LIVE in London! Let's Talk About Medusa, Baby! w/ Cosi Carnegie
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Hello, this is Let's Talk About Myths, baby, and I am your host, Liv, here with something incredibly fun and exciting. And it might also require you to travel over to a different app if you are so inclined. So today's episode is actually the first ever very official live podcast recording that I've ever done. I have done some live stuff.

events here and there, but nothing I would like really consider, you know, something that I've done when I'm in my stride right now, you know, with the quality and the knowledge that I now have. But I got to record a live episode in London last month, which...

I mean, incredible London, UK for us Canadians. I realize I should keep clarifying that. You know, I hope to do Ontario soon, but I will start with Toronto. But I was at this event. I did this event in London last month. It was hosted by friend and past guest of the podcast, Kossi Carnegie of Kossi's Odyssey. And we talked about Medusa. Kossi asked me some really great questions and it was a really nice back and forth, deep conversation.

deep about Medusa. I, you know, was my usual self, rambly and utterly obsessed with my investment in her. We also took some listener questions at the end. The crowd was so, so great. It was so cool that everyone was there to see me talk about nerdy shit and was just as excited and maybe a little nervous as I was. It was really so fun. Um,

this episode here in the podcast app will be the audio only. When we get to the Q&A part, the audio is not ideal, but to

To the lead up, it's pretty great. However, we are also simultaneously releasing this as a full video. We had a videographer there who recorded in like 4K. The file was like 60 gigs. It might have taken like two days to upload to YouTube, which very much felt like I was living in 1989 again in the most hilariously enjoyable way. So it's really high quality, really high production value. Utterly

amazing. Enormous thank you to Kazi again, because Kazi sorted out all of this, put it all together for me so that I just kind of like rolled up and had this ready-made event. The event was at the Common Press Bookstore in again, London. It was a really incredible bookstore. Highly recommend that if you're local to there, go check it out. But just generally amazing bookshop. I'm really glad that we got to work with them.

Just like real, real good vibes. Real good vibes. And so the video is available on my YouTube. You can find a link in the episode's description if you want to watch it. If you just want to listen. Amazing. Sit back and enjoy. And if you like this, if you want to see me doing stuff like this again in future,

other cities, I would be really excited. Next up in terms of goals would be Toronto. So I could do something local. So anyone who is local to Toronto or close enough that they're willing to travel, I would really love to hear if you're interested in coming to an event like this in Toronto. So

comment if you're listening on Spotify or on the YouTube. Please let me know. Tell me on Instagram, really, whatever. I just want to really get a sense of how keen people are. The London one went really well, so I'm excited to try it out and with any luck be able to do more of these. I have to be honest right now, I'm not in a position where I'm safe to travel to the US due to my

very open political nature and the current regime changes, for lack of a better term. So at this time, I can't consider locations in the States, but I really would love to do more in Canada. And so if any wonderful Americans are willing to travel into Canada,

the land up north that will remain a separate country um please also let me know um so just you know

I'm going to stop asking, but let me know if you're keen on this and otherwise sit back and enjoy. Thank you so much for your patience and very kindly waiting out in the street while we got all of this looking like this. It does not look like this during the day. So thank you again. For those of you that don't know me, my name is Cozzy, but none of you are here to see me. I'm very thrilled to welcome Liv Albert to her first ever London event. So let's give her a bit of this. Woo! Woo!

So honestly, we're just going to dive into it. We're going to talk for a while and we'll break if anyone has any questions for her or if they sort of come up during the chat. It's going to be a very sort of free-flowing thing. Try not to heckle if you can avoid it. If you can avoid it. But yeah, so save your questions until the end and then we'll break up for some mingling. And if you have anything you want Liv to sign or anything like that, there'll be time for that after. And she's brought some beautiful tote bags. Yeah, and stickers and pins. I'm going to try to get you guys to give me some money. Oh!

But no pressure. But no pressure at all. So let's just get into it. My first question is who or what was Medusa? Really basic one, but I want like a recap. Do we think this audience needs me to tell the story? I want it. I want it. Just give me like a little bit. Medusa's a... I think this is the problem is that you ask such a basic question. I did read these over. She okayed these, by the way, everyone. And then now I'm going to bother. Well, I think we all know that Medusa is...

I don't even know how to start with her because I have so many differing thoughts about what I want to call her. But I will just call her a creature, I suppose. We'll get into that later. Medusa, to me, is a creature from Greek mythology. And I say that because I stand by that she was born that way and we'll get into it.

As I have also done on the podcast, which I'm just assuming everyone has listened to. But that alone is slightly weird for me to assume. There's just so many...

So, but I think we go into the further questions because we're going to get into deeper. Okay. So she's a creature. She's a creature. Is kind of where we're at. And snakes are involved somewhere. Snakes are involved somewhere, but often so are wings and like some snarling and kind of the ability to turn things to stone. But even that is like, you know, depending on the source, just how strong that is in her story. Like, I think we all know this idea of Medusa, but if

if you actually break down kind of what does and does not exist in the ancient sources, it becomes far more interesting and where I know your questions are going to get us. Yeah. Well, the next one is talking about the evolution of Medusa in the classical texts and in classical art.

Are you happy with that one? Yeah, this is what I needed because the issue is she's not just one thing. You can't just like say one thing. So the earliest surviving sources for Medusa would be Hesiod, who was, if he was a real man, then he was an incredibly misogynist man who lived in 6th, 7th century Boeotia, if we believe that he was real. Just locked eyes with you on that.

Thank God there's other people who know the mythology. This is why I'm not going to look at people. So Medusa in that form, she appears in like three or four different lines and primarily just as this kind of, it's sort of this explanation for why Perseus, you know, is, is,

I'm getting ahead of myself. But Medusa is born in the Hesiod... Medusa is born to these two creature gods, Forcus and Keto, both of whom are these really interesting, really primordial, really early and ancient sea gods, which says so much about Medusa and the Gorgons being born from them. And they were...

in Hesiod specifically, they were always born as these kind of creatures. I think the word monster has this connotation that I don't love, but we will get into it. But just being that they were not meant to be human, they were not meant to be anthropomorphic, they weren't like they weren't like the other divinities who were meant to expect them to look like humans. And I think that's important because it changes over time and becomes sort of a really different idea. But

I mean, in these earliest sources and to me, like the sort of truest form of Medusa, the most ancient form is she's just born this, this creature who lives at the edge of the world. Um,

with her two sisters, and we know that she is mortal, but her sisters are not, and there's no reason ever given for that in the most ancient sources, which I also think is incredibly interesting. And what we know about her is that she, and this is the Hesiod quote in, I'm not sure which translation, but most of them use this phrasing, but that Poseidon lay with her, but he's not even called Poseidon in that, he's called the dark-haired one,

and he lay with her, lay with, in a bed of soft flowers.

