GORGONEION

I use this blog to reblog posts about the Gorgon Medusa so that I can easily access them

[galusandmalus]

a straight up conspiracy theory i like it that medusa is the one who cursed daphnis since ovid has him turned to stone

"the shepherd Daphnis of Mount Ida, who was turned to stone obdurate, for the Nymph whose love he slighted"-ovid

Considering that medusa is a daughter of Phorcys and Ceto shes probably a nymph and not a human, then a cursed nymph, it would be pretty ironic if after everything she does the same thing athena did with the victim blaming thing. also not a lot of people can turn others to stone lmao.

[callmealioness]

A tale of two Medusas

Left: 450-440 B.C, Greek Attic pottery | Right: ~19 A.C, Roman coin

But… I thought that the Romans saw Medusa as beautiful and the Greeks saw her as really scary? How could this be? 😨

[galusandmalus]

reminds me of

[medousa-archive]

Chrysaor and Pegasus are born from the Gorgon Medusa's neck.

Perseus walks away with the kibisis containing Medusa's head.

A low relief on one of the short sides of a limestone sarcophagus, known as the "Golgoi sarcophagus". 475-450 BC. Discovered by tomb robbers in November 1873 in the necropolis of Golgoi, Cyprus

[sarafangirlart]

Yet another retelling that deviates so much from the mythology it should’ve just been an original story lol

And such a generic Medusa design too, I’ve seen millions just like it, I’ve seen so many ppl design Medusa with alt fashion that it’s not really… alt anymore lol. And why do ppl always make Medusa green? The oldest colorful depictions of her were Roman mosaics and while they did depict her as beautiful they usually had a variety of earthy colors not just green.

[sarafangirlart]

You can’t say that Dionysus.

[wickedlythiccoutlaw]

I think its unfair to shit on someone's design for no reason, @stealingpotatoes art is quite lovely.

At least she didn't randomly dress her Medusa in Swatzikas

[patrochillesvibes]

Absolutely wild to make your whole blog persona about hating on other people's Medusa headcanons and designs when your own design is a red lizard monster covered in swastikas.

[medousa-archive]

She did not invent this design or add the symbol to promote white supremacist ideology. She was apparently referencing an ancient Greek depiction of Medusa, where that symbol already appears. The gammadion existed for thousands of years before the Nazis appropriated one particular form of it. It appears in ancient Greek art, Roman mosaics, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, and many other cultures with various meanings from good fortune to religious symbolism or simply decoration.

It's completely understandable why many people today react strongly to the symbol because of the atrocities of the tragedy of the Holocaust and the atrocities of the Nazis. But context matters. Reproducing an ancient artwork for historical or artistic reasons is not the same as endorsing Nazi ideology. Looking at the source and the artist's intent is important before making accusations as serious as calling someone a white supremacist.

[onetrickpegasus-deactivated2025]

Okay, but hear me out, Gorgons, but with earwig wings. LOOK AT THOSE COLOURS!

[onetrickpegasus-deactivated2025]

We seriously need more depictions of Medusa where she is built af

Look at those legs! I beg someone to make a beefy archaic Medusa design.

[sarafangirlart]

Making Medusa’s parents abusive, neglectful, absent or straight up nonexistent is so shallow bc we always see godly parents trying to look out for their children even when they aren’t present parents and some like Thetis try to make their child immortal. That’s not even to mention the story where Phorcys brings Scylla back to life.

Honestly I wanna see someone do Medusa and her parents like Eda and her mom in the owl house, were she’s the one who distances herself from them bc they’re trying way to much to make her immortal

[medousa-archive]

2 Gorgons 1 Head

[sarafangirlart]

Are they holding a deer??

[greek-museums]

Archaeological Museum of Eleusis:

A proto-attic amphora, used to bury a child. On the neck there is a scene from the Odyssey; Odysseus and his companions blind the cyclops Polyphemos. The body bears a depiction of Perseus fleeing from the Gorgons Stheno and Euryale, after the beheading of their sister Medusa. Athena stops them from pursuing him. Between these two scenes there is a scene where a boar is attacked by a lion.

(Middle of 7th century B.C)

The painting on the amphora has suffered some damage. Black and white were primarily used- the reddish tones are a result of fading. Decorative motifs are superimposed on some figures and fill the blank spaces between them.

The cartoon-like feel of the composition and the styling of the Gorgons are probably deliberate since within the amphora a child was burried. We can imagine that these scenes were proably a favourite part from these tales.

