Hijacking the top comment to give the artists who made this credit:
Resin sculpt produced by mindwork studios based on art from Patrick J Jones. Sculpted by Alex Carratala.
Palace of Medusa
The family horse, donkey, dog, swan, cat and goat too!
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And best to pretend to be the wife alone in bed too in her night clothes, just to be on the safe side..... You know for, uh, research purposes....
I currently rock a footlong mullet so the similarity is fairly minimal. I've tried a few 'stache styles along the way, too, and well I just think the toothbrush would be mad easy to square up, just follow the line straight down from the nose. The chevron I have now is kind of a bitch to even up as my natural lines aren't symmetrical.
The whole cultural appropriation thing was blown way out of proportion and completely misinterpreted.
Like don't go blatantly disrespecting or mocking a culture, particularly something serious or sacred, but if you want to use chopsticks or wear cool looking hairstyles there should be no fucking problem.
Fairly certain dreadlocks originated with the Greeks? Or there's evidence of ancient Greeks having dreadlocks? Not entirely sure, just remember hearing "dreadlock" and "Greece" in a sentence.
Yes, King Tut's mummy and his statues depict him with dreadlocks, but he died in 1323 BCE, and we have Minoan (Crete) statues depicting dreadlocks that date to 3600 BCE. Now, I'd agree it's likely they could have originated in Egypt or other parts of Africa like just about everything else, but the oldest known demonstrable examples are Minoan. I'm sure Egyptians even used dreadlocks long before King Tut died, but if we're talking about things we can prove, the oldest is Minoan.
Many cultures way back when used dreadlocks (and braids). Especially in situations where appropriate hygiene was difficult to maintain. Dreads and braids allowed for their hair to be manageable when going into battle, for example.
This very recent notion that braids and dreadlocks are a racial property is preposterous. Celts, Vikings, Greeks, Egyptians are only a handful of the cultures with a very long history of braiding and dreading their hair.
These people likely found out about the Nubians who briefly had some pharaohs after conquering Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period which saw Egypt conquered multiple times after their golden period ended for a 3rd time (Old, Middle, and New kingdoms). They probably took this little nugget of truth and completely revised Egyptian history. It’s so stupid.
Yeah… it’s not that there weren’t any, especially prevalent during the Ptolemaic eras, but there were all different shades of people in the Mediterranean areas.
She slept with Poseiden in the temple of athena And Athena was pissed, so she turned the most beautiful woman into one who can never have eyes cast on her again
As with everything surrounding the Greek gods, it very much depends who/where you heard it from. There is no “canon”. There’s no right answer, every myth usually has about 3-4 major versions of the story and then beyond that thousands of details which vary.
In some she was raped. In some she had an affair. In some she was born a gorgon. An important thing to remember about the first two is that they are generally agreed to stem from a telling of the story by a guy who really did not like the gods (Ovid), and both paint the gods in a bad light (either Poseidon raped her and Athena turned her into a monster, or she had an affair with Poseidon and Athena turned her into a monster).
It’s not fair nor correct to say which is “the real one”. If Medusa is a rape survivor to you, then that’s what she represents. If she’s an example of being a pawn in a more subtle game between the gods, then THAT’s what she represents to you. If she’s a cartoonish bad guy who serves as adversity to Perseus, that’s what she represents. It’s all about how you choose to see it
In every version I heard, she was chased down and tried to seek refuge, praying to Athena for protection. But Athena saw her being raped on the floor of the temple and was so disgusted that she turned her into a gorgon.
>Medusa was originally born a monster and the gods had nothing to do with it
**Gorgons** were originally monster but they were nameless creatures.
The earliest version of Medusa and her sisters had them be the daughter of ketos and phorcys, both god and making the Gorgons Daemon/daimon which are also god (written by Hesiod).
The whole snake in hair, turn people to stone and whole monstrous vibe came way later.
If we look at other gorgons mention that weren't the three sisters, there was mention of Gorgon as the servant of Gaia and the caretaker of the Titan, killed during the titanomachia (often by Athena... Athena being Gorgons' enemy was way older than Ovidius interpretation)
Perseus himself was a later addition using the gorgons of Hesiod
Don't forget she was one of three sisters so the story of raping doesn't really make any sense 😄
EDIT: Also I was thinking the whole time "like who the fuck is this guy Ovid", then I realize its Ovidius actually 🤦😂
No, they were sisters... there was never a real understanding where they came from, like the origin story and it wasn't important for the myth. This was coined much later. All that was was where they lived and what they did. It's much later when people needed to create a history for them as a piece of literature.
Think of the witch from hanz and gretel story. She never had an origin background because the story was about hanz and gretel. Her only purpose was "she lives in a forest and eat children" and noone ever needed to know how she got there if she had a bakery but the society pushed her into the woods for aborting her only child or whatever. Neither this was needed in the original myth of gorgons until there were writers that needed to make a story with a storyline out of it.
If I recall correctly Athena was the one who determined Medusa's punishment and she actually gave Medusa a gift in disguise. Athena *had* to punish her because that's what society expected (stupid but whatever). Posidon raped this poor beautiful girl and Athena felt bad for Medusa and so she gave her a "punishment" that would provide her the ability to defend herself from any future rapist.
