: of times these are these are introductions to these worlds.
Speaker 1: Percy Jackson uh is often an introduction to Greek mythology,
Speaker 1: for for for younger folks these days. Um, Dungeon and
Speaker 1: Dragons is another big one. Medusa has long resided within
Speaker 1: the Monster Manual, where she's sort of she sort of
Speaker 1: becomes a species unto herself. Oh, can you play as
Speaker 1: a Medusa? I'm I'm sure somebody there's I'm sure there
Speaker 1: have been some homebrew rules at some point, or even
Speaker 1: some official rules for playing a gorgon. Yeah, but um,
Speaker 1: but I'm not aware of them offhand. It would be
Speaker 1: It's one of those things would be kind of hard
Speaker 1: to h if you really have petrifying gaze, Like how
Speaker 1: do you run like that in a tavern? I'm a
Speaker 1: gorgon bard So all these audiences hate me. So all
Speaker 1: of these are very much downstream versions of the myth
Speaker 1: of Medusa, and some of you might, you know, you
Speaker 1: might have have this sort of instinct to criticize any
Speaker 1: discussion of the mythic creature, to begin with via such
Speaker 1: recent pop culture expressions like Percy Jackson or Clash of
Speaker 1: the Titans, which you know at times certainly plays fast
Speaker 1: and loose with the myth. But one thing we have
Speaker 1: to keep in mind is that pretty much all versions
Speaker 1: of Medusa or any mythological tale are a downstream product,
Speaker 1: the result of centuries upon centuries of oral tradition, various
Speaker 1: tellings and retellings, various written accounts and references, cross references,
Speaker 1: continually and perpetual reshaping the myth and the monster itself
Speaker 1: to tell better stories, to impart specific cultural ideas, or
Speaker 1: to merge with other tales or other belief systems. So yes,
Speaker 1: while watching Clash of the Titans, which uh, you know
Speaker 1: that was that was big for me, introducing me to
Speaker 1: a lot of mythological ideas because it was always on
Speaker 1: td S or T and T back in the day.
Speaker 1: But but watching that it can be frustrating because we
Speaker 1: inevitably recoil from you know, at the tale being told
Speaker 1: one way and not another. Of liberties being taken the
Speaker 1: influence of modern ideas and narratives like Star Wars, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously being in play in the creation of
Speaker 1: this movie. But to a large extent, this was always
Speaker 1: the way with myths. This there is often this illusion
Speaker 1: of solidarity with the Greek, with Greek mythology, because all
Speaker 1: these various tales come to be largely canonized within certain
Speaker 1: major works uh, such as those of say Hesiod and
Speaker 1: Ovid who will discuss us and then much later in
Speaker 1: key modern mythology books. So much in the same way
Speaker 1: that there is no one unchanging you. There is no
Speaker 1: single unchanging Medusa. It is a creature that spans the ages,
Speaker 1: altering its form along the way, sometimes slightly, sometimes in
Speaker 1: major ways, while retaining certain aspects that resonate with us
Speaker 1: on a on a truly universal level. Yeah, I mean, uh,
Speaker 1: it's a very good point. The same way that modern
Speaker 1: authors are sometimes cleaning up myths for you to make
Speaker 1: them more palatable to children, or to make them more
Speaker 1: acceptable to the morals of the day, or even not
Speaker 1: not even just the moral Sometimes myths I think are
Speaker 1: altered just to sort of make them more acceptable to
Speaker 1: the narrative logic that's dominant within a within an era
Speaker 1: um that was going on back then too. Yeah, So
Speaker 1: it's just all I think, always something to keep in mind. Boy.
Speaker 1: It's a hard thing to explain to to a young
Speaker 1: person though, because like my son really wants he wants
Speaker 1: the cannon version of the tail and he's they're into correcting, uh,
Speaker 1: film adaptations and all, and I have to kind of
Speaker 1: explain to them. It's like, well, you know, there's not
Speaker 1: really just one story. There's no you know, there's this this,
Speaker 1: This is a great point. I feel like children are
Speaker 1: naturally cannon pedants? Why is that? Why is it that
Speaker 1: when you're I was when I was a little kid,
Speaker 1: and now I abhor that kind of thinking, but that's
Speaker 1: absolutely how I was when I encounter all kinds of
Speaker 1: mythology as a child, with Star Wars, with you know,
Speaker 1: with everything. Why why are kids obsessive about cannon and
Speaker 1: turn always turned to cannon pedantry? I guess A part
Speaker 1: of a big part of it is, you know, you
Speaker 1: look to your parents and authority figures you know, adjacent
Speaker 1: to your parents, as as being the providers of truth
Speaker 1: of telling you how the world works. And it's it's
Speaker 1: only later that you really begin to understand that it's
Speaker 1: not so cut and dry that your parents didn't have
Speaker 1: it all figured out, that you have to figure some
Speaker 1: out the stuff out for yourself, and something are beyond
Speaker 1: figuring out or just sort of amorphous, like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: the true nature of a mythological being. And then certainly
Speaker 1: if they're if they're really into something like say Harry Potter,
Speaker 1: like there is one version of Harry Potter, you know,
Speaker 1: I mean, it is, it is, it is whatever J. K.
Speaker 1: Rowling says it is. You know. So, um, it's hard
Speaker 1: to compare. You can't really compare that to Greek myth. Well,
Speaker 1: so maybe the place that we should start with here
Speaker 1: is to try to give a basic retelling of the
Speaker 1: main myths of the Gorgon, the main myths and Medusa
Speaker 1: and Perseus um. What with the understanding that there are
Speaker 1: a lot of different versions of these myths, and different
Speaker 1: things will come in that we can explain as we
Speaker 1: go on, but it probably makes sense to start with
Speaker 1: a coherent version of the story. Absolutely, yeah, what uh? What?
Speaker 1: Author David A. Limming in Medusa in the Mirror of
Speaker 1: Time two thousand eighteen book referred to as quote, what
Speaker 1: can reason to be called a canonical myth of Medusa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a decent way of putting it. And
Speaker 1: that David Lemming book you mentioned Medusa in the Mirror
Speaker 1: of Time, that that's going to be one of our
Speaker 1: main sources over the course of these episodes. That's that's
Speaker 1: a great, short, succinct book that captures a lot of
Speaker 1: what's interesting about the Medusa myth. Uh, And so we'll
Speaker 1: be referring to him a lot throughout these episodes. Yeah.
Speaker 1: David A. Lemming is a Narritus Professor of English and
Speaker 1: Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut, and he's an
Speaker 1: author of various works on myth. Yeah, and his his
Speaker 1: this book is is well worth checking out. Before we
Speaker 1: do that, however, we're going to take a quick break,
Speaker 1: but we'll be right back. All right, we're back, So
Speaker 1: it's time to tell the story of Medusa. Now. Of course,
Speaker 1: as we said earlier, there are a lot of versions
Speaker 1: of the Medusa story. This is a theme that evolves
Speaker 1: over time, and we'll discuss the shifting canon as we
Speaker 1: go on, but at the beginning here, it would probably
Speaker 1: be best to start with the most commonly received version
Speaker 1: of the myths of Medusa and Perseus. And I'll try
Speaker 1: to summarize the story as best I can, um, relying
Speaker 1: a lot on on work by David Lemming that we
Speaker 1: mentioned earlier, but also with a bit of poetic color
Speaker 1: from Ovid's telling in the Metamorphoses, the Garthen Dryden translation. Uh.
