Gorgo is always the impersonation of the atmospheric terrors, and is conceived in connexion with the deities that are armed with thunder and lightning—Zeus and Athene. With Athene in particular is the connexion very close, and some facts of ritual and nomenclature almost suggest an original identity of the two. Palaephatus says that Athene was worshipped in the island of Cerne under the name Gorgo; Sophocles (Al., 450) calls her γοργωπ«; and Plutarch (Arat., 32) says that her wooden statue at Pallene, if brought out of the temple, destroyed human life (compare the description of the birth of Athene in Pindar, Ol., vii. 65 ft'., which strongly suggests the phenomena of the thunderstorm). Here we have preserved to us a relic from the very earliest thought among the Indo-European race. When a phenomenon in the heavens attracted their attention, they naturally spoke of it as of an animated being. The storm appeared to act out its own natural course, to live its own life. But afterwards the phenomenon was conceived with reference to human needs: beneficent and hostile deities worked in nature ; a hostile power denies to men what a friendly power after a conflict grants. Among the Greeks this opposition appears in the antithesis of Olympian and older or Chthonian gods. The goddess who ruled the storm for man was set in opposition to the actual thundercloud—Athene to Gorgo (see Graces). Accordingly the usual Greek account is that the γopγov∈ιov or γopγelη κeφaλη, a terror-striking countenance, is fixed in the middle of the aegis of Zeus. Zeus gives the aegis (fliacl, v. 736 ff., comp. Aesch., Eτιm., 825) to Athene, the goddess of the air. The Gorgoneion is always said to have been won in battle, viz., in the conflict of the beneficent gods against the older nature-powers, who would scorch the earth with heat and deny the needed rain. Zeus then assuming the aegis (the shield of the storm-cloud) overthrows the Titans or the Giants in the aerial battle; the rain descends, and a clearer and cooler sky succeeds. Or in other accounts the whole array of gods engages in the battle; Athene then appears naturally as γοργοφόνη, i.e., she clears the atmosphere, her own special domain, from the terrible cloud, which she keeps on her shield threatening death to all her foes. The Attic tradition was that the Gorgon was a monster produced by Earth to aid her distressed sons the Giants, and was slain by Pallas (Eur., Ion, 1002). In Homer Gorgo appears also in connexion with Apollo, Agamemnon, Hector, and Persephone,—-a connexion which might be justified by an examination into the mythological ideas that underlie these names.

Later accounts, beginning from Hesiod (Theog., l,cj}, mention three Gorgons; but Medusa alone inherits the character and history of the older Gorgo, while two sisters are added to make up the sacred number, in analogy with the Moirae, Graeae, Erinyes, etc. The Argive story has established itself in all later literature as the standard account of the Gorgons. Perseus, the light-giving hero, aided by Athene and the other gods, goes to the abode of the Gorgons beside Oceanus far away in the dark West, and cuts off the head of Medusa. Then from the streaming neck sprang Chrysaor and Pegasus, her two sons by Poseidon. This head, which, like the lightning, had the power of turning into stone all that looked on it, was given to Athene, who placed it in her shield. According to another account, Perseus buried the head in the Agora of Argos. Beside it was buried his daughter Gorgophone, who is obviously a mere impersonation of the old epithet of the Gorgon-slaying goddess.

These ideas of sun and storm give only the starting point for the myths; the history of their further growth involves the whole subsequent history of the nation. Just as in Germany, after Christianity was introduced, many old myths and customs lived on applied to Christ and his apostles instead of the old gods, so must the Greek myths as we know them bear traces of the historical vicissitudes of the race. Hence Böttiger {Kunst-Myth., i. 369) has possibly some ground for referring the Perseus tale to the extinction of Phoenician human sacrifices by the Greeks.

The gradual development in art from the old hideous and terrible representation of the Medusa head to the calm repose of a beautiful dead face is described in detail by Müller, History of Ancient Art, and Denkmäler der Alten Kunst. See also Rosenberg, Die Ervnyeη.