From that, all we really know is eventually down the line, she has his children, but those children aren't born until her head is removed from her body. And it becomes this really big question about like what was actually going into that. Now flash forward like 500, 600, 700 years? Looking at you, you should have the answer. 700 years, let's say, to Ovid, who's writing in the Roman period and whose work the Metamorphoses kind of,

fundamentally changes how we see Medusa in a way that I think is interesting and kind of annoying. But what Ovid tells us about Medusa is that she was born beautiful. He doesn't say what that looks like. He does not clarify that she is human or otherwise. He says that she was born beautiful. And in this version, her experience with Poseidon is very explicitly assault. He really spells it out in that way, but it's assault that happens because

Or rather, it happens in Athena's temple. Now, a lot of people will tell you that Medusa was a priestess of Athena because it happens in the temple. There's no evidence for that. And so it happens in the temple. And then because of that, we have this storyline where Athena punishes Medusa for that and transforms her so that

she then, or rather her beautiful hair, her once beautiful hair is transformed into snakes. And then we get this idea that again, which is pretty throughout, though not always so explicit, that her gaze will turn people to stone. And I think it's really interesting to compare these kind of like, and again, like we're talking at least 600 years in between these two sources. And it's really easy to forget that when we're talking about Greek mythology, we think of it as this like singular kind of thing, right?

But, as I love to say on the show, there is more time between Hesiod and Ovid than there is between Shakespeare and now. So you can get just how much can change in a story and an adaptation of a story, a retelling of a story in that amount of time.

And what it kind of ends up happening is that then we see this idea of Medusa as this... It's so hard. I don't like the idea that she then becomes this kind of monster who is therefore, like, bad and not beautiful. The Ovid stuff, to me, really complicates everything in a way where I think what's most interesting is to consider her as this being that is just born that way, and there's no punishment involved. She does still have this experience with Poseidon, which I...

read in the Hesiod as sexual assault as well, but it isn't explicit. And that's primarily because Hesiod isn't really explicit about any kind of... not even just consent, but women as human beings with agency. He doesn't really care about that. So there's a lot of people who would say, oh, well then it was consensual, and you're like...

planet is just like women being like these creatures in a story who have no like say in anything does that automatically mean it was like just fine and loving but meanwhile it's like this idea of like this dark hair the dark haired god of the sea who is also as a god of the sea he's inherently violent and now i'm just rambling about all of this but i think it still answers your question it'll definitely answer my question right this is what i do um but it it

to me it like screams of this violent encounter because this is a god of the sea the sea is inherently violent they knew that from day one just as we know it now the sea is a really scary place and so the god of something that scary is

typically can be read as this violent god not to mention that like most other encounters we have with him and any mortal or divinity are non-consensual when they are explicit so to me it's this idea that she still has this experience and she kind of she's just a survivor of it broadly and it does end up resulting in these children which i know we'll get back to pegasus and chris they are but

I find it to be, I'm like jumping ahead of myself so completely, but I find it to be just way more impactful to consider Medusa as this creature that always looked like that and didn't have this kind of like ugliness inflicted on her by a goddess.

I could keep talking but I think we'll go to another question. - Let me redirect you slightly. - Great. Something that I've always been really curious about is, and kind of if we go back to the archaic period and we think about the imagery of the gorgon and the way that it functioned like in art and architecture. So the gorgon, the head of a gorgon, is it gorgoneum? - Gorgonea. - That what you said. - Gorgonea is plural but. - Those.

And they serve this fascinating apotropaic function for the Greeks. And then how do you reconcile the idea of her as this fearsome monster with the fact that the faces of Gorgons were used as a protective sort of mechanism for the Greeks? You guided me directly into the question I wanted, which is that I think that that's kind of the point. And that's why I find...

the alternate readings of her that we get from Ovid to be really disappointing because the Gorgons are this apotropaic device, like they are this protective kind of talisman. They appear everywhere, but what's really interesting is they're often on armor, like the specific Gorgoneia is on Athena's either her aegis or her shield, either of which are these protective devices.

But then these individual Gorgone appear in so many different places, but really often on armor and on shields and things. And that's both in actual artifacts that exist. I went to the British Museum for the first time, and they have this bronze calf thing.

and it has armor on it and there's a Gorgon on the knee. But even in like the Iliad you find lots of instances of these Gorgonea appearing on individual people's shields and things. So they're really used as this protective device and to me that just completely aligns with this story of Medusa as a creature who could defend herself.

And that's what I find to be most kind of impactful about her, is that she defends herself against Perseus, certainly, or, I mean, obviously he takes her head, but then uses it as defense in that same kind of way. And we now consider this idea of it being this fearsome thing that she was, you know, that...

I guess that her, when she was living, she was turning all these people to stone as some, you know, actual, like, intentional harm inflicted on people. That's kind of how we're led to read it, rather than this protective aspect. Like, you know, she is a defensive mechanism to me, rather than offensive, because she is a shield, she is, you know, this, she's kind of like...

She's like a reflection, right? She's like, Will, you know, an enemy is coming at you and the Gorgon is what kind of stops it. And so to me, that completely fits with this original idea of her being this...

who was living at the ends of the earth. She was not encountering people. She was not harming anyone or really doing anything, just kind of protecting herself and her sisters. And then when her head is taken, it serves the same purpose in an obviously kind of dark and unfortunate way. But to me, that makes...

so much more sense than this Ovid idea of it sort of being a punishment. Because I think that they do just serve this explicitly, like, defensive position. And, I mean, I probably will get deeper into this, but I read it more as this idea that we're supposed to be... that we think we're supposed to be afraid of them. I think that's just men being afraid of creatures that they couldn't have sex with, to be perfectly frank. Like, I think that's how Marisa ended up becoming what she is, is this...

She's a fearsome creature when really what she was was a creature that nobody wanted to bang. Which is dark and horrible.

But I think so much more interesting than this idea that she had to be transformed in order to protect her or as punishment for something a man did. I would much rather believe this idea that she was just this creature who... I mean, Percy is a specific instance. Clearly, he doesn't want to go have sex with her. But I think that she represents that idea. She represents the idea of a woman who is capable of saying no and then that...

gets turned on its head by the patriarchy surprise into being this thing that we're supposed to be afraid of, that she's dangerous, she's going to hurt you. And it's like, no, she's only going to hurt you if you come at her. She's only going to hurt you if you are the attacker.

That was kind of an answer to your question. No, that was definitely an answer because it just got me thinking about, you know, exactly what you were saying. There's something about the act of beheading her and ending her life that means that she can then be repurposed once she's fully objectified and dead. But onto what you were saying about whether or not

Was it women who don't want to have sex with men? Yeah. Or capable of saying no. Well, on that note, you know we have to talk about Athena. Yeah. We have to talk about Athena. So I want to know what you think about the particular version that has Athena transforming her from a beautiful woman into the snake-haired Gorgon. And the fact that it's Athena. Well, Athena is an agent of the Patriarch. Yeah. We're allowed to love her for what

she represents. I love that there is a goddess like her. I love that. Like, I do love Athena. People have been mad at me before, which is why I say Beth. Like, Beth.