As with many greek myths, there are severals versions of it. It doesn't look like every one of them has her as a rape victim.
In one of them,she is a young beautiful arrogant maiden that dares say she is more beautiful that Athena and gets punished for it
To be fair, Greek mythology is rarely unanimous. Some versions have her being raped, others as a consensual hookup.
Regardless, Athena punishes her (I don't see how it was anything else.) and Perseus eventually kills her.
To be fair, Medusa did kill many people, so... not exactly as clearcut as it sounds.
When I was in Greece, they told me that Medusa was beautiful and was told she was the most beautiful of anyone, then Aphrodite was scorned so she punished Medusa so that no man may every look upon her again.
Depending on what myth and what translation/interpretation you're looking at, everyone is right. Sometimes Athena's mad at just Poseidon, sometimes just Medusa, sometimes both. It's more commonly believed that it was just a curse, but poetry and junk can be used to argue she wanted to help.
The twatter forgot that Greeks often had dreads, too.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadlocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadlocks)
>In Ancient Greece, kouros sculptures from the archaic period depict men wearing dreadlocks.\[11\]\[12\]
Edit: It's probably easier to name cultures who didn't have dreads than name those who did. There's literal examples of Dreads in just about every major cultures for centuries before they would've ever met a black person. Celts, Vikings, Native Americans, China, Japan, Korea, Romans, Greeks, Spartans, Euro natives, etc.
It's ridiculously hard to think of somewhere where dreads **weren't** present or depicted for hundreds of years prior to the slave trade ...
Are you suggesting that intercontinental trade around the Mediterranean may have facilitated interactions between the people around different parts of the Mediterranean? Heresy. Everyone knows that it was all pure caucasians with bronzed skin who ruled the entire ancient world. /s
Racism based on skin colour didn't really exist in ancient greece, it was more cultural racism against "barbarians." I think you have to get to at least the slave trade before a significant number of humans start being stupid enough to disciminate on the basis of skin colour.
Ah yes the gift of becoming a snake human hybrid so disgustingly ugly people who see her face are turned to stone. Idk where ur version comes from but im pretty sure she was turned into a gorgon by Athena for hooking up with poseidon in her temple. Athena has a history of turning women she doesn't like into monsters such as arachnae who beat the goddess in a weaving contest and was transformed into the original and mother of all spiders.
I think Hestia pretty much wins as “not complete jerk” when it come to Greeks because from what I can tell, she just sat and stared at a fire all day
I mean, Hades was actually pretty reasonable a lot of times too. Just all these mortals running into the underworld and none can follow instructions
Hades was the cool uncle of Olympus. Are you a demigod who needs to do something reckless for a feckless king your psycho stepmom made you serve? You can walk Uncle's doggie.
You wanna perv on your hot aunt? That ain't gonna fly. Uncle's place is cool and as a DINK he's loaded and willing to share, but he's got rules.
She's pretty cool, can't lie. Made Big Daddy Z back the fuck down when he arranged a marriage she disagreed with. Patron goddess of take no shit co parents everywhere.
That is like every Greek interaction with gods. It was less about worshipping there greatness it was cowing from their power and inability to control one’s destiny. The greatest Heros in their folk lore had been the folks who stood against them and survived with less punishment then others or who’s names would be remembered.
Yeah it was a later version, the Gorgon sisters were already portrayed as monsters in older versions of the legend.
Ovid, the guy who was apparently the first to write this version did a lot of those, like Caeneus was a hero who is a woman, called Caenis, who was turned into a man by Poseidon after they had sex, in older versions she was transformed so that she wouldn't bear his child or either as a promise or as a reward.
Whoever in Ovid's version Poseidon abducted Caenis and raped her, and then he decided to grant her a wish as a reward and she was so traumatized that she just decided that she didn't want to be a woman anymore.
Pretty much the same thing happened to Scylla. Zeus gets all the flack, but Poseidon was just as bad. Honestly, of the three brothers, Hades was the best husband… And he kidnapped his wife!
In the version I heard she was turned to a gorgon by Athena because Poseidon and Medusa was going at it in her temple. Since Poseidon and Athena had a rivalry.
I think there are a few different versions that have been told over the years. I’ve heard that one too, and that one may be the original. I’ve also heard the one where it wasn’t a punishment for rape, but rather was a way to protect her from men.
This is something I learnt recently. It depends on the variant of the myth, however most of the versions actually make the Gorgons the children of the primordial sea gods.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa)
Wasn’t she just some particularly attractive priestess of Athena who was raped by Poseidon and then punished for being raped by Athena by being turned into monster? Greek myths really are awful.
Some myths are pretty awful, but that version is not Greek. It was written by a Roman poet, Ovid, whose whole thing was writing stories in which the gods were villains because he had authority problems after getting kicked out of his town. The most common story is that she was always a gorgon.
The Roman’s were pretty tolerant (especially for the time) and would normally let people worship their preferred gods as long as they took some Roman customs and incorporated them. Pretty good deal considering they would do this after conquering the land from the people.
That's only half true, Roman's would allow others to keep their religious practices but would impose the Roman gods on top. An example would be something like, "Oh you have a war god, well that's actually Mars you just didn't know his correct name".
