The Graeae

Three sisters grey-haired from birth — Deino, Enyo, and Pemphredo in the Hesiodic list (*Theogony* 270–274), with Persis as a fourth in some later sources — daughters of the primordial sea-deities Phorcys and Ceto and elder siblings of the Gorgons. Between them they had one eye and one tooth, which they passed from sister to sister as each took her turn to see or speak. Perseus, guided by Hermes, stole the eye in the moment of its transfer and refused to give it back until the Graeae told him the road to the Nymphs who kept the winged sandals, the kibisis, and the cap of Hades; from the Nymphs he would then fly on to the lair of their Gorgon sisters (Apollodorus *Bibliotheca* 2.4.2; Pherecydes fr. 11 Fowler; Aeschylus *Prometheus Bound* 794–800, who sets them 'on the Hesperian plains' at the edge of the world). Aeschylus is our source for their swan-shape and their solitary communal eye; Hesiod for their names.