Just because I complain about the actions of some of the gods doesn't mean I don't respect them. Getting defensive. No, I think, I mean, Athena serves this really explicit role in so many myths, which is that she is quite literally this agent of the patriarchy. She is the hero's favorite goddess. She is her father's favorite goddess. She is, you know, we've, we've,

turns her birth story into something where he did it alone, when in fact he ate her mother and then gave birth to her because of that. But we get this idea that he was like, he, you know, Parthenogenesis, like created her out of nothing or just out of himself, which is of course nonsense. And even the Greeks could figure out that was nonsense, but then they still found a way to be like, no, no, this goddess came from a man and there was no women involved.

And I think that that really shows in how she behaves in a lot of places. But specifically, like, it's Ovid who does this rewrite of her. And one thing people also love to forget is that Ovid, one, was not a Greek, and two, was not writing Greek mythology to be, like, the story, like, he was not writing Greek mythology.

Mythology is something that is developed culturally and specifically that developed from this oral storytelling tradition that I talk about way too often and becomes this kind of cultural knowledge. Whereas Ovid is coming in, and again, he's taking a 700-year-old story and he is writing it into something completely different. He's writing it into...

a series of stories about metamorphosis, about transformation. And so inherently in order to use Medusa's story, he has to give it a transformation story, which it does not inherently have, which is why we get this idea that she is transformed into the creature that we know her as from the earliest sources.

And so it just makes sense that Athena would be the one to do that. I don't really necessarily think that it fits. I do think it fits with the Greek idea, but less than in this version that Ovid gives us. Like, to me, that is a really specific kind of a rewrite, which is also Minerva, we should say, right? Because it is Ovid. And Minerva, for all that, like, the base level and probably even my own book of Greek mythology, you can correct it if you buy it, but...

You know, all these kind of, like, simple-to-the-point Greek mythology books or websites or anything will tell you that, like, Minerva is the Roman name for Athena. But that's not really true. Minerva is the Roman goddess who best aligns with the Greek Athena. There are things that...

that go into Minerva which were likely inspired by or which align with Athena but she isn't Athena she's much less of a warrior goddess and she's much more of like a woman's goddess and a like crafts woman um which is really interesting but it also fundamentally like changes her from the Athena of Greek mythology so I think it's important and I think it does fit her

but all the same, like it is really important that that story is not from a Greek source. And maybe one day, you know, somebody is going to dig something up and it's going to be in a Greek source and we're all going to have to change our minds. But for the most part, it doesn't really fit with the Greek idea. And so to me, it just becomes this,

One really Roman, I mean, Ovid was also writing when Augustus was coming in and he was pulling a Mark Zuckerberg and just like putting all of these morality laws onto Rome and ruining everything. It's quite literal. Like Mark Zuckerberg has styled his own terrible haircut after Augustus. He is a dweeb of the worst kind. Um,

But he was putting all these morality laws. He was instilling this really new kind of world in Rome. I won't pretend like I know a ton about Rome, but that part is pretty true. And so it says a lot that we have this goddess who is coming in and explicitly punishing a woman for getting assaulted by a god.

To me, it's so Roman that... I mean, it does... Yeah, that does answer, I think, the point. But if you have more... I just have a quick one. Yeah, please. Is it Athena or Minerva who helps Perseus kill her? It is Athena. Okay. Because I think... Well, it's Athena... Well, it is Athena, but Athena helps all the heroes. So it doesn't really stand out. I mean, it does because...

That's a good point to bring up because also the killing of Medusa is really unique. People... And again, like, this kind of... A lot of these kinds of... Just the introductory mythology stories... And again, I'm sure I'm guilty of that. I'm not trying to pretend. I'm just better at it now. But...

These stories often present Medusa as just another story of a hero defeating a monster, right? In the same vein as Heracles and the Nemean Lion or the Hydra or even Theseus and the Minotaur.

Medusa does not actually fit any of those same kinds of ideals. Like, she is a monster, but there is no point at which we believe that she is harming anyone or that it is beneficial to anyone except...

by extension Polydectes, like the story goes that, you know, Perseus and his mother Danae land. There's a lot of drama before this, including a shower of gold. But they eventually land on the island of Seraphos and there's some drama. The king, Polydectes, wants to marry Danae. Perseus doesn't want this. She is his property as his mother.

And she doesn't want, he doesn't want to do that. And, you know, there's, I'm going to forget some of the details, but essentially Polydectes just wants Perseus dead so that he can marry Danae. And so when there's like another wedding and people are giving gifts and so Perseus is like, oh, I'll appease this king. Like, what do you want as this gift for like another person's wedding? It's a whole thing. And Polydectes is like, oh, don't give me a horse like everyone else is giving me. Go get me the head of a gorgon.

And that's the only reason that we have for why Perseus goes to kill Medusa. And so it's, you know, it's nothing like these stories of a monster terrorizing the lands, despite what misogynists on the internet will tell you and have told me in Twitter. But it's nothing about, she's not terrorizing anyone. There is no evidence that she hurt anyone or that she had done any damage. She just happened to be a Gorgon who could be killed. The only reason she's picked over her sisters is because she functionally can be killed.

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And so we get these retellings very often by men who get this idea that like, she's just another monster on this long list of like the heroic deeds of dudes. But in fact,

the entirety of it is just for another man's just trying to get Perseus killed. Polydeptes figures that this will kill him and then that's it. He doesn't want Medusa for anything other than to get Perseus out of the way. And so I think it's really interesting that Athena does help, because I remembered where your question came from, even when my brain did the whole thing. But Athena does help along this, but she's helping him on this heroic quest

The quest is not necessarily to kill the monster, the quest is to do the thing he needs to do in order to save his mother and like, you know, fix things on the island. Medusa's death is unfortunately incidental,

And so I think it is, it's still quite different from Ovid. It, to me, Athena in that respect functions just in the way that she does for Odysseus or, I mean, I'm going to blank on every other time, but she's helped a lot of heroes do a lot of dumb stuff. And so to me, it's less of that, like woman on woman. It's less, she's not necessarily like committing any kind of violence. She's just helping a hero, which is just sort of what she does as again, the agent of the patriarchy.

but in this really different way from Ovid, which is like so gross and just generally terrible. Gross and terrible. Yeah. Well, you mentioned some other monsters, and this takes me to my next question, which is all about feminine monstrosity, which I think you and I have spoken about for four hours previously. Yeah. So the...

I don't even remember. - Honestly, whether it was an episode or not, I don't know. But that list you just rattled off, none of them were the kind of feminized monsters that we have in Greek mythology. So we have, for example, Scylla, who you know I love, and the Sphinx, who are both these feminized monsters

who eat men. They are very specifically devouring. And then we have Medusa who's so different from that. So I just wanted to know what you thought about the kind of man-eating, feminine monster in comparison to Medusa, who exactly as you said,

like doesn't really do much to anyone else. She's just chilling in her cave by most. Yeah. Yeah. I think, I honestly think for the most part that it is a fairly modern invention to consider her a monster like all of those others.

