Introduction
Medusa is a Gorgon, one of three monstrous sisters, but, unusually, the only one of the three who was mortal. In the best-known tradition, she was not born a monster but was once a beautiful young woman, cursed and transformed by Athena; she is best known for her petrifying gaze and for her death at the hands of the hero Perseus.
This figure marks the point where the genealogy of the gods gives way to the genealogy of heroes. A fuller account of their adventures belongs to a separate treatment of the Greek Heroic Cycle; this article covers their divine parentage and place in that transition.
Family
The curse
According to Ovid's telling, Medusa was once renowned for her beauty, especially her hair, until Poseidon violated her within Athena's own temple. Athena, unable or unwilling to punish Poseidon directly, turned her anger on Medusa instead, transforming her famous hair into living serpents and giving her a gaze that turned any who looked directly at her to stone.
Death at Perseus's hands
Sent to bring back Medusa's head, Perseus, aided by gifts from the gods including a mirrored shield from Athena (allowing him to view her only in reflection and avoid her petrifying gaze directly), beheaded her while she slept.
Pegasus and Chrysaor
From Medusa's severed neck sprang two offspring of her earlier union with Poseidon: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant warrior Chrysaor, born fully formed at the moment of her death. Perseus later used her still-potent severed head as a weapon before giving it to Athena, who set it upon her own shield or breastplate, the aegis, where it continued to turn enemies to stone.
Meaning and reception
Medusa's story, especially the question of her transformation as an unjust punishment for being a victim rather than a perpetrator, has become a particularly significant and widely reinterpreted myth in modern retellings and feminist readings, in notable contrast to her more straightforwardly monstrous role in ancient sources.