Perseus: Greek Hero Who Slew Medusa

The Story of Perseus

Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danae, a princess of Argos. Her father, King Acrisius, had been warned that his grandson would kill him, so he locked Danae away in a bronze chamber. Zeus reached her as a shower of gold, and when baby Perseus was born, Acrisius set mother and child adrift at sea in a wooden chest.

The chest washed up on the island of Seriphos, where a kind fisherman named Dictys took them in. Perseus grew up there, but the island's king, Polydectes, wanted to force Danae to marry him and saw her son as an obstacle. He tricked the proud young man into promising to bring back the head of Medusa, the Gorgon whose gaze turned people to stone.

Athena and Hermes came to help him. Perseus first visited the Graeae, three gray sisters who shared one eye, and he snatched the eye until they told him how to find the nymphs who held the gifts he needed. From them he received winged sandals, a special bag and the cap of Hades that made its wearer invisible, and Hermes gave him a curved sword.

Perseus found the Gorgons asleep. Looking only at Medusa's reflection in his polished shield, he cut off her head and dropped it into the bag. From her neck sprang the winged horse Pegasus and the warrior Chrysaor, and Perseus escaped her furious sisters by putting on the cap of invisibility.

Flying home, he passed over Ethiopia and saw the princess Andromeda chained to a rock by the sea. Her mother Cassiopeia had boasted that she was more beautiful than the Nereids, and Poseidon had sent a sea monster to punish the kingdom. Perseus killed the monster and married Andromeda, and when her former suitor Phineus attacked at the wedding, Perseus turned him and his men to stone with Medusa's head.

Back on Seriphos, he found his mother hiding from Polydectes. Perseus held up the head and turned the king and his followers to stone, then made the good Dictys king. He gave the head to Athena, who set it on her shield, and later, while competing in athletic games at Larissa, he threw a discus that accidentally struck and killed Acrisius, fulfilling the old prophecy.

Ashamed to take the throne of the grandfather he had killed, Perseus traded kingdoms with his cousin and ruled Tiryns, and he was said to have founded Mycenae. Through his son Electryon he became an ancestor of Heracles. Perseus, Andromeda, Cassiopeia and Cepheus were all placed among the stars, where their constellations can still be seen.