50 Fun Facts About Medusa

Medusa is generally described as a woman with what in place of hair?

Anyone who looked at her was turned to stone.

Medusa was one of three sisters known collectively as what?

The other two, Stheno and Euryale, were immortal; she alone could be killed.

What were the names of Medusa's two immortal sisters?

Hesiod says only that the two did not grow old; Pindar makes Euryale the source of the Gorgons' shrill cry.

Medusa and her sisters were usually said to be daughters of which sea-god and his sister?

The same parents produced the Graeae, which is why the Grey Sisters are also called Phorcides.

The name Medusa literally means what in Ancient Greek?

'Gorgon' is the grim one, from an adjective for a fierce or dazzling look.

Which king of Seriphus sent Perseus to fetch Medusa's head because he wanted to marry the hero's mother?

Perseus later turned him to stone with the very head he had demanded.

Perseus avoided Medusa's gaze by looking at her reflection in what?

The shield came from Athena, the winged sandals from Hermes, the sword from Hephaestus and the helm of invisibility from Hades.

Which god gave Perseus a helm of invisibility for the quest?

It let him escape the two immortal Gorgons who chased him after the beheading.

Which sea-god had made Medusa pregnant by the time Perseus killed her?

Her two children were born at the moment of her death.

What sprang from Medusa's body when she was beheaded?

One was a winged horse, the other a giant with a golden sword.

Chrysaor, born from Medusa's neck alongside the winged horse, was father of which three-headed giant?

Heracles killed Geryon while stealing his cattle for his tenth labour.

Perseus finally gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on what?

The image of the head became the gorgoneion, an evil-averting device.

The evil-averting image of Medusa's head used in classical antiquity is called what?

It turns up on temple pediments, shields, coins and the bottoms of drinking cups.

According to Ovid, whom did Perseus turn to stone with the head while flying over north-west Africa?

Atlas, holding up the sky, tried to attack him and became a mountain.

Medusa's blood spilling onto seaweed was said to have created what in the Red Sea?

Perseus had laid the head down by the shore during his stay in Ethiopia, where he rescued Andromeda.

Drops of Medusa's blood falling on the desert were said to have produced which creatures of the Sahara?

The Argonautica, Ovid and Lucan all tell the tale; her blood also spawned the Amphisbaena.

Which ancient historian located Medusa and her sisters in Libya?

Hesiod and Aeschylus put Medusa's home on Sarpedon near Cisthene instead.

In an ode of 490 BC, which poet already speaks of 'fair-cheeked Medusa'?

Fifth-century artists began to show her as beautiful as well as terrifying.

The vase-painter Polygnotus showed Medusa doing what as Perseus beheads her?

Killing a beautiful sleeping maiden is hardly heroic, so it is unclear whether the vase mocks Perseus.

In Ovid's late version, why did Minerva turn the beautiful Medusa's hair into snakes?

No earlier source tells this story, though beautiful Medusas in art predate Ovid.

Perseus learned where to find Medusa by seizing what from the Graeae, the Grey Sisters?

The three old women had one eye and one tooth between them and passed the eye from hand to hand.

Athena gave Perseus a kibisis to carry the head; what was it?

She warned that the head could still petrify even in death.

Perseus's own grandfather Acrisius died when the hero did what at funeral games?

The Delphic oracle had warned Acrisius that his grandson would kill him.

Which queen's boast about her daughter's beauty led Poseidon to send Cetus against Andromeda?

Athena later placed Andromeda among the stars near Perseus and Cassiopeia.

According to Pausanias, the Greeks believed Perseus founded which city as his capital?

The Greeks treated Perseus as a genuine historical figure and founder of the Perseid dynasty.

The early sixth-century BC Medusa pediment comes from a temple of Artemis on which island?

Her son Chrysaor is carved beside her, in his earliest known appearance in art.

In the Iliad, the Gorgon's head appears on Athena's aegis and on the shield of which Greek commander?

