RE-AIR: Sister, Saviour, Survivor, the Gorgon Medusa

Published Jan 30, 2024, 8:00 AM

Revisiting one of the most controversial women of myth... Medusa is never just one thing: her history, variations on her story, interpretations... There's a whole wide world of Medusa and this episode attempts to touch upon just a fraction of ancient sources and versions. Monster? Beautiful woman? Survivor? Mother? One of three mortal queens? Medusa is everything. Find the thread of relevant Medusa tweets and responses to them here. Liv has also discussed Medusa on the The Partial Historians podcast, listen here, and Next Door Villain, listen here.

CW/TW: far too many Greek myths involve assault. Given it's fiction, and typically involves gods and/or monsters, I'm not as deferential as I would be were I referencing the real thing.

Sources: Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by Allen Mandelbaum, Theoi.com, The Medusa Reader edited by Marjorie Garber and Nancy J. Vickers.

Attributions and licensing information for music used in the podcast can be found here: mythsbaby.com/sources-attributions.

Hello, this is Let's talk about miss Baby, and I am your host Live who is here with another reairing episode, because well, I'm trying to figure out how to be a person, and I love my job, but it's really hard when you feel this way to research and write five to six thousand words about anything. Anyway, so this week we are going to listen again to one of my favorite episodes. It is a deep dive I did on just some of the ancient sources that talk about Medusa to kind of debunk like half the things we think we know about her based on modern culture, almost none of which have any basis in the ancient world. I've been thinking about Medusa a lot. I'm actually going to be writing a little bit about her for an upcoming book that I will talk about more when I have my shit together. But I've just been thinking about her a lot, and I thought, you know, this would be a great episode to revisit, and maybe I will revisit her soon too. I'm trying to come up with ideas for episodes on topics that make me happy and bring me joy as an attempt to get back into creating content. So anyway, today we are going with my I beloved Medusa listening back to that epic episode where I dove into just a handful even of the ancient sources that talk about her, and basically all the things they don't say. But you know what, more on Medusa soon. I think I've got to get back to you her. This is episode one hundred and seven, Sister, Survivor, Savior, the Gorgon Medusa. We first hear of Medusa in any kind of detail in he see it, the passage I read at the top of this episode. He see it as one of the oldest writers we have have. That's the key when it comes to mythology of ancient Greece. He and Homer are basically it for the very very old stories of mythology. That said, that statement lumps in the Homeric hymns with these two, given their authorship is unclear and they're from around the same time period. So this is our oldest textual introduction to the Gorgon we all know and love. Keto bear to Forcus, the Gorgons, Theeno eurili and Medusa, who suffered a woeful fate. So, according to Hesiod's brief telling of her story, Medusa was a gorgon born to Keto in Forcus now here, we don't know what a gorgon is exactly. Keto is a sea monster goddess and Forcus is a primordial sea god. So basically we know they're three sisters born to these gods. We know that Medusa had sex with Poseidon, and we know Perceus killed her and from her death were born their children. That is the oldest version of her story that we have. That's it, that's the whole of it. And again it's not the original myth, there is no such thing. It is simply the oldest extant version, the oldest one we can look back on. Now. Homer, the other oldest source we have, doesn't mention her by name and doesn't explain the number of gorgons that there are. Homer in the Iliad references ah Gorgon. According to Homer, Athena's aegis her shield or other form of protection, depending what you read, had a terrible gorgon on it. From Homer, we know a gorgon head was terrible, terrifying in some way, though the monstrosity of it isn't clear, and we know the gorgon was a she. It's Hesiated who gives us any kind of story. He tells us of the three daughters of Forcus and keto'stheno Eurreally and Medusa. It's Hesiod who says that Medusa was the only one of these three who is mortal. He doesn't explain why, though it seems ripe for interpretation by only one of three sisters, all of whom our daughters of two deities would be mortal just to allow Perces to kill her. It's also Hesiod who first explains that Poseidon had sex with Medusa. That's who he's referring to when it says the dark haired one. The term used in most translations I found is lay with. This seems to be a literal translation of the ancient Greek, and the word translated does explicitly mean lay with, as in they had sex, but it doesn't necessarily mean anything was explicitly non consensual. That said, I have to wonder how much consent could have been understood when Hesiod was writing. Would he have said if it were meant to be non consensual, it certainly didn't matter to them whether or not it was consensual. Women didn't often get to decide, and even less so when it came to the gods. It's often easier to interpret in myth when a kidnapping is involved, because the implication that is non consensual in those cases is obvious. But what of when a woman wasn't actually taken away? So while it isn't explicit whatsoever, I personally think it's not out of the realm of possibility