Greek to Me: Medusa Was the Victim
In Hesiod she is born a Gorgon. In Ovid she is assaulted, transformed and killed. The version matters.
The monster label needs a source note.
Ancient sources do not give Medusa one neat origin. Hesiod's Theogony, composed around 700 BC, already presents her as the only mortal Gorgon among three sisters and calls her fate woeful. Centuries later, Ovid's Metamorphoses gives a different backstory: Medusa was once famous for her beauty and hair; Neptune assaulted her in Minerva's temple; Minerva changed her hair into snakes; Perseus found her asleep and killed her; and Minerva wore those snakes on her breastplate. Greek art was depicting monstrous Gorgons long before Ovid, so his Roman account is not the one original Greek version. It is, however, a version in which Medusa is attacked, transformed and killed. The film never calls her a priestess, because the ancient texts cited here do not.
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Greek to Me
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