Perseus
For other meanings, see Perseus (disambiguation)Perseus, or
Perseas (Greek:
Περσεύς,
Περσέας), the legendary founder of
Mycenae and of the
Perseid dynasty there, was the first of the mythic heroes of
Greek mythology whose exploits helped establish the hegemony of
Zeus and the
Twelve Olympians in the mainland of
Greece. Perseus was the hero who killed
Medusa.
Perseus was the son of
Danae who, by her very name, was the
archetype and representative of all the
Danaans (Kerenyi 1959:45) and the only child of
Acrisius, King of
Argos. Disappointed by his lack of male heirs, Acrisius consulted the
oracle at
Delphi, which warned him that, destined to remain without a son himself, he would one day be killed by his daughter's child. Danae was childless and, to keep her so, he shut her up in a brazen chamber underground: this
mytheme is also connected to
Ares,
Oenopion,
Eurystheus, etc.
Zeus came to her in the form of a shower of gold, and impregnated her. Soon after, their child Perseus was born.
Fearful for his future but unwilling to provoke the wrath of the gods by killing Zeus' offspring, Acrisius cast the two into the sea in a wooden chest (compare the mythemes of
Osiris,
Karna and
Moses). Danae's fearful prayer afloat in the darkness has been expressed by the poet
Simonides of Ceos. Mother and child washed ashore on the island of
Seriphos, where they were taken in by the fisherman
Dictys, who raised the boy to manhood. The brother of Dictys was
Polydectes, the king of the island.
After some time, Polydectes fell in love with Danae and desired to remove Perseus from the island. He thereby hatched a plot to send him away in disgrace.Polydectes announced a banquet wherein each guest would be expected to bring him a horse, that he might woo
Hippodamia, "tamer of horses". The fisherman's protegé had no horse but promised instead to bring the head of
Medusa, one of the
gorgons, whose very expression turns people to stone. The Medusa was horselike in archaic representations (Kerenyi 1959:48), the terrible filly of a mare—
Demeter, the Mother herself— who was in her mare nature when Poseidon assumed stallion form and covered her. The issue of her foaling were the gorgon sisters. Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise.
For such a heroic
quest, a divine helper would be necessary, and for a long time Perseus wandered aimlessly, without hope of ever finding the gorgons or of being able to accomplish his mission should he do so.
|
The Gorgon just before being beheaded by Perseus as exhibited at the Archaelogical museum of Corfu. Note the oversized eyes. According to myth anyone looking at the Gorgon's eyes was petrified (turned to stone) |
According to the iconography of the
vase-painters, the gods
Hermes and
Athena came to his rescue. They did not know the way themselves, being of a younger generation of deities, but they knew ancient ones who would know; they led him to the
Graeae, sisters of the gorgons, three perpetually old women with one eye and tooth among them. Perseus snatched the eye at the moment they were blindly passing it from one to another and would not return it until they had given him directions. He also received winged sandals, a magic wallet (
kibisis), the cap of
Hades that made one invisible, also known as the Cap of Darkness, an
adamantine sickle such as the one that reaped the genitals of
Uranus, and a mirrored shield. With all this, "Like a wild boar he entered the cave" (
Aeschylus,
The Phorkides ), where he came upon the sleeping gorgons. By viewing Medusa's reflection in his shield he could safely approach and cut off her head. Seeing her own reflection in the shield, the Gorgon herself was turned to stone. The other two gorgons pursued him, but in his cap of invisibility he escaped.
On the way back to Seriphos, Perseus stopped in
Aethiopia (not to be confused with
Ethiopia, the modern name for
Axum), ruled by King
Cepheus and Queen
Cassiopeia. Cassiopeia, having boasted herself equal in beauty to the
Nereids, drew down the vengeance of
Poseidon, who sent an inundation on the land and a sea-monster,
Ceto, which destroyed man and beast. The
oracle of Ammon having announced that no relief would be found until the king exposed his daughter
Andromeda to the monster, she was fastened to a rock on the shore. Here Perseus, returning from having slain the gorgon, found her, slew the monster, and set her free. Medusa's blood that fell in the sea became
Pegasus (the flying horse) and
Chrysaor.