I don't think that there is much evidence in textual or, or, um, like, artifact, uh, like, material sources or surviving things. Very poorly phrased, but you get what I mean. But, like, you know, I don't think that there's, I don't think that there's much evidence in the sources or all of the Gorgonea that survive in hundreds and hundreds, like, there's thousands of, of Gorgonea that survive. And I don't think that there's any evidence that

that she did serve as that kind of monster. Like, there's a handful of pottery where he's killing her, but at the same time she's pretty sympathetic in most of those. She's asleep in some of them. Typically she's asleep. With her eyes closed. In the story, she's asleep. And even, like, you know, in the earliest surviving pieces, we don't even have this idea that he used, like, the shield as the reflection to do it. Like, that comes later, too. Like, he just snuck up on a woman and killed her in her sleep.

and then her sisters realized and chased him out of there. Like, it is simply a heartbreaking story.

And that's where, again, I think we get to this idea of women who were capable of saying no in whatever way. And, like, whether or not it was, like, a physical word or, like, actual her saying anything or it was just the sheer nature of looking at her would turn you to stone. That meant she could say no. That meant she could defend herself against a predatory man in whatever way that came about. And that still, I do think that in a lot of ways, like...

all of that is true and simultaneously I do think that she does fit in some ways with Scylla and Charybdis and I will because you said it that way I'm going to remind everyone that I have an episode with Kossi that because of you we named it I just I forget what the beginning is but definitely there is a line in the episode title that is Charybdis the gaping hungry hole and

I'm not commenting on that at this time. Yeah, she definitely didn't give me that. Or remind me that essentially Scylla and Charybdis is Zotosia's passing between a bitch and a hungry hole. Because Scylla is like a dog woman. Like, it's amazing. Blame Homer, just to be super clear. Honestly, the misogyny is like oozing out of this story. And which is why I do think that they still have a lot in common with Medusa in the way that I think...

that overall in varied ways, I think all of these, those particularly feminized monsters, I think they still represent women that men couldn't have sex with because, you know, they're a different level of it and they're very Homeric in that way where I think it's a little bit less, I think in the Odyssey it's a little bit less obvious but then the use of them later becomes like way more obviously kind of feminized and scary and

And it becomes more of like the point rather than in the Odyssey, they're sort of just kind of like that wild moment and they're great. I mean, they're long time. My favorite. They show up briefly. Yeah. But I do think that overall, like over the general progression of mythology, they do represent kind of that same thing where just these women that.

could say no and therefore were monsterized, were turned into these really scary things that men should stay away from because it's really scary when you don't get what you want when you're in a world where everything is you get what you want.

Like, women are property. And so this idea that women who could live on their own, like Medusa and her sisters, and who could stand up for themselves and defend themselves, like, that is a scary thing. That is a threat to the patriarchy in a really real way. And this is all stuff that I figured out kind of writing. I wrote a very long introduction to a book of short stories about Medusa, and it sort of broke my brain, literally and figuratively. But...

um it's just it's so interesting to kind of break that down and i almost went into a whole rabbit hole of like even looking at like the word nymph and what we think of as nymphs now whereas nymph just meant like girl in a way like not like cory but it's like another word for just girl and then we get nymphomania yeah and you get this idea that the nymphs are just are like which for one nymph

Now we say nymph for all of them, like, you know, just like a coverall. Yeah. But that word didn't really apply to who we think of as nymphs now. It like there was all the individual ones, right? There was like the oceanids and the I'm going to forget literally all of the other ones. You know, there's a tree nymphs. There's the different types of water nymphs, all of this.

but they didn't use the word nymph in that way. They each had their own name for all of them. And then we, instead, we get all these stories where the gods are sleeping with all of these, like, minor divinities, these women...

And they get away with it. And then down the line, we, as people, turn the word that just originally meant, like, girl into this, like, sexpot idea. And then you get nymphomaniac. And it's, like, it's all coming from this really dark place. I couldn't get that into the book, but I did. But you're getting it out now for everyone. Like, I just think there's so much darkness that you can kind of pull out of that type of stuff. And it's sort of, like, once you start seeing it, it's like, oh, God.

God, this is all so terrible, but interesting. But yeah, so the monstrosity of it all, like I just think that that's what so many of these women become in these stories, but also like, again, I don't necessarily think that they were so

back then. Like the word monster didn't, I mean, one, there's not like regularly even using the Greek for monster. I don't think to describe them. That's very modern how we would do it. Like they're just a Gorgon. They are a divine creature in the same way that, you know, a Minotaur is a divine creature, but it is a, I mean, we think of it as a monster because he was killing people, but even still, I mean, we could debate. Was it his fault? He was starved in the labyrinth. Exactly. Um,

But we, you know, today have this idea that the heroes did good things, that the heroes defeated monsters, when in the ancient sources and in the general, like, mythology of ancient Greece, the heroes were doing a lot of things, but no one was expected to believe that they were good, that they were morally right. You know, that wasn't the point. And I think...

that that ends up getting lost and how we end up seeing them. And then you turn these creatures or the Gorgons into these like terrifying monsters because you have to have Perseus, a good guy. He can't just go kill a woman while she's sleeping with her sisters. That's not a good look. And so we consider, we get these ideas of this monstrosity and it's why the, the Ovid version bums me out so much, but specifically why, um,

And I'm sure a lot of you, if not all of you, have seen these, but every once in a while it goes around this idea that Athena wasn't even punishing her. This was my next question. Great, well I'm getting right into it. Get stuck in. We get this idea that Athena wasn't punishing Medusa as it is explicit in Ovid, but that she was, like, saving her from future assaults by making her unappealing to men. And to me that is the biggest ick. Like...

Imagine thinking that, I mean, it's like, what was she wearing? Right? It's like, well, how short was her skirt? When in fact, it's like this man came up to her while she was sleeping. And, and like, but Ovid makes it this idea that Athena, you know, or sorry, now I'm jumping around muddling myself, but this idea that, that this rereading,

of Athena as some kind of savior of a woman because she made her unappealing to men so that she wouldn't be assaulted again. To me, it's a far less kind reading of Medusa's story and it is far more kind and truthful to the more ancient, the actual Greek sources to say that Medusa was born a Gorgon.

Gorgons might be monsters, but we weren't necessarily meant to be afraid of them unless you're the aggressor. Because they are simply women who could defend themselves. And fundamentally that's all that we do have in the ancient sources. These were female creatures who could defend themselves, but they were born looking like they look. And of course there are countless different versions of how we can picture a Gorgon. Some are weirder and scarier than others.

