Gorgon

“ That mingle with her hair, the Gorgon reigns.
Her eyes are clouds wherein Death's lightnings lurk,
Yet, even as men that seek the glance of Life,
The gazers come, where, coiled and serpent-swift,
Those levins wait. ”

“ So tell me the way to the Gorgon, lest I wander and perish in the waves."
Then they sighed and wept; and answered:
"The Gorgon! she will freeze you into stone."
"It is better to die like a hero than to live like an ox in a stall. The Immortals have lent me weapons, and they will give me wit to use them."
Then they sighed again and answered: "Fair boy, if you are bent on your own ruin, be it so. We know not the way to the Gorgon; but we will ask the giant Atlas above upon the mountain peak." So they went up the mountain to Atlas their uncle, and Perseus went up with them. ”

“ Then rushes up with a scream, and stooping the wrath of his eyebrows
Falls from the sky, like a star, while the wind rattles hoarse in his pinions.
Over him closes the foam for a moment; and then from the sand-bed
Rolls up the great fish, dead, and his side gleams white in the sunshine.
Thus fell the boy on the beast, unveiling the face of the Gorgon ”

“ These bare roots and blasted stumps circle the water like a hideous crown, till the lake becomes a realization of the Medusa. Here, far from the voices of mankind, the Gorgon stares at heaven, but sees with introverted eye only the writhing horror of her own brow; hears only the hiss, and shrinks from the kiss of her serpent locks, gazing into no living eyes but those of her own damnable strands.
The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is a victim waiting for deliverance. Release her, and she is no longer Medusa; the snake hair will give place to bands of gold and light ”

“ The evil eye, it would seem, is a regular attribute both of the Gorgon and of the wolf; for both, by merely looking upon a man, are still believed to inflict some grievous suffering,—dumbness, madness, or death; and yet there is little in common between the narrow, crafty eye of the wolf and either the prominent, glaring eyes in an ancient Medusa’s head or the passionate, seductive eyes of the modern Gorgon, unless it be that any fixed unflinching gaze is sufficient reason for alarm. ”

“ His physiognomy becomes still more disfigured by his outbursts of wrath, which are not rare, when his true character is more rapidly developed in the working of his features than by all the chiselling and carving of the Gorgon’s head. His blue eyes stare and sparkle in his deadly pale countenance, and his inmost soul reflects itself in its real light, at this moment, as if in a mirror—it is the face of a tiger. Every one, seeing him for the first time, finds him a handsome man, but with something inexpressibly gloomy in his look, and in the melancholy features shaded by a dark beard. ”

“ "Yes, the Gorgon HAS dried your tears," he said.
"Well, she opened my eyes too; it's a delusion to say that she blinds people. What she does is just the contrary—she fastens their eyelids open, so that they're never again in the blessed darkness. ”

“ Pillowy air he treads a time and hangs
His thoughts on her, forsaken that she seems,
⁠All while her patience, morselled into pangs,
Mounts; then to alight disarming, no one dreams,
With Gorgon's gear and barebill, thongs and fangs. ”

“ What a joke it would be on this modern Gorgon, this monster daily press of America that eats up men and women, soul and body, this monster that must be fed night and morning on live men who dare to come to the surface, if it should in this case be utterly mistaken! ”

“ The modern conception of the Gorgon (ἡ γοργόνα) or Gorgons (γοργόνες) —for popular belief seems to vary locally between recognising one or more such beings—is extremely complex. Of my own knowledge I can unfortunately contribute nothing new to what has been published by others concerning them; for though I have several times heard Gorgons mentioned, and always on further enquiry found them to be terrible demons who dwell in the sea, it has so chanced that I have been unable to get any more explicit information on the subject. ”

“ Some of the men in the prime of life are grand and haughty, with the cast-bronze countenance of Roman emperors. But the old men bear rigid faces of carved basalt, gazing fixedly before them as though at some time or other in their past lives they had met Medusa: and truly Etna in eruption is a Gorgon, which their ancestors have oftentimes seen shuddering, and fled from terror-frozen. The white-haired old women, plying their spindle or distaff, or meditating in grim solitude, sit with the sinister set features of Fates by their doorways. ”

