Persée

Origin

Isabelle Leroy-Turcan in (Persée, victorious of the " hivernale" harms; …, Studies I.E., 1990) interprets the legend of Persée, victorious of the gorgone Méduse like a myth Cosmologique, that of a victorious solar genius of the reign of the winter. The Grées as the Gorgones are related to the world " noir" of Ouranos, respectively the first are country of the night and the gorgones resident with the extrème occident where each day disappears the sun. The capacity petrifying of the glance of Jellyfish is that of freezing. By decapitating the Jellyfish, Persée annéantit a winter force and allows the release of the solar forces, the divine twins PEGASE and Chrysaor. Both incarnate the life spouting out of death. PEGASE is compared to a winged source, it carries the thunder and the lightning for Zeus and Chrysaor " the man with the sword of or" that Leroy-Turcan brings closer to the Scandinavian god Freyr, heroic twin and parking fertility.

Myth

Birth

In the town of Argos, drew up a high bronze tower to the closed windows of thick bars. In this lugubrious prison, Danaé, cried with heats tears, because his/her father king Acrisios, had decided to lock up it forever, after being informed by an oracle which it would be killed by his grandson. By imprisoning his daughter, far from any human presence, he hoped to avoid this destiny.
However, a night, through the narrow space which separates the bars, started to fall a rain from gold. It was Zeus (Jupiter), which thus metamorphosed, penetrated in the room of the princess to allure it. When Danaé put at the world a son, Persée, Acrisios entered an insane rage. It renonça however to kill his/her own daughter and her grandson, but he locked up them in a trunk which he threw to the sea.

Exile

They derived to the island from Sérifos, where they were helped by a generous fisherman, Dictys (“net”), who was in fact the brother of the king of the island, Polydectès. Persée grows there until the adulthood under the care of Dictys. Polydectès éprit of Danaé, which irritated Persée which made good guard around his/her mother. Also Polydectès sought it a means of drawing aside the young man become awkward. He then imagined to impose a tribute in horses to the inhabitants of the island or, according to certain versions, he intended these present for Hippodamie of Pisa, which he claimed to want to marry. Persée did not have horses, but it offered to him to bring anything else to him which the king wished, which went exactly according to the plans of Polydectès. It gave him the almost unrealizable task to go to seek the head of the Gorgone Méduse, monster whose glance changes the men into stone.

The mission of Polydectès

Athéna, which hated Méduse because this one had been linked with Poséidon in a temple which was devoted to him, appeared in Persée and taught to him what it had to make. First of all, it offered a shield to him of which the interior was polished like a mirror to avoid to him being petrified by a direct glance with horrible Gorgone. It was to then go in the cave of the three Grées, three old hags which divided only one eye and only one tooth.

Even if they were the sisters of Gorgones, Persée were to require of them of the assistance. Because it had concealed their single eye temporarily to them, they taught him where the nymphs of North were. Persée launched their eye in the lake Triton to prevent them from warning their sisters of his approach.

The nymphs, which lived not far from there, gave three objects to him: Kunée (helmet of Hadès which makes invisible), a pair of winged sandals which makes it possible to fly in the airs (the same ones as Hermes) and a double sack in which it was to put the head of Jellyfish.

By leaving the nymphs, it met Hermes which, admiring its beauty, offered one additional present to him: a sword curves very hard steel. According to a tradition, it is this god and not the nymphs which had given to Persée the winged sandals. Using its sandals and the helmet which makes invisible, Persée crossed the Ocean by the airs and arrived on the coast where live Gorgones. It found them deadened and, being held remotely of Sthéno and Euryale which was immortal contrary to their other sister, it approached Jellyfish by using its bronze shield like mirror. He decapitated the monster with the sword of Hermes and hid the head in his double sack. Invisible thanks to its helmet, he escaped anger from the sisters from Jellyfish and he flew away to turn over at his place.

In the version of Ovide, Persée returned to Greece while passing by the country of Atlas. This one learned that Persée was a son of Zeus and tried to move away it by the force, because THEMIS had predicted to him that a son of Zeus would steal one day the Pommes of gold of the garden of Hespérides. Ovide adds that Persée, in anger, petrified Atlas by showing him the head of Jellyfish, and transformed it into an assembly line on which the sky rests. This legend is opposed to the most known version of the search of gold apples undertaken by Héraclès, in which Atlas is always alive, after several generations.