to suggest that the idea of a problematic encounter with Poseidon existed in her mythology all the way at the earliest sources, with Hesiod's first mention. Through Hesiod's Theogony, we first hear of Medusa, But Hesiad doesn't say much about what she looked like, what made her monstrous, if she was monstrous at all, And of course her monstrosity is the general crux of the way her story is interpreted now, and certainly the crux of the standard argument against viewing her favorably, viewing her as a woman who didn't deserve to be killed by Perseus. It's much harder to think Perseus went in and killed a random human female rather than a monstrous gorgon of epic proportions. And I should say that she is a woman is very clear she may have been monstrous, we'll get there, but she was definitely a woman, even in her monstrosity. So many monsters in Greek mythology are referred to by she her pronouns, but they're not all described as women. To me, that's quite the distinction. I mean, ships also have she hear pronouns assigned to them, but they're certainly not described as women. From a similar time period, we also have a reference to the Gorgon in the Shield of Heracles, which is a work ascribed to Hesiod, though that authorship is questioned either way, it's old. The Shield of Hesiod provides a slightly different take and some varied details. It describes the moments after Perseus has beheaded the Gorgon, not naming her as Medusa, just the Gorgon. Her terrible monster head is stored safely in a bag, and he flees her home, with the two Gorgon sisters chasing after him in their rage. Here we have a description of monstrosity, though it's not specific what makes the monstrous. But interestingly, we also don't have the name Medusa, just gorgons. Flashing forward a few hundred years, we get to Pindar, who sort of straddled archaic and classical Greece in terms of time periods, two hundred or so years after Hesiod and who knows how many years after Homer, because who on earth can agree that he lived, if he did live at all. Pindar is a poet I don't often mention as a source, primarily because while he was prolific and important, his works aren't the easiest to take mythology from. What we have of his work is a lot of poems dedicated to those who won competitions at Olympia and Delphi. Mainly he referenced mythology, but it was pretty nonlinear and frankly confusing. As a poet, though, he's quite something. In a poem he wrote for a man named Midas, who won a flute playing competition at Delphi, he tells a part of Medusa's story. This is another interpretation, a later version, suggesting that understanding of her had evolved. Of course, it could also just be Pindar's version of Medusa. It's difficult to say if he was working off of a well known tradition or making an interpretation of his own for these purposes. But then that's the question of so so much of what we know and don't know of the stories from Greek myth. Pindar's brief mention of Medusa adds a few details to her story. Her sisters the other two Gorgans from which screaming can be heard from quote writhing serpent heads. Of Medusa herself, we only get the description fair cheeked. So does Medusa here have serpentaire or was she different from her sisters? According to Pindar, it's very specific that the other two gorgans have that snaky hair, but Medusa it's unclear. Yet another example of the enigma that is Medusa when it comes to the ancient sources we have. Of course, some depictions of her do include the snakes, but there are also a number of pottery depictions of her where she looks very human, very pitiable, and undeserving of her fate by Perseus. But then her sisters here are monstrous, so the implication certainly could be that she is too. But again, she's described as fair cheeked, and it's notable that she's the only mortal, So who is this Medusa of Pindar? She too, is just about as mysterious as the Medusa of Hesiod or the Gorgan of Homer. You can't pin her down. Eighty or so years later, we have my beloved tragedian Euripides weighing in on the subject of Medusa in the play Ion. I won't tell you much about the play because it's now very high on my list to cover for the show. For the purposes of this Medusa interpretation, Creusa is a woman planning to poison a young man named Ion four reasons that are too spoilery to say. Creosa describes her poison of choice, poison extracted from the snakes of the Gorgon. Once again, we don't get the name of Medusa, but we do hear that this is the gorgon of Athena's armor. Her aegis placed there when the goddess defeated the monster. According to this detail in Euripides, the gorgon was actually born of Earth. After the war between gods and giants, Athena defeated her and presented two drops of blood to Erichthonius, one of the first kings of Athens. One drop came from the snakes it was poison, the other from the veins of the gorgon herself. It restored life and kept disease away. This take on her is so interesting for so many reasons. First, Euripides introduces a different origin, one where she's born of the earth itself. Then that she has this combined ability to cause death and prevent it, a duality that we haven't seen before in the existing texts. Again, that's not to say that these concepts hadn't already been ascribed to her in the ancient world. It might have been common knowledge, but if they were, we don't know about it. But we also have to remember that this is in the context of a play. It wasn't out of the ordinary to have some liberties taken when telling the stories for the stage, much like we do now with movies, TV fiction. We