Speaker 1: That we should note that though Ovid's telling is far
Speaker 1: from the earliest, it's where some of the best known
Speaker 1: aspects of the story come from today. Absolutely, And Uh,
Speaker 1: one other thing I want to point out that will
Speaker 1: become obvious is that, you know, we tend to refer
Speaker 1: to this story is that of of Perseus and Medusa,
Speaker 1: and that it is you know, that is that the
Speaker 1: key conflict, uh, that we tend to focus on, and
Speaker 1: it's the conflict that is brought out in these various
Speaker 1: cinematic adaptations. But I think in some respects it's almost
Speaker 1: more fair to consider it the story of Athena and
Speaker 1: Medusa featuring Perseus. And we'll get into that as we go. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And it's weird how Perseus can, sometimes, even though he's
Speaker 1: ostensibly the hero of the story, feel kind of like
Speaker 1: a little like Paul on or game piece that's being
Speaker 1: moved around by various powers. Yeah, we're just a character
Speaker 1: of chaos that is just occasionally nudged in different directions
Speaker 1: by more powerful entities. Yeah. Okay, So, according to some
Speaker 1: of the most ancient sources of the actual Medusa myth
Speaker 1: as opposed to just sort of like the imagery of Medusa. Um,
Speaker 1: this will be especially the Greek poet Hesiod, who would
Speaker 1: have been writing in the seventh or eighth century b c. E.
Speaker 1: Medusa was originally descended from a family of primordial gods
Speaker 1: and monsters. The original being in this lineage of gods
Speaker 1: and monsters was Gaya, who is the personification of the
Speaker 1: Earth itself. And at first Guya was without a mate,
Speaker 1: so she conceived a son parthenogenetically meaning virgin birth, much
Speaker 1: like an island stranded komodo dragon. And this son that
Speaker 1: she gave birth to was no as Pontus, and he
Speaker 1: became her counterpart. She was the personification of the Earth
Speaker 1: and Pontus was the personification of the ocean. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: this is the sort of thing is not uncommon among
Speaker 1: primordial mythic beings. Uh. So, then together Guya and her
Speaker 1: son Pontus conceived more children, including the two figures who
Speaker 1: would become the parents of Medusa. And these figures were
Speaker 1: focus the sea god, who Homer called the Old Man
Speaker 1: of the Sea. He's sometimes depicted with claws. He was
Speaker 1: generally kind of a fishman, crab person type thing. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like the Crabby character on a SpongeBob basically.
Speaker 1: I'm actually not familiar with SpongeBob canon. I can't go
Speaker 1: in there, but there's a fishman, crab person monster. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The character is Mr Crabs who runs um runs a restaurant.
Speaker 1: And he's voiced by Clancy Brown. Oh wow, Clancy Brown.
Speaker 1: He was on SpongeBob. Oh yeah, he's he's a major
Speaker 1: part of it. Well, I'm glad to hear he's doing voicework. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he has a great voice. It's a great to see that.
Speaker 1: You know, he lends it to a number of different projects. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we gotta focus the Old Man of the Sea.
Speaker 1: And then on the other hand, we've got Ketto or Keto,
Speaker 1: which is where we get our classic terminology for whales,
Speaker 1: the idea of the ketas or the SETAs, and and
Speaker 1: Keto was a giant sea monster and together focus and
Speaker 1: Ketto produced a whole mess of monsters from their union.
Speaker 1: So first of all, you've got the gray and this
Speaker 1: is a set of triplets who were all born with
Speaker 1: gray hair. They're described as hags who share one eye
Speaker 1: and one tooth between the three of them, and their
Speaker 1: gray hair was believed to embody the foam of heavy
Speaker 1: seas during a storm. Yeah. They are often depicted in
Speaker 1: TV and film adaptations of them De Deuce's story. You
Speaker 1: see them in Clash of the Titans, Hintson, Percy Jackson
Speaker 1: and others. My son is really into them, and the
Speaker 1: other day he quizzed me on what their names were,
Speaker 1: at which I had no idea, uh, but then he
Speaker 1: spouted them off. They are Dino, Inyo and the Fredo.
Speaker 1: When there are three anyway, so in some tellings there
Speaker 1: are only two. Yeah, and I think their names I
Speaker 1: don't recall exactly what they translate to, but they have
Speaker 1: something to do with the qualities of the sea. Their
Speaker 1: names translate to things like depth and terror and stuff. Now,
Speaker 1: another offspring of this union of of Forcus and Kato
Speaker 1: or Quito is Thusa, who became the mother of Polyphemus.
Speaker 1: Polyphemus of course, is the Cyclops in the Odyssey who
Speaker 1: discus stabs in the eye. Uh. And then you've got
Speaker 1: a kidna, the she Viper. This is a woman who
Speaker 1: was half snake. Yeah. And sometimes she's credited as being
Speaker 1: the mother of Monsters and other tellings, mother of Medusa
Speaker 1: even and I guess you know, there's a little bit
Speaker 1: of a kidna in the recreation of of of the
Speaker 1: gorgon Ian Clash of the Titans Ray Harry Housen's fabulous sequence.
