All language subtitles for Clash of the Gods - S01E05 - Medusa

If looks could kill...

you would be dead.

Turned to stone with just
one glance.

This is the myth of Medusa.

A monstrous female
feared by all men.

On the battlefield and beyond.

But she will be challenged
by a surprising enemy.

Behind the story lurks
a stunning reality.

Is Greece's most famous monster
inspired by a human corpse?

And is her story based
on actual science

as seen on our night sky?

Discover the hidden meaning behind
one of the greatest stories ever told.

The hunt for the head of Medusa.

This was once a garden,

now it is a graveyard littered
with dead bodies.

Each face frozen in a moment of terror.

The fatal moment
when it gazed upon...

Medusa.

Her gaze penetrates right into
your inner being

and petrifies you from the inside out.

The myth of Medusa has captivated
us for almost 3,000 years.

Today her image still commands
instant recognition around the world.

The Medusa that we often see
depicted on vases

features a woman with boar's tusks,

snakes curling around
her head instead of hair,

sometimes she is bearded,
very often she's grimacing,

facing us directly with her tongue
lolling out of her mouth,

her eyes staring straight at you.

In ancient Greece, myths made
sense of a confusing world.

Their stories recorded history,
explained nature,

and dictated how people should live.

The Medusa myth was no exception.

They teach lessons to the society
and help them organise things.

And I think the Medusa story gives us
a window into certain kinds of values

in ancient Greek society.

It surely gives a sense of a rich
portrait of men's experience

insofar as they may well have
felt, at some point in their lives,

completely under the spell
of some bewitching type of woman.

Medusa can crush a man with
a single, penetrating look.

It is a power that makes
her nearly invincible.

The Medusa myth awakens
a number of fears in people,

especially men. This image
of the all-powerful woman

whose gaze can't be averted,
whose gaze can see right through you,

to expose everything
inside of you,

that can freeze you in your tracks,

and somehow devour you
and consume you,

I think men in particular are very
afraid of this sort of strong woman.

To the ancient Greeks, Medusa's deadly
image was one of the most terrifying

in all of mythology.

But she was not always a monster.

According to the myth,
Medusa was once a ravishing woman.

Every man in Greece
wanted to possess her.

She's described as a beautiful
woman with long flowing locks of hair,

every suitor wants to marry her,

she causes envy among everyone.

But Medusa can't get married.

She is a priestess of Athena,
the goddess of war,

and bound by an eternal
vow of chastity.

Athena is the patron goddess of
the great city of ancient Athens.

She's also a virgin goddess,
sex is not a part of her world,

she's actually beyond the
reach of any male desire.

Servants in her temple would
have been expected to be virginal

so they could devote their energies
not to domestic issues and child rearing

but to the goddess' service.

Medusa, the hideous image of evil

starts out as a symbol of purity.

This is the story, but could
it be based on reality?

Athena's temple is no myth.

It still stands today high atop
the Acropolis in Athens.

The Parthenon.

In Greek it means
"place of the virgin".

When it was completed in 430 BC
it towered over the city of Athens.

Any Greek city should
have a great temple.

It would be like any city in America
having some kind of great sports stadium.

So Athens being the most prominent
city in ancient Greece,

wanted to have also a temple
that befitted its magnificence,

and so they created the Parthenon.

At the centre of the temple
stood a colossal statue of Athena.

Nearly 40 feet high,
carved out of ivory and gold.

It was one of the most impressive
sights in the ancient world.

In the myth, this is where
Medusa's tragic fate unfolds.

Medusa's beauty is off-limits,

locked away in the service to Athena.

But one suitor will not let her vow
of chastity stand in his way -

Poseidon, god of the sea.

Poseidon is this sort of very
prominent, masculine power.

He is the god of the sea and the god
of storms and the god of earthquakes.

Earthquakes don't creep up on you,
they hit you very hard.

If he was angered, even just a
little bit, he could explode violently

and really do harm to you.

In a fit of raw lust

Poseidon makes his move.

And ravages the virgin priestess.

He raped her inside of Athena's
Temple, a sacrilegious act.

He stole from her her virginity.