Both scenes do allude to the ongoing rivalry between Athena and Poseidon in some way. In the blinding of Polyphemos, Odysseus, a hero favoured by Athena, blinds the son of Poseidon. In the bottom scene, the three gorgon sisters- monsters associated with the sea- are thwarted with the aid of Athena.

[a-gnosis]

A drawing of the Gorgon Medusa that I made for Medusa, a Swedish popular science magazine about ancient Greece and Rome. I was inspired by archaic and early classical depictions of her. I’m still a bit unsure about the colours, though.

Early Greek writers, like Hesiod, portrayed Medusa as a monster from the beginning, born by the two sea gods Keto and Phorkys who produced many other monstrous beings. Unlike her two sisters, Medusa was mortal. When Perseus cut off her head the winged horse Pegasus was born, Medusa’s child with the god Poseidon who once had slept with her on a meadow with spring flowers.

According to later traditions (and probably the most well-known version today), Medusa was once a beautiful girl who either compared herself to Athena in beauty or was raped or seduced by Poseidon in the temple of Athena. To have sex in a sacred place was absolute taboo and a very serious insult to the god or goddess which the place was sacred to. Athena couldn’t punish Poseidon, so Medusa got all the blame for it and Athena turned her into a monster. Yeah, Athena was quite an asshole in that myth and a good example of the more disgusting sides of the patriarchal ancient Greek society. Maybe that’s why I actually prefer the older tradition where Medusa was born a monster and where she had sex without getting punished for it (if that was not a rape too. Sometimes it’s hard to tell).

[a-gnosis]

Do you know if it's true that Medusa's head was used as a sign of protection for women or is that a rather new thing with people knowing the Roman version of her myth (I'm asking cause I'm thinking of getting a tattoo of her and I'd like knowing opinion?)

Gorgons and Gorgoneia (Gorgon heads) seem to have been used in ancient Greece as apotropaic symbols to ward off evil, but it was not used to protect women specifically. They appeared on funerary monuments, temples, artisan workshops and kilns, private houses, furniture, drinking cups, personal amulets, helmets and ornamented shields among other things. "Their countenances, grisly and transfixing, were thought to have protective, defensive powers by intimidating the spectator and provoking fear in the enemy" (Dangerous Beauty: Medusa in Classical Art by Kiki Karoglou).

1. Relief with Achilleus carrying a gorgon shield, ca. 600 BCE.

2. Terracotta roof tile, ca. 540 BCE.

3. Terracotta kylix, ca. 530 BCE.

[medusaspeach]

She says Heeeey~

references from theoi.com

[sarafangirlart]

When ppl draw Medusa’s cave they tend to have statues of Greek warriors scattered everywhere, but it’s actually a key detail that Medusa lives extremely far away from Greece, basically “at the edge of the world”, Polydectes sends Perseus after her not only bc she is a reliable death trap, but bc she’s extremely far away, if Medusa won’t kill Perseus then the long treacherous journey certainly will, (that’s why Hermes gave Perseus flying sandals at the beginning of his quest) if anything there would be a bunch of North African warriors in her cave and if you go by Diodorus Siculus’s writings on Queen Myrina, then Amazons statues will be everywhere too.

So realistically Medusa wasn’t a poor innocent girl who gets constantly harassed by patriarchal men, she’s a scary monster who did scary monster things like Chimera and Scylla, she doesn’t only target men, she targets anyone who goes against her, which yes, includes women that aren’t Athena.

[medousa-archive]

The running Gorgon, archaic terracotta metope from the Artemision of Syracuse (6th century BC) today at the Paolo Orsi Regional Archaeological Museum

[nemfrog]

Fig. 23. Gorgon. Necrocorinthia: a study of Corinthian art in the Archaic period. 1931.

Heidelberg University

[sinatraaloof]

Gorgoneion (Medusa) drawing found in the Parthenon.

[zebedeezing]

Doing a project on archaic Medusa (pre-ovid Hesiod double wings scary Medusa) and can’t get over Poseidon and Medusa having sex in a meadow. I know it doesn’t say exactly what Medusa was getting up to in the Theogony, but I like to think she was running around petrifying people, making a dragons keep of statues bodies, eating raw cattle, scaring the kids etc etc -

And Poseidon bruhhh Poseidon you know he dgaf about non of that miscellaneous loss of life, bad bitch detected, he really pulled out all the stops with his charm magic - ‘a soft meadow amid spring flowers’ uknow

There’s no art of this by the way. None!!