Speaker 1: Oh is she half snake in that? Yeah? She's she's
Speaker 1: depicted as being um a snake from the waist down,
Speaker 1: you know, having been kind of a serpentine centaur uh
Speaker 1: and and then being more traditionally a gorgon from the
Speaker 1: waist up, but without the wings. Okay. So another one
Speaker 1: of the offspring here is one that's familiar to us,
Speaker 1: is going to be Scilla, the the sea monster with
Speaker 1: many heads, who swallowed sailors who came too close to
Speaker 1: her rocks. And she's classically the counterpart of Charybdis. Right,
Speaker 1: So you've got this pair of hazards in the ocean
Speaker 1: that is difficult to thread a pathway through. Charybdis of course,
Speaker 1: is like a whirlpool. Yeah, and then, of course, finally
Speaker 1: you've got the Gorgons, and the Gorgon's are a trio
Speaker 1: of sisters whose name comes from the word gor ghos,
Speaker 1: which means frightening or terrifying. Medusa is one of the
Speaker 1: three Gorgon sisters. The names of the other two are
Speaker 1: Thinno and Urially, and curiously, we are told by multiple
Speaker 1: ancient sources that while the other two Gorgon sisters are immortal, tragically,
Speaker 1: Medusa is not immortal. Hes He had writ specifically that
Speaker 1: her fate was a sad one, for she was mortal,
Speaker 1: though it's I'm not sure if it's ever explained anywhere
Speaker 1: why specifically she and only she was mortal. Yeah, nothing
Speaker 1: ever seems, at least in anything I've read, seems to
Speaker 1: be really made of that fact. Like it's not like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: that means that Perseus is forever hounded by these immortal
Speaker 1: gore guns or anything like that. It's just kind of
Speaker 1: here's the facts. It seems like one of those things
Speaker 1: that might have been when people were trying to stitch
Speaker 1: together disparate versions of a of a myth cycle that
Speaker 1: that had incompatible facts. You might just paper that over
Speaker 1: by inserting a little like, by the way, she was
Speaker 1: mortal for some reason. Yeah, yeah, if someone was like,
Speaker 1: well I thought they were immortal. No, No, she was mortal,
Speaker 1: so she's dead. She was the only one though. Yeah. Anyway,
Speaker 1: according to a fragmentary document called the Shield of Heracles,
Speaker 1: the three Gorgon sisters would talk about with serpents hanging
Speaker 1: from their girdles. So imagine a kind of Batman utility built,
Speaker 1: but all the pouches are replaced with snakes, and the
Speaker 1: belt snakes would lear and they would flick their tongues
Speaker 1: that anyone who beheld them. Yeah, and I have to
Speaker 1: say depictions of this are cooler and grizzly are looking
Speaker 1: than it sounds, because that sounds cool enough for you. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I know it doesn't sound cool when I read it initially,
Speaker 1: because it's like, oh, and that she had they had
Speaker 1: snakes for belts. That just sounds kind of, I don't know,
Speaker 1: kind of lame. But then you see an image and
Speaker 1: it's like these snakes you're hanging off and you know,
Speaker 1: and maybe writhing a bit, and there's there's perhaps a
Speaker 1: sense of the we won't get into this until the
Speaker 1: second episode. But uh, you know, you get into some
Speaker 1: of these Freudian concepts of what Medusa is all about,
Speaker 1: and you look at an image like that and you
Speaker 1: can you can see it. But again, more on that
Speaker 1: in the second episode. Yeah, it should not come as
Speaker 1: a surprise that some people, especially Freud, read a lot
Speaker 1: of genital sygnificance into the depiction of the snake bearing sisters.
Speaker 1: Here now, writing of the three Gorgon sisters, Apollodorus says
Speaker 1: that their heads were twined about with the scales of dragons,
Speaker 1: and that they had golden wings or I've also seen
Speaker 1: it said sometimes bronze wings, and also great tusks, like
Speaker 1: a swine's tusks. Yeah, those wings are often forgotten in
Speaker 1: art and you know, other depictions, cinematic or otherwise. I
Speaker 1: think in part because that's just one more thing you
Speaker 1: have to try and bring to life, either with effects
Speaker 1: or otherwise. Though Hinson does have the wings in his version.
Speaker 1: I think also sometimes, as with the Clash adaptation, there's
Speaker 1: an attempt to focus more on those serpentine details, you know,
Speaker 1: like people want hybrid city, but they don't want to
Speaker 1: deal with a chimera um uh, you know, generally speaking, chimera.
Speaker 1: Of course, for the most part, you don't see a
Speaker 1: lot of like cinematic adaptations of the mythical chimera either.
Speaker 1: We want half and half, we don't want uh you know,
Speaker 1: three different types of animal physiologies merged together. Well, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, I want, at what point do you start
Speaker 1: pushing from minimally counterintuitive into just like too complicated, too weird? Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think that's a big part of it too. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So anyway, you've got these three terrifying sisters, all with
Speaker 1: snakes of England. They've got scaly dragon heads, they've got
Speaker 1: wild boar tusks and huge metal wings. And in this telling,
Speaker 1: Medusa is quite clearly a primordial monster, right, She's ancient.
Speaker 1: She springs from a line of beings with deep roots
Speaker 1: in the earth and sea and natural forces. And it's
Speaker 1: in this version of Medusa it's easy to see similarities
Speaker 1: here with other primordial monster gods who embody or spring
Speaker 1: from embodiments, especially of the sea, right like Tia Mott,
Speaker 1: the saltwater dragon of ancient Babylonian myth, particularly in the
Speaker 1: Uma a leash who spits poison and death upon the
Speaker 1: world to create. It's creatures that are kind of xenomorph
Speaker 1: like in that they have acid for blood. Yeah. And
Speaker 1: I think in all this to remembering the salt water
Speaker 1: origin of these creatures, we have to remember the you know,
Speaker 1: the importance of sailing and fishing in the Mesopotamian and
Speaker 1: in the know, the Greek world that we're discussing here,
Speaker 1: like the terror of the sea, the risks of the sea,
Speaker 1: the unknown depths of the sea, you know, all of
Speaker 1: these impacting the psyche and the creativity of of of
Speaker 1: early people. Well, I think it's no coincidence that Poseidon
Speaker 1: is maybe the most like cruel and capricious and bad
Speaker 1: tempered of all the Olympian gods, right because the sea
Speaker 1: is a place of great bounty and promise, but it's
Speaker 1: also full of chaos and death and and it can't
Speaker 1: be it can't necessarily be predicted. The sea itself is
Speaker 1: bad tempered. Yeah. Yeah, it really cannot be trusted. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you see that with with arguably with the gods
Speaker 1: in general, but especially with Poseidon. But Okay, that's the
Speaker 1: version of Medusa where she she's from this primordial lineage
Speaker 1: of ancient creatures and monsters there are other tellings in
Speaker 1: which it seems like Medusa was once maybe a human
Speaker 1: or at least something more vaguely humanoid like. One of
Speaker 1: the main examples is the version of the Medusa myth
Speaker 1: that we get presented in Ovid's Metamorphoses, which is probably
Speaker 1: the most familiar version of the myth to us today,
Speaker 1: probably the most canonical version, and in this it says
Speaker 1: that Medusa was once a beautiful young woman with many suitors.
Speaker 1: She was widely admired for her beauty and her glamorous hair.
Speaker 1: Um Avid writes, quote, Medusa once had charms to gain
Speaker 1: her love a rival crowd of envious lovers strove they
Speaker 1: who have seen her own they ne'er did trace more
Speaker 1: moving features in a sweeter face. Yet above all her
Speaker 1: length of hair they own in golden ringlets, waved and
Speaker 1: graceful shown. So the this goes very much against like
Speaker 1: the the version of Medusa we were just talking about,
Speaker 1: who's like this, uh, you know who, who's sort of
Speaker 1: monster to the core and monster from the beginning. But
Speaker 1: in this version of the story, tragically Medusa catches the
Speaker 1: attention of the cruel and violent god Poseidon, the lord
Speaker 1: of the sea, the commander of natural disaster is like
Speaker 1: earthquakes and storms. And in Avid's telling, Poseidon comes down
Speaker 1: to the earth and he rapes Medusa in the midst
Speaker 1: of the temple of Pallas Athena, the virgin goddess of wisdom.
Speaker 1: And this attack represents a desecration of Athena's temple. And
Speaker 1: so because her sacred home is defiled, Athena becomes furious.