Certainly this would be a crime
in any time of the world.

Medusa is devastated.

Her innocence has been stolen.

Her life changed forever.

She was a rape victim
and so she was no longer

eligible for ordinary marriage
according to the mores of Greek times.

And she's no longer a virgin either
so she wasn't able to be devoted

to service to a goddess.

For certain religious rites you had
to purify yourself from intercourse

so actually having intercourse in
the Temple is desecrating that space.

Hence Athena's anger.

Athena is furious.

But not with Poseidon.

As a powerful male god,
this is expected of him.

In the eyes of Athena, it is Medusa
who deserves to be punished.

The victim is about
to become the accused.

Athena's one of the guys.

She has this role that places her
in the kind of male camp.

She's going to side with the men.

In a way, it reflects a society where
they considered women

more as property value.

They recognised at some point that
rape is necessarily harmful to the woman,

but it doesn't seem
in most of these myths

that there's any sympathy at all.

And frequently, the female figure who
is raped is the one who's punished.

Athena will impose a devastating
sentence on her shattered priestess.

She will transform
Medusa from a beauty...

into a beast.

Her new look will bear
a terrifying resemblance

to a frequent and real
sight in ancient Greece.

Human corpses.

Medusa, mythology's heinous
snake-haired beast

can turn her enemies to stone
with a single glance.

Once, she was Greece's greatest beauty.

Desired by both men and gods.

But after Poseidon raped her
Medusa's world changed forever.

The Medusa story is a tragedy

because she wasn't even
the perpetrator of the deed,

it was Poseidon who raped her
in Athena's Temple,

but she's then turned into
a hideous monster.

In the myth, the goddess Athena
curses Medusa without warning.

She begins an agonizing transformation.

Clawing desperately at her face.

Her skin cracks and withers.

And her long, silken hair becomes
a writhing mass of poisonous snakes.

Medusa's horrific transformation
is almost complete.

But there's one more twist.

She's now gonna have to undergo
the most powerful and gut-wrenching

of all the aspects of her curse.

She'll have to be now a person
whose very sight

turns the looker into stone.

It's now gonna isolate her
from all of human society.

Medusa is now no longer have any
interactions with anyone else.

So what Athena has effectively done
is consign this poor girl

to a kind of solitary confinement
for the rest of her life.

For the tragic crime
of being raped,

Medusa has lost her status,

her beauty

and her ability to look at anyone
without killing them.

Now, the final blow,

she is banished to a remote
and desolate island...

for life.

Medusa is now gonna live
out this curse for eternity.

And for all eternity, things
don't really change.

All that matters is that
stone garden grows by one

every time someone tries
to come close to her.

In the myth, Medusa has become
a type of monster called a Gorgon.

A name that comes from the
ancient Greek word for terrible.

The gorgon is this horrible monster.

It's got scaly skin, huge staring eyes

that can turn you to
stone by looking at you.

The earliest traditions that we have
of gorgons mention Medusa.

Medusa becomes first a human being

who's then transformed into
one of these nasty beasts.

In Greek myth, gorgons represent
the physical embodiment of death.

In fact, death is what inspired them.

The broad, wide-open eyes, the marks
on the face, the bloated face itself,

the pulled-back skin showing the teeth
and the tongue protruding

was inspired by the sight of a dead body.

In the days after dying,
the skin of a human corpse

begins to shrink around the
various parts of the body.

The face becomes grotesquely bloated.

The eyes expand out of their sockets.

And the tongue swells pushing
itself out of the mouth.

Gradually, the corpse morphs
from man to monster.

On photographs of dead bodies,
you can see all these changes

that are characteristic
of the gorgon taking place.

This is one of the things that people
today aren't so familiar with,

we get separated
from death very early.

We have specialists to
take care of dead bodies.

But the truth is that in ancient times
you wouldn't be insulated from this.

People would see this sort of thing.

Death was everywhere in
the ancient world.

In fact, many other historical
monsters are modelled on corpses.

In the middle of the Aztec calendar

you find exactly the same features,

you've got exactly the
same oversized eyes,

you've got the broad nose,
you've got the rictus grin,

you've got the protruding tongue.

