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Perseus was the son of Zeus and Danae and the first king of Mycenae.
He was the first of the seven great Greek Heroes. He was engendered by
a shaft of golden light, the guise Zeus used to visit Danae in her prison,
where she was put by her father when he was told be an oracle that he would
be killed by his grandson. When Dana's father, Acrisius, found out that
she was pregnant, he locked her and baby Perseus up in a wooden box and
cast them out to sea. The box floated to shore on Sephiros. The were taken
in by the fisherman who found them and his wife and cared for. The king
of the region, Polydectes, fell madly in love with Danae and wished to
get rid of Perseus, now grown into a youth. He therefore tricked Perseus
into going after Medusa's head. Medusa was the youngest of the Gorgons
and the only one capable of being killed. The Gorgons were three monstrous sisters who were once beautiful maidens. Medusa was courted by Poseidon,
arousing the jealousy of Athena, so she changed Medusa into the ugliest creature imaginable. She had a scaly body and bulging red eyes, brass wings
and claws and every hair on her head became a hissing snake. She was so
ugly that anyone who looked upon her was turned to stone. Medusa's sisters
protested, so Athena turned them into similar monsters. Perseus was not
at all afraid and climbed a hill at dawn to hymn the rising sun. Hermes
and Athena then appeared to him and gave him special gifts. Athena gave
him a golden sword and a shield of gold polished so well that it could
be used as a mirror and warned him to look at Medusa only through the shield.
Hermes gave him a pair of gold-winged sandals that would allow him to fly
faster than an eagle. Hermes then told him that there were still two other
pieced needed for the mission, kept by the Nymphs of the West, who dwelt
in a secret place only the the Gray Sisters could tell him. The Gray sisters
had only one tooth and one eye between them which they passed between each
other to bite and see. Perseus asked them where to find the Nymphs of the
West but they refused to tell him, so he seized the eye and tooth and refused
to give them back until they told him. They told him they lived in the
Garden of the Hesperides, so he took off to find them. The nymphs greeted him with great joy, for they rarely saw strangers and when he departed,
they gave him the gifts Hermes and left with them (a helmet which cast
darkness about it's wearer making him invisible and wallet woven of golden
thread which was the only thing that could contain the poison of Medusa's
head). He then sped to the swamp where the Gorgons lived. He crept to the
one he knew was Medusa, wearing his helmet and keeping her head in the
center of his mirror-like shield and slashed down with his sword. A great
shriek rose from the other Gorgons as they woke up and he stuffed the head
in the wallet and flew away. The Gorgons chased him but he quickly out
ran them. He used the head to turn a sea monster to stone, saving Andromeda,
who became his wife. Then he returned to Sephiros just in time to stop
his mother's forced marriage to Polydectes. He drew the head from the wallet
and turned the groom and guests to stone. Perseus lived to a great age
and founded Mycenae, becoming it's first king. Some stories say he gave
the head to Athena who attached it to her shield and others say he wanted
to rid the world of such hideousness and threw it into the see where it
still rolls on the waves making coral.
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