It’s worth noting the mutable nature of myths in Medusa’s case in particular.
In the oldest forms of the story where she is recognizable as her own character, she was just a hideous monster who turned people to stone with her sheer ugliness and was, presumably, a bit of a public health hazard. This being when Medusa is a Gorgon, one of three. Perfect quest bait for a hero. Add in a King trying to get him killed with the quest so he can bang Perseus’s mom and you’ve got enough drama to keep people interested.
That, however, wasn’t sexy enough for the horny ass Greek artists, who began depicting her as a beautiful woman with snake hair and the myth changed into the more dramatic form of her being cursed by Minerva for defiling her temple with Poseidon (consent levels variable by story teller).
This changed the story from a generic heroic quest into the tragic form popular today, that tripped over its own horniness and fumbled the character motivations.
Possibly deliberately, as the myths became propaganda tools with various city states claiming this god or that hero as their patrons. And, ironically, the idea of Smexy Snake Lady Medusa might be a return to form, but that requires bringing up the phrase “proto-Indo-European” and you can’t prove any of it, so all I’ll say is, food for thought, Athena’s early depictions also sometimes showed her as a sexy snake lady.
As a fun note, the idea of using a mirror to either petrify her with her own visage or to indirectly see her is a relatively new addition to the myth. In the shift from “hideous monster” to “smoking babe with magic snake hair and a gaze attack” there were versions of Perseus where his clever plan to slay her was… Killing her in her sleep.
Most of the monsters in Greek myths used to be beautiful girls that said they were more beautiful than some random goddess (or something along those lines), and half of the trees in Greece used to be a sad guy or girl that the gods took pity on and transformed for some reason.
And the Gorgoneion amulet (Medusa’s face on a plate, and on the shield Aegis) adorning every door in Athens to scare away evil spirits predates all the Perseus stories.
From OSP, I learned about Dread Persephone predating Hades in running the underworld and Aphrodite washing up on Kythira as Astarte (Ishtar) and bringing the alphabet that would replace Linear-B. The Hellenic myths go deep.
Oh and Ishtar might be Asherah, consort to Adonai, id est Yahweh.
It’s worth noting the mutable nature of myths in Medusa’s case in particular.
In the oldest forms of the story where she is recognizable as her own character, she was just a hideous monster who turned people to stone with her sheer ugliness and was, presumably, a bit of a public health hazard. This being when Medusa is a Gorgon, one of three. Perfect quest bait for a hero. Add in a King trying to get him killed with the quest so he can bang Perseus’s mom and you’ve got enough drama to keep people interested.
That, however, wasn’t sexy enough for the horny ass Greek artists, who began depicting her as a beautiful woman with snake hair and the myth changed into the more dramatic form of her being cursed by Minerva for defiling her temple with Poseidon (consent levels variable by story teller).
This changed the story from a generic heroic quest into the tragic form popular today, that tripped over its own horniness and fumbled the character motivations.
Possibly deliberately, as the myths became propaganda tools with various city states claiming this god or that hero as their patrons. And, ironically, the idea of Smexy Snake Lady Medusa might be a return to form, but that requires bringing up the phrase “proto-Indo-European” and you can’t prove any of it, so all I’ll say is, food for thought, Athena’s early depictions also sometimes showed her as a sexy snake lady.
As a fun note, the idea of using a mirror to either petrify her with her own visage or to indirectly see her is a relatively new addition to the myth. In the shift from “hideous monster” to “smoking babe with magic snake hair and a gaze attack” there were versions of Perseus where his clever plan to slay her was… Killing her in her sleep.
Most of the monsters in Greek myths used to be beautiful girls that said they were more beautiful than some random goddess (or something along those lines), and half of the trees in Greece used to be a sad guy or girl that the gods took pity on and transformed for some reason.
The ancient gods were weird.
The tree thing sounds like the Greek God version of carbon credits.
It’s weird how many people they turned into trees for a variety of reasons. It was the solution to everything back then.
Mob unjustly angry with a hero? Make him a tree. Guy trying to rape a girl? Poof, she’s a tree.
Life was simple. And had lots of random trees.
And the Gorgoneion amulet (Medusa’s face on a plate, and on the shield Aegis) adorning every door in Athens to scare away evil spirits predates all the Perseus stories.
From OSP, I learned about Dread Persephone predating Hades in running the underworld and Aphrodite washing up on Kythira as Astarte (Ishtar) and bringing the alphabet that would replace Linear-B. The Hellenic myths go deep.
Oh and Ishtar might be Asherah, consort to Adonai, id est Yahweh.