Medusa
meh-DOO-suh
Attested elsewhere in ancient sourcesThe only mortal one of the three Gorgons. Hesiod says her sisters were ageless and deathless and she was not, and that Perseus cut off her head, and that Chrysaor and the horse Pegasus sprang from her neck.
Her head goes onto Athena's aegis afterwards, which is how a killed monster ends up as a defensive weapon carried by a god. The gorgoneion on shields and armour works the same way.
The gorgon standing in the hoard with her serpent hair caught motionless is in that tradition, a creature turned to metal by a thing that collects them.
Sources
- Hes. Theog. 270-283
- Apollod. 2.4.2
References are to the standard divisions of the ancient texts, not to any one edition.
Acenes of Sparta: The Dragon Slayer
A dragon is the reason the 300 died. Leonidas used the magic of the gods to bind Kalaxes beneath Taygetus, and the price was his life and his men's. Sixty-two years later a seven-year-old of the agoge falls into the dragon's crypt and inherits the unpaid balance.
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