You find it in Bes, in Egypt.

In India, you find many of
the same features on Rahu,

the demon responsible
for the eclipse.

In southeast Asia, Rangda,
the demon that kidnaps children

also has huge pop-eyes and a very, very
long tongue scrolling out of her mouth.

The prominence of this gorgon symbol

in many different spots
in the ancient world

gives us a real sense of just
how widespread these myths were.

In the story, Medusa is now a gorgon,

the mythical face of death.

But her physical transformation is
only the beginning of her punishment.

Her hideous looks will
make her an outcast.

But her petrifying power
will make her a target.

Because the warrior who beheads Medusa

will possess the ultimate
battlefield advantage.

Her severed head will
still turn men to stone.

Men from all over the
Mediterranean set out to slay Medusa

and claim that power for themselves.

One of them has more
than glory at stake.

His name is Perseus.

And his hunt for Medusa's head

is one of mythology's
greatest adventures.

The story of Perseus begins in Argos,

a real region of southern Greece.

In antiquity a lot of myths were
situated in specific locations.

Now, this was important for the people
who lived in those places.

They could actually claim connection
to one of these divine heroes.

In the myth, Argos is ruled by
a tyrant named Acrisius.

The king has a problem.

He has no male heir.

The Greek world tried to
retain property in families.

And the way you retain it families
is you leave it to the first born son

or the eldest male heir.

Acrisius' only child
is a daughter, Dana�.

She has no children of her own.

So the King consults a prophetess

to ask if she will ever
bear him a grandson.

Acrisius is told in prophecy that
if his daughter ever had a child,

that child would rise up and kill him.

He finds out that the son of his
daughter is in fact going to kill him,

and he sort of freaks out

and decides that he needs to prevent her
from ever having a child to begin with.

This fear of generational shift,

this fear of losing your power
to the next generation, was real.

If you had a kid and you
had something worth taking,

at some point you needed
to keep an eye on the kid.

Overcome by terror, the King hatches
a plan to save his own skin.

Acrisius had his daughter Dana�
walled up inside of a tower

where no on could see her.
It was a pretty miserable existence.

Dana� is trapped with no fresh air

and barely any food.

It is the King's way of killing her
without getting blood on his hands.

The King kept waiting for news
that his daughter had died,

and was very surprised that

he never received news that
she had died of starvation or thirst.

After a while, they begin to see
lights on and hear noise and sound

coming from the tower.

So Acrisius went to see what
his daughter was up to.

The King enters his daughter's chamber

and discovers to his horror that
Dana� is not only still alive,

she's a mother to a son,

Perseus.

Acrisius is stunned that someone
accessed the secure tower

and impregnated his daughter.

But the baby's father
isn't a mortal man.

He is king of the Greek gods.

Mythology's most prolific womaniser.

Zeus.

Zeus, who seduced so many
women in so many myths,

sees Dana� through the grating
and falls in love with her.

He comes down to her in about the only
shape that could come through the bars,

which is a shower of gold.

He took the form of a cascade of gold

and poured himself into the room

and then was able to
make love to her that way.

Zeus' shower of gold may have been
inspired by a real natural phenomenon,

one named after Perseus.

Probably the most impressive and
visible meteorite shower in the sky

is the Persean meteorite shower.

Certainly, it looks like a shower
of gold coming down

if you've ever stopped
and watched it in August.

You can see the individual streaks
with the yellowish colour to them.

In mythologies around the world

women can be impregnated
by various natural forces.

It's not just the shower of gold
that we have in the legend of Perseus,

we have women and animals sometimes
being impregnated by the wind.

Or in various mythologies women
become pregnant by the sun.

Perseus is born both divine and mortal.

A type of hero known as a demi-god.

So this demi-god idea means that

this person has some features
that are very godly, some divine powers,

but at the same time
he is mortal, he can die.

I suspect that the Greeks invented
this idea of the demi-gods

because they wanted to reach
the gods as much as possible.

To create images of themselves
that are closer and closer to the gods.

To fulfil his destiny as a demi-god

Perseus must first survive
his grandfather's wrath.