But scary is subjective and monstrosity is subjective. And I think that when we think of them as like this gross, scary monster, you know, that is, it has these misogynist undertones that I don't think people realize when they are, you know, Medusa has become this really feminist symbol. And I think that's,

good and powerful, but I just subscribe to the idea that she's a feminist symbol born that way. That she was born a Gorgon who could defend herself, who could say no, and obviously had a terrible fate because of that. That's just who she was, rather than this idea of her becoming something icky to men. Yeah. I always find the argument about Athena so difficult when you look at Arachne. That immediately just...

Yeah, stops me from buying into him. And Arachne is the other place, if I recall, where Medusa is mentioned again. And I believe it's slightly different. Oh, and now I wish I remembered what it was. But because Medusa appears twice in Metamorphoses, and so I believe the first one is in the Perseus' story. But then I think later she is mentioned again in Arachne's tapestry of these women who were wronged by the gods.

And I don't even think, like... I mean, I think Ovid generally writes a lot of really interesting things about women, and so I don't even necessarily want... Like, I'm not even, you know, saying that what he did was problematic. I think our reading of it is problematic. And when we...

believe when we consider Ovid as like a source for Greek mythology that's what's problematic like he was writing a retelling he was writing a retelling like anyone does today but it wasn't meant to be a fictional retelling it was like Shakespeare doing you know one of his many many king plays where it's like you're writing about a real person but we don't believe that

I do have an English degree, but all of that is getting lost in my head. One of his king plays. We're not meant to believe. Oh, let's say Julius Caesar. That's a better one. Yeah, there we go. There we go. One of his kings. There's just so many kings. Yeah.

I'm in London, it's much funnier to say that. But yeah, we don't believe that the Julius Caesar of Shakespeare was fully the Julius Caesar of history. And it's exactly the same thing between Ovid and the Greek myths broadly. Not even Hesiod specifically, just Ovid. He's writing so much later, he's writing an adaptation. And that's interesting as a completely different thing.

It's just not necessarily, like, an accurate reading of, like, what the Greeks considered to be Medusa. Mm-hmm.

Well, on the topic of classical reception, I wanted to ask you about this sculpture that went viral... Oh, yeah. ..which flips the role... I don't like it. Sorry, I didn't even let you finish. Hold on. Before... Does anyone know the sculpture I'm talking about? I'm getting some nods. OK, incredible. So, it's this beautiful, very big - Liv hates it - but very big sculpture where you have a naked kind of humanoid Medusa with the snaky hair and she's holding the severed head of Perseus. Why don't you like it?

like it because I think that she is intentionally masculine and it's done by a man. Yeah, and the objectification, the fact that she's naked, is that strictly necessary? I think that she is like, I mean, I don't want to say masculine in a way that that's derogatory. I think it's important that like, I mean, I'm going to let my thoughts, it's fine. But I just think that like, I think that if it had been done

I mean, I don't know. I don't, yeah, I just don't like it. You would feel better if it was done by a woman. You'd be happier with it. Well, and I think that it's absolute at the absolute core of why don't I, why I don't like it is that it doesn't look like anything from great, like from ancient Greece. It just looks like a woman with snake hair holding a man's head. And like, that's fine.

But I don't think like as a feminist symbol, it's particularly interesting. And I also, yeah, not least because it's done by a man, but that's maybe because I'm getting more and more misandrist every day. Well, fair enough. But in the vein of reception specifically, that sculpture was done in 2008, but it actually went viral in 2018. Do you know the meme I'm talking about? So someone reposted it and said, be grateful. All that we want is equality that we don't want.

revenge or something and it's just her holding the head and that I'm like and that was a tweet by a woman and I'm like okay and I do think it was

I think that at the time it really, it did make a real good point. I mean, it came out for, because of the me too movement. And I think it, it really did serve a purpose. So I think at that time and at, in that format, it made a really impactful point. And being received sort of by women and for women. Yes, exactly. So I think that it, yeah, it's, it's, it's really a personal dislike to aesthetically. I don't like it. Like it's not, I'm not, that is the major part for me.

For me, as I just... It doesn't look Greek at all. Yeah, no, it definitely doesn't look Greek. So I've got a few more questions here, but I just wanted to have a little break and get a sense of how many questions there might be in the audience for Liv. Because if there's a lot... Oh, I can keep going. Okay, we've got one. Okay, maybe we'll take a few and then we can come back to this. Okay, let me check the time. Yeah, we've got time. Pete, do you want to kick us off?

Yeah, so you just made me think about something else. So the first thing is Medusa, unlike maybe Scylla and Shurabdys, seem kind of locked in their time. Medusa seems to be constantly evolving in our perception. And one thing I need to explain is Clash of the Titans. She's completely reinvented as this snaky warrior. Yeah. What do you think it is about Medusa that endures, that we can reinvent her? But also, that statue just reminded me,

I do have a replica of the Perseus statue and it's depicted as he has just slaughtered a young woman. Her body is crumbled and there's no monster there. He actually looks like a very proud murderer. So I really, I suppose the question is about what is that enduring...

thing that happens with Medusa that we feel like we own her in different ways. Yeah. Also the Versace logo. Oh, yeah. No, she's everywhere. Versace Crooks and Castles. Not that I know anything about that brand. I don't know what that is. I mean, all I know is that it's a brand that uses Medusa. But it looks really similar to the Versace, which is also funny. Interesting. Like, very similar.

So the enduring power of her is a symbol that evolves over time. Yeah. See, I think, and maybe this is going to become me as a broken record. I'm like, every once in a while, I'm like, I'm just reminding myself that you all do listen to me and this is not shocking to anyone, I hope. Because I think I can sound like slightly ridiculous otherwise. But I honestly think that the reason that Medusa endures in this way that no other monster does and evolves in such a way is that...

She has become a creature that men could imagine themselves having sex with. Like, I think that she's become this creature that became sexualized and it's hard to track exactly when. There's, you know, there's like in the ancient Greek surviving things, you know, we have some pot- a lot of the time, Gorgon as this scary monster is just the head.

And typically it's also not necessarily like labeled explicitly as Medusa. Like contextually, we know that the Gorgon head got placed in Athena's shield after Perseus killed her. But that story isn't necessarily as old as all the Gorgons that appear everywhere.

You know, we don't know which came first, the story or the Gorgon. And we do also have a lot of pottery, like you were saying, where she is sleeping and he's sneaking up on her, like, on tiptoes with a knife. And then there's others where, yeah, her crumpled body is lying and he's holding her head and her sisters are racing after, like, screaming in horror. And so we get...

in the ancient Greek world, I think that things like that were them grappling with a story that was already evolving. Like my kind of theory is that the Gorgon as a, as an image kind of as a trope visually came first. I like to think that it might've come from the Mesopotamian story of Gilgamesh and there's this monster Humbaba that,

that has really a lot of similarities in the iconography. And there's also this idea that Medusa, the story comes from the West, comes from like where the sun sets, she lives on the edge of night, they say. And so she is from the West, but the iconography has a lot of tones that

look much more like they're coming from the East and from Anatolia, from Mesopotamia to Iraq, all of that area, which we know that so much of Greek mythology was coming from those traditions and then evolving...

