by Stephen Fry
But there was nothing to see! How could the mirror not work?
Of course! Cursing himself for his slowness of wits, he removed the Hood of Hades and tucked it into the satchel. This was no easy task. With a heavy sickle in one hand and the even heavier shield in the other, with his mind half on the danger of waking the Gorgons and half on keeping his sandals hovering at just the right altitude, he was sweating and panting hard by the time he had tucked the hood away and was ready to concentrate on practising his moves. His reflection now clearly visible in the shield, he taught himself how to swing his sword arm in the mirror image.
Without knowing it he had dropped a little lower. The swishing of the blade awoke the vipers on Medusa’s head and they began to spit and rear. Changing the angle of the shield, Perseus saw they were looking directly at him and hissing. At any moment Medusa would wake – and perhaps her indestructible sisters too. He closed in on Medusa’s sleeping form, weapon at the ready. In the shield he saw her stir and her eyelids flutter.
Her eyes opened.
He didn’t know what he had expected, ugliness and horror, perhaps, certainly not beauty. But Medusa’s eyes, for all their blaze and fury, had a quality that made him want to turn from the reflected image and look deep into them for real. He pushed the feeling down and raised his blade higher.
Medusa was staring into the shield. She lifted her head to look at Perseus directly, giving him a clear sight of her throat. The harpe swept through the air and he felt the blade slice through the flesh of her neck. He lunged down to snatch away the head and pushed it into his satchel before the thrashing, dying snakes could fix their fangs into him.
He tried to fly up and away, but something was tugging at his ankles. The other Gorgons, Stheno and Euryale, awake and screaming, were pulling him down. With a mighty effort he kicked and kicked, urging the sandals up. The screeches of the outraged sisters rang in his ears as he rocketed through the ceiling of fog and into the clear moonlit air, with never a backward glance.
Perhaps he should have looked back. A most remarkable sight would have met his eyes. Since the day Poseidon violated her in Athena’s temple, Medusa had held in her womb twins from that union. With her head removed, they had at last a place from which they could be born. The first to rise out of the gaping wound was a young man bearing a weapon of shining gold. His name was to be CHRYSAOR, which means ‘Golden Sword’.
Another form now emerged from the open throat of the dead Medusa. Not since the lovely APHRODITE arose from the frothing seed and blood of Ouranos’s severed testicles was something so transcendentally beautiful born of something so appallingly foul. Chrysaor’s twin was a shimmering white, winged horse. It pawed the air and flew up into the sky leaving its brother and the two shrieking sisters behind.
The name of the horse was PEGASUS.
ANDROMEDA AND CASSIOPEIA
‘I did it! I did it! I did it!’ Perseus shouted to the moon.
Indeed he had. With Medusa’s head safely stored inside the satchel he had originally dismissed as so uninteresting, he flew on in a state of intoxicated excitement. Indeed, so excited was he, so high on the thrill of his achievement, that he took a wrong turn. Instead of turning left he turned right, and soon found himself flying along a strange coastline.
Mile after mile he flew, not tiring, but growing increasingly bewildered by the unfamiliar shore. And suddenly, in the first light of dawn, the most extraordinary sight met his eyes. A beautiful girl, naked and chained to a rock.
He flew up to her.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘What does it look like I’m doing? And I’ll thank you to keep your eyes up on my face, if you don’t mind.’
‘I’m sorry … I couldn’t help wondering … is there any way I can help you? … My name is Perseus.’
‘ANDROMEDA, pleased to meet you.’
‘How are you staying up in the air?’
‘It’s a long story, but more to the point, why are you chained to this rock?’
‘Well …’ Andromeda sighed. ‘It was my mother, really. It’s a long story too, but I’ve nothing better to do so I might as well tell you. My parents, CEPHEUS and CASSIOPEIA, are the king and queen.’
‘Where are we exactly?’
‘Ethiopia, where did you think we were?’
‘Sorry, go on …’
‘It was all mother’s fault. She remarked out loud one day that I was more beautiful than all the NEREIDS and OCEANIDS in the world.’fn12
‘Well, you are,’ said Perseus.