Speaker 1: And you, you, of course, do not want to be
Speaker 1: on Athena's bad side. After the attack is over, Athena
Speaker 1: takes out her revenge horribly, not on her uncle Poseidon,
Speaker 1: but on Medusa. Yeah, it's as if Poseidon is is
Speaker 1: kind of untouchable and us, Yeah, based one of the
Speaker 1: Big Three after all. And uh, you know, I think
Speaker 1: Arachne would remind us that the gods as a whole
Speaker 1: are cruel and violent. You might remember, listeners, Arachne was
Speaker 1: turned into a spider for disrespecting the gods, namely Athena,
Speaker 1: of whom she lost a weaving contest to um. But yeah, this, this,
Speaker 1: this particular telling of god and possibly mortal interactions really
Speaker 1: smacks of cruelty. I should note a couple of things here, now, Uh,
Speaker 1: Ovid chiefly contributes or at least records, the sexual assault
Speaker 1: aspect of this story in the classical tradition, while Hesiod
Speaker 1: and uh Apahollodorus keep it at lay with you know,
Speaker 1: they lay together, and and uh and that offended Athena,
Speaker 1: while others tellers of the tale have described the union
Speaker 1: as an act of seduction, such as folklore Carol Rose. Now,
Speaker 1: I don't know how much of that is just sanitizing
Speaker 1: it again, a little bit like we've said, you know,
Speaker 1: you don't taking some of the more horrific details out
Speaker 1: of the story for specially younger readers. Um, but uh,
Speaker 1: I just I thought that was important to note. Apollodorus, however,
Speaker 1: added the wrinkle that Medusa had previously claimed that her
Speaker 1: beauty matched that of Athena. So we get into territory
Speaker 1: where from the point of view of the gods, this
Speaker 1: is just mortals paying for their vanity one more time,
Speaker 1: so that it's not just Athena is blaming the victim
Speaker 1: for the crime, but Athena also has it in for
Speaker 1: the victim because she previously had the gall to say
Speaker 1: that she was on Athena's level. Yeah, exactly, And and
Speaker 1: so Athena, she turns her fury against Medusa. Here of
Speaker 1: it again, writes the bashful goddess that's talking about Athena.
Speaker 1: The bashful goddess turned her eyes away nor during such
Speaker 1: bold impurity survey. But on the ravished virgin vengeance takes
Speaker 1: her shining hair is changed to hissing snakes. These in
Speaker 1: her aegis Palace joys to bear the hissing snakes, her
Speaker 1: foes more sure and snare than they did lovers once
Speaker 1: when shining hair. It's interesting that he describes Athena as bactful. Uh,
Speaker 1: it's not great first description when it comes to mind. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean there's this weird thing the way Athena is
Speaker 1: depicted as I mean, it's often emphasized that she is
Speaker 1: like there's something pure about her, that she is the
Speaker 1: virgin goddess, they say, um and so, so that's sometimes
Speaker 1: described as this weird quality of like shyness or something.
Speaker 1: But of course we know that Athena is quite bold
Speaker 1: and quite powerful and has great uh wisdom and strength
Speaker 1: and rage and you do not want to be her enemy. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I hope she didn't listen to the podcast. I don't
Speaker 1: know if we're really portraying her in the best light here. Now,
Speaker 1: not a lot of the gods come out of this
Speaker 1: looking great. Um. But so anyway, this is how Medusa
Speaker 1: becomes a monster. Athena transforms her into this hateful mockery
Speaker 1: of her former self. She's once known for her beauty,
Speaker 1: you know, her curly locks of hair. Now she's a
Speaker 1: creature with slithering snakes for hair, a creature so hideous
Speaker 1: that anyone who looks upon her would instantly be turned
Speaker 1: to stone. Yeah, it's it's a it's a weird and
Speaker 1: dark origin story, but you know, here we are. But
Speaker 1: so beyond her tragic origin story, Medusa is probably best
Speaker 1: known as the monster, the sort of dragon figure of
Speaker 1: the Perseus myth, And so I think maybe now we
Speaker 1: should turn to the myth of Perseus's journey. And one
Speaker 1: of my main sources here, of course, is going to
Speaker 1: be that book by David Lemming, which provides an excellent
Speaker 1: overview of and synthesis of the different sources on the story.
Speaker 1: Like a great many heroic narratives, the story of Perseus
Speaker 1: actually begins with a miraculous conception under dire circumstances. So,
Speaker 1: once upon a time, and the ancient Greek city of Argos,
Speaker 1: which is on the eastern end of the Peloponnese. It's
Speaker 1: often said to have been the oldest Greek city or
Speaker 1: one of the oldest Greek cities. The city was ruled
Speaker 1: by a fish and paranoid king named a Chrysis, and
Speaker 1: a crisis had a daughter named Danny, but a Chrysis
Speaker 1: he longs to have a son to carry on his line,
Speaker 1: and one day a Chrysis visits an oracle to ask
Speaker 1: whether he will ever be able to father a son,
Speaker 1: and instead, the oracle warns him that he will not
Speaker 1: have a son, but his daughter Danny will, and the
Speaker 1: boy she gives birth to will one day murder him.
Speaker 1: Now how many Greek stories start with an oracle and
Speaker 1: then they turn out good? Yeah, it's like, why would
Speaker 1: you visit an oracle at all? It just never works out, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's always some like ironic point about trying
Speaker 1: to avoid faith. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's really
Speaker 1: a story we continue to tell to this day. You know,
Speaker 1: just the idea that if you, yeah, you don't really
Speaker 1: want to know what's coming, because it's only going to
Speaker 1: make things worse. You're not going to be able to
Speaker 1: really duck fate or you're ye're just gonna, you know,
Speaker 1: double down on the horrors to come. Uh yeah, it's
Speaker 1: I mean, it's it's it's one of these stories resonate
Speaker 1: so strongly with us. Yeah. Uh So, of course, a Chrysis,
Speaker 1: being selfish and kind of paranoid, he fears for his
Speaker 1: own life, so he resolves to prevent the prophecy from
Speaker 1: ever coming true. And he says, Okay, Danny right now
Speaker 1: is childless at the time he gets the warning, she
Speaker 1: doesn't have a son yet, and so the Chrysiest figures
Speaker 1: he can escape his fate if he just locks her
Speaker 1: in a prison cell forever. I've seen the prison characterized
Speaker 1: in different ways. Sometimes it's a tower. I've seen it
Speaker 1: elsewhere characterized as like some kind of subterranean dungeon, or
Speaker 1: even a box of bronze. But anyway, So, of course,
Speaker 1: the crisis believes that by imprisoning his daughter like this,
Speaker 1: she will stay childless forever. But Zeus, the king of
Speaker 1: the gods who reigns in the sky, he sees the
Speaker 1: young woman locked away in her prison cell, and he
Speaker 1: comes down to her in the form of a shower
Speaker 1: of gold from the clouds, and Danny conceives a child.