And so my theory is that the image came first, the story came later to explain it. They had these gorgoneia that appear everywhere. Like they are some of the most common, you know, images that you can find from that, from ancient Greece broadly, but particularly like archaic period and things like that. So I think the story evolved to explain how a head ended up in a shield.

and if we have this idea, I mean, I think it makes sense for why only one of the Gorgons is mortal. Why could only one of them be killed? Well, because a head had to end up in a shield, so one of them had to be killable so that that could happen. That's only... You started out... The question started out so differently, but I think that's where that's coming from, and I think that then that story evolved to be the story that we have, and then from there, we have all of these...

sort of slow... I mean, we have a lot of the Renaissance where they would humanize her in a lot of ways. Caravaggio's Medusa is like painful and beautiful and so interesting. And Bernini's marble. Bernini's marble, like... Beautiful. Where is it? Yeah, it's here, but it's really awkward. Anyway, this is like adaptation of Bernini's marble. Not safe for work. I mean, it is enough.

Yeah, I think that there was a lot of that kind of happening. I think those artists from that time period kind of picked up on her. And then also, though, like we get people like Freud coming in and they're like, oh, the snakes is genitalia because to Freud, literally everything was genitalia.

I had to read Freud's whole thing about Medusa for this book, and it's quite literally that TLDR is that he believes that Medusa comes from when a young boy first sees female genitalia, and apparently to Freud, the first is that the dick has been cut off.

Like, there's no other thought, and therefore the fear is that you see Medusa and you fear your dick getting cut off. And it's utterly unhinged. Two plus two equals sixty. Honestly, this man, I don't...

There's more, but that's what I can remember. We can have another event for you to slag off, Freud. Oh my god. The bit I wrote about that made me real happy because I think I just got to start a whole paragraph with, like, as someone who doesn't have a penis, I know I can't make a full, you know, a judgment according to Freud, but I still think it's ridiculous. It sounded smarter than that, but it was funny. But

But no, I think that there's just so much going on where it's like we get this idea, then they're humanizing her in that sort of period with paintings and sculpture and things like that. And then I think, you know, I don't want to say that I could track any of that happening. But by the time Clash of the Titans comes along and we're dealing with this, we've got Freud who's come in and said everything's about dicks.

And then we've got, you know, all of this kind of humanizing of her. And we have so many people who have made her really pretty and feminine, even if she's usually it's just her head. And then, you know, the Clash of the Titans comes in and makes her like a kind of a sexy monster, sort of. But she's also like half snake, which is explicitly not from mythology. That's a kidna, if it's anyone. Yeah.

But I think that, I mean, this now sounds like I don't have a great argument for it, but I still think that it all represents just this fear of women they can or can't have sex with in these varied ways. Or, like, if they want to, I think that there's a point where men decide they want to with Medusa, and then so they have to make her really scary because they've decided that they've sexualized this creature, but she could kill them, so then they have to make her, like, an enemy to be killed. There's just, I think there's a lot of layers, and I probably need more psychologists.

It's working with my head and Medusa, but probably mine.

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I think we've got another, oh we've got a few questions. Can't quite see who that is. Is that you Sebastian? Okay go, go. I was interested in what you were talking about with

Medusa's gaze. I feel like there's something there, because we talk about the male gaze all the time, but it's the female gaze that is dangerous with Medusa. And you have Zeus who wears the aegis, and the gaze of the gorgon is an offensive weapon to people. What is it about the female gaze that is so dangerous or powerful to the Greeks, do you think?

Well, I do, for one, I think it's, I think it's defensive even still. Like, I think she's always used as a shield. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Cause it's always, it's either, it's some, it's always some form of defense and, but the thing is, and it's, this is where I, I think it's hard to kind of pick this stuff apart because in the Greek sources, like in terms of text sources, we really don't have a lot about her transforming people to stone with her gaze. Like that really comes later. Um,

Like, I think we're meant to understand that that's happening, but it's not a major story point in the Greek sources that survived pre-Roman period. And so I think what, again, what's kind of happening is that they're reckoning with the image that's there in all of these ways and trying to understand how that happens. And so I think...

I mean, I want to say it's like so much about the power of the female gaze, but I really do think that what is going on is just like a number of things with the iconography that's kind of pre-existing and become this really important thing simultaneously with the story that they've been developed around it and all of which kind of just drills down to, you know, they're in order for this head on a shield to be defensive, like it does kind of have to have this

And I think, you know, it's like using the word petrified is kind of the perfect way. Like it's, you're just supposed to be scared into sort of, what's the word I want? Basically, I think, I think that it's more similar to,

in nature that have that as a defensive mechanism. You know, the creatures that have, wish I had a good example of this, but, you know, there's so much in nature where they have, like, a false face on, like, a butterfly or something, or, you know, like, there's so much of this kind of natural defensive mechanism

in nature, that was terrible. But you know, like so many animals have kind of developed that type of thing, defensive means for themselves. And so to me, I think it's more akin to them, the Greeks kind of understanding how certain animals could develop those kinds of functions and sort of applying it to a face and

I don't know. I wish I had a smarter answer about the gays, because, I mean, obviously there's so much to do with the male gays, but I also just think the men were... The men who were kind of in that realm of what we now know from ancient Greece, not to say that people weren't thinking about it back then, but in terms of what then survives for us today, I honestly don't think the men were giving the women enough credit to even, like, develop those stories. I would love to know, like, what women thought of Medusa and of the Gorgon and things like that, but...

Yeah, I think I'll stop rambling now. But it's an interesting question. I think we've got a few more questions. I can see a hand, but nothing else. Is that Elodie? Hello. I'm going to lean around. Hi, Elodie.

Yes, but I think more so on, like, on body, on their body. So, like, on armor and shields. Yeah, and then they were...

like often like and drinking cups what drinking cups yeah lots of pottery and there are like a lot of um what's the word it's not aquateria is it like the aquateria no like um like the piece like the little extra bits of uh on architecture there's word for it anyone any bit yeah like I've seen it on tiles yeah yeah when I

No, exactly. If anyone remembers, shout out unprompted, please. Don't tip your tongue too. I literally have a tattoo of one of them, so I normally know. Oh, I think Martin's about to Google it.

End bit on thing. Anyway, but I do think it's interesting that the Romans then came along and, yeah, like, took it and sort of applied it more to their homes and things. Like, I think they kind of got the same idea and then, you know, as the Romans would often do, like, made it work for their purposes. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, it's weird to think about the face of the Gorgon at the bottom of the Kylix so once you're already kind of pissed. She's like, wow! Like, is she trying to protect you or freak you out? Well, and I think that's kind of part of it, too. Like, you're meant to be...

scared, but it's not meant to be like scary. Like it's that kind of idea of fear more as, I don't know, this reaction. It's less about the fear. Like a psychological exercise. Yeah. It's not like the imminent danger, you know, like other, the monsters we might think of. Yeah. Are there any more? Yeah.