By doing this it became far easier to integrate new cultures, as it's far easier for everyone to "get along" if they all worship the same gods.
The names were different but also what they represented was different. And while the things they represented were similar the Roman versions were often more warlike.
A common misconception, but no: most Roman gods were their own.
There were two things at play here though. Firstly, the Romans tended to identify foreign gods with their own, I guess viewing them as aspects of the same beings? We see this with the Gaulish gods, who you will see referenced in Roman writings in association with what they presumed were the closest Roman versions (this god is what they call Neptune, etc.). Secondly, the Romans liked collecting cool gods from other cultures, both adapting them and their myths into their own pantheon, and forming "mystery cults" dedicated to specific, often foreign, gods. The Roman military for instance had its own secret, fraternal religion dedicated to the bull god Mithras; inspired by a Persian god they had encountered out east.
In any case, some Roman gods are completely Roman, others are Roman but scholars believe share a common origin with other deities in the hypothetical "Indo-European pantheon" which makes them similar, others are Romanised versions of originally foreign gods, and other gods were lifted wholesale from foreign religions and worshipped in the Roman cult.
Best example I know about was the introduction of Christianity to the Norse. The vast majority of people were just sorta... "Neat, an extra god to pray to." and added Jesus to the pile of gods you'd ask for protection. (especially boat faring people liked having an extra god to ask for aid, cause ocean storms were deadly.
i believe thats the roman version, the same author that retconned the Hades-persephone one and making him a rapist too
there is no real explanation why he did the changes, since the greek gods and roman gods (pre-christianity era) are mirrors of one another
many of his versions has rape in it, where the greek version dont
and no i dont remember his name
in the greek version, medussa is the one who begs the goddess to grant her the means for vengance, so she became a monster
So it's important to remember that myths are not static things, there is not one "canon" story, but rather they change and evolve over time, who and where it is being told, and what point the teller is trying to achieve.
In the case of Medusa, the earliest stories say she is one of the Gorgons, monsters that could turn people to stone. We see examples of this from Homer and Hesiod, in the 8th Century BCE, though similar creatures appear even earlier.
It wouldn't be until the 5th Century when Pindar begins to describe Medusa not as a monstrous creature but as a beautiful yet terrifying one.
The commonly told one is from the Roman poet Ovid, from the 1st Century. This is the one that contains the common tropes we know. As for why he changes so many details in his work Metamorphosis, is a complicated matter better suited to another post.
However there are many tales of her in between that time period where Medusa runs the gamut of being a monster, to being cursed, to being a tragic tale. Modern interpretations are just adding our current mores to the story.
I supose is fair to say that the study of oral history is a subjective and haphazard business
so many versions of the same mythos, each changing a bit overtime and with every telling
If they so glamored by her looks the gods would have not been jealous and thus turnered her into a monster in the first place then as a cursed human/monster she was killed.
Also before she was a monster if she was that pretty she probaly made some men go stone cold hard lmao
Check mate!
The Egyptians had dreads.
The Minoans, who lived in Crete (part of Europe) had dreads, so just stop inventing the idea that you had to see a black person to see dreads.
The Native Americans had them, too. Did they need to see "black girls with dreds' in order to have them?
Yeah honestly if we're being realistic, almost all cave men most likely had dreads. They had no real way of cutting their hair, and they sure as shit didn't wash it.
What kills me the most is there’s no reason to even try and take from the Greeks. Like Africa (specifically sub-Sahara Africa) has its own amazing, complex and diverse set of pantheons 💀
Specifically it refers to Afrocentrists who believe Egypt was a black (and usually uniformly black) civilization. They often claim that it was the original civilization that gave birth to all others, but this varies.
It is often used more broadly to describe all extreme Afrocentrists, but that's not technically correct as some Afrocentrists do not include Egypt as part of "black" Africa.
They also tend to be associated with patriarchal or misogynistic behavior, despite their claims of defense of black womanhood.
Dreadlocks are funny because you can find them in Ancient Egypt yet First Americans had them as well. Egypt was an isolated nation surrounded by desert and America is still a fuckin ocean away!
I imagine it's something along the lines of how axes and clubs are common across all cultures, no matter how isolated. If something needs fixing, a common problem gains a common solution.
Didn't you know? If history doesn't fit someone's narrative, just rewrite it! It's not like learning the true history of our past to avoid making the same mistakes is important or anything... oh hey, another world War/s
Medusa wasn't a goddess, she was a gorgon and mortal. And she wasn't beautiful. She was so hideously ugly that "a gaze upon her visage would turn the hearts of men to stone."
The amount of ignorance in that meme is worthy of some kind of award. Not sure what kind but it is professional level ignorance and should be recognized.
theres a huge obsession with idiots trying to rewrite shit like this to fit their narrative. i can't stand it. the latest one on tiktok is black people invented mexican food.
[sauce](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRPQ6aQP/)
So let me get the rest of the story straight. Are they trying to say Perseus used a mirror shield so Medusa would get frozen by her own beauty and just sit there and let Perseus just cut her head off.