Speaker 1: This is her child as a boy, and she gives
Speaker 1: him the name Perseus. Uh. This part is yet another
Speaker 1: recurring theme in Greek mythology. Of course, God coming down
Speaker 1: and having sex with a mortal woman to father a
Speaker 1: child to become a type of demigod or a son
Speaker 1: of God. Here. Yeah, that's this is also one of
Speaker 1: the key plot points in those Percy Jackson books is
Speaker 1: that all the the the young characters are the children
Speaker 1: of the gods that have been in the modern world
Speaker 1: created sired the same way and kind of you know
Speaker 1: left uh, you know, none of them have any real
Speaker 1: connection with their divine parents and have a lot of
Speaker 1: mixed up feelings concerning them. Well yeah, I mean, the
Speaker 1: gods do not tend to be very good parents here.
Speaker 1: So like, so you Perseus, Now, this boy is half
Speaker 1: human and he's half king of the gods. And so
Speaker 1: Perseus begins to grow up in this prison cell with
Speaker 1: his mother, and at some point a Chrisius discovers this
Speaker 1: boy and prison with Danny and crisis. Of course, is
Speaker 1: still in fear for his life, and so he says, okay,
Speaker 1: I've got to I've got to be more more extreme
Speaker 1: even now. So he has Danny and the young Perseus
Speaker 1: locked inside a box and tossed into the ocean to die.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. Living describes this box as quote a sort
Speaker 1: of arc as in the Ark of the Covenant, and
Speaker 1: indeed that's often how it is depicted, including in the
Speaker 1: Clash of the Titan and also in that Jim Hinson adaptation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the strategy is often presented as a kind of indirect
Speaker 1: murder method. It's like, hey, I didn't kill them, I
Speaker 1: just left them to their fate. Uh. It seems like
Speaker 1: a kind of weird moral sensibility that makes a real
Speaker 1: distinction there. But he a lot of characters in Greek
Speaker 1: cultures seem to think along these lines. Yeah. It's as
Speaker 1: if to say, for legal purposes, the ocean is the
Speaker 1: one that will murder you, right, um. Yeah, But of
Speaker 1: course Danny and Perseus didn't die. Instead, while they're floating
Speaker 1: around in this box, they are rescued by a fisherman
Speaker 1: named Dictus, who is the brother of Polydectes, the king
Speaker 1: of the island of Seraphos. And there on the island
Speaker 1: of Seraphos, Danny and Perseus come under the protection of
Speaker 1: Polydectes court under under the protection of his house. Now
Speaker 1: eventually the king Polydectes here. He turns out to be
Speaker 1: a pretty wicked king too. He decides that he wants
Speaker 1: to marry Danny, but she refuses him, and Perseus supports
Speaker 1: his mother in her refusal of the king's hand. So
Speaker 1: Polydectes what he wants a way to get rid of
Speaker 1: young Perseus, to sort of get him out of the picture,
Speaker 1: to improve his chances of of wedding Danny. And a
Speaker 1: great opportunity actually presents itself. Let's send Perseus out on
Speaker 1: a suicide mission. Polydectes sends Perseus out with the task
Speaker 1: of killing the mom Sir Medusa, who is of course
Speaker 1: one of the dreaded Gorgon sisters, and to bring back
Speaker 1: her severed head. Now, this version that you just said,
Speaker 1: this makes the most sense, right, Like Percy's wants to
Speaker 1: protect his mother, Polydectes wants to marry her, and he's like, sure,
Speaker 1: I'll leave your your mother alone if you bring me
Speaker 1: the head of the Medusa. Ha ha. But and the
Speaker 1: typical version of the story is that Polydectes just demands
Speaker 1: some fine horses, like, oh, I need some just ridiculously
Speaker 1: nice horses. Uh, let's see you get those. And then
Speaker 1: Perseus just leaps up like a final bidder in a
Speaker 1: Hollywood auction scene, you know, where they just outrageously outbid
Speaker 1: everybody by like a million dollars and gives himself the
Speaker 1: suicide mission. He's like, I'll tell you what, I'll bring
Speaker 1: you the head of a gorgon, and um In Polydectes
Speaker 1: is like, okay, um, you know, I was thinking about
Speaker 1: trying to send you on a suicide mission, but if
Speaker 1: you just want to propose one, go for it. Um.
Speaker 1: So he's He's of course delighted and accepts. Yeah. But
Speaker 1: but it's like Percy's who's just who comes up with
Speaker 1: the idea in in most of these tellings where it's
Speaker 1: just like, i'll kill the gorgon. How about that? Yeah? So, actually,
Speaker 1: I think the way it works as Polydectes he tries
Speaker 1: to ruse where he says, actually, I'm not going to
Speaker 1: marry your mom. Don't worry about it. Chill out. I'm
Speaker 1: gonna marry some other woman. But if I marry this
Speaker 1: other lady, I'm gonna need some good Mayor's as a
Speaker 1: wedding present. And of course Perseus what he doesn't have
Speaker 1: any money to go out horse trading and get horses
Speaker 1: for a wedding present, so what does he have to offer.
Speaker 1: Basically just has his courage, so he's like, hey, hey,
Speaker 1: I know I'll go find a prime primordial snake lady.
Speaker 1: I'll kill her. I'll bring you her head. And again,
Speaker 1: of course this works out great for Polydectes because Polydectes
Speaker 1: knows that the gaze of Medusa turns men into stone.
Speaker 1: So this is an easy way to be rid of Perseus.
Speaker 1: Here's one less pesky kid getting in the way of
Speaker 1: his his dating game. I mean, I criticized Perseus because hey,
Speaker 1: it's really easy to hate perseus um based on all
Speaker 1: the details of the story. But but I guess you
Speaker 1: can see this as being really clever on his part
Speaker 1: because he chooses something, He chooses a task that is
Speaker 1: difficult enough or even seemingly impossible enough that Polydectes agrees
Speaker 1: to it. But also he has he has enough confidence
Speaker 1: that he can somehow pull it off, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: I think again, one of the most common personality traits
Speaker 1: we see in these heroes of old is just kind
Speaker 1: of like endless confidence. You know, you should have no
Speaker 1: reason to think that you can kill the gorgon Medusa,
Speaker 1: but he just, yeah, I can do it. Yeah, I'll
Speaker 1: figure it out. Stuff just kind of falls into my lap.
Speaker 1: That's how it works. But but either way you kind
Speaker 1: of look at it. Medusa is not even the adversary
Speaker 1: that is thrust upon him by a cruel king, which
Speaker 1: is which is what we see like saying the Labors
Speaker 1: of Hercules. She is instead just out there on the
Speaker 1: edge of the world, minding her own business, already punished harshly,
Speaker 1: when percy Is simply decides that killing her would be
Speaker 1: an ideal feet to accomplish his ends. Yeah, she's not
Speaker 1: doing anything. It's not it's not like Baowolf, like she's
Speaker 1: raiding the hall or something. She's just on the other
Speaker 1: side of the world. Yeah, Like Clash of the Titans, Like,
Speaker 1: one of the things it does is it retrofits the
Speaker 1: story where the head of the Medusa is the thing
Speaker 1: we need to overcome some other adversary or to get
Speaker 1: through some some great horror that's coming um, which you know,
Speaker 1: I think makes it a little more palpable to to
Speaker 1: modern audiences. But again, looks like you said, we have
Speaker 1: to we have to think about what the model of
Speaker 1: the hero is that we're dealing with in these ancient versions. Right,
Speaker 1: all right, we need to take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: we'll be right back with more than and we're back.
