Gorgons
A Gorgon head was displayed on Athena's aegis, giving it the power both to protect her from any weapon, and instill great fear in any enemy.
While Archaic Gorgons and gorgoneia are universally depicted as hideously ugly, over time they came to be portrayed as beautiful young women.
The name 'Gorgon' is associated with the Ancient Greek adjective gorgós (γοργός), which, of an eye or look, means 'grim, fierce, awesome, dazzling',[4] and is thought to derive from the Sanskrit stem garğ.
[13] According to Hesiod, the Gorgons lived far to the west beyond Oceanus (the Titan, and world-circling river) near its springs, at the edge of night where the Hesperides (and the Graeae?)
[16] And the fifth-century BC poet Pindar has Perseus, apparently on his quest for the Gorgon head, visit the Hyperboreans (usually considered to dwell in the far north).
[36]Pindar tells us that the cry of the Gorgons, lamenting the death of Medusa during their pursuit of Perseus, was the reason Athena invented the flute.
[37] According to Pindar, the goddess: wove into music the dire dirge of the reckless Gorgons which Perseus heard pouring in slow anguish from beneath the horrible snakey hair of the maidens ... she created the many-voiced song of flutes so that she could imitate with musical instruments the shrill cry that reached her ears from the fast-moving jaws of Euryale.
[44] And in the Odyssey, Odysseus, although determined "steadfastly" to stay in the underworld, so as to meet other great men among the dead, is seized by such fear at the mere thought that he might encounter there the "head of the Gorgon, that awful monster", leaves "straightway".
[48] The mythographer Apollodorus gives the most detailed description: ... the Gorgons had heads twined about with the scales of dragons, and great tusks like swine's, and brazen hands, and golden wings, by which they flew".
[49]While such descriptions emphasize the hideous physical features of the Gorgon, by the fifth century BC, Pindar can also describe his snake-haired Medusa as "beautiful".
[51] Gorgons were a popular subject in ancient Greek, Etruscan and Roman art,[52] with over six hundred representations cataloged in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC).
[53] In addition to the many examples found on vase paintings, Gorgons occur in a wide variety of other contexts, including architectural ornamentation, shield devices, and coins.
The faces of Archaic Gorgons are particularly distinctive, typically with large menacing eyes, tripartite scroll-like (volute) noses, wide mouths with rictus-like grins or grimaces, lolling tongues, fangs and/or tusks (Figs.
That the Perseus on the pithos averts his gaze shows that already in these earliest images it was understood that looking directly at the Gorgon's face was deadly.
[63] Of particular interest is the famous Medusa pediment (early sixth century BC) from the temple of Artemis in Corfu (Fig.
6), which shows a winged-Medusa in the characteristic Knielauf (kneeling-running) position, with two snakes wrapped around her waist, like the Gorgons described in the Hesiodic Shield of Heracles.
[64] Although the Gorgon being beheaded on the Boeotian pithos is depicted as a female centaur, with neither wings nor snakes present, and the Gorgons on the Eleusis Amphora, have wingless, wasp-shaped bodies with cauldron-like heads, by the end of the seventh century BC, humanoid bodies, with wings, and snakes around their head, necks, or waist, such as depicted on the Medusa pediment, become typical.
[78] Thought to have had an apotropaic (protective) function, gorgoneia are often found on architectural elements such as temple pediments, and ornamental antefixes and acroteria, or decorating various round objects, such as shields, coins, and the bottoms of bowls and cups.
[80] Athena's victory over the Giant Enceladus—with a gorgoneion on her shield—was apparently depicted on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi (latter part of the sixth century BC).
In Euripides's Ion (c. 412–412 BC), the Chorus describes seeing, on the temple's stone walls, Athena "brandishing her gorgon shield" against Enceladus.
[81] Pausanias describes seeing a votive golden shield dedicated by the Spartans and their allies after the Battle of Tanagra (457 BC), with a gorgoneion (or possibly a full-bodied Gorgon) depicted in relief being displayed at the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
[103] This suggests the possibility that Greeks misinterpreted or reinterpreted these Mesopotamian images, giving rise, through a process that Burkert has described as a "creative misunderstanding", to the myth of the Gorgon's petrifying gaze.
[104] The consensus among classical scholars seems to be that the function of a gorgoneion was apotropaic, as a device (an apotropaion) to ward away unwanted things, and which was in origin a dancer-worn mask.
The primitive Greek knew that there was in his ritual a horrid thing called a Gorgoneion, a grinning mask with glaring eyes and protruding beast-like tusks and pendent tongue.
[108]That gorgoneia were used as apotropaic shield devices, at least, seems evident from Agamemnon's gorgoneion-shield, which Homer describes in the Iliad as displaying "the Gorgon, grim of aspect, glaring terribly, and about her were Terror and Rout".