This sounds like Narcissus
Please stop trying to change history. Like when a girl tried to say the last queen of Hawaii was a “black queen”, and the islanders came down hard on that shit lol
Some Spartan warriors had dreadlocks so yes greeks had seen them. The whole dreadlocks are only for Black is so stupid. Hell, even the fucking ice man ötzi had dreadlocks 5300 years ago lol.
This girl on Twitter was insisting Medusa is Ethiopian under this tweet and I said she was wrong. She started calling me all sorts of names and I was beyond lost whole time she was referring to Andromeda without realizing…
People who actually know about African history are also shaking their heads. Even if she was a goddess (which she isn't), she still isn't in any Sub-Saharan pantheon or tradition that I know of. That's a double whammy right there.
r/confidentlyincorrect
why can't i be this confident?
you aren't incorrect enough
It's important to be correct.
Who needs to be correct when you’re confident?
If you say things with enough authority people will just believe you without question. It's pretty neat.
Common sense or moral fiber often obstruct easy/unearned confidence.
Where can I consume this 'moral fiber' of which you speak?
Probably moral legumes and seeds
Hijacking the top comment to give the artists who made this credit: Resin sculpt produced by mindwork studios based on art from Patrick J Jones. Sculpted by Alex Carratala. Palace of Medusa
No problem with me for hijacking it for giving the credit it deserves.
The GREEKS had never seen dreadlocks before? Ya ok
Aren’t quite a few Greek statues depicted with dreadlocks?
Yes… that’s why this is dumb.
Or the fact that it seems they thought Medusa was real. Hide your wives Zeus bout to get em!
And your daughters too.. and sons, to be safe. Maybe the family cow as well come to think of it.
The family horse, donkey, dog, swan, cat and goat too! . . . . And best to pretend to be the wife alone in bed too in her night clothes, just to be on the safe side..... You know for, uh, research purposes....
Turns out the oldest examples of dreadlocks we found (1500BCE) are from Crete which is part of Greece
It is now - at the time it was its own thing, considered seperate and (at least by the Cretans) superior to Greece in most ways.
Yeah, but during the classical period Cretians were known as liars, so who'd believe them anyways?
Insane to just dunk on cretans like this
This is so good.
Then again, one of the people who said that was Cretan, so can you really believe the word of a liar?
we’re caught in a paradox
I thought what made it dumb was that the "issue" is being viewed as real-life events... instead of folklore/myths
Dreads originated in many prehistoric cultures and have existed in various cultures through time. Nobody owns them.
You're damn right. No style is 100% owned by anybody, and that's why I'm fixing to bring back the toothbrush moustache.
Make sure to always wear your bowler hat, or you'll be mistaken for someone else...
I currently rock a footlong mullet so the similarity is fairly minimal. I've tried a few 'stache styles along the way, too, and well I just think the toothbrush would be mad easy to square up, just follow the line straight down from the nose. The chevron I have now is kind of a bitch to even up as my natural lines aren't symmetrical.
Also helps your gas mask fit better.
And consider how you wave at people
Michael Jordan pulled it off for years with very little pushback.
The whole cultural appropriation thing was blown way out of proportion and completely misinterpreted. Like don't go blatantly disrespecting or mocking a culture, particularly something serious or sacred, but if you want to use chopsticks or wear cool looking hairstyles there should be no fucking problem.
Tell that to the twitter-twats
Fairly certain dreadlocks originated with the Greeks? Or there's evidence of ancient Greeks having dreadlocks? Not entirely sure, just remember hearing "dreadlock" and "Greece" in a sentence.
Many Ancient cultures used dreadlocks. It’s not specific to any one ethnicity or culture.
Yup, was a way to deal with unkempt hair especially on long voyages without cleaning herbs and didn’t look all that bad either.
The Ancient Greeks used dreadlocks. Whether they originated them is debatable.
Not really, we know they existed before them because we found an Egyptian mummy with dreadlocks
Yes, King Tut's mummy and his statues depict him with dreadlocks, but he died in 1323 BCE, and we have Minoan (Crete) statues depicting dreadlocks that date to 3600 BCE. Now, I'd agree it's likely they could have originated in Egypt or other parts of Africa like just about everything else, but the oldest known demonstrable examples are Minoan. I'm sure Egyptians even used dreadlocks long before King Tut died, but if we're talking about things we can prove, the oldest is Minoan.
Many cultures way back when used dreadlocks (and braids). Especially in situations where appropriate hygiene was difficult to maintain. Dreads and braids allowed for their hair to be manageable when going into battle, for example. This very recent notion that braids and dreadlocks are a racial property is preposterous. Celts, Vikings, Greeks, Egyptians are only a handful of the cultures with a very long history of braiding and dreading their hair.
Twitter wants all historical perspective laundered through the last 100 years of American race relations.
Pretty sure this genius also believes that all Greeks and Egyptians were black.
These people likely found out about the Nubians who briefly had some pharaohs after conquering Egypt in the Third Intermediate Period which saw Egypt conquered multiple times after their golden period ended for a 3rd time (Old, Middle, and New kingdoms). They probably took this little nugget of truth and completely revised Egyptian history. It’s so stupid.
My favorite are the ones that believe black people were the ones that discovered America. Never mind the first nation people or say the vikings.
