Seeing Ourselves in Myths
It’s hard to know how an ancient culture viewed its myths. There are indications that the Greeks believed in their gods as much as did any group of people. They worshiped them and sacrificed to them because they hoped these powerful beings might bless them and their loved ones.
The stories told about these gods, however, were something else. In Christianity, Biblical literalism is a recent phenomenon, arising in Europe and America in the 18th century, according to the French writer, Dennis Diderot, [1] and the 19th and 20th centuries, according to Marcus Borg. [2] Ancient Hebrews and first-century Christians understood that their religious stories were about truth, not fact. The Greeks would not know this, as well.
Therefore, we tell myth not to learn what actually happened in those days long ago, but to learn about ourselves and our world. Through the stories we tell, we process fears, hopes, longings. We discover who we are and what we might become if we were faithful or kind or patient or heroic.
Monsters and Heroes
Most myths have a hero and a villain. Take the story of Perseus and the Medusa. Perseus is a kind and affectionate young man, willing to die for those he loves, humble enough to ask for help, and cunning enough to defeat his foe.
The Medusa, on the other hand, is one of the Gorgon, a terrible monster who delights in killing. Or so we are led to believe if we simply hear the story of how Perseus destroyed her. Certainly, we don’t want to empathize with this deadly woman. We want our monsters dead. To justify our violence against them, we needs villains to be evil. We need them to deserve their fate.
Yet, life is not like that, and even the mythological realm is morally complex. Good people do bad things sometimes, and bad people can end up looking sympathetic. As Louise Penny and Hillary Rodham Clinton wrote in their novel, State of Terror, “Saviors could be quite unsavory, and monsters could be compelling, making the worst seem the best.” [3] Sometimes monster and heroes are not what they seem.
Fate Is Fate
As most stories do, the myth of Perseus began in the days before he was born. His grandfather, the Greek king, Acrisius, went to visit the Oracle. She told him that his own grandson would be his death. You might remember a similar theme in the myth of Oedipus. In that story, Laius, also a king and the father Oedipus, was told that his own son would murder him and make love to his own wife.
Imagine hearing something so terrible. To think that a boy you must surely love with all your being was to turn on you and be your end. Would you not want to thrust that child away from you, do all you could to keep distance from him?
It would take a strong and wise person to do otherwise. We who know the stories realize that fate is fate and cannot be defied. We discover that it is best to live each day loving those close to us and taking life as it comes. Indeed, the irony is that had those kings done this and kept their offspring close, the tragedies that killed them would not have occurred.
King Laius tried to lengthen his life and protect his wife from such defilement by sending Oedipus far away, where a neighboring king agreed to raise him. Like his father, Oedipus went to see the Oracle, who told him the prophecy that he would kill his father and sleep with his mother. Fearing this, Oedipus left the home where he’d grown up, resolving never to go there again. He, too, thought he could avoid fate by taking his life into his own hands. But that only made the disaster possible, because it brought him closer to where his true parents lived.
The Villain and the Victim
King Acrisius, on the other hand, did not yet have a living grandson, so he planned to keep his sole child, his daughter, Danaë, from giving birth. Thus, he imprisoned her in an underground cavern and ran off any suitor who dared try to rescue her. He became a villain to his daughter and made of her a victim.
Let us try to understand Acrisius. Perhaps, like many Greeks of his time, he thought little of women, even of his own daughter. To him, she was perhaps more property than person.
Even so, many Greek stories speak of parents who dearly loved their offspring. Such passion was not unknown. The Greek language even has a word for familial love, that between parents and children: storge.
Yet if Acrisius felt such love, the thought that he must one day die, and the apparent terror it brought him, must have pushed it right out of his heart. If he’d once felt kindness and for his daughter, it was now gone. In her medieval mystery story, The Raven in the Foregate, Ellis Peters writes, “Men do things far out of their nature when deformed by circumstances.” [4] This is a good description of this king. Perhaps Acrisius’s heart was deformed because he’d been given more knowledge than he could handle. He did not have the wisdom to understand what it meant. How fitting, then, that he who entombed his daughter should be entombed, even if indirectly, by another member of his family.
Perseus Is Born
But if we can see how events twisted Acrisius into someone even he could no longer recognize, maybe we can understand Danaë. She must have felt horrified by this man she thought she knew, and sick with betrayal. If she had ever trusted her father, she could do so no more.
So what did she do in her impregnable prison? For how long did she seek a way out, or did she always sit obedient and passive in her room? Did her father visit her? If he tried, did she refuse to talk to him, or did she forgive him and welcome him, regardless of what he had done? The story does not tell us.
It does tell us, though, how she became pregnant. No man breached the walls. She did not sneak secret messages to some beloved. No. Like in everything else that had happened to her thus far, she had no say in the union that brought her the child her father feared, for the suitor who reached her was the supreme deity, Zeus, and Zeus never asked permission.
