Gorgo
or Gorgon (Γοργώ).
1.
The wife of Leonidas, king of Sparta. A fine repartee of hers is given by Plutarch. When a woman, a stranger, observed to her, “You Spartan women are the only ones that rule men,” she replied, “True, for we are the only ones that give birth to men” (Lacon. Apophth.).
2.
（Γοργώ). The capital of the Chorasmii in Bactriana. It is supposed to correspond to the modern Urghenz.
3.
（Γοργώ). Homer makes mention of the terrible head of the Gorgon, a formidable monster (Odyss. xi. 633). This head is a terror in Hades, and in the aegis of Zeus. Hesiod speaks of three Gorgons: Stheno (Valeria, the mighty), Euryalé (Lativolva, the wide-wandering), and Medusa (Guberna, the ruler). They are the daughters of the aged sea-god Phorcys and Ceto, and sisters of the Graiae. (See Graiae.) They dwell on the farthest shore of Ocean, in the neighbourhood of Night and of the Hesperides. They are awful beings, with hair and girdles of snakes, whose look turns the beholder to stone. They are also often represented with golden wings, brazen claws, and enormous teeth. Medusa is mortal, but the other two immortal. When Perseus cut off Medusa's head, Chrysaor and the winged horse Pegasus, with whom she was with child by Poseidon, sprang forth from the streaming blood. The head was given by Perseus to Athené, who set it in her shield. Heracles received a lock of the hair from Athené as a present. When endeavouring to persuade Cephalus of Tegea to take part in his expedition against Hippocoön of Sparta, the king represented that he feared an attack from his enemies the Argives in Heracles's absence. Heracles accordingly gave to Steropé, the daughter of Cephalus, the lock of Medusa's hair in a brazen urn, bidding her, |
| Rondanini Medusa. (Glyptothek, Munich.) |
In consequence of the belief in this power of the Gorgon 's head, or Gorgoneion, to paralyze and terrify an enemy, the Greeks carved images of it in its most terrifying forms, not only on armour of all sorts, especially shields and breastplates, but also on walls and gates. Thus, on the south wall of the Athenian Acropolis, a large gilded Gorgoneion was set on an aegis (Pausan. i. 21.4). In the popular belief the Gorgon 's head was also a means of protection against all enchantment, whether of word or act, and we thus find it throughout Greek history employed as a powerful amulet, and often carved with graceful settings on decorative furniture and costly ornaments. But the Greek artists, with their innate sense of beauty, knew, even in the case of the Gorgon , how to give adequate expression to the idea which lay at the root of the story. The story said that Medusa had been a fair maiden, whose luxuriant hair had been turned by Athené into snakes in revenge for the desecration of her sanctuary. Accordingly the head of Medusa is represented in works of art with a countenance of touching beauty, and a wealth of hair wreathed with snakes. The face was imagined as itself in the stillness of death, and thus bearing the power to turn the living to stone. The most beautiful surviving instance of this conception is the Rondanini Medusa now at Munich. The story of Medusa has suggested several fine bits of English verse, among them D. G. Rossetti's Aspecta Medusa and Hake's sonnet, The Infant Medusa.