The Three Gorgons - Greek Mythology
AI interpretation of The Three Gorgons

Three Sisters

Everyone knows Medusa, but few remember that she was one of three Gorgon sisters. Stheno ('The Strong'), Euryale ('The Wide-Leaping'), and Medusa ('The Guardian') were daughters of the ancient sea deities Phorcys and Ceto. All three possessed the terrifying ability to turn anyone who looked directly at them to stone. They had snakes for hair, bronze claws, and in some accounts, wings of gold.

The Mortal Sister

The crucial difference between the sisters was mortality. Stheno and Euryale were immortal and could never be killed. Medusa alone was mortal, which is why Perseus was sent to behead her specifically. This detail raises an interesting question that the myths never fully answer: why was one sister mortal while the other two were not? In Ovid's later version, Medusa was originally a beautiful woman transformed by Athena as punishment after Poseidon assaulted her in Athena's temple. But in the earlier Greek sources from Hesiod, all three Gorgons were born monstrous.

After Medusa's Death

When Perseus beheaded Medusa, two beings sprang from her severed neck: Pegasus, the winged horse, and Chrysaor, a giant wielding a golden sword. Both were children of Poseidon, conceived before Medusa's transformation. Stheno and Euryale, awakened by their sister's death, pursued Perseus in a fury. He escaped only by using Hades' Helm of Darkness to become invisible. The two immortal Gorgons could never be killed and presumably still grieve their sister somewhere at the western edge of the world.

Legacy

The Gorgon face, called the Gorgoneion, was one of the most common protective symbols in the ancient world. It appeared on shields, armour, temple pediments, coins, and amulets. The image was believed to ward off evil, a practice called apotropaic magic. Athena wore the Gorgoneion on her aegis, and it appears on the surviving metopes of several Greek temples. The terrifying face that turned enemies to stone in myth served as a protective charm in real life.

Classical Sources

Cross-referenced with multiple classical sources for accuracy.

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What the earliest poets say

Hesiod's Theogony puts the Gorgons "beyond glorious Ocean," at the edge of the world toward Night, next to the clear-voiced Hesperides. They belong to a large family descended from Phorcys and Ceto. Their sisters are the Graeae, grey-haired from birth, and their youngest sibling is the serpent that guards the golden apples, later named Ladon. Hesiod does not describe their faces at all. His only detail about Medusa is that she was mortal and that Poseidon lay with her "in a soft meadow among spring flowers," with no temple and no punishment. Pegasus, he explains, took his name from the springs (pegai) of Ocean where he was born.

The Homeric poems know the Gorgon mostly as a face. In the Iliad, a Gorgon's head is set on Athena's aegis and on the shield of Agamemnon, and Hector's battle-glare is compared to the Gorgon's eyes. In the Odyssey, Odysseus leaves the land of the dead in a hurry, afraid that Persephone might send up the Gorgon's head from Hades. The pseudo-Hesiodic Shield of Heracles gives the first close picture of the sisters in action. They chase Perseus across the shield with two snakes hanging at their belts, darting out their tongues.

Variant traditions

Later writers disagree on several points:

  • Appearance. Apollodorus gives the fullest description. He says the Gorgons' heads were covered in serpent scales, they had tusks like boars, hands of bronze and golden wings, and their gaze turned people to stone.
  • Location. Most writers put them in the far west near Ocean. An epic fragment attributed to the Cypria places them on a rocky island called Sarpedon. Later authors moved them to Libya.
  • A single Gorgon born of Earth. In Euripides' Ion, the Gorgon is a monster that Gaia produced to fight for the Giants. Athena kills it herself during the Gigantomachy and wears its skin. Two drops of its blood, one deadly and one healing, are passed down to the Athenian royal house.
  • A rationalized queen. Pausanias reports an Argive story in which Medusa was a queen who ruled the Libyans near Lake Tritonis and was killed in battle by Perseus. Her head was said to be buried under a mound in the agora of Argos.

The surviving sisters have one more story of their own. Pindar's twelfth Pythian Ode says that Athena invented the music of the aulos to imitate the piercing lament that Euryale and the snake-haired Gorgons raised over Medusa's death. The tune was called the "many-headed melody."

To find the Gorgons in the first place, Perseus had to visit their sisters the Graeae, who shared a single eye and a single tooth between them. In Apollodorus' version, he snatches the eye as it is being passed from one to another and gives it back only after they direct him to the nymphs who hold the winged sandals, the cap of invisibility and the kibisis bag.

The Gorgons in temples and on vases

The Gorgons were among the first mythological subjects in Greek monumental art. On the proto-Attic Eleusis amphora (about 670–660 BC), two Gorgons with cauldron-shaped heads chase Perseus while Medusa's headless body lies beside them. The west pediment of the Temple of Artemis on Corfu (about 580 BC) is dominated by a huge Medusa in the archaic "running-kneeling" pose. Her children Pegasus and Chrysaor stand beside her, even though in the story they are not born until her death. Archaic Gorgons usually have broad grinning mouths, tusks, protruding tongues and beards, a type that is unsettling rather than tragic. From the fifth century onward, artists gradually gave Medusa the calm, beautiful face that later ages remember, while Stheno and Euryale largely disappear from art.

Common misunderstandings

People often use "Gorgon" and "Medusa" as if they were the same thing, but Medusa was only one of three. Not every source gives the sisters snake hair. In the earliest poetry the snakes hang at their waists, and the snake-haired image became standard later. The idea that Medusa was once a beautiful woman cursed by Athena comes mainly from Ovid. In Hesiod and in archaic art, all three sisters are monstrous from the start. It is also a mistake to think the petrifying gaze belonged only to Medusa. Apollodorus says that all the Gorgons could turn onlookers to stone, which is why Perseus attacks while they sleep and flees from the two immortal sisters once he has the head. For a broader comparison with other monsters, see the list of Greek monsters.

Ancient sources

  • Hesiod, Theogony 270–283: the Gorgons' parentage, their home beyond Ocean, Medusa's mortality, her union with Poseidon, and the birth of Pegasus and Chrysaor.
  • Homer, Iliad and Odyssey: the Gorgon head on Athena's aegis and on Agamemnon's shield, and Odysseus' fear of the Gorgon head in the underworld.
  • [Hesiod], Shield of Heracles: the Gorgons pursuing Perseus with snakes at their belts.
  • Pindar, Pythian 12: Euryale's lament and Athena's invention of the aulos melody that imitates it.
  • Euripides, Ion: the Earth-born Gorgon killed by Athena in the war with the Giants.
  • Apollodorus, Library 2.4: the Graeae, the Gorgons' appearance and Perseus' expedition.

Frequently asked questions

What are the names of the three Gorgons?

Stheno, Euryale and Medusa. Stheno and Euryale were immortal, and only Medusa could be killed.

Could all three Gorgons turn people to stone?

In Apollodorus' account, yes. Anyone who looked at any of the sisters was petrified. Medusa's head is the one famous for this power only because Perseus took it and used it as a weapon.

Where did the Gorgons live?

Hesiod puts them beyond the river Ocean at the western edge of the world. Later writers place them on a remote island or in Libya.

What happened to Stheno and Euryale?

No surviving myth describes their end. They chase Perseus and fail to catch him, and Pindar remembers their mourning, but because they were immortal, no story kills them.

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