(A Roman mosaic from Piraeus depicting Medusa in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens)
From the second part of this week's readings, I wanted to focus on Perseus and Medusa...but more specifically, the last paragraph where the story of how Medusa came to have snakes for hair was told. I looked up Medusa's Wikipedia page to rad more about her, but as far as the actual myth goes, there isn't much information, and what is there are differing stories. Going with Ovid's telling, since it's the one I read this week, Medusa was raped by Neptune (Posideon) in Minerva's (Athena's) temple, so Minerva turned Medusa's hair to snakes and made her turn people to stone.
This goes along with my Part A reading notes where I talked about Juno's reactions and punishments for women that Jupiter had raped. This is a common theme in Greek mythology, but not one I am a fan of. Looking again to Wikipedia at a list of people who were raped in mythology in general, 9 out of 18 entrees are about Greek mythology. Out of those 9, 7 were raped by gods, 4 by Zeus specifically. This list is not complete, by any means. It leaves out Callisto, which I talked about last week, and I'm sure countless others. What I am not sure of, is why this trope persisted so much. It probably had something to do with people making excuses or wanting to tell a good story, and perhaps the parts about the angry goddesses Juno/Hera and Minerva/Athena were due to who told the story and something to do with gods being unable to rally harm other gods.
A messed up, interesting pattern.
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Bibliography: Ovid's Metamorphoses: Perseus and Medusa translated by Tony Kline
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