can't necessarily equate this version of her with beliefs at the time, but it's an interesting development in the growth of her as a concept healing powers as well as the ability to cause death. Ugh, how I love Euripities. Moving on to one of the most fascinating finds I've made and purchasing this Medusa source book I've been working off of an ancient Greek by the name of Palais Fatus. Know much about him, but it's believed he's from the fourth century BC and was palled with Aristotle. But what we do have is one text attributed to him, on Unbelievable Tales, a work in which he rationalizes the myths of his time and his people. That's right. Essentially, Palifatus explains away the myths, and don't worry, I'm already planning to order a copy of this book for future episodes. For now, how does he explain the myth of Medusa? Pallifatus provides us with a historical story behind the myth of Medusa. Now, to be clear, as far as I know, there are no further examples for this being explicitly true, but it's a fascinating way to understand how these stories became myths. In general, I believe Medusa is ancient enough that it isn't really possible that this is actually where the story came from, but it sure is interesting enough for me to share it with you. According to Palifatus, the focus of mythol that is, the primordial see God and father of Medusa, the Gorgons, the graye and others, was in fact a king. He was a king of the Kernian people, supposedly three islands in ancient Libya that's northern Africa, beyond the Pillars of Heracles, which is the Strait of Gibraltar, that King Palithatis says built a statue of Athena, a golden statue of the goddess six feet tall, And he says the Kernian people notably called Athena Gorgon. He attributes this name to the way other peoples of the Mediterranean had gods and goddesses that can be kind of tenuously linked to those of Greece. Of course, this was a Greek writing this story, so to him, these gods were explicitly the same gods with different names. Historically, it's more like these people each had gods of similar values and such long standing interactions with each other that they all became very similar and can be under st to in some cases represent each other. All to say, Palifatus is saying that the Kernian name for Athena was Gorgon. The king Forcis there had three daughters, Stheno, Eurreli, and Medusa. When Forcus died, his three daughters took over control of the islands. Given the geographical location in relation to carthage, which is of course mythologically founded by Dido. It's not surprising that women would be allowed to rule these lands, but of course it was notable to the Greeks. The three sisters shared access to the statue of Athena, this gorgon statue, each keeping her as a personal treasure for a time. Meanwhile, Pallifatus says Perseus was indeed an exile from Argos, but he was a bit more of a pirate than a hero. Perseus was making piratical raids around the region, and he heard of this land where three women were in charge, and where there weren't many men, and there was a lot of gold, an appealing opportunity. Indeed, now there is much more to this story by Palyfatis, more ways in which he explains a way the explicit aspects of the Perseus and Medusa myth. But I hope to use the source more in the future, so I'm not going to give it away. Today. We're just concerned with interpretations of Medusa as a woman or a monster, or more often both. Perseus arrived on the islands in search of this gorgon statue, this solid gold statue of Athena, and demanded its location from the three women who were ruling the islands. Medusa, it seems, refused to tell him where it was, though her sisters Eurrelianstheno gave up the location. Thus Perseus killed only Medusa and stole the statue, cutting it up into pieces and affixing the golden head to the prow of his ship. So yet another interpretation of Medusa, but here just a woman, or not just a woman, a woman who along with two other women, ruled a region of the Mediterranean in itself impressive and once more a version of the story where Perseus is very much in the wrong, killing the woman for no good reason, and, according to Pallifatus, a straight up pirate. Frankly, I always agree with the idea that Perseus was in the wrong, just searching for and killing this woman for her head alone. It's gross and weird. But to have this rationalized account where she is very much the victim of him, specifically his piracy, is fascinating. It's also reminder that while Greek mythology was widespread and it was the religion of the ancient Greeks, just as now, there were people who didn't believe it. There were atheists in ancient Greece, people who found ways to explain away the stories that had become important and widespread in their culture. That's not to say that Palifatus was definitely an atheist who didn't believe in the gods at all, but there were also certainly people who thought that the stories of monsters and heroes just didn't check out. So in this version, Medusa is quite plainly a strong woman killed by a shitty man. The last source in today's episode, though by no means the last source on Medusa, will be Apollodorus, or rather the work attributed to Apollodorus. The work is called the Library of Greek Mythology, but its authorship is debated. It was originally attributed to a Polydorus, a scholar from the second entry BCE, but that's now quite debated, if not generally not accepted at all. So the work itself may be that old, though I've also heard it's attributed to more around the first or second centuries ad Regardless, you'll have seen