Perseus And The Gorgon Medusa Story Moral Lesson/Summary

Once in a time, Zeus and Danae had a son named Perseus. Danae was King Acrisius’s daughter, the king of Argos.

Long before Perseus was born, the oracle of Delphi told King Acrisius that his grandson would kill him one day. Her daughter Danae will later give birth to the child.

He feared the prophecy, depriving his daughter of any possible intercourse. He built a bronze room beneath the earth and imprisoned her daughter.

Acrisius cut off Danae from men. However, drawn by her beauty Zeus came to her in the golden rain. He pierced through the wall and made Danae her bride.

Time passed, and one evening as he walked by Danae’s room, King Acrisius heard a crying child from within. He then discovered that her daughter was married to Zeus.

The exasperated king let her daughter and grandson out to the sea on a chest. The chest floated safely to the island of Seriphus, where a fisherman, Dictys, brother of the king of the island, Polydectes, saw the chest, released the prisoners, and adopted them.

Perseus grew into a tall, handsome, strong, athletic young man. He received an education suitable for a hero. Achilles, Jason, Hercules, and Chiron the Centaur, Theseus’s teacher, taught Perseus.

Polydectes wanted Danae to be her bride, but Perseus believed he was less than honorable and protected her mother from him. Polydectes knew that Perseus would always be there to protect her mother, so he plotted a plan.

He flattered the lad for his prowess at many games and told him he was wasting his talent in Sephirus. Polydectes told him about a dangerous quest for him to become a great hero.

He continued to explain that three Gorgon sisters were living far away in the west in the land of the darkness. Two were ugly, but the most beautiful was Medusa.

She is beautiful, but her hair is terrible, coiling serpents that the sight of it turned men into stone. Perseus, indeed, has an arduous task.

As the son of Zeus, the gods helped him on his quest to find and behead Medusa. Hades gave him the cap of invisibility, Hermes gave him a pair of winged sandals, Athena gave him a reflective bronze shield, and Hephaestus gave him a sword.

Hermes guided him on the first part of his journey, where they flew over the seas of the black-earth country called Cimmerians. They found the Graiae sisters, like three old gray birds who only had one tooth and one eye between them, which they passed around.

Perseus tricked them into telling him what he wanted to know by stealing the eye. He eventually returned the eye after they told him where the gorgons lived.

Then, Perseus and Hermes returned to the very limits of the world, the back of the North Wind. They came to the blessed land of the Hyperboreans, where the people lived happily with a never-ending spring.

They bestowed a big leather bag to Perseus to put on the head of Medusa. He flew far west and found the Gorgons as the Gray sisters had told him.

He attached all the magic items that the gods gave and flew towards the cave. Upon entering, he saw statues of men with terror expressions on their faces. He found Medusa sleeping.

The gods warned Perseus that whoever looked upon Medusa’s eyes would transform into stones. So he carefully stood with his face turned away and looked at Medusa through the reflection in his bright bronze shield.

Then, he hurriedly cut off Medusa’s head and placed it in his bag. After he had done that, a winged horse Pegasus and a winged boar, Chrysaor, sprang from her neck, where Poseidon’s children were.

Perseus traveled home until the winged sandals that carried him reached Ethiopia, the kingdom of Cepheus. Here he found the country full of catastrophes and noticed a lovely maiden chained to a rock. She was the king’s daughter, Andromeda.

Cassiopeia, her mother, boasted that her beauty surpassed that of the Nereides. It caused anger in the sea nymphs, who also appealed to Poseidon. So, the sea god devastated the country with catastrophes and brought a monster that ate everything in front of it.

The Ethiopians begged Zeus and received a response to sacrifice the king’s daughter to the monster to save the country. Andromeda was then chained to the rock as prey to the beast while being watched by her lonely parents.

Perseus proposes to Cepheus that he will kill the monster in exchange for Andromeda to be his bride. The king was overjoyed and gladly accepted Perseus’s proposal. Then, he jumped into the air with the helmet from Hades and waited for the monster.

Then, the monster came and leaped towards Andromeda. But the courageous hero suddenly flew in front of the beast and brought out the head of Medusa from his bag.

The beast’s hideous body became a massive black rock. He then unchained Andromeda and led her to her delighted parents, who ordered her to prepare a wedding feast.

Perseus left Ethiopia with her wife and returned to Sephirus. He gave King Polydectes the gift he requested. But he did not find his mother in court, and Polydectes would not reveal where she was.

Perseus pulled Medusa’s head from his bag right there and then. Polydectes revealed that he locked her in a dungeon just before his head became stone.

He then rescued his mother and sent a messenger to his grandfather to let him know they wanted to return to Argos. Upon hearing from the messenger, Acrisius fled for protection to his friend Teutemias, king of Larissa, for he feared that the oracle’s prophecy might come true.

When Perseus arrived at Argos, he asked for his grandfather and followed him. Yet, with some strange luck, an accident occurred while participating in a funeral game. Perseus accidentally struck Acrisius with a discus and caused his death.

They made funeral rites for Acrisius, and Perseus presented Medusa’s head to Athena. She placed it at the center of his shield.