Homer never names Medusa; he speaks only of 'the Gorgon', grim of aspect and glaring terribly.

Benvenuto Cellini's bronze Perseus with the Head of Medusa stands in the Loggia dei Lanzi of which city?

Cosimo I de' Medici commissioned it, and Cellini hid a self-portrait on the back of Perseus's helmet.

Cellini's Perseus was unveiled to the public in which year?

Michelangelo's David and Donatello's Judith were already standing in the same square.

Caravaggio painted his Medusa on what unusual support?

It was commissioned by Cardinal del Monte as a gift for Ferdinando I de' Medici and hangs in the Uffizi.

Caravaggio's two Medusas are also what?

He painted the first in 1596 and the second around 1597, in years marked by run-ins with the law.

Bernini's marble Medusa in the Capitoline Museums has been read as a visual pun because it is what?

Its clumsy eyebrows and rough snakes have led some to doubt Bernini carved it at all.

Under which emperor was Istanbul's Basilica Cistern, with its two Medusa-head column bases, built?

Its 336 marble columns were revealed when 50,000 tons of silt were dredged out in the 1980s.

Which Dan Brown novel features the cistern and its inverted Medusa pillar?

The 2016 film adaptation used the location too.

Which Italian fashion house uses Medusa's head as its logo?

Founder Gianni Versace came from Calabria, once part of Magna Graecia.

Medusa's head appears at the centre of which Italian island's flag, together with the three-legged trinacria?

The head implies the protection of Athena, who wore the Gorgon on her aegis.

Whose posthumous 1940 essay 'Medusa's Head' equated decapitation with castration?

The article drily notes there are no recorded instances of Medusa turning a woman to stone.

Which feminist theorist wrote 'The Laugh of the Medusa', declaring 'she's beautiful and she's laughing'?

She argued men made Medusa a monster because they feared female desire.

Garbati's 2008 sculpture, shown in Lower Manhattan in 2020-21, reverses the myth by showing what?

Garbati grew up near Florence admiring Cellini's bronze and wanted to flip its roles.

In the 1981 film Clash of the Titans, Perseus uses Medusa's head to petrify which sea monster?

The film's stop-motion Medusa was the final work of Ray Harryhausen.

Which actress played Medusa in Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief?

Percy beheads her at a garden centre in New Jersey, and her head later petrifies his stepfather Gabe.

Jellyfish are the 'medusa' phase of which subphylum, named after the Gorgon?

The trailing tentacles evoked her snaky hair; the medusa is normally the sexual phase that produces larvae.

In Lully and Quinault's 1682 opera Persée, Medusa is sung by what type of voice?

Her aria laments 'I have lost the beauty that made me so vain'.

Medusa was called the original 'Nasty Woman' in 2016 after comparisons to which politician?

Elizabeth Johnston argued Medusa reappears whenever male authority feels threatened by female agency.

Which novelist used 'Medusa-Truth' as an image of the unbearable Real in The Mutiny of the Elsinore?

In this reading, refusing to meet her eyes is refusing to face a meaningless universe.

Which god lent Perseus his own winged sandals and harpe sword for the quest against Medusa?

Zeus sent Hermes and Athena, Perseus's half-siblings, to arm him after he prayed for help.

Perseus was the son of Zeus and which mortal princess, locked in a bronze tower by her father?

The Delphic oracle had warned her father he would be killed by his grandson, so mother and baby were cast adrift in a chest.

Caravaggio's second Medusa, dated around 1597 and painted on a shield, hangs in which gallery?

He chose a convex wooden shield to invite comparison with a celebrated shield said to have been painted by Leonardo da Vinci.

Perses, a son of Perseus and Andromeda left behind in Aethiopia, was held to be the ancestor of which people?

The couple's other descendants ruled Mycenae from Electryon down to Eurystheus, Heracles's taskmaster.

According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, on which island did Medusa live and die?

Later writers such as Dionysius Scytobrachion and Herodotus instead placed the Gorgons in Libya.