So many artists have tried to capture Helen: she invariably reflects the ideals of beauty in whichever age they create her, from Star Trek’s Elaan （with her black ringlets and purple, sparkly leotard） to Rossetti’s Helen of Troy （a wide-eyed blonde, modelled on Annie Miller,41 whose hands clutch at her necklace but whose face seems almost empty of expression）。 And so we are left – as Ptolemy’s curious list suggests – with an array of Helens, none of whom seems quite real, and all of whom seem to represent the desires of their creators. Look at the certainty with which Achilles is drawn – his speed, his anger, his love for Patroclus, his commitment to honour and immortality through fame: he is defined by what he wants, and strives for, and loses. And then think of Helen, and how much harder she is to pin down: her confused parentage, her contested childhood, her multiple marriages. One of our earliest narrative traditions states that the most notorious fact about her – that she eloped with Paris – is actually a lie: the real Helen is elsewhere, while a war is fought over an unreal creature, an image. In fact, the more we try to understand her, the more she seems to elude us: Helen of Troy, Helen of Sparta, Helen of joy, Helen of slaughter.
Medusa
HE WHO FIGHTS MONSTERS, NIETZSCHE TELLS US, SHOULD TAKE care that he himself does not become a monster.1 But what happens when we look at this advice from the other direction? Is this how monsters are created: are all monsters heroes who went astray? Not in Greek myth, certainly. Some monsters are born that way and others, especially female monsters, are turned monstrous after a bruising encounter with a god. In the case of Medusa, she can cite both kinds of genealogy, depending on who tells her story.
Most ancient authors follow Hesiod’s lead and describe three Gorgons: Sthenno, Euryale and Medusa.2 They are the daughters of a sea god, Phorcys （a son of Gaia）， and his sister Cēto, who produce a tremendous array of sea-monster offspring, including Echidna （a fearsome sea-snake）， and sometimes also Scylla, who chomps her way through several of Odysseus’ crew. Hesiod notes an unusual aspect of Medusa’s condition: her two sisters are immortal and ageless, but she herself is mortal – which Hesiod considers a wretched fate.3 He doesn’t emphasize that Medusa must therefore also be prone to ageing, but the correlation is surely implied. Nor does he explain how she has turned out to be mortal when her parents are gods and her siblings are immortal. He simply states that it is the case. To grow old and die might be considered miserable enough, if all your relatives are going to live, ageless, forever. But for Medusa, being mortal will result in a premature and grisly fate.
And she has a pretty unhappy existence even before we consider the end of it. It’s not always clear that Medusa is a monster from the outset, though perhaps one could argue that the offspring of a sea-god and a sea-monster was always likely to have monstrous leanings. Several ancient authors, from Hesiod to Ovid, suggest something different though: Medusa began her life as a beautiful woman. Things only change after the sea god Poseidon seduces Medusa ‘in the soft, damp meadow’， as Hesiod puts it.4 This phrase has precisely the same double meaning in Greek as it does in English: Hesiod might mean that the god and the Gorgon had sex in an actual damp meadow, or the damp meadow might be a euphemism for Medusa’s vagina （you will have to insert your own joke about being turned to stone here, as I am far too mature）。 The gods are usually capable of seducing whoever they choose （with a few exceptions）， and it seems likely then that at this stage in her life, at least, Medusa is beautiful. Certainly, she is in the lyric poet Pindar’s twelfth Pythian Ode. He describes her as euparaou – ‘with beauteous cheeks’。5
This sexual encounter with Poseidon is a recurring feature of Medusa’s story, but the mood and location of their encounter vary, as do the consequences （we’ll come to her offspring later on）。 What is presented by Hesiod as consensual and idyllic is given a far darker spin by Ovid. In his Metamorphoses, Medusa is clarissima forma – ‘most beautiful in her appearance’。 She has multiple suitors attempting to woo her: this is not the snaky monster we have come to expect. This glorious woman has no feature more eye-catching than her gorgeous hair （I discovered this, says Ovid’s narrator, from someone who said he’d seen it）。 But then Medusa is raped by Poseidon in a temple of Athene.6 Ovid uses a brutal word – vitiasse7– which means to injure, defile or damage. Athene shields her eyes to avoid the sight of her temple being profaned. As we might expect from a goddess who so rarely favours women and so often favours men, Athene takes her revenge on the wrong person. Rather than punish Poseidon （which may be beyond her: he is at least as powerful as she is）， she instead punishes Medusa, turning the Gorgon’s hair into snakes. It is the perfect illustration of Athene’s clever cruelty that she destroys the feature of which Medusa must have been most proud. For modern readers, this disfiguration might bring to mind the French women whose heads were shaved after the Second World War because they were perceived to have collaborated with the Nazis. The punishment for having been considered beautiful by the enemy is to be turned into something less beautiful, as viciously as possible.