Usually, when that lusty god raped one of his many conquests, he did so as an animal, like a swan or an eagle or a bull. But since no animal could get through the windows or the walls of that fortress where Danaë dwelt, this time, he changed himself into golden rain. By doing that, he could slip through the cracks of the building. Once inside the prison, he entered the young woman’s womb and planted the seed that would quicken her egg and become Perseus.
Perseus Grows Up
Even in the face of this miraculous birth, Acrisius thought he could cheat death. After the child was born, he set mother and babe in a wooden chest and tossed them into the sea, thinking they would drown. Maybe he couldn’t bring himself to murder them outright, but still, how low could a man sink?
Obviously, the pair could not die. Not yet. The prophecy had to be fulfilled. So though Acrisius might not care about them, Zeus did. He kept them safe until they landed on an island where they were given shelter.
Years passed, and Perseus grew. He became strong and brave and devoted to his mother. Polydectus, the king of the island, was also devoted to her, but not in a way she appreciated. He wanted to wed her, but Danaë was not interested in him. Still, he would not leave her alone.
It was up to Perseus to protect his mother, and for years he did so. But eventually, Polydectus managed to manipulate the young man into setting off to bring him the Medusa’s head. Polydectus felt certain Perseus would die in the attempt, for as we all know, to look upon the face of the Medusa is to be turned to stone.
The Medusa
The Medusa, of course, is the monster. Villains might have stories, pasts that help us understand their cruelty. Monsters are irredeemable. They are bad through and through.
Yet the Medusa was not always a terror. In fact, at one point, she had been a woman with beauty to rival Danaë’s. That very beauty got her into trouble, as beauty often does. How she ended up with snakes for hair, is debatable, but in all versions of the story, the sea god, Poseidon, lusted after her. Some say she spurned him, and, in a rage, Poseidon turned her into the Gorgon. Others say she had sex with the god in Athena’s temple, offending the goddess. We don’t know if the coupling was consensual, but if Medusa resisted the god’s attentions in some stories, why not this one, too?
Willing or not, though, Medusa was punished. It is a common story to blame women who are raped or otherwise abused. To justify such injustice, we turn the women into monsters, like a beauty who has snakes for hair.
Monsters Are Not Always What they Seem
Ugly and lonely as she was, Medusa was powerful. She could kill without even meaning to. Interestingly, there are no tales in which she turns a woman into stone. [5] Perhaps she just wanted to take her anger out on men, or maybe Athena never wronged her in the first place. Who knows?
Regardless of who destroyed her life or why, it’s possible Medusa learned, over time, to let go of her anger and forgive her abusers. After all, she wasn’t born evil. In fact, there’s nothing in her story to make us think she ever was cruel or irreverent.
In Homer’s Odyssey, there’s a scene in which a “monster’s grisly head” rises up from Hades. This translation does not mention the Medusa, but a translation from the scholar, Jane Ellen Harrison, does. She writes, “the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon.” [6]
In other words, we create monsters ourselves. Indeed, some monsters are more thoughtful, more empathetic, than we like to pretend. After all, they know what it is to be reviled.
At a certain point, though, the Medusa’s intentions don’t matter. If no one can look at you without dying, you’re a hazard. Whether the Gorgon wanted it to be so or not, it had become her nature to destroy. She was too dangerous to live.
Medusa Dies
Now the hero could ride off to get rid of the monster.
Why was Perseus willing to take this risk? Well, he loved his mother with all his heart, and he wanted to save her from a relentless suitor whom she despised. Besides, he was a young man and was ready to test himself. Being young, of course, he failed to understand the risk. It’s easier to be a hero when we don’t feel beaten down by life, and when we still believe we are strong enough to overcome adversity.
Perhaps hero tales are for children and elders. When we are young, we need to believe we have power even when we feel powerless. When we are older and feeling a little weak, the stories remind us of a time when we, too, dreamed we could destroy monsters and save victims. We again feel it might be possible to turn the world aright.
Of course, none of us can do that alone, and neither could Perseus. Like us, he needed help. So he appealed to his father, Zeus, who willingly paved the way. At the god’s behest, Hades loaned Perseus a helmet that would make him invisible, while Hermes gave him winged sandals like his own. Athena offered him a sword and also the shield that shone like a mirror, a mirror that would enable Perseus to fight Medusa without looking at her.
Using his magical gifts, Perseus made his way to the monster’s cavern and beheaded her. As she died, one drop of her blood became the winged horse, Pegasus; the other turned into the giant Chrysaor. In life, the Gorgon turned men into statues; in death, she gave birth.
Perseus Finds a Wife and Saves His Mother
That was not the end, however. Perseus had to get home before Polydectus defiled his mother. On the way, he became distracted by the vision of the beautiful Andromeda chained to a rock at the ocean’s edge. The young woman’s mother had boasted of her beauty, angering Poseidon, who sent the sea monster, Cetus, to ravage the coast of their kingdom. To appease the serpent, they left Andromeda as a sacrifice.