“ The Attic tradition, reproduced in Euripides (Ion 1002) , regarded the Gorgon as a monster, produced by Gaea to aid her sons the giants against the gods and slain by Athena (the passage is a locus classicus on the aegis of Athena) .
The Gorgons are represented as winged creatures, having the form of young women; their hair consists of snakes; they are round-faced, flat-nosed, with tongues lolling out and large projecting teeth. Sometimes they have wings of gold, brazen claws and the tusks of boars. ”

“ When he tries to think about the future itself, his mind diminishes to a pin point with imbecility, which some call Nirvana. To-morrow is the Gorgon; a man must only see it mirrored in the shining shield of yesterday. If he sees it directly he is turned to stone. ”

“ There was no help for it, and I had to go from the country of Seriphus, leaving my mother at the mercy of Polydectes.
"I bade good-by to my sorrowful mother and I went from Seriphus—from that land that I might not return to without the Gorgon's head. I traveled far from that country. One day I sat down in a lonely place and prayed to the gods that my strength might be equal to the will that now moved in me—the will to take the Gorgon's head, and take from my name the shame of a broken promise, and win back to Seriphus to save my mother from the harshness of the king. ”

“ But when people happened to catch a glimpse of their glittering brightness, aloft in the air, they seldom stopped to gaze, but ran and hid themselves as speedily as they could. You will think, perhaps, that they were afraid of being stung by the serpents that served the Gorgons instead of hair,—or of having their heads bitten off by their ugly tusks,—or of being torn all to pieces by their brazen claws. ”

“ Approaching nearer, he saw the figure of the Gorgon on his shield. He raised his sword and struck off her head. He then seized it by the snaky hair, fastened it to his shield, and hurried away. The two living Gorgons awoke and swept the air with their wings, but could not catch the youth, as the cloak of Pluto hid him from their sight.
On his way back, Perseus came to Ethiopia. The people there were in great trouble, for a dreadful calamity had happened to them. The water of the sea was in flood and had brought with it a monster which devoured men and animals. ”

“ Gorgon is a monster with three heads. The Harpies, born of Oceanus and Terra, have the faces of virgins, and the bodies of birds with claws. Their names are Ocypete, Aello, and Celeno. The Gorgons are Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale, daughters of Phorcys and Cete. They have heads covered with snakes instead of hair, which so terrifies beholders that they immediately turn into stones. The Lamiæ and Empusæ have each only one eye and one tooth. They have faces, necks, and breasts like women, but their bodies are covered with scales, and they have the tails of serpents. ”

“ Strangely enough, in the ancient form of the folk-tale, the Gorgon is an almost essential part of the story, though the Life Token has disappeared, and the Supernatural Birth only applies to the hero and not to his animal companions. In the modern European folk-tales these animal friends are rather supernumeraries and are occasionally replaced by the formula of the Grateful Animals, to whom the hero does some service during his wanderings, in reward for which they rescue him from some extremity. ”

“ But it struck an almost effacing one at the life of the young nobleman of boundless wealth, whose highest renown was the being a patron of prizefighters. Husband of the daughter of the Old Buccaneer as well! perchance as a result. That philosopher tramp named her ‘beautiful Gorgon.’ She has no beauty; and as for Gorgon, the creature has a look of timid softness in waiting behind her rocky eyes. A barbaric damsel beginning to nibble at civilization, is nearer the mark ”

“ The Fan Gorgon, from the Antilles (Fig. 42) , is a species which often attains the height of eighteen or twenty inches, and nearly as much in breadth. The network of its interstices with its unequal and serried meshes, resembling fine lace, have led to its designation of Sea Fan. Its colour is yellow or reddish. In Fig. 43 we have the Sea Fan magnified to twice its natural size, showing the curious details of its organization.
Fig. 45. Gorgonia verticellata (Pallas) , magnified four times. ”

“ She gave him a task to perform, to rid the land of the horrible Gorgon Medusa, whose hair was a thousand snakes and whose [51] face was so horrible that no man could look upon it and live. That Medusa might not kill Perseus, Athene gave him a magic shield and told him to look into the shield and seeing there the Gorgon's image, strike! He was to wrap the head in a goat's skin and bring it back. She gave him also Herme, the magic sword, and sandals with which he might cross the sea and even float through the air. ”