Speaker 1: So Percius sets out on his quest, and along the
Speaker 1: way he's given aid by the god Hermes, who is
Speaker 1: of course the messenger of the gods who flies between
Speaker 1: worlds on his winged sandals, and of course also by
Speaker 1: Athena popping back up in the story yet again to
Speaker 1: to just never stop spitting calamity in Medusa's direction. Yeah,
Speaker 1: as if Medusa hadn't suffered enough for angering Athena, the
Speaker 1: gray a had goddess instantly jumps into help Perseus out
Speaker 1: in his quest to murder her. Right, Uh, And it's
Speaker 1: worth considering that there are sort of double alliances here. Like, first, yes,
Speaker 1: it really does seem just kind of like Athena hates
Speaker 1: Medusa and is always making things worse for her. But second,
Speaker 1: also Perseus is Athena's demi god half brother. Right, they
Speaker 1: both share Zeus as a father, and both were conceived
Speaker 1: in these unconventional mythological ways Athena springs from the head
Speaker 1: of Zeus. H So, I think you could see Perseus
Speaker 1: as a kind of champion or representative of the interests
Speaker 1: of the Olympian pantheon down here on Earth, like the
Speaker 1: Zeus administration has as an agent on Earth Perseus, and
Speaker 1: you're kind of going to see that in the way
Speaker 1: that he fights against and causes trouble for these other
Speaker 1: primordial non Olympian beings, Like the enemies of the Zeus
Speaker 1: administration will just get endless grief from Perseus. Like Perseus,
Speaker 1: I need you to go on Network News this evening,
Speaker 1: just make all the rounds and just verbally attack all
Speaker 1: of my enemies, all the all the Titans, all the monsters.
Speaker 1: You just let them have it, right, anybody from the
Speaker 1: line of Guia, any Titans out there, Yeah, just go
Speaker 1: at them. But anyway, Percy, so he goes on this
Speaker 1: journey with multiple stops, so we don't have to get
Speaker 1: into all the stops on the journey right here, there's
Speaker 1: some that are more Germane to what we're talking about
Speaker 1: than others. I think, Yeah, but if we were to
Speaker 1: make a montage on it, basically Perseus needs to I
Speaker 1: d the Gorgon's he needs to gear up with magical
Speaker 1: weapons to fight them, find out where they are exactly,
Speaker 1: and of course travel there. Right. That's that's a good summary.
Speaker 1: So at one point Perseus does encounter the three gray sisters,
Speaker 1: the gray haired hags who share the one eye and
Speaker 1: the one tooth between them and perseus strategy here is
Speaker 1: quite clear, for he steals their one eye. Just seems
Speaker 1: which just I mean, he sounds just like such a bully.
Speaker 1: There's like three hags who share one eye, and he
Speaker 1: takes their one eye, and he uses the eye to
Speaker 1: get leveraged basically to leverage information out of them, specifically
Speaker 1: about how to acquire some pieces of magic equipment that
Speaker 1: he needs. Yeah, he's direct and to the point. Now,
Speaker 1: I and I love how in some versions of the
Speaker 1: tale Perseus returns their eye and tooth, because sometimes he
Speaker 1: takes the tooth as well afterwards, and other times he
Speaker 1: just keeps them right. And some modern tellings find a
Speaker 1: middle ground by having him return the eye but just
Speaker 1: like throwing it into the room somewhere where they have
Speaker 1: to like scramble for it, So he's not being you know,
Speaker 1: a complete meaning about it, like he's not just gonna
Speaker 1: keep the eye forever, squash it or whatever. But he
Speaker 1: doesn't just hand it back like okay, business concluded. I
Speaker 1: don't know something about it just seems like so classically
Speaker 1: bullysh It's like the bully stealing the kids glasses. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: four uys need his glasses. Yeah. Anyway, so we know
Speaker 1: he's got to get this magical equipment, so we has
Speaker 1: to go to the realm of the Nymphs to get
Speaker 1: some of it, and he ends up acquiring a number
Speaker 1: of powerful objects and tools to to help him in
Speaker 1: his quest, including a pair of winged sandals, a leather
Speaker 1: bag that's known as a kipsist, sometimes translated as a wallet,
Speaker 1: but I think this is best understood as like a
Speaker 1: sack of some kind, a helmet from hades that confers
Speaker 1: the power of invisibility, a magic sickle made of unbreakable adamantine,
Speaker 1: and a shield that is so well polished that its
Speaker 1: face is as a mirror. I mean, he really gears
Speaker 1: up for this quest, and the thing is like, if
Speaker 1: these are magical items, if this was dungeons and dragons,
Speaker 1: I don't think he'd even be able to attune to
Speaker 1: this many items. I think there's like a three attunement limit. Uh.
Speaker 1: And he's just like just just geared up to the gills,
Speaker 1: which high power magical items in video game terms. I
Speaker 1: was thinking this might be described as over leveling. Yes,
Speaker 1: but anyway, once he has all the weapons he needs, uh,
Speaker 1: and once he discovers where he needs to go, percy
Speaker 1: As uses the winged Sandals to fly to the dwelling
Speaker 1: place of the Gorgon's which is someplace out at the
Speaker 1: edge of the world. Yeah. I love how Limbing describes
Speaker 1: this place is a quote a kind of underworld at
Speaker 1: the end of the ocean. Yeah. In more rationalist accounts,
Speaker 1: it's described as a place kind of far out to
Speaker 1: the west, like a series of islands in the Atlantic Ocean.
Speaker 1: But wherever this otherworldly places. Once he gets there, Perseus
Speaker 1: knows he remembers in advance that he cannot look at
Speaker 1: Medusa or he will be turned to stone, so he
Speaker 1: uses the mirror faced shield to see her as he
Speaker 1: sneaks up upon the sisters while they're sleeping, And they're
Speaker 1: sleeping among a garden of stones that are currently the
Speaker 1: remains of men and animals who once looked Medusa in
Speaker 1: the eye. Yeah, and this is a haunting uh setting
Speaker 1: that that is really brought to wonderful life. And in
Speaker 1: some of these adaptations again that the clash of the
Speaker 1: Titans uh sequence with Perseus and Medusa is just uh
Speaker 1: so wonderfully brought to life totally though. One of the
Speaker 1: things that again it's like how it gets adapted to
Speaker 1: our modern sensibilities. Modern adaptations tend to make it some
Speaker 1: kind of heroic fight against this threatening enemy. I mean
Speaker 1: in the story, he sneaks up on the sisters while
Speaker 1: they're sleeping, you know, they're they're taking a nap, and
Speaker 1: Perseus comes up to Medusa and uses the magic sickle
Speaker 1: to chop off her head and then put it in
Speaker 1: a leather sack. Yeah, and then run before the other
Speaker 1: two Organs can really do much about it. Which, yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't. It's not very cinematic, it's not very um,
Speaker 1: it's not intense. You know. The the Ray Harry House
Speaker 1: and sequence, for instance, makes it where it's more like
Speaker 1: Perseus is hunted by the monster because that ultimately creates
Speaker 1: more tension you know, for our for us is as
Speaker 1: viewers and resonates more with with our our modern expectations. Uh,
Speaker 1: but but not so much with like the role of
Speaker 1: the Greek hero. Yeah. So Strangely, when Medusa has killed,
Speaker 1: it's noted that a couple of mythical beings just sort
Speaker 1: of erupt out of her dead body. One of them
Speaker 1: is the winged horse Pegasus, and the other is a
Speaker 1: warrior known as Chris or Yeah, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: would himself go on to father the three headed monster. Garon.
