There is an interesting feminist reading of this part of Medusa’s story, which suggests that we might see Athene’s transformation of Medusa as an act of sisterly solidarity. In this interpretation, Athene saves Medusa from further sexual assault by making her undesirable to male gods who can and do force themselves on her. Medusa is also armed against attackers, because she has the power to turn them to stone. But it isn’t at all clear from Ovid’s telling of the story that Medusa’s petrifying appearance is a gift from Athene, or indeed that it post-dates her snaky conversion. The only metamorphosis that Ovid mentions is the changing of her hair into snakes. It is perfectly possible that Medusa was always able to turn living creatures to stone: her immortal sisters seem unaffected by this, so perhaps Poseidon is similarly impervious. There is a second, greater difficulty with this interpretation: anyone who spends time with Athene in almost any story told about her will struggle to see her as a cheerleader for other women. Her most enduring fondness is not for a woman at all, but for Odysseus. And he is hardly the hero you would wish your sister to marry, unless your sister had bullied you relentlessly as a child.
In this metamorphosis, the focus of Ovid’s attention – and ours – is on the head of the Gorgon. There is no description of her body being transformed into a monstrous shape. Even before Medusa is decapitated by Perseus, we are drawn to her head, rather than the whole of her. Unless, of course, her head is the whole of her.
The earliest visual representations of Gorgons are highly stylized images, which we’ll look at shortly. Earlier still, we find gorgoneia: monstrous heads, which probably reflect the fears of the societies that created them. They are perhaps also connected to Humbaba, a divine monster of earlier Mesopotamian myth, who first terrorizes and then is beheaded by Gilgamesh.8 The gorgoneia are incredibly strange: huge mouths full of teeth, protruding tongues and tusks, often beards. They can be found carved onto the pediments of temples, decorating armour or sometimes on one side of a coin. In the Iliad, Homer says that Athene has a terrible Gorgon head on her aegis, or breastplate, to unnerve her enemies.9 Agamemnon also has a grim-faced Gorgon head on his shield,10 so mortal and goddess alike use the Gorgon head to provoke fear. And it clearly works: Homer also mentions a Gorgon head in the Odyssey. And this one is not a decoration on a shield, but is an actual creature which apparently lives （or maybe ‘dwells’ would be the more appropriate verb） in the Underworld, doing the bidding of Persephone.11 After a trip down to Hades to commune with the dead, Odysseus makes a hasty retreat in the fear that Persephone might send this head after him. Odysseus is made of stern stuff – he has made the journey to the Underworld, for a start – yet he is scared of even the possibility of seeing this disembodied head. But then, who wouldn’t be scared of a hovering Gorgon head? Its reputation is clearly formidable and far-reaching. Visitors to the Archaeological Museum in Olympia can see a wonderful example of a gorgoneion, which dates to the first half of the sixth century BCE. This shield decoration is a circle surrounded by three large wings. In the centre is a hideous face: bulbous nose above distended mouth, its thick tongue outstretched. A garland of twisting snakes surrounds her.
There have been many attempts to derive a definitive meaning from these Gorgon heads, or more accurately, Gorgon faces or masks. Archaeologists, anthropologists and psychologists have sought to connect them to various natural phenomena: storms, for example. Gorgons are renowned for the strident noise they make, as Pindar confirms when he explains that Athene created many-voiced flutes to try and imitate the eriklanktan go?n12 – ‘deafening wail’ – that emanates from the mouth of Euryale, one of Medusa’s sisters. So the connection with thunder and storm clouds is a tempting one. More convincingly, the Gorgon is thought to be a representation of the animals we might fear, particularly if we slept outdoors: perhaps her snakish hair stands in for snakes （which are often poisonous in Greek myth） or even a lion’s mane. The snakes that surround the Olympia shield decoration are certainly reminiscent of a mane. And the sound of a lion’s roar in the darkness or an unseen snake’s hiss would be the stuff of nightmares for many of us. Is a Gorgon head a way of making our nebulous nightmares less terrifying, by carving them into solid objects we can touch or hold, made of metal and stone? And is it then something we can use to assist us?
The frightening appearance of the gorgoneion is precisely what makes it so powerful as a decorative design. It acts as an apotropaic device: something which wards off danger, particularly the supernatural kind. What better thing to have on your shield than something which scares you, so will definitely terrorize your enemies? And what better way to master your own fears than by taking them and turning them away from you to face whoever you are about to fight? In Homer’s description of the Gorgon, she is accompanied by Terror and Fear.13 These personifications are clearly who you need on your side in a battle. If they are to be found on either side of your gorgoneion, so much the better for you, and so much the worse for your enemies.