In the classical legend, he flew using the flying sandals. In
Renaissance Europe, and continuing to at least one modern
movie, the idea came in that Perseus flew mounted on Pegasus.
Perseus married Andromeda in spite of
Phineus, to whom she had before been promised. At the wedding a quarrel took place between the rivals, and Phineus was turned to stone by the sight of the Gorgon's head (
Ovid,
Metamorphoses v. 1). Andromeda followed her husband to
Tiryns in
Argos, and became the ancestress of the family of the
Perseidae through Perseus's and Andromeda's son,
Perses. After her death she was placed by Athena amongst the constellations in the northern sky, near Perseus and Cassiopeia.
Sophocles and
Euripides (and in more modern times
Corneille) made the story the subject of tragedies, and its incidents were represented in numerous ancient works of art.
On returning to Seriphos and discovering his mother had had to take refuge from the violent advances of Polydectes, Perseus killed him with Medusa's head, and made Dictys king.
Perseus then returned his magical loans and gave Medusa's head as a gift to
Athena, who set it in her shield.
The fulfillment of the oracle was told several ways, each incorporating the mythic theme of exile. In
Pausanias (12.16.1) he did not return to Argos, but went instead to
Larissa, where athletic games were being held.
He had just invented the
quoit and was making a public display of them when Acrisius, who happened to be visiting, stepped into the trajectory of the quoit and was killed: thus the oracle was fulfilled.
In
Apollodorus' version (2.4.4), the inevitable occurred by another route: Perseus did return to Argos, but when he learned of the oracle, went into voluntary exile in
Pelasgiotis (
Thessaly). There
Teutamides, king of
Larissa, was holding funeral games for his father. Competing, Perseus struck Acrisius in the foot, killing him instantly.
In a third tradition (
Ovid,
Metamorphoses, 5.177), Acrisius had been driven into exile by his brother,
Proetus. Perseus turned the brother into stone with the Gorgon's head and restored Acrisius to the throne.
Having killed Acrisius, Perseus, who was next in line for the throne, gave the kingdom to
Megapenthes son of
Proetus and took over Megapenthes' kingdom of
Tiryns. The story is related in Pausanias (loc. cit.), which gives as motivation for the swap. Perseus was ashamed for becoming king of Argos by inflicting death.
In any case, early Greek literature reiterates that manslaughter, even involuntary, requires the exile of the slaughterer, expiation and ritual purification. The exchange might well have been a creative solution to a difficult problem; however, Megapenthes would have been required to avenge his father, which, in legend, he did, but only at the end of Perseus' long and successful reign.
The two main sources regarding the
legendary life of Perseus—for he was an authentic historical figure to the Greeks— are
Pausanias and
Apollodorus, but from them we obtain mainly folk-etymology concerning the founding of Mycenae. Pausanias (2.15.4, 2.16.3-6, 2.18.1) asserts that the Greeks believed Perseus founded Mycenae. He mentions the shrine to Perseus that stood on the left-hand side of the road from Mycenae to Argos, and also a sacred fountain at Mycenae called
Persea. Located outside the walls, this was perhaps the spring that filled the citadel's underground cistern. He states also that
Atreus stored his treasures in an underground chamber there, which is why
Heinrich Schliemann named the largest
tholos tomb the
Treasury of Atreus.
Apart from these more historical references, we have only folk-etymology: Perseus dropped his cap or found a mushroom there (both named
myces), or perhaps the place was named from the lady Mycene, daughter of
Inachus, mentioned in a now missing poem, the great
Eoeae.
For whatever reasons, perhaps as outposts, Perseus
fortified Mycenae according to Apollodorus (2.4.4, pros-teichisas, "walling in") along with
Midea, implying that they both previously existed. It is unlikely, however, that Apollodorus knew who walled in Mycenae; he was only conjecturing. In any case, Perseus took up official residence in Mycenae with Andromeda.
