In Argos,
centuries and centuries ago...
There lived a king.
Acrisius.
He had a single child, a daughter more radiant than any other woman of the world. This child though,
he valued not; for what he wanted was a son.
But you know what they say: be careful what you wish for.
Acrisius, King of Argo. In his desire for a son, went to Delphi to ask the priestess if he might have one,
No, they told him and threw in a bonus second part of the prophecy for free.
They told him that his daughter though, would have a son and that that son would, in time, kill him.
Horrified, he decided that the only way to avoid fate --
something which if he had read any mythology, he'd realized you just don't get to do -- was to kill his own daughter.
He feared the Furies though, for their vengeance was especially harsh for those who had committed crimes against their own blood.
So being of sound mind and quick thinking -- as
anyone who's about to kill their own daughter clearly is -- he came to the most obvious solution.
He figured he'd simply build a house of bronze
underneath the ground, with just enough of it open to the air that his daughter might breathe, and then
Imprison her there forever.
Great plan, but it had one
fatal flaw.
Zeus. You
see, Acrisius, his daughter, being very lovely, and Zeus, being Zeus,
meant that inevitably Zeus came down to her in the form of rain through the open portal and
impregnated her. Because you know that was (sighs)
kind of his thing.
She was able to hide the pregnancy from her father and even hide the boy she'd bore for a little while. But eventually,
Acrisius found them.
So now, Acrisius really had to get his murder on but he ran into the same problem; the Furies.
Then he had it! He hit upon an even sounder plan. if he
put them both in a chest, and drop it in the ocean.
then he'd totally not be responsible for the murder. Get it? This would ensure it was
totally the sea that killed them, not him. "You see, the sea did it, you see?" That
sound logic was 100% going to work on the Furies
So with this impeccable and unimpeachable plan, he locked them both in a chest and dumped it over the side of a boat.
But turns out, his plan was both peccable and impeachable.
Because in his "towering genius", he forgot to make the box, you know, sink.
Yep, he dumped them in a buoyant chest and didn't weigh it down.
But they were still locked in the box. So from their perspective, they're still not great
And thus they floated, bobbing on the waves, until finally there was a thud and the motion stopped.
They had washed up on a beach and, as fortune would have it, a fisherman found them and took pity on them. Childless,
he brought them into his home and with his wife helped raise the boy...whose name was Perseus.
Perseus grew strong, following his adopted grandfather's trade, living simply with his family as a fisherman.
But peace was not fated for him, as his adopted
grandfather's brother, Polydectes,
the despot of the island, took notice of his mother, who was still very beautiful and
desired her...just not her son.
Being slightly more cunning than the last ruler we ran into though, Polydectes came up with a crafty plan.
Step one:
He befriended Perseus and told him about a group of terrible monsters that lived on an island far away.
They were called the Gorgons.
They had wild hair, all of snakes, terrible wings that beat the air, and whosoever looked at them turned to stone
living no more.
Step two: He told Perseus of his one great desire more than anything else;
he wanted the head of one of the Gorgons to treasure for his own.
Step three:
He invited all of the great men of the island to a feast and declared that he intended to wed, knowing what would come next.
Each of the guests in turn rose and toasted him and told him they would give him a horse for his wedding.
But Perseus was poorer than these men and had no horse to give.
So, as his pride welled up inside him, he stood and
declared that he would bring the head of Medusa, the only mortal of the three Gorgon sisters, as a wedding gift.
There was shocked silence, but the despot grinned. All had gone according to his highly
straightforward plan.
So Perseus raced out and boarded a ship for Greece before his mother could discover what he'd proposed...and
before he could ask his mother what the despot might really be up to
So having about as good of a plan as everyone else at this point,
he made his way to Delphi to see if they might tell him what to do.
In typical helpful Delphic fashion,
they told him to go to the land where people only eat acorns and,
luckily as the sheltered son of a fisherman who had never left his island before, he guessed the answer right in one try and knew
exactly where they were talking about.
So he made his way to Dodana; where the talking oaks speak the will of Zeus and the people only eat acorns.
Unfortunately, they were basically no help at all because they didn't actually know where the Gorgons were.
Despondent, he wandered aimlessly for a while until at last he ran into a striking young man
fine of features with just the beginnings of a beard carrying a golden wand wearing winged sandals and a winged hat.
He knew at once, this must be Hermes.
Hermes told him that to fight Medusa he would need better gear,
specifically some items a group of nymphs were holding on to.
Unfortunately, and let's be real at this point stereotypically,
he couldn't tell Perseus where the nymphs were.
All he could tell him was of the gray women who alone knew the way to the nymphs. And
so, he told Perseus of a twilight land;
stuck in perpetual shroud lit by neither the sun nor the moon, but some force of its own
where the three women lived. But these women were not like the mortal women Perseus knew. Oh no...
they were gray and haggard,
but did not age more astonishingly still they had the forms of swans with human heads.
Most striking though, the three sisters had but one eye between them.
They would take turns with the eye
popping it out of their forehead and handing it to the next one when their time with it was up.
It was to them, he must go to
continue his quest for the weirdest wedding gift ever. And that's a story we'll all keep an eye on for next time.
...Could someone pass the marshmallows?