Gorgons

They lived in the limit of the world, far beyond the oceans, near the Halls of Night, where the Night itself used to dwell. They also lived in Libya.
Her names were Esteno (Steno or Stheno), Euriale and Medusa and were the three daughters of the sea god Forcis o Forco (a venerable ancient god of the sea) and his sister Ceto, daughter of Neptune. They were sisters of the Hesperides, the Grayas, Equidna and Ladón (Thoosa and Scilla?). All together they were called the Forcides (Forcids).
The Gorgons were organised under the power of Medusa and, though for some authors they were a tribe of savage women that fought against the Amazons and that were ruled by the queen Medusa, they all agree in that, by the time Perseo found them, they were three ugly creatures that could kill with their sight.
In their origin, the Gorgons seem to have been really beautiful and the men that were seen by them suffered an immediate death- some say because of a passionate love and some owing to the deadly sight of the sisters who are supposed to have been able to turn humans into stones.
Them being ugly and even their power of ending human life are facts that are believed to have been a sort of punishment by Athena, since Medusa not only had made love with Poseidon but had done it in one of the goddess'temples. The question of them sharing a teeth and an eye that was stolen by Perseo seems to have been a confusion with their own sisters, the Grayas, who do shared a teeth and an eye.

The Forcides were the cousins of the Nereids but also of the Harpies, who hunted criminals that were taken to the Erinias (also called Furies) that were in charge of their punishment.

Returning to the story that interest us, Medusa was, apparently, discoved by Athena and was turned into an ugly creature of snakes as hair, a long tongue, shining deadly eyes. So go further and say that her skin was green and that they had copper hands (also green as copper oxide?) but the general description is the one of above.

Perseo, when decides to kill Medusa, he had to carry a mirror and kill the Gorgon with his own power and, after doing it, to go quickly away before her sisters returned. From Medusa's blood and owing to that night spent with Poseidon, Pegasus and Crisaor were born of the liquid. Medusa's head was given to Athena, who put it in her own 'Egid' or 'Aegis' ('egida') as protection. It's believed that Athena also unsoldered the corpse and made an 'aegis' with it (the 'aegis' was the tunic used by Libyan girls, Athena may have used Medusa's head as a defense of her virtue: if a man took the egid from a girl without permission he could be killed, but the castity of the goddess could be safe if the eyes in the head turned every man into stone). Athena is also believed to have turned Yodama, daughter of the king Iton, into stone when the princess entered the goddess' room without permission.

Medusa's sisters, after her death, went to live- owing to Virgil- near the hell, where the Centaurs and Harpies dwelt but there's a myth that traces them to Japan, or the end of the world, as ogresses.

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