Who's Scared of Medusa?
We all know about Medusa, do we not? Looking her up in The Oxford Classical Dictionary reveals that, according to the “canonical” version, she is the third and only mortal of the Gorgon sisters and that she was beheaded by Perseus. What exactly Bremmer means by “canonical version” is unclear, especially considering that there are at least six different literary transmissions of the myth including: Hesiod’ Theogony , Pindar’s Pythian Odes , Apollodorus’ Library , Ovid’s Metamorphoses , Diodorus Siculus’ Bibliotheca Historica , and Pausanias’ Description of Greece ; not to mention the immense amounts of artistic representations. The most famous version of the myth today is probably the one reported by Ovid. According to him, Medusa was once a maiden with particularly beautiful hair who was raped by Poseidon in the temple of Athena. The goddess, disgusted by the immodest act, punished Medusa by transforming her into a monstrous being with snake hair. This version of the myth is often s...