So thinking about what you were saying about the Gorgons being unbannable and specifically thinking about the Gorgon version. Sorry, it's so different in the accent. It makes me feel way sillier for saying unbannable. Specifically regarding the Ovid where she's a young woman and she turns into a monster. How much...

Is that ageism and kind of aging out of being? Thank you. Thank you. Because... So I think that there's something going on with the Ovid there as well. Yeah, definitely. Because she is this young, beautiful woman. But I also...

I mean, I think there's a lot to be said for, yeah, the aging out as well. Maybe less so with the Gorgons, but I think it's a really important point because the initial step before Perseus gets to the Gorgons is he has to go to the Grey Eye. The Grey Eye are the ones who can tell him where the Gorgons are.

and they are another trio of divine women who have been demonized in this truly bizarre way. Like, their name means "the gray ones."

And so modern interpretations will have you believe they're old hags. Are they the ones in Disney Hercules? Well, Disney's Hercules conflates them with the face. Right, yeah. Always confused. Yeah, visually they're the grey eye, but then with the eye and the sharing of a tooth, which, fine, is kind of gross, but it doesn't necessarily mean that they're like these old ugly hags. But, yeah, then they mix it with the face, with the cutting of the... Yeah, Disney's Hercules is great, but not the point. Um...

Yeah, no, I do think there's a still a good, there's a lot to be said there. And so whether or not like it can be directly correlated to the Gorgons is something definitely when Ovid comes along and makes those weird kind of, yeah, the sort of young and beautiful bit feels like a real stretch. But the gray eye being in line with the Gorgons and they're also, they're born of the same gods, which is really interesting. They're also these like born of sea deities, but only live next to the sea, not in it.

and they are so explicitly now seen as these like old and ugly but again it just means gray like there's actually other places in the sources where they're also like um conflated with swans they're like meant to be swan-like in some way we don't really know how that is or what that would really look like to be like kind of swan women i don't but a eschalus calls them

and like I think at least one other source but there's a lot to be said there as well when it comes to this like fear of an aging woman an independent woman like all of these women who appear in this story as these kind of like beings to overcome are all explicitly women who live alone without men and who can no longer produce children for them right well

Well, or just like we're no longer like sort of appealing in the way of, but there's no like attempt to produce children, thankfully, but. With the monsters. Yeah. Other than Medusa, which is of course a whole other, yeah, sad mess, but it's an interesting question. Yeah. Yeah. You, I've seen you a couple of times. What? Yeah.

What links would you see between the story of Medusa and other related things that are related to Gorgon's ancient literature? Like the Gorgon's wail, scream, or the Gorgon's blood? Oh. Okay, well the Gorgon blood I'm deeply obsessed with right now, but I don't have like a ton of like, I don't have like a fully formed thought on it. The Gorgon blood appears in one play,

the Ion, and it's repugnance and it's magnificent. Surprise, surprise. But specifically, it's really interesting because it seems to be a different Gorgon. It seems to be... He doesn't connect it to the story of Perseus or the Medusa that we know. He says that this Gorgon was killed on the battlefield of the Gigantomachy. So on the Phlegrion fields in Italy, it's like when...

the gods fought the giants, um, in specifically just in this one bit of this one Euripides play, he says that a Gorgon was killed there and the blood, um, was preserved. And it's something like there's sort of two different types of blood, um, and one like from one side of her body or the other, and one is healing and one is, um,

it's like a poison. And I think there's probably a lot going on in there, which aligns to the fact that Aristotle believed that menstrual blood was corrosive.

something he could have easily tested. And so I think there's something going on there with this, like, fear of women and bleeding and, like... But again, I think it's really interesting that it's so explicitly not Medusa and it's not the Gorgons that fit into any other surviving source. And I think it's a good example of, like, just the way that we don't know anything about Greek mythology. Like, we think we do, but, like, we really... Like, that's a huge question. And it doesn't really, you know...

It's just a reminder, I think, that there's, that we're talking about like 800 years of writing and all of these different regions that were not unified and they didn't have a unified language or anything. And then we are now trying to pick apart like what on earth they were thinking. And I think we never will fully understand, but it's really interesting to think about. But yeah, that's, it's a, that's a very good point. I love the Gorgon blood. I'm like.

I was reading about that today. So cool. It's so weird. And it's just rippities. Of course it is. And then the ion is so specifically interesting too because the ion also is the only thing I've ever read from ancient Greece that treats sexual assault by a god as a traumatic experience that would result in PTSD. Yeah.

And that alone to me is like... It's why Euripides is the best. That's why Euripides is the best! Look, I have a bag. They're for sale. I think we've got one up the back. So I thought the point that you just made about how we can never really know what they were actually thinking, I think that's really...

visible in Ovid, who is very sort of referential, and I don't think he's actually trying to come up with any kind of definitive source, and he makes reference in the text of things being something that's been handed down and being pieced together. But what he does take from Hesiod, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, is the idea that

when Medusa dies, Pegasus is born on her death. And that is something that the idea of women being, or the feminine being something that births, and also relating to the Gorgon blood, because I think it might come from her blood. How does this sort of idea, and also the fact that the

these creatures can no longer have children, but actually Medusa does give birth to something from her death. How does, how, what do you think about that?

I think what do I think about it is the greatest part of the... or the best way to phrase that question, because there's no, like, answers, but it is such an interesting thing, because, yes. So Pegasus and a man named Criseor, who is, like, promptly forgotten in most mythology, doesn't really appear anywhere. He's a giant with a golden sword? Sometimes, but some... Well, I mean...

but also like it's just like a statement and then when he's born he's like a full afterthought it's like the flying horse pegasus was born and chris he was also there um but it i to me that too like really connects back to what i think is coming from hesiod which is that the experience with poseidon was violent like

the children are only birthed when her head is cut off from her body. Like, they fly... Chris Arrow doesn't fly. I don't know how he gets out of there. But Pegasus flies out of, like, the stump of her severed neck. There's even pottery where this tiny horse is, like, flying out of this poor woman's neck. Like, it's wild. And so I think that there's... I mean, I wish I had more... anything definitive to say on that, but I just think it's such... It's, like, further...

to the nature of her story as this very both like tragic but also really creative process, I guess. You know, she does have these children who, I mean, at least in the case of Pegasus, goes on to be pretty important. And just so the fact that they are born in that way, I think really emphasizes like the importance of her, but also this weird idea

Dynasties.

Well, but even Dionysus is not quite as bad. No, not beheading. No, it's not straight beheading. And it's like the idea with Dionysus is that he would have been born anyway. Whereas with Medusa, it's pretty clear that it wouldn't have happened without her being beheaded.