Perseus and Andromeda had seven sons:
Perses,
Alcaeus,
Heleus,
Mestor,
Sthenelus,
Electryon and
Cynurus, and two daughters,
Gorgophone and
Autochthoe. Perses was left in
Aethiopia and became an ancestor of the emperors of
Persia, which etiologizes the similarity of the country's name and Perseus', as is mentioned above. The other descendants ruled Mycenae from
Electryon down to
Eurystheus, after whom
Atreus got the kingdom. However, the Perseids included the great hero,
Heracles, son of
Amphitryon, son of
Alcaeus. The Heraclides, or descendants of Heracles, successfully contested the rule of the Atreids.
A statement by the Athenian orator,
Isocrates (4.07) helps to date Perseus roughly. He said that Heracles was four generations later than Perseus, which corresponds to the legendary succession: Perseus,
Electryon,
Alcmena, and
Heracles, who was a contemporary of
Eurystheus.
Atreus was one generation later, a total of five generations. Taking 1223 as the start of Atreus' reign and assuming an average generation of 25 years brings the date for the start of Perseus' reign to about 1373, which is roughly consistent with the archaeology.
It would have been Perseus after all who had the Cyclopean wall built ca. 1350. The Egyptian embassy of about 1380 might have been for the purpose of cementing diplomatic relations with the new dynasties in power. It is logical to assume that the first act of the Pelopids when they obtained the throne of Mycenae would be to strengthen the defenses, adding the extension to the north and the secret cistern about 1220.
Because of the obscurity of the name and the legendary character of its bearer, most etymologists pass it by, on the presumption that it might be pre-Greek. However, the name of Perseus' native city was Greek and so were the names of his wife and relatives. There is some prospect that it descended into Greek from the
Proto-Indo-European language. In that regard
Robert Graves has espoused the only Greek derivation available.
Perseus might be from the ancient Greek verb, perthein, "to waste, ravage, sack, destroy", some form of which appears in Homeric epithets. According to
Carl Darling Buck ("Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin"), the "eus suffix is typically used to form an agent noun, in this case from the
aorist stem, pers-. Pers-eus therefore is a man who habitually sacks cities; that is, a soldier by occupation, a fitting name for the first Mycenaean warrior.
The origin of perth- is more obscure. J. B. Hofman ("Etymologisches Wörterbuch des Griechischen") lists the possible root as *bher-, from which Latin ferio, "strike". This corresponds to
Julius Pokorny's *bher-(3), "scrape, cut." Ordinarily *bh- descends to Greek as ph-. This difficulty can be overcome by presuming a dissimilation from the "th" in perthein; that is, the Greeks preferred not to say *pherthein.
Graves carries the meaning still further, to the Perse- in
Persephone, goddess of death.
John Chadwick in the second edition of "Documents in Mycenaean Greek" speculates as follows about the goddess pe-re-*82 of
Pylos tablet Tn 316, tentatively reconstructed as Preswa::"It is tempting to see...the classical
Perse...daughter of
Oceanus...; whether it may be further identified with the first element of Persephone is only speculative."
The Greeks made a folk-etymologic connection with the name of the
Fars people, whom they called the Persai. The native name, however has always had an -a- in Iranian.
Herodotus (7.61) recounts this story, devising a foreign son, Perses, from whom the Persians took name. Apparently the Persians themselves (Herodotus 7.150) knew the story, as
Xerxes tried to use it to suborn the Argives during his invasion of Greece.
One legend holds that Perseus turned
Atlas the
Titan into Atlas the mountain using the head of Medusa when Atlas refused to give Perseus shelter, or that Atlas asked to be shown Medusa's head to end the weary labor of holding heaven and earth apart.
Perseus had a daughter called
Gorgophone, whose name means "Gorgon Killer".
Abas was a good friend of Perseus.
Andrew Lang retold the story, removing all the specific names, in the story "The Terrible Head" in
The Blue Fairy Book.
John Barth also retells the myth of Perseus in his novel
Chimera.
The legend of Perseus was the basis for the film
Clash of the Titans.
A large survey software company has named itself Perseus.
It is the sole surviving line from Aeschylus' lost play.
*
Kerenyi, Karl, 1959.
The heroes of the greeks.
