Perseus Flashcards
What is Perseus’s story and origin?
Perseus is unusual because he is well integrated in social order, gets along well with women, gets married, lives happily ever after
What is his early life like?
Acrisius receives a prophecy that he would be destroyed if his daughter were to bear a son (wow haven’t heard this one before)
He locks Danae in a tower but Zeus impregnates her in the form of rain
Acrisius discovers the bay and puts Perseus and Danae out to sea in a chest
How is he rescued? What threats are there?
The chest lands on the island of Seriphos
They are rescued by fisherman Dictys
Perseus grows up here
His mom is pursued by evil cringe king Polydectes
Perseus offers him anything else except his mum, Polydectes wants the medusa head (gorgon)
- A divine female associated with Gaia and reptiles who makes direct eye contact (seen as immodest)
What are the events of his quests?
Athene offers wisdom (friend)
He must seek advice of Graiae (3 hags who share a tooth and an eye, passing it around, because they are soooo old)
- He tricks Graiae into directing him to nymphs who gift him a cap of invisibility, winged sandals, and a pouch for the head
Perseus uses an adamantine/unbreakable sword borrowed from Hermes, beheads Medusa
- He can do this by looking at only her reflection in his shield
Pegasus (child of Poseidon) emerges from Medusa’s body
- Medusa is turned into a monster before her labour, so Pegasus is trapped
How does Perseus get married?
Cassiopeia and Cepheus (queen and king) have daughter Andromeda
- Cassiopeia says Andromeda is more beautiful than sea nymphs (hubris; angers Poseidon)
- Poseidon floods the land and demands Andromeda as sacrifice
He sends a sea monster to seize her
Perseus kills the monster by turning it to stone (and creating the coral reefs) and claims her hand in marriage
- Andromeda is already married so Perseus battles her previous husband
What does he do when he returns home? What events take place later in his life?
Returns to Seriphos and turns Polydectes and his court to stone
Gifts head of Medusa to Athena
He visits Argos and kills Acrisius with a discus accidentally (prophecy fulfilled)
He becomes king of Tiryns and Mycenae, lives happily ever after with Andromeda, and is catasterized
What are the elements of “the girl’s Tragedy” story pattern exhibited by Danae?
- Prohibition: forbidden to marry
- Seclusion: locked in a tower
- Violation of prohibition: conception of Perseus
- Threat of punishment: set to sea in a chest
- Liberation: rescue by Dictys and later Perseus
- Confirms the norm that a girl should leave her father’s control, become a mother, continue life-cycle
Reflects paternal anxiety about being replaced by son/grandson
