GORGONE. — From Gr. Γοργών, Γοργόνη (Lat. Gorgōn and Gorgōn). A female figure of Greek myth, originally singular, later split into three sisters: Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, the first two immortal, the third mortal.
The Gorgons dwell in a dark region at the extreme west (Hesiod, Theog., 274 sq.): they thus represent the nocturnal darkness, and for this reason one of them, Medusa, is in conflict with the solar hero Perseus; in the legend of Argos, he cuts off her head, whose terrible gaze can petrify men; another natural symbol of the storm cloud from which the life-annihilating lightning is unleashed. The anguished head is given by the hero to Athena, who places it in the center of her shield, a fact that has led some mythographers to conjecture the original unity of Medusa and Athena.
Two types of representations of Medusa exist: one archaic, with a frontal face adorned with wings, and the body in profile, eyes wide open, tongue protruding, and serpentine hair, which lends the type itself an apotropaic value; the other, more recent, with a face composed in beauty, retaining only the wings from the ancient depiction.
GORGONE — Head of a Gorgon. Marble (6th cent. B.C.) — Athens, Acropolis Museum.