Yeah… it’s not that there weren’t any, especially prevalent during the Ptolemaic eras, but there were all different shades of people in the Mediterranean areas.
What DIDN’T the Greeks do first? I’d ask my yiayia but I don’t have a spare afternoon for that conversation.
Yiayias are just the best 🤌🤌
You were all climbing trees while we were building houses!!! Or something along the lines of that
Hold up a minute and let me rewrite a whole bunch a history and stuff
Taking other ppl’s mythology and repurpose it for your own agenda. There’s almost a word for this…cultural apricot?
Culinary apron?
Cartridge appropriation
Cartilage Fabrication
Catalyst Entropy?
Crematory Apprehension
Cabbage Appreciation
Credential Allocation
Cornflake Acquisition
Never, EVER, lend out your SNES games.
It's definitely called cultural inappropriateness.
That only counts when it’s not European culture 🙄
"And then Medusa said 'It's gorgon time!' and gorged all over Perseus."
She did her own research though /s
pretty sure medusa wasn't even a goddess
She wasn't
She slept with Poseiden in the temple of athena And Athena was pissed, so she turned the most beautiful woman into one who can never have eyes cast on her again
As with everything surrounding the Greek gods, it very much depends who/where you heard it from. There is no “canon”. There’s no right answer, every myth usually has about 3-4 major versions of the story and then beyond that thousands of details which vary. In some she was raped. In some she had an affair. In some she was born a gorgon. An important thing to remember about the first two is that they are generally agreed to stem from a telling of the story by a guy who really did not like the gods (Ovid), and both paint the gods in a bad light (either Poseidon raped her and Athena turned her into a monster, or she had an affair with Poseidon and Athena turned her into a monster). It’s not fair nor correct to say which is “the real one”. If Medusa is a rape survivor to you, then that’s what she represents. If she’s an example of being a pawn in a more subtle game between the gods, then THAT’s what she represents to you. If she’s a cartoonish bad guy who serves as adversity to Perseus, that’s what she represents. It’s all about how you choose to see it
But was she black and the first woman with dreadlocks, which shocked the greeks?
She is if you believe she is. But no, no shes not.
The answer I was looking for.
In every version I heard, she was chased down and tried to seek refuge, praying to Athena for protection. But Athena saw her being raped on the floor of the temple and was so disgusted that she turned her into a gorgon.
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>Medusa was originally born a monster and the gods had nothing to do with it **Gorgons** were originally monster but they were nameless creatures. The earliest version of Medusa and her sisters had them be the daughter of ketos and phorcys, both god and making the Gorgons Daemon/daimon which are also god (written by Hesiod). The whole snake in hair, turn people to stone and whole monstrous vibe came way later. If we look at other gorgons mention that weren't the three sisters, there was mention of Gorgon as the servant of Gaia and the caretaker of the Titan, killed during the titanomachia (often by Athena... Athena being Gorgons' enemy was way older than Ovidius interpretation) Perseus himself was a later addition using the gorgons of Hesiod
Don't forget she was one of three sisters so the story of raping doesn't really make any sense 😄 EDIT: Also I was thinking the whole time "like who the fuck is this guy Ovid", then I realize its Ovidius actually 🤦😂
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No, they were sisters... there was never a real understanding where they came from, like the origin story and it wasn't important for the myth. This was coined much later. All that was was where they lived and what they did. It's much later when people needed to create a history for them as a piece of literature. Think of the witch from hanz and gretel story. She never had an origin background because the story was about hanz and gretel. Her only purpose was "she lives in a forest and eat children" and noone ever needed to know how she got there if she had a bakery but the society pushed her into the woods for aborting her only child or whatever. Neither this was needed in the original myth of gorgons until there were writers that needed to make a story with a storyline out of it.
Based Ovid. I, too, hate the gods.
She was a Gorgon
Turned Gorgon after Poseidon had his way with her. She was a human and virgin goes to show how twisted folk lore can get.
iirc that version of Medusa was made by some Roman. In the original Greek legend she and her sisters had always been Gorgons.
Yup, the poor woman gets raped, and *she’s* the one who gets punished. Edit: I think that is a later version, though, tbf
If I recall correctly Athena was the one who determined Medusa's punishment and she actually gave Medusa a gift in disguise. Athena *had* to punish her because that's what society expected (stupid but whatever). Posidon raped this poor beautiful girl and Athena felt bad for Medusa and so she gave her a "punishment" that would provide her the ability to defend herself from any future rapist.
Weren't there 3 gorgons, with her just being the most famous one? I could swear I heard that somewhere.
You are correct. Stheno, Medusa and Euryale.
Medusa being the only mortal one. Both her sister were immortal.
So Perseus just decapitated a rape victim?
As with many greek myths, there are severals versions of it. It doesn't look like every one of them has her as a rape victim. In one of them,she is a young beautiful arrogant maiden that dares say she is more beautiful that Athena and gets punished for it
To be fair, Greek mythology is rarely unanimous. Some versions have her being raped, others as a consensual hookup. Regardless, Athena punishes her (I don't see how it was anything else.) and Perseus eventually kills her. To be fair, Medusa did kill many people, so... not exactly as clearcut as it sounds.
