Perseus

Perseus was born in Argos, a powerful kingdom in the northeastern Peloponnese, to Danae, the beautiful daughter of King Acrisius, and to Zeus, who entered her bronze prison as a shower of golden light that slipped through the cracks in the tower walls. Acrisius, terrified by the prophecy that his grandson would one day kill him, had imprisoned Danae to prevent her from bearing children, but the gods could not be thwarted by bronze or stone. When Perseus was born, Acrisius placed mother and child in a wooden chest and cast them into the sea, hoping the waves would destroy them. But the chest drifted for days and finally washed ashore on the island of Seriphos, a small and rocky place in the Aegean Sea, where the fisherman Dictys found them and took them into his home. Dictys was a poor but honest man, and he raised Perseus as his own, teaching him to fish and to sail and to honor the gods. But Dictys's brother Polydectes was the king of Seriphos, a cruel and lustful man who desired Danae and wanted Perseus out of the way. When Perseus reached manhood, Polydectes announced that he would marry Hippodameia and demanded gifts from every man on the island. Perseus, proud and poor, boasted that he would bring the king anything he desired, even the head of the Gorgon Medusa. Polydectes seized upon the promise and sent Perseus to fetch it, expecting him to die.

Perseus wandered in despair until Athena and Hermes appeared to him, divine patrons who favored the hero for his courage and his lineage. Athena gave him her polished bronze shield, not to strike with but to use as a mirror, for to look directly at Medusa was to be turned to stone forever. Hermes gave him the curved sword Harpe, a divine weapon capable of severing the Gorgon's neck. The hero then traveled to the Graeae, three ancient sisters who shared a single eye and a single tooth between them, and by stealing their eye as they passed it from hand to hand, Perseus forced them to reveal the way to the nymphs who guarded the weapons of the gods. From these nymphs he received three treasures: the winged sandals of Hermes, which carried him through the air; the cap of Hades, which made him invisible; and a magic wallet, the kibisis, in which to carry the Gorgon's head. Thus armed, Perseus flew west across the sea to the land of the Gorgons, where Medusa slept among her two immortal sisters, Stheno and Euryale, who could not be killed.

Perseus found Medusa sleeping, her serpent hair coiled on the sand, her face turned away. Using Athena's shield as a mirror to guide his hand, he approached without looking directly at her, raised the sword Harpe, and in a single stroke severed her head. From the stump of her neck sprang Pegasus, the winged horse born of blood and horror, and Chrysaor, the warrior with the golden sword. Perseus caught the Gorgon's head in the kibisis before her blood could touch him, and he fled as Stheno and Euryale woke and pursued him, shrieking, their wings beating the air. But Perseus was already invisible, flying eastward with the winged sandals, and the immortal sisters could not find him. He carried the head across the sea, and everywhere drops of Medusa's blood fell, they bred new monsters, for even in death the Gorgon's power was terrible. On the coast of Libya, her blood gave birth to the venomous snakes that still infest that land. And the head itself, still potent, could turn any living thing to stone with a glance.

On his return journey, Perseus passed through Ethiopia, a kingdom on the Red Sea coast, and there he saw a sight that stopped him in flight. A young woman was chained to a rock by the sea, weeping, her clothes torn by the wind, her body exposed to the elements. This was Andromeda, the daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia, a princess whose mother had boasted that her beauty surpassed that of the Nereids, the fifty daughters of Nereus, the Old Man of the Sea. The Nereids had complained to Poseidon, the god of the sea, and he had sent a sea-monster, Cetus, to ravage the Ethiopian coast. The oracle of Ammon had declared that only the sacrifice of Andromeda would appease the beast. Perseus, seeing her beauty and her despair, offered to kill the monster in exchange for her hand in marriage. The king and queen agreed, and Perseus waited for Cetus to rise from the water. When the monster emerged, its scales like iron, its jaws vast enough to swallow a ship, Perseus dove from the sky, his winged sandals carrying him in circles around the beast, and he struck again and again with the sword Harpe until the creature sank dead into the waves. He freed Andromeda, married her, and carried her back with him to Seriphos.

When Perseus returned to Seriphos, he found that Polydectes had tried to force Danae into marriage and had driven Dictys into hiding. Perseus walked into the king's hall, where Polydectes sat at feast with his court, and announced that he had brought the promised gift. He drew the Gorgon's head from the kibisis, and every man in the hall who looked upon it was turned to stone in an instant, frozen forever in their final postures of feasting and surprise. Polydectes himself became a statue, his hand reaching for his wine cup, his mouth open in a laugh that would never finish. Perseus gave the island to Dictys, made him king, and then sailed with his mother and his bride to the Greek mainland. He went to Argos, hoping to reconcile with his grandfather Acrisius, but the old king, still terrified of the prophecy, had fled to Larissa in Thessaly. Perseus followed him there and found the king attending funeral games held by the king of Larissa. Perseus entered the discus competition, and as he threw the heavy disc, a gust of wind carried it off course. It struck Acrisius in the foot, and the old king died of the wound. The prophecy was fulfilled, not by murder or malice, but by the casual cruelty of fate. Perseus, horrified, would not take the throne of Argos, but instead exchanged kingdoms with the king of Tiryns and founded the city of Mycenae, which would become one of the greatest powers of the Greek bronze age. He buried the Gorgon's head in the marketplace of Argos, beneath a mound of earth, and there it remained, its power sealed away, a trophy of the hero who had conquered death itself and been conquered by destiny.