Here we have the sin of hubris and deities who are easily offended. Innocent women become victims, and sea monsters eat them. As a hero, Perseus had to do something. Using Athena’s magic sword Athena, he cut down the monster and saved the maiden, receiving her hand in marriage.
Finally, with his wife beside him, Perseus could go home. When he got there, though, he discovered his mother hiding in the temple of Athena, for in the young man’s absence, Polydectus had become aggressive. Outraged, Perseus stormed into the throne room, where the king met with his advisors. Surprised, the king asked if Perseus had the Medusa’s head. In answer, the younger man whipped the head from the bag on his shoulder and held it up. All the men looked upon it and turned to stone.
Not even death took from the Gorgon the power she held. It seems that the monsters we create never entirely go away.
Creating Our Own Ending
The hero’s story was not yet over, for Perseus’s grandfather still lived. A few years later, while attending some games, the young man tossed an iron ring that accidentally struck an elderly gentleman, who died from the blow. Later, Perseus learned he had killed his grandfather.
If, instead of shunning his daughter and her child, Acrisius had welcomed them, his death might have turned out differently. Fate is fate, but, like our monsters, we create it. If Acrisius had held his family close, Perseus might have been at his side during those games. He would have known the old king and taken care of him. Surely, then, the elder would not have died at the younger’s hand.
Perhaps because villains and monsters die in stories, we prefer to identify with the hero. Unfortunately, that is not always who we are. Often, we behave like Acrisius, sacrificing others to protect ourselves. At times, we are petty and selfish and too scared to do what we know is right.
It is easy to feel complacent, to be certain we would never betray another, especially our own family. Few of us identify with the frightened king.
Yet until we have been tested, how can we know for sure how we will act? If we have been tested and managed to emerge as heroes, is it right to judge one who might never have known the blessings that gave us our courage?
Because Danaë loved her boy, he also learned to love. What did Acrisius learn? How much sadness had he experienced before he took that desperate step of entombing his daughter. What loneliness lay within him? Did he feel empty, bitter? We do not act in a vacuum. We are not always the hero.
Soothing Our Hurts
If we can understand this, we can understand that our work is not to rush out to destroy whatever we see as bad. After all, we can see monsters where there are none. If instead, we look for the monster within us, and if we learn to soothe that hurt and bitter creature that lives in our heart, we might discover that the world holds fewer monsters than we thought.
Of course, Acrisius, who was a villain, and Perseus, the hero, are not the only characters in this tale. Danaë, for instance, may seem like the passive victim. After all, things are done to her. One man tries to keep her from the world, while other men lust after her. None of them care about her as a person. To them, she has no importance in and of herself. When others treat as less than human, our spirit shrivels.
But Danaë had resilience. Not only did she survive her imprisonment and that wild ride on the ocean with a spirit that could still love, she also kept a king at bay by seeking strength from other women. She was not completely helpless. Neither are we, no matter how trapped or harassed or abused.
Being the Best Person We Can Be
If we are like the hero, and the villain, and the victim, we are also like the monster. That’s why we have to look clearly and compassionately at our rage and shame. In this way, we can transform them into kindness. Otherwise, our wounds will turn into hate, and we will make monsters of those around us.
That’s why, in the end, Perseus relinquished Medusa’s head. Although he carried her with him for a long time, and used her power against his foes, he knew he couldn’t hold onto her forever. That would be like holding onto his anger. So he gave the head to Athena, who set it on her shield. In this way, the head lost its power to harm. Not only did this make the world a safer place, but it also freed Medusa from her curse.
Living on Athena’s shield, the Gorgon became a symbol. Whoever looked upon it would know that a monster lives in us all. None of us is wholly divine. But instead of carrying the monster close to our heart, we can do as Perseus did and give it to our god. We can let it go.
But don’t imagine the monster goes away forever. It lives on Athena’s shield to remind us that it is there and that it can turn our hearts into stone at any moment, if we let it. That’s why we must, over and over, every day of our lives, befriend our wounds, soothe our shame and our rage. Even the thoughtless toss of an iron ring can kill. Our task is to pay attention to all the parts of us. We can encourage the hero within, seek to be the best person possible, without pretending that’s all we are.
In faith and fondness,
Barbara
Credits
- See “Biblical Literalism,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_literalism, accessed February 5, 2022.
- Wilson, Mandy, “The History of Biblical Literalism: What You May Not Know,” Wilson Freelancing, March 24, 2013, https://wilsonfreelancing.wordpress.com/2013/03/24/the-history-of-biblical-literalism-what-you-may-not-know/, accessed February 5, 2022.
- Clinton, Hillary and Louise Penny, State of Terror, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2021, 8:49:50 audiobook.
- Peters, Ellis, The Raven in the Foregate, Ashland: Blackstone Publishing, 2010, audiobook 4:39.
- “Medusa,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa, accessed February 5, 2022.
- Harrison, Jane Ellen, Prolegomena: To the Study of Greek Religion, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1908, 187-188. See “Medusa,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa, accessed February 5, 2022.
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Copyright © 2022 Barbara E. Stevens. All Rights Reserved.