King Acrisius fears the boy will
fulfil the prophecy he dreads

and grow up to kill him.

His first impulse is to murder
both mother and child.

But he fears Zeus' revenge.

So he devises a plan to let nature
do the killing for him.

Acrisius decided to put both
the mother and the child into

a boat-like construction
and throw them into the sea.

Dana� and Perseus have been
left for dead with no food,

no direction and no protection
from the dangers of the sea.

Meanwhile, on a dismal island
beyond the waves,

Medusa is adding statues
to her garden of death.

Warriors turned to stone
trying to capture her head.

She possesses a power
every conqueror desires.

Even real conquerors

like Alexander the Great.

Medusa's power to turn
men to stone

may have spawned the famous
phrase "looks that kill".

But the ancient Greeks believed
her power could be used for good

as well as evil.

In their language, the name "medusa"
actually had a positive connotation,

it meant "guardian".

Her image was often used
to ward off danger.

She even appeared on the armour

of some of the world's
most feared warriors.

Evidence of this can be found in one of
the time capsules of the ancient world,

Pompei.

When they were excavating
the city in the 1830s,

archaeologists found a very large
mosaic which depicts a battle between

Alexander the Great
and the Persian King Darius.

And on Alexander's breast plate
is an image of Medusa.

The battlefield wasn't the only place
where Medusa's powers were sought.

She was also used
to scare children.

The idea was that you would put the
symbol on the outside of your stove

and this would prevent children
from opening up the oven door.

Now, the Medusa was something
that Greek parents used to use

in order to scare the kids
in order to eat their food.

"Eat your food or I'll ask
the Medusa to get you. "

So it was something very horrendous,
very horrible, mesmerizing, frightening.

In the myth, Medusa
has a price on her head.

Warriors from across the Greek
world travel to her remote island

seeking to steal it and
use its petrifying power

as a weapon against their enemies.

So far, all who have tried made
the same fatal mistake.

They looked at her, first.

The ancient sources are relatively
silent on what Medusa must have thought

and she is just sitting there

living out her life amid a
huge panoply of stone corpses.

You can imagine that it would have
been a very strange situation.

You've got little stalagmites
of people all over the place,

and there she is, all alone.

But never had the satisfaction of
actually being engaged with anybody.

So you can imagine Medusa
living out her life,

kind of waiting for the next
person to waft into her purview

and get turned into stone.

But one hero is determined
to break her spell.

As Medusa languishes
among her statues

Perseus is coming of age
across the sea.

When he was a baby,
he and his mother Dana�

were cast out to sea by his
grandfather, King Acrisius.

Mother and son
were expected to die.

But Perseus' divine father,
Zeus, protected them.

They washed up on an
island called Serifos

and settled there.

He grows up into a nice and
strapping young lad, as it were,

very strong, and also very strong-willed
and very protective of his mother.

Perseus has a very good
reason to feel protective.

The ruler of Serifos
has plans for his mother.

The king of Serifos was not enthusiastic
about having Perseus around,

partly because he had his eye on
Dana� who was still a young woman

and beautiful and he
wanted to marry her.

The king hatches a plan
to take Perseus out of the picture.

He demands an expensive gift
from all of his subjects

and vows to banish any
who don't comply.

He knows that Perseus is poor
and won't be able to deliver.

Perseus, being a young man without
a father and without a family,

if you didn't have a
father in ancient Greece,

it meant that you were very much
a kind of social outcast,

didn't have any gifts
to bring to the king.

Perseus is cornered.

If he is exiled, his mother will be
forced into an unwanted marriage

and be separated from him forever.

He makes an impulsive decision...

with deadly ramifications.

Perseus says, well, I may not be able
to buy a great gift because I am poor,

but I'm gonna do something that
no one else has been able to do,

I will bring you the head of Medusa.

It's a suicide mission.

No one has ever returned
from Medusa's island alive.

But for Perseus
there is no turning back.

It's a matter of honour.

He can't get out of it.
He has to bring the head of the Gorgon.

If Perseus succeeds,
he will return home a hero

with the stature to challenge
the King and protect his mother.

But if he fails,
he'll be turned to stone.