it listed in my sources before, because it's one of the very few works we have remaining that is just a compendium of the myths that details most of them in one place whenever it was actually written. It's a really valuable source, and it's a very different version of Medusa. Apollodorus's take on Medusa and Perseus's hunting of her is where we get some of the most straightforward tellings of her story. Perseus goes hunting for her to bring her head to Achrisius encounters the Gray Eye, steals their eye and tooth until they reveal the Hesperites location, which reveals Medusa's location. In Apollodorus, Medusa is there with her sisters the other two gorgans, though here too she is the only mortal and therefore the one person has been sent to kill. Here, the gorgons are described quite specifically and quite monstrously, heads twined with the scales of dragons, boarli like tusks, golden wings. They aren't described as ugly, but not particularly human either. In this version, Perseus sneaks up on the three gorgons while they're sleeping, and with the help of Athena and the reflective shield, cuts off the head of Medusa. But at the end of Apollodorus's telling of this story, he has an addition to make. He adds that some say quote Medusa was beheaded for Athena's sake, and they say that the gorgon was fain to match herself with the goddess even in beauty. So another fascinating addition to the pantheon of versions of Medusa. In Apollodorus, she has monstrous qualities snakes and tusks and wings, but she might have even rivaled Aena in beauty. Now that probably sounds familiar, as it's very similar to Abd's version. Now, given the work attributed to Apollodorus probably did in fact come from the first or second centuries a D, it's not surprising that these versions would be similar. Still, that doesn't make them less valid. What it means is that the understanding of Medusa changed. It's another example of what makes her so fascinating. She is constantly evolving through the sources in a way very few other characters in mythology do potential beauty rivaling Athena aside, this version is very traditional. Even in this version that's so traditional, So clearly where the more mainstream understanding of Medusa comes from. She doesn't sound like that much of a threat. Perseus doesn't fight her. She isn't violent or even really scary. She's a woman with some monstrous qualities who he was sent to kill just so he could bring her head back to a Christius. And not only that, but he kills her while she's sleeping. She doesn't even get a chance to wake up to seem scary, to try to defend herself. How we got to a point where men can come to me and say that Medusa deserved to die, that it was necessary, is truly so far beyond my ability to understand. There is simply nothing in these versions that suggests anything like that. Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, Euripides, Pallfatus, and Apollodorus spanning hundreds of years, all with different takes on her, both big and small differences, but none suggesting the kind of monstrous needs to be killed for the safety of others creature that we know from pop culture. This episode has just been a taste of all the incredibly varied takes on Medusa throughout hundreds of years of ancient sources. I will dive back into more in the future. I just can't help myself and haven't covered even half of this source book that I have, But for now, this is why I love Medusa and why I will defend her always. There's no cut and dry interpretation of her. No one myth, no one woman, one monster. Each of these varied descriptions holds weight for one reason or another. Each is valid in its own way. She is a beautiful woman, she is a victim of Poseidon. She is monstrous, she is powerful. All are valid and none should be discounted. She is whatever we want her to be, and therein lies the power. Think on all these sources and versions I've just shared with you, and take note of one added thing. These are all versions from before the beginning of the Common Era. In terms of time, these sources have spanned hundreds of years, but we're still in the BCEE period. Like I mentioned, a Polydorus is tricky to sort out and is now pretty accepted to be from the Common Era, But that only makes it more relevant because the very very traditional understanding of Medusa in pop culture basically comes from a Polydorus. Regardless, we're still in very Greek versions of her. Dark Age versions are Chaic, classical, all very ancient versions of her, and again there are more. We are not finished. Medusa is definitely one of the most enigmatic figures in Greek mythology. She is one big fascinating question mark. Here's the over our issue and why I don't intend to stop sharing literally everything I ever find on Medusa as a character. There's a subset of people who believe that mythology shouldn't be interpreted, shouldn't be understood through a modern lens, or it seems even across the generations which wrote about these stories in ancient times. A group of people who have this flawed idea of a so called original myth. But there is no such thing as an original myth. It is antithetical to the very idea of mythology. Original myth simply doesn't exist. There is the oldest extant version, meaning the oldest written version that survived the test of time that exists for us to read now. That would be he sid but that doesn't make it original or more truthful than anything else. Those arguments aren't realistic, they're not in good faith, and in my experience, they're used to silence women or marginalized genders, to make them feel like this