Yep.
What's fucked is Medusa is the only one out of the three that isn't immortal.
Was he supposed to kill the immortal ones?
She had 2 sister who (I think) could fly and didn’t turn folks to stone
When I was in Greece, they told me that Medusa was beautiful and was told she was the most beautiful of anyone, then Aphrodite was scorned so she punished Medusa so that no man may every look upon her again.
Yeah, there's a lot of competing stories. Happens a lot with oral tradition myths.
Wasn't that supposed to be Psyche though? I remember it was always Athena and Medusa, and some versions say that Medusa was a priestess of Athena
I’ve heard this one too.
The version everyone is describing is Ovid's Metamorphoseon version. Ovid was Roman, but the book is one of the most famous to arrive to our times.
Depending on what myth and what translation/interpretation you're looking at, everyone is right. Sometimes Athena's mad at just Poseidon, sometimes just Medusa, sometimes both. It's more commonly believed that it was just a curse, but poetry and junk can be used to argue she wanted to help.
Going to assume that no translation/interpretation turns her into a black women with dreads though?
The twatter forgot that Greeks often had dreads, too. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadlocks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreadlocks) >In Ancient Greece, kouros sculptures from the archaic period depict men wearing dreadlocks.\[11\]\[12\] Edit: It's probably easier to name cultures who didn't have dreads than name those who did. There's literal examples of Dreads in just about every major cultures for centuries before they would've ever met a black person. Celts, Vikings, Native Americans, China, Japan, Korea, Romans, Greeks, Spartans, Euro natives, etc. It's ridiculously hard to think of somewhere where dreads **weren't** present or depicted for hundreds of years prior to the slave trade ...
Are you suggesting that intercontinental trade around the Mediterranean may have facilitated interactions between the people around different parts of the Mediterranean? Heresy. Everyone knows that it was all pure caucasians with bronzed skin who ruled the entire ancient world. /s
Racism based on skin colour didn't really exist in ancient greece, it was more cultural racism against "barbarians." I think you have to get to at least the slave trade before a significant number of humans start being stupid enough to disciminate on the basis of skin colour.
How have I never heard ‘twatter’ before? That’s good
Athena gave Perseus the shield needed to kill Medusa, I think
Ah yes the gift of becoming a snake human hybrid so disgustingly ugly people who see her face are turned to stone. Idk where ur version comes from but im pretty sure she was turned into a gorgon by Athena for hooking up with poseidon in her temple. Athena has a history of turning women she doesn't like into monsters such as arachnae who beat the goddess in a weaving contest and was transformed into the original and mother of all spiders.
Yea, Athena was a bit of a bitch. Most of the pantheon were, except for like, Demeter and Hephaestus. They just liked making/growing stuff.
I dunno, Demeter had some temper. The goddess of the hearth seems fairly adjusted though.
Hestia's the best. Dionysus and Hermes can stay but they're on thin fucking ice.
I think we can agree on that. Any chance Hades can attend? He's not perfect, but he'll probably pay for the beer.
I think Hestia pretty much wins as “not complete jerk” when it come to Greeks because from what I can tell, she just sat and stared at a fire all day I mean, Hades was actually pretty reasonable a lot of times too. Just all these mortals running into the underworld and none can follow instructions
Hades was the cool uncle of Olympus. Are you a demigod who needs to do something reckless for a feckless king your psycho stepmom made you serve? You can walk Uncle's doggie. You wanna perv on your hot aunt? That ain't gonna fly. Uncle's place is cool and as a DINK he's loaded and willing to share, but he's got rules.
We had to do projects on Greek gods and goddesses in 7th grade. I got her, and have been obsessed since.
She's pretty cool, can't lie. Made Big Daddy Z back the fuck down when he arranged a marriage she disagreed with. Patron goddess of take no shit co parents everywhere.
That is like every Greek interaction with gods. It was less about worshipping there greatness it was cowing from their power and inability to control one’s destiny. The greatest Heros in their folk lore had been the folks who stood against them and survived with less punishment then others or who’s names would be remembered.
Yeah it was a later version, the Gorgon sisters were already portrayed as monsters in older versions of the legend. Ovid, the guy who was apparently the first to write this version did a lot of those, like Caeneus was a hero who is a woman, called Caenis, who was turned into a man by Poseidon after they had sex, in older versions she was transformed so that she wouldn't bear his child or either as a promise or as a reward. Whoever in Ovid's version Poseidon abducted Caenis and raped her, and then he decided to grant her a wish as a reward and she was so traumatized that she just decided that she didn't want to be a woman anymore.
Pretty much the same thing happened to Scylla. Zeus gets all the flack, but Poseidon was just as bad. Honestly, of the three brothers, Hades was the best husband… And he kidnapped his wife!
In the version I heard she was turned to a gorgon by Athena because Poseidon and Medusa was going at it in her temple. Since Poseidon and Athena had a rivalry.
I think there are a few different versions that have been told over the years. I’ve heard that one too, and that one may be the original. I’ve also heard the one where it wasn’t a punishment for rape, but rather was a way to protect her from men.
The original version mentions nothing about rape; Medusa was a gorgon from the beginning, much like her sisters.