Andromède

Persée crossed Egypt where he saw the fatherland of his ancestors with Chemmis. Then, flying over the coast phenician, it looked at downwards and saw Andromède connected with a rock and offered in sacrifice to a marine monster. The oracle of Am had indeed suggested that the young girl undergoes such a fate in atonement of the conceited words of her mother Cassiopée. The father of Andromède, Céphée, king of Joppa, promised in Persée the hand of his daughter and his kingdom in dowry if he managed to kill the monster. The hero accepted and, like the animal advanced to devour its prey, it attacked it and transpierced it with the sword of Hermes.

Andromède gave him several children, in particular a son, Persès, that Persée entrusted to Céphée. When one year later, it took along Andromède to Sériphos, it designated his son like successor on the throne of Joppa.

The return

In Sériphos, it delivered his mother of Polydectès while making use again of the head of Jellyfish, thus changing into stone the king and his partisans. Persée left in Dictys, the capacity on Sériphos and went with Andromède in Argos, kingdom of Acrisios. This one, learning the arrival from its grandson, flees with Larissa in Thessalie, by fear which prophecy is not carried out. Of return in Greece, Persée took part in funeral plays that the king thessalien Teutamidès gave in the honor of his father and to which Acrisios assisted. Exceeding its target with the throwing the discus, it struck and killed accidentally the old man, thus achieving prophecy.

Ovide reports that ghost with Argos, Persée discovered that Proétos, the twin brother of Acrisios, and according to some, the true father of Persée, had usurped the throne of his/her brother. The hero killed it by transforming it into rock and went up on the throne of the city. But he preferred not to reign on Argos, having killed the preceding king. He thus exchanged his kingdom against that of Tirynthe whose king is Mégapenthès and he founded there the town of Mycènes and Midée.

Whereas the task of Persée was accomplished, Athéna recommended to him to give the magic objects to Hermes, which would return them to their respective owners. According to certain traditions, Athéna preserved the shield on which it placed the head of Gorgone.

According to a legend, Persée went to Asia, where his/her Persès son became the legendary founder of the empire of the Perses to which it gave its name. One also allots the paternity of five to him others wire, Alcée, Sthénélos, Héléos, Mestor, Électryon, and of a girl, Gorgophoné ( “the tueuse one of Gorgone” ).

Hygin gives however a version very different from these mythical events. For him, Polydectès was a peaceful king who married Danaé and put Persée at the service of Athéna. In addition, Acrisios was killed accidentally by the young man with Sériphos, during the funeral plays in the honor of Polydectès. Hygin as indicated, joining the version of Ovide, as Persée was killed by Mégapenthès, which avenged death for his/her Proétos father.

Although the legends of Persée are very known and constitute the subject of many parts, now lost, the traditions which reached us concerning his death are provided little. It is told that Persée quarreled with the following ones of Dionysos, whose worship was introduced in Argolide at the same time. Persée also launched a statue in the Lake Lerne and delivered combat against a certain “Woman of the Sea”. Athéna (Zeus according to some) put Persée, Andromède, the marine monster, Céphée and Cassiopée with the number of the constellations in the firmament.

Artistic evocations

Benvenuto Cellini carried out a bronzes, Persée holding the head of Jellyfish (1545?). Florence, loggia del Lanzi;
Jean-Baptiste Lully composed in 1682 a lyric Tragédie entitled Persée ;
Antonio Canova made also a scupture called Persée holding the head of Jellyfish and which is with the Musée Pio-Clementino with the the Vatican.

Sources

(IV).
(II, 4,1-5).
(IV, 9,1).
(v. 216).
(CCXLIV).
(II, 19,3; III, 2,2; III, 20,6).
(IV, 611-V, 248).
( Pythiques , X, 45).

See too

Jellyfish

External bonds

Guy Massat, “Persée and the Jellyfish”, seminar Psychoanalysis and Mythologie , Paris, 2006.

Simple: Perseus

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