‘Oh shush. Poseidon heard this boast and he was so outraged he sent a monstrous sea dragon called CETUS to ravage the shoreline.fn13 No shipping could get through and the people began to starve. We rely on trade, you see. The priests and priestesses were consulted and they told my parents that the only way to appease the god and call off Cetus was to have me chained naked to the rocks. Cetus would devour me, but the kingdom would be saved. Oh no – there he is now – look, look!’
Perseus looked round and saw a great sea beast arching through the waves towards them. Without a moment’s thought he dived into the water to confront it.
Andromeda looked on with feelings of admiration and relief that slowly turned to despair when, as the minutes passed, Perseus failed to surface. She could not know that he held the Seriphos underwater breath-holding record. Nor could she know that he was in possession of a blade so keen it could cut through even Cetus’s hard horny scales. She let out a great cry of relief when Perseus’s cheerful and triumphant face finally burst up through the waves, surrounded by a boiling mess of blubber and blood. He waved shyly before flying up to Andromeda once more.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she said. ‘I just can’t believe it! How did you do that?’
‘Oh, well,’ said Perseus, breaking her shackles with two swift strokes of the harpe. ‘I’ve always been at home in the water. Just swam underneath him with my blade up to slice through his belly. Fancy a lift?’
By the time they landed at the royal palace Andromeda was as hopelessly in love with him as he was with her.
Cassiopeia was overjoyed to see her daughter alive and thrilled to think of the handsome young hero becoming her son-in-law.
Cepheus the king said meekly. ‘Don’t forget, my dear, that Andromeda is already promised to my brother PHINEUS.’
‘Oh poo,’ said Cassiopeia, ‘a loose agreement, no kind of a binding engagement. He’ll understand.’
Phineus did not understand. As a brother of AEGYPTUS and descendant of NILUSfn14, he believed that an alliance with Andromeda would allow him to unite the most powerful kingdoms of the Nile. He was not about to let some puppy with a scythe take that away from him. The rumours of the puppy being able to fly he discounted.
So it was that the music and laughter of the betrothal banquet in the great hall of the Ethiopian palace was silenced by Phineus and a large body of men storming in, armed to the teeth.
‘Where is he?’ roared Phineus. ‘Where is the boy who dares come between me and Andromeda?’
Up on the top table where the royal party was feasting, Cassiopeia and Cepheus looked on in some embarrassment as Perseus rose uncertainly to his feet. ‘I think there may have been some mistake,’ he said.
‘You’re damned right there has,’ said Phineus. ‘And you made it. That girl was promised to me months ago.’
Perseus turned to Andromeda. ‘Is this true?’
‘It is true,’ she said. ‘But I was never consulted. He’s my uncle, for heaven’s sake.’fn15
‘What’s that got to do with it? You’re mine and that’s an end to it. And you,’ snarled Phineus, pointing his sword at Perseus, ‘you have two minutes to leave the palace and the kingdom, unless you want your head to decorate the gatepost.’
Perseus looked down across the hall towards Phineus. There must have been sixty armed men behind him. But talk of heads decorating gateposts gave Perseus an idea that made his head spin. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ll give
you two minutes to leave the palace – unless you want you and your men to decorate this hall.’
Phineus blew out his lips in amused contempt. ‘You’ve got a nerve, I’ll give you that. A purse of gold to the first to fire an arrow through this brat’s insolent neck.’
The armed men roared in delight and started to draw their bows.
‘Those with me, get behind me!’ shouted Perseus, opening his satchel and bringing out the head of Medusa.
Andromeda, Cassiopeia, Cepheus and the wedding guests on the top table shrieked in astonishment as Phineus and his sixty men instantly froze.
‘Why aren’t they moving?’
‘Oh, my lord – they’re stone!’
Perseus put the head back into the satchel and turned to his parents-in-law to be. ‘I hope you didn’t like him too much.’
‘My hero …’ breathed Andromeda.