In Greek mythology, the names
Perseus and Medusa are forever linked.

The consummate hero
and the ultimate monster.

It is a story that began here,
among these ruins.

This is ancient Mycenae.

According to legend, this
once great civilisation

was founded by Perseus himself.

Mycenae was the greatest
of the ancient city-states

back in the Bronze Age.

And it ruled sway over a large
swath of ancient Greece.

For millennia, it was thought that
Mycenae, just like Perseus and Medusa,

was a myth.

The only surviving reference to it
was in Homer's epic story, The Illiad.

But in the late 19th century,
a lost civilisation was rediscovered.

Using Homer's epic poems as a guide,
archaeologists in the 19th century

were able to locate these
great ancient citadels.

And what an amazing
adventure it must have been

to find out that not only was Homer
talking about something that existed

but now they themselves were
in contact with it as well.

Mycenae lies near Argos,

the city where Perseus
was born in the myth.

Its ruins are a window

into the people who invented
the story of Perseus and Medusa.

Ancient Greeks who used mythology
to explain life's mysteries.

The city structures were so massive
later generations of Greeks believed

they were built by gods.

They would look at the ruins
of those palaces

and see monumental masonry.

This was a kind of feat that
they couldn't imagine themselves doing,

it seemed like something
that only heroes could do.

It was from these ruins that
the story of Perseus sprang.

The hero remembered for building
the city and taking on Medusa.

It is the ultimate challenge.

Perseus confronts it
with the bravado of a boy

who is eager to prove himself a man.

But he is woefully unprepared
for the task at hand.

Perseus has no weapons,
no experience,

and no idea how to kill his target.

Another piece that makes
Medusa so terrifying

is that they wouldn't have had a real
sense of exactly what she looked like.

Anyone who had seen her before Perseus
would not have lived to tell the tale.

So all he knew about was that there was
this monster that was so hideous

that if you ever caught eyes on her
you would be frozen and turned to stone.

He stalked off
and began his adventure,

and it wasn't long before he realised
that he had no idea where he was going.

But, as heroes often do, and especially
heroes whose fathers are gods,

he soon gets supernatural aid.

Lost in the wilderness, Perseus
does what many ancient Greeks

would have done under
the same circumstances.

He prays...

and the gods hear him.

His father Zeus sends down
a divine messenger, Hermes,

who gives Perseus the
jumpstart he needs,

a pair of winged sandals.

One of the things
that Perseus has to do

is travel long distances very fast.

And being an era without
airplanes here comes Hermes

to offer a solution - those sandals
with wings that he himself,

as a messenger of the gods uses.

So he gives them to Perseus,
he wears them

and he can fly through
continents at the speed of...

Well, faster than a jet.

Now that Perseus has a set of wings,

what he really needs
is a set of weapons.

Perseus has everything going for him,

I mean, he has divine blood,
he's got great powers,

he's been brought up to just
on the cusp of manhood,

he's ready to take
on these nasty beasts.

But he needs more,
he's got to have technology.

Hermes offers Perseus
an inside tip.

He advises him to locate
the Stygian Nymphs,

beautiful women who possess
the magical weapons he needs

to kill Medusa.

The Nymphs are these female divinities

who are associated with
natural elements,

and they inhabit them,

so they are in springs,
in mountains,

they're in trees.

They're typically the objects of
deep and powerful sexual desire

and from this we get the idea
of a "nymphomaniac".

The whereabouts of these
nymphs are a mystery.

Only three hideous women
know how to find them.

The Graeae sisters.

They had been old, withered hags
since the day they were born,

and they don't like visitors.

Perseus must get them to talk

so he can save his mother
and survive his face-off with Medusa.

It's a battle we can still see
in today's night skies...

if we look closely.

Medusa, a deadly gorgon, has turned
countless warriors into stone.

But someone is still
stalking her, Perseus,

and he wants her head.

His success will require more
than boyish bravado.

Perseus will need a powerful
set of weapons so slay Medusa.

To get them he must find
the Stygian Nymphs.

But only three wretched old women
know where they live,

the Graeae sisters.

They are very strange.