character who feels empowering, feels important, feels like an emblem of strength isn't why. She's just a monster who deserve to die, nothing more. It's bullshit. There seems to be almost a concerted effort online to ensure Medusa cannot be used as a symbol of strength and empowerment for women, either because the oldest version of her that we have doesn't explicitly refer to her as a survivor of sexual assault, or because the version that does comes from Rome, or as I've seen recently, even the idea that Avid's version should be trusted, but in a way that suggests perseus killing her with somehow merciful a way of releasing her. Truly, it's dark as hell. The idea that a survivor of assault needs to be released from their trauma with more trauma. It's all nonsense. It's very possible to interpret stories from a modern lens. It's possible to take hold of a character using ancient sources for what they've given us, and utilize her to symbolize something. It's possible even to enjoy Avid's version and use that one for whatever purposes one desires. Of It's version isn't wrong simply Ofvid's version. It simply isn't wrong to understand the myths through the world we live in today. But then that's basically the entire of this podcast. So it's a hill I'm willing to die on. I don't believe it's wrong to look at these myths from thousands of years ago, the versions of which we have almost exclusively from men who believed women were property, and think, hey, maybe this isn't the whole story. Maybe it's all based on the world they lived in, but that doesn't make it the whole story. In truth, it's important to look at these stories from different lenses and look at the different versions in detail. If the ancient world isn't examined from a modern lens with a degree of credulity, then we're well and truly fucked. If we don't put at least some of our modern morals under the stories and people of the past, then how are we gonna learn from it? The ancient Greeks did a hell of a lot of things that would be considered horrific and barbaric by current standards, as they should be. If we can't look back and say that slaveholding and treating women as property to be used discarded was bad, then what does that say about us now, Butdusa with sometimes a monster, sometimes a goddess, sometimes a beautiful woman. Ultimately, though throughout generations of the ancient world, she was a symbol of power and protection, and I am more than happy to take her on as a symbol of badass women and feminism in the twenty first century, because why the fuck not. It makes misogynists really angry, and that's satisfying as all hell. Oh nerds, thank you all for listening to that particularly ranty end. I've been wanting to do another episode of Medusa for a long time, but the more dumb ass men come at me for every single thing I deign to tweet about her, the more I realized I really needed to take a close and detailed look at her and all those versions of her that everyone likes to come back to. It's tough because what we have tends to be really fragmentary and lacking in detail, which is of course part of why it's so ridiculous that the argument about her comes down to all these idea of her being explicitly a monster who deserved death. There's simply nothing in the ancient sources that suggests that's true. She is instead, enigmatic and mysterious and the perfect figure to examine in all her forms and versions, if you can believe it. From the time I spoke with Anwyn for the bonus episode today and since I began writing the script for this one, I've gotten in another two scuffles with shitty dudes online who have really troubling, misogynist takes on Medusa. If you're at all interested in this what I'm talking about when I rant and rave about the Twitter bullshit, I've shared a number of those takes and the really interesting and awful ways that men try to debate stories of Medusa on Twitter. There's a link in the episode description of this podcast. And well, this isn't the end of Medusa here. Like I mentioned, I haven't even made it halfway through the source book. We haven't even gotten to Ovid's very controversial, though I don't believe it should be controversial at all. Take If you're aching for more, listen back to that episode I covered so long ago now on Medusa and Arackney. But we'll be back with her, both the woman herself and the man who killed her. Thank you, nerds so much for listening. I really appreciate the patience that you all are having with me right now, and honestly all of the messages I have had a real influx of people reaching out to me, and you read the room correctly. I needed those little bits of reassurance and little confirmations. You know that people listen to me that what I am doing is valuable. So thank you if you reach out at any point over the last couple of months, I mean all the time, but specifically recently, it has been really nice for me. So thank you all so much. I really hope to be back with more soon. Yeah it's scary, Okay, thank you all so much for listening. You are truly wonderful. As always, Let's talk about My Baby is written and produced by me Live Albert Mikaila Smith is the Hermes to my Olympians. My assistant producer, Laura Smith is my wonderful audio engineer and production assistant, and the podcast is hosted and monetized by iHeartMedia. They are lovely too. Uh you know, I've got a YouTube with captions for you know, accessibility slash if you want to read them now I'm just kind of rambling. Thank you all. You are truly wonderful. I promise I do still love this shit. I just have to get back to the me that knows how to