Speaker 1: The Limbing notes that there's some indication that Medusa somehow
Speaker 1: unnaturally birthed these creatures via the parentage of Poseidon. Fair enough,
Speaker 1: I mean, we're up to our waist in a in
Speaker 1: a pretty weird story. That doesn't really make it too
Speaker 1: much weirder, uh to imagine that. For some reason, when
Speaker 1: I was reading about this, I was reminded so much
Speaker 1: of the ending of The Fly Too, where where like
Speaker 1: the monster is kind of defeated and you end up
Speaker 1: with like two entities emerging from it. Though in that
Speaker 1: like one is pure and one is monstrous, and this
Speaker 1: one like both are beautiful, Like it's a seemingly normal
Speaker 1: humanoid hero and a beautiful flying horse. So I don't know,
Speaker 1: you know, the original Fly, I just realized would fit
Speaker 1: in quite well with a of its metamorphoses. Right, It's
Speaker 1: a story about a change in the body brought on
Speaker 1: by Hubris. Oh man, that's perfect anyway. So back to
Speaker 1: Perseus a Medusa. So Medusa is dead, head chopped off.
Speaker 1: Perseus has got it, and he crams the head into
Speaker 1: the bag into the Kivisus and now Medusa's Gorgon's sisters
Speaker 1: thin Oh and your Reality. They are awakened, and of
Speaker 1: course they become enraged because they see their sister dead,
Speaker 1: and they give chase, trying to kill the boy. But
Speaker 1: fortunately Perseus still has some gear. He uses the helm
Speaker 1: of invisibility and the winged Sandals to escape them. Now
Speaker 1: Medusa is dead, and the story is far from over.
Speaker 1: On the journey home with the Gorgon's head in the sack,
Speaker 1: Perseus stops to take part in several other adventures. A
Speaker 1: major one that we're not going to get into in
Speaker 1: depth is uh this part of the story where he
Speaker 1: rescues a princess named Andromeda from a dragon and ends
Speaker 1: up marrying her, but also as part of the story
Speaker 1: where where the head of Medusa becomes very relevant. Perseus
Speaker 1: comes across Atlas Atlas is of course a a Titan.
Speaker 1: You know, he was one of the original race of
Speaker 1: Titans that were defeated in a war by the gods
Speaker 1: led by Zeus, and so now he's the sort of
Speaker 1: like defeated prisoner of war type figure who is tortured
Speaker 1: after losing this war by the gods by being forced
Speaker 1: to hold up the sky for eternity. And when Perseus
Speaker 1: arrives in Atlas's lands, Atlas is obviously not a fan
Speaker 1: of course. First of all, Atlas is suffering after his
Speaker 1: people lost this war to Zeus, and Perseus claims Zeus
Speaker 1: is his father. Second, like, who is this kid with
Speaker 1: a bloody leather bag? But uh so, because he feels
Speaker 1: not welcomed by Atlas, Perseus pulls the severed head of
Speaker 1: Medusa out of the bag and shows it to Atlas.
Speaker 1: Atlas looks on the head and he turns to stone,
Speaker 1: and in this form, Atlas becomes a mountain range that
Speaker 1: holds up the sky. Then, when Percy has finally arrives
Speaker 1: back home with his bride Andromeda, he uses Medusa's head
Speaker 1: to turn the wicked king Polydectes and his servants into stone,
Speaker 1: and he sets his mother free. So really, Percy's is
Speaker 1: just going on a freaking rampage with the Gorgon's head,
Speaker 1: just petrifying anyone he likes, even a Titan before finally, uh,
Speaker 1: you know, eventually handing it back, in which we'll get
Speaker 1: to uh fun fact um. Atlas shows up in that
Speaker 1: Hintson adaptation and played by none other than Pat Roach.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Pat Pat Roach of course played the bald
Speaker 1: Nazi that Indiana Jones fights uh in front of the
Speaker 1: uh the airplane and Greater the Lost Art gets turned
Speaker 1: into propeller soup. Yeah, yeah, he plays uh. Oh, he's
Speaker 1: in like Conan the Barberry and well no, he's encoding
Speaker 1: the Destroyer. Uh, he's in that. Um. He is also
Speaker 1: in Clash of the Titan where he plays the Festus
Speaker 1: and of course his background was British professional wrestling, so
Speaker 1: he's quite an interesting fellow. Now in the hints And
Speaker 1: version of the story, they change it so they don't
Speaker 1: they don't make Percy is so vindictive, and they don't
Speaker 1: make it like Petrofaction murder. Right. It's portrayed that Atlas
Speaker 1: is weary of this. You know, he's tired from having
Speaker 1: to hold up the sky and it's like, uh, Perseus
Speaker 1: takes pity on him and turns him to stone to uh,
Speaker 1: you know, I guess to save him his burden. Oh sweet,
Speaker 1: it was. It was a mercy petrofaction. There was another
Speaker 1: interesting fact that Limming mentions in his book, and that's
Speaker 1: that the petrofaction of Polydectes and his followers might be
Speaker 1: a type of ideological myth, the myth explaining, you know,
Speaker 1: an origin or feature of something, and in this case,
Speaker 1: it would be a known circle of standing stones on
Speaker 1: the island of Seraphos. That you know, it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: here's you know, Polydectes and his followers who were turned
Speaker 1: to stone once. But anyway, at the end of the story,
Speaker 1: here's where we get into some really interesting territory. Perseus
Speaker 1: doesn't just like, you know, keep the head as a trophy.
Speaker 1: He gives the head of Medusa to Athena and it
Speaker 1: becomes the emblem of Athena's breastplate or shield. Now, of course,
Speaker 1: in addition to being the goddess of wisdom, Athena was
Speaker 1: sometimes styled to say goddess of warfare, and this, of
Speaker 1: course becomes part of the very interesting tradition of the aegis,
Speaker 1: the idea that both Athena and Zeus had this object
Speaker 1: that's mentioned in ancient Greek literature all over the place,
Speaker 1: but exactly what it is is sort of unclear. Now,
Speaker 1: it's called an aegis. It's sometimes translated as a shield
Speaker 1: or a breastplate or piece of armor, or some kind
Speaker 1: of animal skin like a goat skin. Whatever it is,
Speaker 1: it's it's some kind of protection device or some kind
Speaker 1: of covering that the gods can hide behind or can
Speaker 1: shield themselves with. And it has this power that's described
Speaker 1: both as protective and as frightening, which is very interesting.