None of them have eyes except this
one that they pass between each other

whenever one wants to have
a look at something,

so they need to share it.

Their eye is very precious to them.

The island of the Graeae
sisters is a dark realm

where even the Moon
does not shine.

Perseus uses his trustee winged
sandals to get there.

Perseus is not just a hot-headed brawny
but he's also pretty clever.

When he gets to the island he realises
he should do some reconnaissance

and find out what their weaknesses
might be before he proceeds.

When he realises they
only have the one eye

and they're blind while
they don't have it,

he steals the eye from them
as they're passing it around.

The sisters fly into a blind panic.

They're in a very abject position.

It's like a beggar having his last
farthing stolen from him.

They're falling all over each other
trying to get that eye back from him.

Perseus has the upper hand.

He demands the location of the nymphs.

The Graeae sisters reveal
that they live on the river Styx,

the waterway that separates
the land of the living

from the land of the dead.

Perseus has what he came for.

He tosses the eye onto the sand
and takes to the skies.

This is the myth, but how
does it connect to reality?

This story, like many others
in Greek mythology,

may literally have fallen from the sky.

Since the dawn of civilisation,

mankind has looked at the
heavens to explain the past,

present and future.

An awful lot of storytelling

revolves around the things
that you saw in the sky,

the constellations that you see.

Certainly we know that an awful lot
of myths were tied to the constellations.

We have, in the 5th century, Greeks
naming the constellations by the names

of mythical beings.
And at that time,

people not only saw the mythical
creatures up in the sky as symbols,

as mere representations,
but they actually believed

that the constellations were divine.

One especially curious pattern
exists in the heavens.

A hero holding a curved sword
and the head of a gorgon.

This is the constellation
known as Perseus.

A celestial blueprint for the myth.

But there may be more
to this cluster of stars.

It may also reveal how the story
of the Graeae sisters originated.

The constellations themselves did things
that inspired portions of the myth.

The second brightest star
in the constellation of Perseus

is Algol, which is a very
peculiar star.

In the Perseus constellation,
Algol forms a point on Medusa's head.

It is known as
an eclipsing binary star.

It appears as a single point
of light in the sky,

but is actually two stars
that orbit around one another.

As they go they eclipse
each other's light

making Algol appear to dim
and then get bright again.

It is a three-day cycle that
may have inspired the story

of the three Graeae sisters.

Algol is very bright for a while
and then it goes out further rapidly

every third day.

This represents the stealing of
the eye of the Graeae by Perseus.

As it tries to pass to the third Graeae,
Perseus is in there among them

and he steals the eye.
And when he takes it,

you can see it go out.

Well, if you're a good storyteller,
and if you kept track of this,

you know when the star
is going to disappear,

so you can start telling your story
when the star is still bright.

And when you get to the part of the
story where Perseus has stolen the eye

you can point up at the sky and say,
"Look, it's gone. "

Algol's impact on the myth may
not end with the Graeae sisters.

Some experts believed it also
inspired the climax of the story.

Medusa's gruesome demise.

The myth continues.

Perseus is in a collision
course with Medusa.

The odds are stacked against him.

To take on the monster he needs
the right battle gear.

He finds it along the River Styx.

The gateway to Hades

where he encounters
the Stygian Nymphs.

They present Perseus with three
weapons essential to his survival.

The sword of Zeus.

The shield of Athena.

And the helmet of Hades,
god of the dead.

It reminds us irresistibly of James Bond
getting all the fabulous devices from Q.

Not only because he gets all these
things to carry out his mission

but because they have magical
properties to them.

Now Perseus is ready
to fulfil his destiny.

And not a moment too soon.

Back home in the island of Serifos

a royal wedding is in the works,

and Perseus' mother is
the unwilling bride.

Will her son slay Medusa
and bring back her head

before it's too late?

And how can he succeed where so
many others before him have failed?

The secret lies in his shield.

Perseus' dangerous quest
for the head of Medusa

has taken him on a journey
over thousands of miles.

Now his moment
of truth has arrived.

He stands at the threshold
of Medusa's deadly lair.

The gods helped him get here

but the rest is up to him.