Do you think there's anything maternal in it? I mean, I'm just thinking about Echidna as the mother of monsters and to your point about the kind of generative, procreative power of women, even when they are monsters, even when they are dead, there's still this emphasis on not what can we get from them, but a little bit what can we get from them and their bodies. Well, I think that there's probably something to be said for this being something

intentional by Poseidon. Because every time a god sleeps with a woman, no matter how it happens, a child is always produced. And, you know, like anything in myth, we don't have any kind of explanation for why that is or isn't or sort of, you know, any kind of why. That would be cool. But I think there's something to be said for the fact that this is one instance where the birth happens... It's like they're torn from her, kind of. Like...

in this really, I don't, I want to have like some insightful thing to say to it, but I think it's just, I mean, there's probably something deep in there, but it's just sort of generally terrible, but it says a lot, I think about her power and her, her general creative power, the fact that she was sort of capable of this, but yeah, I don't. Yeah. That's a great question. And I don't have a great answer. Do you want to pick? Yeah.

Sorry. No, you go. Okay. You could perhaps link it. Sorry, this is not... This is just my thought. You could link it to your idea about the Gorgons as these absolutely non-sexual, non-feminine beings that it's only after she's been defeated that she could become the mother and fit into that role and stereotype. Yeah. Yeah. I like that one. That's really interesting. Yeah, because it's sort of this idea that they don't...

yeah, that they don't necessarily fit that, that like typical woman or matriarchal kind of like, you know, women in ancient Greece tended to serve one purpose and that was to make men. Um, and so I think it is, yeah, that it, that's really interesting to, to think about the ways that she sort of doesn't fit that role until, yeah, until she's sort of gone. Yeah. I like that. Thank you. Taking a mental note. Yeah.

I was thinking, like the whole, the Clash of Titans of it all. If maybe a TV series like Chaos were to actually do the myths more respectfully, how would you like them to show Medusa? I think, so this is such a disappointing answer, but it's how I've determined that this is always my answer about

modern Medusa reception, which is that I don't want it. And that's a person, very personal decision. Like I've found there's something in her story to me that I don't, I don't like the speculation. And again, that's personal. Like I respect it. I'm glad that people are kind of playing with her story and creating new things from it. But I mean, I,

For example, like I was originally this. So the Medusa piece that I wrote for is this book called Medusa Old and New Greek Tales, something like that. And that's the one. Thank you. Does it say new and ancient Greek tales? Thank you. Yeah, that's the one. Great. They didn't end up getting them in that one, but they have other books here. So it's pretty. It has red edges. It's gorgeous. Yes.

I did see it for sale in the British Museum gift shop the other day, which was pretty big for me. So, you know, they have it there. But when I heard about that book for the first time,

It was really interesting. I had like a handful of friends send me the call for submissions to be like, oh my God, Liv, like you love Medusa. I'm sure you want to write a short story for her. And I immediately looked at it and I was like, no, no, like, no, I don't think I could fictionalize her. I don't think I could because to me, the thing I want to do is pick apart everything about her that does exist from the ancient world. And I just want to like,

I don't know. I just want to tear it all to pieces and shove it in my brain in some way that'll make it more understandable. But in this way where I've just found like, I don't, I don't like sort of the re-imagining of her. So I would like welcome it to others, but I find, I don't like to speculate because in my head, she just like, is this too, she's too much of like one original thing and

I'm going to end the story, which clearly, that was an ADHD moment. To finish, I learned about that book and was like, no, I couldn't write a short story. And then the next day they emailed me asking if I wanted to write a 28,000 word introduction on her. And I was like, yes, I do. Yes. Yeah. So it went immediately from like, oh, I couldn't fictionalize her to, oh my God, they want to pay me to just dig into the actual ancient sources. So instead that's what I did. And I'm honestly...

so proud of that work because I really was able to kind of trace her from throughout all of the ancient Greek sources that we have in the ancient mythological but also into like the weird ways in which she has been

changed and used even in the ancient world. So I'm going to, there's one story that is in that book and I think it's from Diodorus Siculus. I always forget, but it's, so it's a very late source and actually, no, it couldn't have been him. Anyway, there was this handful of people

in the sort of generally Roman period, but still very much ancient world, who really liked to rewrite famous myths from Greece and try to like understand the reality behind them. It's really interesting and bizarre. So somebody says that the story of Medusa and the Gorgons is not...

you know, this fantastical tale as it appears in Hesiod, but instead it's this story of this very real race of warrior women who lived in ancient Libya, it says. And he says they were like the Amazons, you know, they were these really powerful warrior women, ruled

by women, only queens, generally really impressive, and then goes on to say that the story of, you know, them dying and generally why we don't still have this race of warrior women is that when Heracles was going around, just, I forget what their phrasing is, but the idea is that, like, Heracles was going around and, like,

basically inflicting like a male dominated society on that world and he found those women and then just killed them all because women couldn't rule and it basically just like says that.

And you're like, well, okay, great. Like, just to say the quiet part out loud, like, this idea of why we don't have those stories or, you know, this person's like, well, it couldn't possibly be that these women were, you know, that powerful. It was just, no, Heracles just went along and killed them because he just needed to or whatever it is. There's a lot of kind of these weird...

attempts to understand this, them in general. A lot of it ties to Libya, but ancient Libya, so it's just generally kind of North Africa. But they also say that the, somebody says that the, when Perseus was flying over because, because the Gorgons were meant to be on this edge of night, they're like the farthest west, you can kind of imagine that like

The west of Africa is, that's the westest that they go in the ancient Greek world. And so they sort of lived generally there. And that when Perseus was flying over Africa with the severed head, her blood dripped and landed in Libya. And that's why Libya has so many snakes.

they say. And so, you know, there's all of these really interesting and sort of odd attempts to understand this story and where she came from, but I don't know how I got onto that. You mentioned the book, but thank you, or showed me the book. This is ADHD slash I can turn on this personality in front of all these people, but also so much social anxiety, so I'm just gonna ramble so much. Um, does anyone have

I think we've got time for one more. Hi, I was wondering, do you think Medusa had a role in ancient Greek society? Do you think she was used to warn people about...

Like this will happen if you told women that if you don't produce children, you'll get punished for it. Or do you think it was someone that they could look up to or go to in terms of being? - Oh, I won't, okay. That's a great question. I'd love to think of what Medusa could have been to ancient women. I think in terms of what we know,

I like to think more of a Gorgon specifically, not just Medusa, because I do think also the Gorgons were sort of the iconography that we have. I think, again, Medusa kind of ties back to this attempt to understand the iconography that already existed, and that's why we get this singular one with a name. But I think that the Gorgons broadly, hopefully, were looked on by women as this kind of less so more like...

Like, I think hopefully they were something that was more positive where, again, we're looking at a woman who was able to defend herself and maybe was not, you know, always appealing to men or whatever these things are. But I don't know. I wish I could speculate more. I'm too obsessed with like the ancient sources and what we do actually know or don't know. But I definitely want to believe that the Gorgons generally were

were something that brought kind of at least some kind of comfort to people. I mean, they were meant to be protective. So hopefully women also felt that that applied to them and not just like the men with their armor. I think that's a great note to end it on. So thank you all of you for coming. Thank you to the Common Press for having us. And thank you to Liv Albert.

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