Speaker 1: Like normally you might think of a weapon as terrifying,
Speaker 1: but this is a terrifying shield or a terrifying covering
Speaker 1: or piece of armor. And in many depictions, the central
Speaker 1: visual feature of the aegis of Athena and of Zeus
Speaker 1: becomes the head of Medusa, or at least the image
Speaker 1: of the head of Medusa. Yeah, and this is really
Speaker 1: one of those points where the story does seem to
Speaker 1: just come back around to being all about Athena's rage
Speaker 1: against Medusa, as as she accepts the whole head of
Speaker 1: the gorgon and absorbs it into her shield or makes
Speaker 1: her shield out of it. The less harsh interpretation of
Speaker 1: this is that, you know, via the creation of the
Speaker 1: Gorgon's Athena unleashed a powerful weapon on the world, and
Speaker 1: now she has taken it back and claimed it as
Speaker 1: her own. But I also can't help but think of
Speaker 1: Medusa as is still being alive in some fashion, you know,
Speaker 1: in the same way that the snakes continue to writhe
Speaker 1: in the cinematic and artistic um depictions of Medusa's head.
Speaker 1: So you know, it's there's even this idea that perhaps
Speaker 1: the head is still alive as its essence is infused
Speaker 1: into a thenis shield. And if so, it just seems
Speaker 1: like another level of just you know, horrible God inflicted fate.
Speaker 1: You know, speaking of fate as a coda to the story,
Speaker 1: I should mention, of course, Perseus, Denny, and Andromeda eventually
Speaker 1: do return to uh Denny and Perseus's home city of Argos.
Speaker 1: And when Perseus shows back up, a Crisius remember him
Speaker 1: from the beginning, the king didn't want to be murdered
Speaker 1: by his grandson. Well he's just like dude, I am done,
Speaker 1: and he just flees. He goes to another city to hide,
Speaker 1: and later on in the city where the king goes
Speaker 1: into hiding, Perseus just happens to show up and he
Speaker 1: takes part in some funeral games or funeral games are
Speaker 1: a feature of a lot of stories back then, remember
Speaker 1: the funeral games at the death of Patroclus and the Iliad.
Speaker 1: Funeral games include things like the throwing of the discuss.
Speaker 1: So Perseus is like, yeah, I'll play. So he decides
Speaker 1: to throw the discus and he accidentally hurls the discus
Speaker 1: into his grandfather's head, killing him and proving the oracle's
Speaker 1: prophecy true. And it has like nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the the the adventure with the Gorgon or anything. He
Speaker 1: just accidentally throws a disk and hits him, almost as
Speaker 1: if someone said, storyteller, what about that that oracle and
Speaker 1: the prophecy that you mentioned at the beginning. Oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: he he threw a discus at a funeral game and
Speaker 1: it hit hit him in the head. He died, after all,
Speaker 1: he died, after all, we kid. But again, this guy's
Speaker 1: come back to the you know, sort of the nature
Speaker 1: of myth about like converging and uh in the absorption
Speaker 1: of different stories and the continuing uh, you know, retinkering
Speaker 1: of the tay ole in the myth as we as
Speaker 1: we as we experience it. Uh So, you know, sometimes
Speaker 1: I think there are elements like that where things don't
Speaker 1: maybe completely come together. There's some little plot holes that
Speaker 1: emerge that you know, sometimes other storytellers come around and
Speaker 1: try to fill them or smooth and out. I feel
Speaker 1: like it would be more conventional and make more sense
Speaker 1: if like Perseus, I don't know he got out the
Speaker 1: Medusa will say he still had the Medusa head. Maybe
Speaker 1: he gets it out of the bag every now and
Speaker 1: then to clean it or something, and you know, he
Speaker 1: gets it out of the bag right at the moment
Speaker 1: that a crisis accidentally walks into the room and sees
Speaker 1: it and then turns to stone. You know that seems
Speaker 1: like that would be more more connected in a holistic way. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but you know, instead that would be nice and tragic,
Speaker 1: would have an air of tragedy to it to a
Speaker 1: certain extent. I mean, but then also not that much,
Speaker 1: because the grandfather did lock his mother up in a prison,
Speaker 1: and that's what he's a bad guy. Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 1: there's not you know, what what can you say is
Speaker 1: the disc ascending supposed to be funny. Maybe it is maybe,
Speaker 1: or you know it, it also kind of sounds like
Speaker 1: to me, this is just me spitballing here. This is
Speaker 1: nothing that lembiting argues. But it also has the smack of, say,
Speaker 1: a story that originally didn't have any of that middle stuff. Like,
Speaker 1: let me tell you the story about a king who
Speaker 1: heard that his grandson would kill him. So he, uh,
Speaker 1: he didn't let his daughter out of a box. She
Speaker 1: had a son anyway, so he threw him in another box,
Speaker 1: threw him in the ocean. They and they were lost
Speaker 1: for years and years. Then they came back. He was
Speaker 1: in a funeral game through a discus and he died.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's not I'm not saying that's a great story,
Speaker 1: but at least it's it gets to the end a
Speaker 1: little quicker. But instead we have this whole additional story
Speaker 1: that ends up sandwiched in the middle. You know, it
Speaker 1: actually forms a very similar kind of bracket to the
Speaker 1: bracketing in the narrative of Jason and the Argonauts, right
Speaker 1: where like, you know, he goes on a journey in
Speaker 1: the middle, but then comes back to the court situation
Speaker 1: at the end, and and there's sort of you know,
Speaker 1: vengeance happens or fate is delivered. Yeah, at any rate,
Speaker 1: it does bring us to the end of this particular
Speaker 1: mythological story, and it brings us to the end of
Speaker 1: this episode, but not the end of our discussion of Medusa. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it looks like we need to call part one here.
Speaker 1: But next time we'll be able to come back and
Speaker 1: explore so many more fascinating angles on this myth. Uh.
Speaker 1: We'll get to talk about possible origins and aperture, pic magic, Uh,
Speaker 1: sort of backwards development of myths that can sometimes happen.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about reception history, you know, all throughout cultures
Speaker 1: and in different time periods. We'll talk about art, we'll
Speaker 1: talk about science. I'm very excited, absolutely all right. So
Speaker 1: in the meantime, if you want to check out other
Speaker 1: episodes of Stuff to Blow your mind, and we have
Speaker 1: done quite a few episodes about monsters and myths over
Speaker 1: the years, you can find us wherever you get your podcasts,
Speaker 1: wherever that happens to be. Help us out by rating, reviewing,
Speaker 1: and subscribing. Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio
Speaker 1: producers Seth Nay Chillis Johnson. If you would like to
Speaker 1: get in touch with us with feedback on this episode
Speaker 1: or any other, to suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: or just to say hi. You can email us at
Speaker 1: contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.