“ Never met such a Gorgon . . . I don’t really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure that Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster, without being a myth, which is rather unfair . ”

“ Onwards he went, not knowing whither he was borne, for he saw but dimly through the pale yellow light which brooded on the Gorgon land everlastingly; but presently he heard a groan as from one in mortal pain, and before him he beheld a giant form, on whose head rested the pillars of the heaven, and he heard a voice, which said, "Hast thou slain the Gorgon Medusa, child of man, and art thou come to rid me of my long woe? [574] Look on me, for I am Atlas, who rose up with the Titans against the power of Zeus, when Prometheus fought on his side ”

“ Hicks, the great brewer at Oldborough, who held numerous mortgages on the Gorgon property, all of which he yielded up, together with his daughter Juliana, to the care of the baronet.
What Lady Gorgon was in character, this history will show. In person, if she may be compared to any vulgar animal, one of her father's heavy, healthy, broad-flanked, Roman-nosed white dray-horses might, to the poetic mind, appear to resemble her. At twenty she was a splendid creature, and though not at her full growth, yet remarkable for strength and sinew ”

“ He cry'd, to punish your presumptuous Crime;
Beware, my Friends; his Friends were soon prepar'd,
Their Sight averting, high the Head he rear'd,
And Gorgon on his Foes severely star'd.
Vain Shift! says Thescelus, with Aspect bold,
Thee, and thy Bugbear Monster I behold
With Scorn; he lifts his Arm, but e're he threw
The Dart, the Heroe to a Statue grew.
In the same Posture still the Marble stands,
And holds the Warrior's Weapons in it's Hands. ”

“ This is colder than Caspian snow, or Celtic ice. The emperor’s shield takes up a whole book to describe. The Gorgon’s {35} eyes are blue, and black, and white; the serpents twine about his hair, and his belt has all the colours of the rainbow. How many thousand lines does it cost him to describe Vologesus’s breeches and his horse’s bridle, and how Osroes’ hair looked when he swam over the Tigris, what sort of a cave he fled into, and how it was shaded all over with ivy, and myrtle, and laurel, twined together. ”

“ When the Gorgon mentioned the parcel, the girl Loise had made an exclamation of acute vexation.
Clement was young enough (and she was pretty enough) to seize such an opportunity of doing her service. He said decisively it might be rescued, and he asked crisply, “How much time have we?”
[Pg 17]
It was the Gorgon who had pulled her watch with (now he could see) astonishing celerity. The watch showed that there was a full thirteen minutes to spare before the train went. That was ample. The Gorgon gave him the cloakroom ticket for the parcel. ”

“ It is one thing to describe an interview with a gorgon or a griffin, a creature who does not exist. It is another thing to discover that the rhinoceros does exist and then take pleasure in the fact that he looks as if he didn't. ”

“ A bold bad man, that dar'd to call by name
8 Great Gorgon, Prince of darknesse and dead night,
At which Cocytus quakes, and Styx is put to flight. ”

“ The prize, it seems, fell at length upon a cobbler, Giles Gorgon by name, who produced several new grins of his own invention, having been used to cut faces for many years together over his last. ”

“ But Gorgons rather; nay, that word is weak,
Nor may I match the Gorgons' shape with theirs!
Such have I seen in painted semblance erst--
Winged Harpies, snatching food from Phineus' board,--
But these are wingless, black, and all their shape
The eye's abomination to behold.
Fell is the breath--let none draw nigh to it--
Wherewith they snort in slumber; from their eyes
Exude the damned drops of poisonous ire:
And such their garb as none should dare to bring
To statues of the gods or homes of men. ”

“ One of the most exaggerated and fantastic forms of the snake development is that known as the Gnostic Gorgon (Fig. 5) . This is chiefly interesting as one of the earliest instances of the old Pagan legend appearing in a curiously Christian setting, and though an interesting fact, it has but a small place in our chain of evidence. Long before this, however, we find the snakes on the later Medusæ of the Etruscan tombs—where the Gorgoneion was by far the most frequent of decorations. Several such heads are to be seen on the sarcophagi of the
Fig. ”