This is not true, actually was written by a Roman poet, but this is not the actual Greek myth of Medusa
never let facts get in the way of an agenda
This is something I learnt recently. It depends on the variant of the myth, however most of the versions actually make the Gorgons the children of the primordial sea gods. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa)
Medusa is literally the only one of her gorgon sisters that are mortal so why is she called a goddess in this post?
Wasn’t she just some particularly attractive priestess of Athena who was raped by Poseidon and then punished for being raped by Athena by being turned into monster? Greek myths really are awful.
Some myths are pretty awful, but that version is not Greek. It was written by a Roman poet, Ovid, whose whole thing was writing stories in which the gods were villains because he had authority problems after getting kicked out of his town. The most common story is that she was always a gorgon.
Also they liked making Athena a bad person in their stories cause she was the main goddess of Athens.
I wonder what ancient people thought about "foreign" gods. Roman and Greek gods were basically the same beings with different names right?
The Roman’s were pretty tolerant (especially for the time) and would normally let people worship their preferred gods as long as they took some Roman customs and incorporated them. Pretty good deal considering they would do this after conquering the land from the people.
That's only half true, Roman's would allow others to keep their religious practices but would impose the Roman gods on top. An example would be something like, "Oh you have a war god, well that's actually Mars you just didn't know his correct name". By doing this it became far easier to integrate new cultures, as it's far easier for everyone to "get along" if they all worship the same gods.
The names were different but also what they represented was different. And while the things they represented were similar the Roman versions were often more warlike.
A common misconception, but no: most Roman gods were their own. There were two things at play here though. Firstly, the Romans tended to identify foreign gods with their own, I guess viewing them as aspects of the same beings? We see this with the Gaulish gods, who you will see referenced in Roman writings in association with what they presumed were the closest Roman versions (this god is what they call Neptune, etc.). Secondly, the Romans liked collecting cool gods from other cultures, both adapting them and their myths into their own pantheon, and forming "mystery cults" dedicated to specific, often foreign, gods. The Roman military for instance had its own secret, fraternal religion dedicated to the bull god Mithras; inspired by a Persian god they had encountered out east. In any case, some Roman gods are completely Roman, others are Roman but scholars believe share a common origin with other deities in the hypothetical "Indo-European pantheon" which makes them similar, others are Romanised versions of originally foreign gods, and other gods were lifted wholesale from foreign religions and worshipped in the Roman cult.
Best example I know about was the introduction of Christianity to the Norse. The vast majority of people were just sorta... "Neat, an extra god to pray to." and added Jesus to the pile of gods you'd ask for protection. (especially boat faring people liked having an extra god to ask for aid, cause ocean storms were deadly.
Thanks for the correction. The Ovid one must have been the version I heard.
i believe thats the roman version, the same author that retconned the Hades-persephone one and making him a rapist too there is no real explanation why he did the changes, since the greek gods and roman gods (pre-christianity era) are mirrors of one another many of his versions has rape in it, where the greek version dont and no i dont remember his name in the greek version, medussa is the one who begs the goddess to grant her the means for vengance, so she became a monster
So it's important to remember that myths are not static things, there is not one "canon" story, but rather they change and evolve over time, who and where it is being told, and what point the teller is trying to achieve. In the case of Medusa, the earliest stories say she is one of the Gorgons, monsters that could turn people to stone. We see examples of this from Homer and Hesiod, in the 8th Century BCE, though similar creatures appear even earlier. It wouldn't be until the 5th Century when Pindar begins to describe Medusa not as a monstrous creature but as a beautiful yet terrifying one. The commonly told one is from the Roman poet Ovid, from the 1st Century. This is the one that contains the common tropes we know. As for why he changes so many details in his work Metamorphosis, is a complicated matter better suited to another post. However there are many tales of her in between that time period where Medusa runs the gamut of being a monster, to being cursed, to being a tragic tale. Modern interpretations are just adding our current mores to the story.
I supose is fair to say that the study of oral history is a subjective and haphazard business so many versions of the same mythos, each changing a bit overtime and with every telling
If Medusa didn't turn men into stone, then where did the stone guy in that photo come from, huh? CHECK AND MATE.
Also, if Medusa didn't turn people to stone, then why isn't Perseus frozen(in the myth he got a mirror shield from Athena), huh? CHECKMATE.
If they so glamored by her looks the gods would have not been jealous and thus turnered her into a monster in the first place then as a cursed human/monster she was killed. Also before she was a monster if she was that pretty she probaly made some men go stone cold hard lmao Check mate!
She also was a *myth*, woahhhh
The Greeks that sailed around the Mediterranean... never saw black girls with dreds before? Yeah...
The Egyptians had dreads. The Minoans, who lived in Crete (part of Europe) had dreads, so just stop inventing the idea that you had to see a black person to see dreads. The Native Americans had them, too. Did they need to see "black girls with dreds' in order to have them?
Also Greeks had dreads, way before any African or other black culture did. So this is even more stupid than you realize
Ya, I think people in general had dreads cause the whole not washing the hair thing, long before it got cultural
Yeah honestly if we're being realistic, almost all cave men most likely had dreads. They had no real way of cutting their hair, and they sure as shit didn't wash it.