All that's around Medusa is
rocks, very hard things,

anything that would have been living
would have been turned to stone,

so it must have been a very
bleak and desolate place.

Perseus is frightened as he takes
the first steps toward his fate.

But they are not steps forward.

The young hero is slowly
creeping backwards.

Perseus is very smart,

and he realises that trying
to attack Medusa head-on

would be his own undoing.
He'd be turned to stone.

So what he does instead
is gets his shield

turn it round and actually
approach her from behind.

And he walks up to her backwards

looking at her in a
shield so that he's safe.

You can imagine the tension building
as he gets closer and closer.

As far as he knows,
the shield will protect him.

But he must not have
really known for sure.

Perseus cautiously makes
his way through the lair.

Eyes locked on his shield.

The slightest misstep will prove fatal.

At last, Perseus locks onto his target.

Closes his eyes.

And swings his sword.

With one clean stroke
the head of Medusa rolls to the floor.

Her years of torment and
isolation are finally over.

There would have been great fascination
for Medusa among ancient audiences

and whether they were rooting
for her or against her,

there would have been a great
sympathy for this poor person.

I mean, think about what
she'd been through,

and all that she'd lost,

and the horrible life
she was fated to live.

And her end point is to have
a hero chop her head off.

It is a tragic end
for a tragic figure.

But Medusa's story doesn't end here.

One of the remarkable
things about Medusa's head

is even after she is dead,

even after she has been
removed and stuffed in a bag,

it still has the power to transform
anyone who looks on her to stone.

Medusa's unstoppable and terrifying,

but those forces can also be harnessed,

and Perseus' story talks about that.

When the head is inside the bag

then it becomes a weapon that
can be used for good as well as evil.

Perseus is now the owner of the
most dangerous weapon on Earth.

He can turn anyone to stone.

And he has a few targets in mind.

His mother, Dana�, has been left
with no one to protect her

from the lecherous King of Serifos.

She's about to be made
a queen against her will.

For Perseus it is a race
against time.

As the hero flies home

it becomes clear just how powerful
Medusa's head still is.

As Perseus is flying with
his winged sandals back across

to get to Greece, drops from
her blood drop into the sand,

and from this spring up hundreds
and hundreds of poisonous snakes.

Some nasty monsters in antiquity
are so mean and awful

that their blood actually
produces other monsters.

Medusa is one of those that have
such powerful blood.

The dripping blood from her head
as Perseus was flying away

was thought, in later
tellings of the story,

to have given rise to all these snakes

that ancient Romans knew
to exist in North Africa.

In the myth, the royal
wedding day has arrived.

The father of the bride
has come from Argos.

Perseus' own grandfather,
King Acrisius.

He has long feared the prophecy
that his grandson would kill him.

Perseus arrives just as the wedding
ceremony is getting under way.

When Perseus returns to Serifos

and sees that his mother
is about to marry the King,

he becomes very angry.

So he lifts up the
head of Medusa and says,

"King, I have brought you your gift!"

One glance turns the King to stone.

His face frozen in an eternal scream.

But he's not the only king
who gets caught looking.

Acrisius is also petrified.

Dana� has been saved
by her son.

And Perseus has earned his place
as one of mythology's bravest heroes.

His death-defying journey

has transformed him
from a boy into a man.

Perseus is particularly relatable
among the ancient heroes.

He is cast out at different
points along the way

and only because of the
extra love of his mother

is he able to make his way through
some very difficult times.

He makes his mark in the world
and he grows into his own.

He becomes a real, true
powerful hero.

Someone that the Greeks
can look up to.

After he saves his mother

Perseus presents Medusa's head
as a tribute to Athena,

the goddess who created the monster.

In the end, it is Medusa's original
punisher who inherits her power.

There's a poetic quality
to the ending of this story

as Medusa's head becomes the icon
on the breastplate of Athena.

After all, this poor young girl
started off this great misadventure

by running a afoul of that goddess.

Athena has the first
and the last laugh.

Medusa's story has come full circle.

Her myth ends where it began:

In ancient Greece's greatest temple,
the Parthenon.

Above it, she and the
man who took her life

are forever linked in the night sky.