‘How did you do that?’ shrieked Cassiopeia. ‘They’re statues. Stone statues! How is this possible?’
‘Oh, you know,’ said Perseus with a modest shrug. ‘I just happened to meet Medusa the Gorgon last night. Came away with her head. Thought it might come in useful.’
Perseus hid the extremity of his relief. He had by no means been certain that the gaze from the Gorgon’s dead eyes would have retained the power to petrify, but an inner voice had told him that it was worth trying. Whether the inner voice was his own inspiration or the whispered advice of Athena, he would never know.
Cepheus put a hand on Perseus’s shoulder. ‘Always hated Phineus. Done me a great service. Don’t know how to thank you.’
‘The hand of your daughter in marriage is all the thanks I need. I hope you will allow me to fly her to my home island of Seriphos to meet my mother? No!’ Perseus slapped Queen Cassiopeia’s hand which had inched forward to lift the flap of the satchel. ‘Not a good idea.’
‘Oh, mother,’ sighed Andromeda. ‘Will you never learn?’
THE RETURN TO SERIPHOS
‘It’s not a palace,’ Perseus warned Andromeda as they flashed across the sea towards Seriphos. ‘Just a simple cottage.’
‘If it’s where you grew up, I know I’ll adore it.’
‘I love you.’
‘Of course you do.’
But when they landed on the beach, they found that Dictys’s cottage had been burned to the ground.
‘What can have happened? Where is everyone? What can have happened?’
Perseus found a group of fishermen mending nets not far off. They shook their heads sadly. Danaë and Dictys had been taken prisoner by Polydectes.
‘They say the king is holding a great feast at the palace.’
‘Aye. Even now.’
‘Some announcement to make, they say.’
Perseus grabbed Andromeda’s hand and flew with her to the palace. They arrived at the back of the throne room in time to see Danaë and Dictys, bound with ropes and being dragged before the seated Polydectes.
‘How dare you? How dare you marry each other without my permission?’
‘It was all my doing,’ said Dictys.
‘It was our doing,’ said Danaë.
‘But I offered you my hand. You could have been my queen!’ screamed Polydectes. ‘For this insult, you will both die.’
Perseus stepped forward and walked towards the throne. Polydectes looked over the shoulders of Danaë and Dictys and saw him coming. He smiled broadly.
‘Well, well, well. If it isn’t brave young Perseus. You told me you wouldn’t return without the head of the Medusa.’
‘You told me you were going to challenge Oenomaus to a chariot race for the hand of Hippodamia.’
‘I changed my mind.’
‘Why have you arrested my mother?’
‘She and Dictys are due to die. You can be hanged alongside them if you like.’
Danaë and Dictys turned.
‘Run, Perseus, run!’
‘Mother, Dictys, if you love me, turn and look at Polydectes. I beg you! All who love me, look on the king now!’
The smile on Polydectes’ face was a little less certain. ‘What nonsense is this?’
‘You asked for the head of Medusa. Here she is!’
‘Surely you don’t expect me to —’ Polydectes got no further.
‘You can turn and look at me now,’ said Perseus, putting Medusa’s head back in the satchel. ‘It’s safe now.’
The statue of Polydectes on his throne, flanked by stone men-at-arms, became a popular attraction on Seriphos. Visitors paid to see and touch them, and the money was spent on the construction of a temple to Athena and the installation of a hundred herms around the island.fn16
Andromeda and Perseus left King Dictys and Queen Danaë on Seriphos and moved on. Perseus and Andromeda could have stayed and inherited the throne. They could have returned to Andromeda’s homeland and ruled the combined kingdoms of Ethiopia and Egypt. But they were young, spirited and minded to travel, and Perseus was keen to visit the land of his birth. As a baby he had been there for less than a week. His grandfather King Acrisius had done everything to prevent his existence and shorten his life, but he was curious to see what Argos, the famous kingdom of his birth, was like.