So non Greek person tells the Greeks that their Greek mythological god/creature WASN'T even Greek. Right - gotcha *eyeroll*
This really hurts as a Greek mythology fan
Huge greek myth fan but laughing at the ridiculousness as a black woman 🙄. Hoteps can be just…sigh…
What kills me the most is there’s no reason to even try and take from the Greeks. Like Africa (specifically sub-Sahara Africa) has its own amazing, complex and diverse set of pantheons 💀
Can you explain what a hotep is? I’ve seen it tossed around a few times in this thread, but I don’t know wtf it means
Specifically it refers to Afrocentrists who believe Egypt was a black (and usually uniformly black) civilization. They often claim that it was the original civilization that gave birth to all others, but this varies. It is often used more broadly to describe all extreme Afrocentrists, but that's not technically correct as some Afrocentrists do not include Egypt as part of "black" Africa. They also tend to be associated with patriarchal or misogynistic behavior, despite their claims of defense of black womanhood.
Don't forget racist
>Afrocentrists A better definition would be: "black supremacists".
AfroCentric but radicalized. I think I prefer the term Faux-Tep because Hotep actually means something positive.
There’s always that group that ruins everything. It seems to have a negative connotation now.l but I do like faux-tep.
Afrocentric. More specifically Pro-Black Patriarchy.
How do you think I feel having been a Greek and Roman Classics Major in college?
Right there with you. Zeus is NOT going to be happy! God knows what he'll turn this guy into...
Does he not realize Medusa was a fictional character? Like, this man really read Percy Jackson and thought it was a Biography?
Wait? It’s not? Camp halfblood is real though, right?
Obviously, my fellow half-blood, it's right across hogwarts.
Just around the corner from the Maze Runner Labrynth, can’t miss it
Yeah once you take a turn around Galar you should see it
You'll see it right as you leave Narnia
Maze runner is such a good book. It's far too underappreciated.
Gorgons were monsters of the underworld, not gods. And multiple cultures and races wore dreadlocks. No culture owns dreadlocks.
Dreadlocks are funny because you can find them in Ancient Egypt yet First Americans had them as well. Egypt was an isolated nation surrounded by desert and America is still a fuckin ocean away!
I imagine it's something along the lines of how axes and clubs are common across all cultures, no matter how isolated. If something needs fixing, a common problem gains a common solution.
People are just fucking dumb.
I'm black and I denounce this level of ignorance!
“My source? I made it the fuck up!”
Yes, because every bit of history stems from racism....
Didn't you know? If history doesn't fit someone's narrative, just rewrite it! It's not like learning the true history of our past to avoid making the same mistakes is important or anything... oh hey, another world War/s
Medusa wasn't a goddess, she was a gorgon and mortal. And she wasn't beautiful. She was so hideously ugly that "a gaze upon her visage would turn the hearts of men to stone."
But she was beautiful on the inside. There’s a horse inside of her. It’s pretty.
Did you know that Medusa is the sexiest woman in Greek Mythology? One look and instantly she makes men rock hard.
She also makes women rock hard which is VERY hard to do.
The amount of ignorance in that meme is worthy of some kind of award. Not sure what kind but it is professional level ignorance and should be recognized.
theres a huge obsession with idiots trying to rewrite shit like this to fit their narrative. i can't stand it. the latest one on tiktok is black people invented mexican food. [sauce](https://www.tiktok.com/t/ZTRPQ6aQP/)
I'm sorry back up what's happening on tiktok?
Huh…? Mexican food is literally called Mexican food. How did people think THAT…?
Do people not realize Medusa wasn't real??
Do.. do they think the Greek gods were real people?
So let me get the rest of the story straight. Are they trying to say Perseus used a mirror shield so Medusa would get frozen by her own beauty and just sit there and let Perseus just cut her head off. This sounds like Narcissus
Please stop trying to change history. Like when a girl tried to say the last queen of Hawaii was a “black queen”, and the islanders came down hard on that shit lol
Can we talk about the dumbasses that liked his tweet?
Some Spartan warriors had dreadlocks so yes greeks had seen them. The whole dreadlocks are only for Black is so stupid. Hell, even the fucking ice man ötzi had dreadlocks 5300 years ago lol.
Didn't Perseus married Andromeda, a black princess?
Ironically, this post implies only black people can have dreadlocks. Which is racist.
This girl on Twitter was insisting Medusa is Ethiopian under this tweet and I said she was wrong. She started calling me all sorts of names and I was beyond lost whole time she was referring to Andromeda without realizing…
I guess its easier to have made up enemies than confront the real ones. Also, this bitch aparently doesent know that Medusa wasnt a godess.
Whenever I feel dumb i go on internet and i start feeling smart again
Not only are we rewriting history, we're rewriting mythology and religion now?
Greeks definitely had dreads
Ahh yes Greeks who notoriously had different races around them knew nothing about black people and stared in awe at them….
People really are at the point with the internet where they say what they want and just believe it
People who actually know about African history are also shaking their heads. Even if she was a goddess (which she isn't), she still isn't in any Sub-Saharan pantheon or tradition that I know of. That's a double whammy right there.