Persée, Méduse Et Prophétie - Mythes et légendes #1.2

Hello everyone. After following Jason and his famous Argonauts's adventures, we are going to focus today on another great Greek mythological hero, the famous Perseus. An amazing adventure filled with abused women, excessive manlihood and a good deal of divinities and Iron Man-like artefacts...Here we go! To begin with, there is several versions of Perseus's adventure and this one is a mix between Homer's, Hesiod's and Pherecydes's versions. There are other versions offering their own details, but they are regarded as less important. This story begins with the quarrel between two twin brothers, Proetus and Acrisius, for the control of the city of Argos and for their father's kingdom. If the mood is not the fairest between the brothers, the situation becomes extremely tensed when Proetus decides it might be smart to flirt with his brother's daughter...his niece isn't it... Young Danaë then finds herself at the heart of a sensitive matter and things won't evolve in an easy way since her father, praying to have a son, consult an oracle who tells him that, not only it would never happen, but also that his grand-son, therefore Danaë's son, would kill him. To garantuee his own safety, Acrisius locks his daughter in a donjon, safe from the carnal desire of his brother. The matter could have ended there, but it wouldn't be any fun and Zeus, the most famous womanizer, decides to sneak into the donjon under the shape of a golden rain to seduce the young woman and make her a child. When he discover the truth, Acrisus does not know what to do. He is torn apart at this difficult choice: killing his own daughter with her child, or do nothing and wait his upcoming death. With bravery and consciousness, he then decides to lock his daughter and the child in a wooden chest, which he throws in the sea. Yes, I hadn't seen this one coming. This chest drifts and grounds on Seriphos island, where a fisherman finds it, free the prisonners and introduces them to the local king, a despot in his own time. You guessed right, this child born from the union between Zeus and Danaë is Perseus who grows up on the island and becomes a tall and handsome lad. For Danaë, his mother, there is still troubles to come as Polydectes, the despot, is clearly fond of her and tries to make her marry him. Perseus is firmly opposed, aware of the man's strong temper, and this is where Perseus odyssey begins. Polydectes then pretends to marry another woman and ask Perseus a horse as a wedding gift. The young man does not have the means and wants to show off a bit in front of the audience and replies he'd better bring him back the famous Gorgon Medusa's head. An unfortunate statement for our young hero since the despot agrees and asks him to honor this mission. Before going further, one question has to be dealt with: who is Medusa? Originally, Medusa is an incredibly beautiful young woman, whom main asset is her hairs. Pretenders rushes to seduce her, even Poseidon takes a chance and seduce the girl at the heart of Athena's temple. After they're done their business, Athena and Medusa chat a bit and the poor girl dare to pretend her beauty is probably superior to the goddess's. Athena, quite annoyed by this pretentious mortal , decides to changer her hairs into snakes and to curse her, making anyone crossing her gaze immediatey changed into stone. Since then, Medusa lives recluse wither her two immortal sisters, petrifying every adventurer coming too close to her. When Athena heards of Perseus's expedition and his goal, she decides to help him and offers him a reflecting shield, which allows the hero to indirectly observe the Gorgon without any risk. Another god, Hermes, also brings Perseus his help by giving him a weapon with which he could cut Medusa's head's off. Still, a major problem remains. Perseus is not fully equipped for his quest yet to get to the Gorgone's place, who he has to fight. Therefore, he has to get three objects back, all of them owned by the nymphs, for him to leave in peace. Hades's helmet allows him to be invisible, a pair of winged sandal giving him the gift to fly and lastly, a shoulder bag in which he could protect the Gorgon's head. Like Russian dolls, fitting one into another, a problem suddenly adds to the other: Perseus doesn't know where to find the nymphs. So Hermes leads him to the Graeae, three ladies incarnated into swans who only own a teeth and an eye they have to share and who are the only ones to know the nymph's location. Perseus starts his journey, steals the Graeae's eye and tooth, making them tell him the nymph's location and takes off to get the perfect little warrior's outfit. In many movies or modern books I read, an epic fight takes place with Medusa during which, most of the time, the hero get lost in a temple's maze in ruin, terrified of crossing the Gorgon's petrifying gaze. That's a pretty picture, isn't it, but according to the ancient sources, which are obviously also fiction, well...Perseus finds the three Gorgons asleep when he gets there and therefore he cuts Medusa's head off in her sleep and puts it in his shoulder bag. However, a strange phenomenon occurs during the beheading: a winged horse, Pegasus, gets out of Medusa's corpse. It's a child of Poseidon and Perseus adopts it, even though the hero didn't really needed it since he had his magic sandals but anyway...we shouldn't seek for too much logic in mythology if we want to avoid an headache. So, after Medusa's ***, Perseus flee the area because Medusa's sisters get really angry, but thanks to Hades's helmet and its invisiblity trick, the hero gets out without any harm. On his way back, he uses on many occasion Medusa's head to petrify his ennemies and he even allows himself the luxury to save a princess, Andromeda, who was condemn to get eaten by a sea monster. He then finds his mother back, petrifies the despot who had sent him on the mission and makes governor the fisherman who had found him as a child. Then, he leaves to the city of Argos in order to get back the land of his ancesters. The king of the city, Acrisius, decides to flee the city as he remembers the dreadful prophecy. Unfortunately for the king, no one escape their destiny and like in a ''Final Destination'' movie, what was bound to happen did... In another city, Teutamides, its king, holds some funeral games after the death of his father. Perseus asks to join the games as an athlet and, probably out of curiosity, Acrisius come to see him in the galleries, far enough to take no chance. It's during the discus throw that the tragedy come to an end. Perseus focuses, thrown the the discus with a prodigious force and the latter veers beyond the limits and ends up its course in Acrisius's head, thus accomplishing the prophecy. I guess that, like the rest of us, he haven't seen that one coming... That's all my friends, I hope you liked the episode. We don't know exactly in what circumstances Perseus finished his life but there is no risk saying that he had a lot of stories to tell around the fire. As usual, suscribe if it isn't already done, leave a thumb up and, if you desire it, you can become my boss by supporting me on Tipeee! See you next time!