When Perseus and Andromeda arrived, they discovered that Acrisius, after casting his daughter and grandson onto the waters in their chest all those years ago, had turned dark, cruel and despotic. Never a popular ruler, he had soon been toppled from his throne. Nobody knew where he was now. The people of Argos, having heard of Perseus’s astonishing feats, invited him to fill the vacant throne. Uncertain what to do or where to settle, the young couple thanked the Argives and asked for time to consider.
They wandered about mainland Greece, Perseus funding their travels with prize money from athletic meetings that he entered and invariably won. They heard news that the King of Larissa was holding the richest games of the year and made their way north to Thessaly to compete. The finest athletes in Greece were taking part and great would be the honours awarded the competitor who won the most events. One by one, Perseus prevailed in every race and every competition. It came at last to the discus. Perseus threw his so far it shot over the longest mark, cleared the stadium and landed amongst the spectators. The great roar of delight that met this astounding feat swiftly turned to a groan of horror. The discus had struck someone in the crowd.
Perseus ran to the place. An old man was lying on the ground, blood streaming from his gashed head. Perseus cradled him in his arms.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said. ‘So terribly sorry. I don’t know my own strength. May the gods forgive me.’
To Perseus’s astonishment the old man smiled and even managed to cough out a laugh.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It’s funny really. I defeated the oracle. How many can say that? It said I would be killed by my grandson, and here I am instead, felled by some clumsy oaf of an athlete.’
The old man’s attendant pushed Perseus away. ‘Give his majesty air.’
‘His majesty?’
‘Don’t you know this is King Acrisius of Argos?’
Accident or not, preordained or not, it was a blood crime. Perseus and Andromeda made a sad pilgrimage to Mount Cyllene in Arcadia and the temple of Hermes that stood near the cave where the god was born. On the altar stone they laid the hood of invisibility and the talaria, the winged sandals. As they left the temple precincts, after a brief prayer to the god, they turned to look back at the altar. The hood and sandals had disappeared.
‘We did the right thing,’ said Andromeda.
Now they made their way to Athens, and in the deepest recesses of the temple of Athena they hid the sickle, the shield and the satchel that held the head of Medusa.
Athena herself appeared before them and blessed them.
‘You did well, Perseus. Our father is pleased with you.’
She raised the shield and they saw that the face of Medusa, startled, dismayed, sad and somehow beautiful stared out, forever trapped within the shining surface
of the bronze. From that time on the shield was the Aegis of Athena – her sign, her standard and her warning to the world.
It can be said of Perseus and Andromeda, and of no other great heroes I can think of, that they lived happily ever after. After their wanderings they returned to the Peloponnese – the large southwestern peninsula connected to the mainland of Greece by the land bridge of the Isthmus of Corinthfn17 – and founded Mycenae, a great kingdom that in time, under the name of Argolis or the Argolid, absorbed neighbouring Arcadia and Corinth as well as Perseus’s birth kingdom of Argos to the south.
Through their son Perses, their bloodline founded the Persian nation and people.
After their long lives, Perseus and Andromeda were awarded the greatest prize that Zeus can bestow on mortals. Along with Cassiopeia and Cepheus, they were taken up into the heavens as constellations. Together Perseus and Andromeda look over their unruly shower of meteor children, the PERSEIDS, whom we can still watch showing off in the night sky once a year.
HERACLES
* * *
THE LINE OF PERSEUS
Zeus sat alone at the breakfast table, musing on Hera’s dream long into the morning. Someone would rise up to save the immortals. Someone from the line of Perseus. It was probable, he told himself, that it was nothing but an impertinent fantasy sent by MORPHEUS to delude and confound. But there was a chance, a slim one, perhaps, but a chance nonetheless, that the dream was indeed a warning – a prophecy. There would be no harm in making preparations. Besides, a little fun could be had along the way.
So. The line of Perseus. Where were we …?
Zeus looked down on Tiryns, the capital of Mycenae. The royal pair of Perseus and Andromeda themselves had been catasterized, raised to the firmament as constellations; but were there, Zeus wondered, any direct descendants who might give birth to a hero whose bloodline would accord with the conditions of Hera’s dream?
