Medusa
Natalie Haynes Stands Up for the Classics
BBC
4.8 • 598 Ratings
🗓️ 18 May 2021
⏱️ 28 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
"Rock star classicist" and reformed stand-up Natalie Haynes is obsessed with the ancient world. In these series she explores (historical and mythological) lives from ancient Rome and Greece that still have resonance today. They are hilarious and tragic, mystifying, revelatory. And they always tell us more about ourselves now than seems possible of stories from a couple of thousand years ago.
Today Natalie tells of Medusa, she of the snaky locks and stony glare. Medusa is truly terrifying, but she wasn't always a monster. She was once the most beautiful of the Gorgon sisters, turned into this hideous version of herself by the goddess Athene, after being 'seduced' by Poseidon. Which may make her - literally - the original monstered victim.
Natalie is joined by Professor Edith Hall, who says that Medusa is not just a victim or a monster. She's a beloved sister and mother (to winged horse Pegasus and hero Chrysaor). Her lithifying gaze gives her something in common with Midas but there's a difference in how we are invited to view them: we fear her and pity him.
Illustrator Chris Riddell draws Medusa as he talks to Natalie, contemplating how she managed her serpentine hair (a hairdresser's nightmare, presumably) and whether some kind of super-sunglasses might help out with the problem of turning everything she looks at into stone.
Producer, Mary Ward-Lowery
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, radio, podcasts. |
| 0:09.0 | Today I am standing up for Medusa. |
| 0:15.0 | Medusa is, to my generation of TV and cinema nerds, anyway. She is a monster from Ray Harryhausen's Clash of the Titans. |
| 0:24.9 | As a child, I watched Perseus Harry Hamlin. |
| 0:28.1 | Of course, engaged in a battle of wits with her. |
| 0:31.6 | She had snakes for hair and a big snakey tail. |
| 0:35.3 | And she lives alone in this sort of strange, dark place. She is armed |
| 0:40.2 | with a bow and arrow. She fires at Perseus's comrade, knocks him down, and then turns him to stone |
| 0:47.5 | with her glowing gaze. Perseus watches her reflection in his shield and then in his sword blade. |
| 0:55.5 | When he finally swings and decapitates her, we feel relief. |
| 1:00.3 | The monster is dead and we're safe. |
| 1:03.6 | Even her spilled blood can corrode metal. |
| 1:07.6 | It was years before I found out that there was more to Medusa than being a monster, because she |
| 1:12.5 | doesn't start out as a monster at all. According to Hesiod, Medusa is one of three Gorgon sisters. |
| 1:20.3 | Stheno and Uriali are immortal, but Medusa is mortal. Although she has a sea monster mother, whose name is Ketus, |
| 1:29.3 | and a sea god father who's got pincers for hands, his name is Forkis. |
| 1:33.3 | Medusa isn't always a monster herself. |
| 1:36.3 | The lyric poet Pindar describes her as Yuparaou having beautiful cheeks. |
| 1:42.3 | Ovid, meanwhile, the Roman love poet, |
| 1:45.3 | describes her as Clarissima Forma, |
| 1:47.8 | most beautiful in appearance. |
| 1:50.2 | He goes on to say she has multiple suitors. |
... |
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