The Gorgons

Three sisters — Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa — daughters of the primordial sea-deities Phorcys and Ceto, dwelling at the edge of night beyond the stream of Ocean. Two of them, Stheno and Euryale, were immortal; Medusa alone was mortal and the only one Perseus could kill. In the Hesiodic tradition they are monstrous from birth, with serpent-hair, brazen claws, and a gaze that turned the living to stone; the Ovidian retelling that Medusa was a beautiful mortal raped and transformed by Athena belongs to Latin literature (*Met.* 4.794-803), not the Greek sources. After Perseus took Medusa's head it kept its petrifying power and was finally set on Athena's aegis (Apollod. 2.4.2).