希腊罗马神话论文美杜莎

From Medusa learn Greece and Rome culture

Abstract

Greece and Rome are the cradle of western culture. Greek and Roman mythology, as the symbol of Greece and Rome, are therefore of great significance to the western culture. As a vast system, Greek mythology has an extensive influence on the arts, and the literature and the language of Western civilizations. Poets and artists from ancient times to the present have derived inspiration from Greek mythology. Also, Greek mythology had an influence on the culture of many commentary countries such as Rome. The Greek influence on Rome was explicitly exhibited in the Roman mythology. Like Greek mythology, Roman mythology is the body of traditional stories of gods and heroes, concerning with ancient Rome's legendary origins and religious system. as represented in the literature and visual arts of the Romans. Roman mythology has greatly influenced by Greek mythology with respect to the reinterpretation of Greek myths with a Roman version in Roman mythology. During Rome's protohistory, Greek religion had an influenced on the whole Italian peninsula. In that time, Greek mythology had introduced into Rome. In later time, there had been a popular period artistic imitation of Greek literary models by Roman authors.

In both Greek and Roman mythology, they are full of popular heroic legends. These heroic legends can often tell us about the value of the ancient people. The value they worship is often gave to the heroes in their myth. By seeing what kind of value the heroes are addicted to in the myths can have a glimpse on the value of the sociaty in that time.

Medusa, one of the three Gorgons, daughter of Phorcys and Ceto. She was the only one of the Gorgons who was subject to mortality. She is celebrated for her personal charms and the beauty of her locks. Neptune became enamoured of her, and obtained her favours in the temple of Minerva. This violation of the sanctity of the temple provoked Minerva, and she changed the beautiful locks of Medusa, which had inspired Neptune’s love to serpents. According t o Apollodorus, Medusa and her sisters came into the world with snakes on their heads, instead of hair, with yellow wings and brazen hands. Their bodies were also covered with impenetrable scales, and their very looks had the power of killing or turning to stones. Perseus rendered his name immortal by his conquest of Medusa. He cut off her head, and the blood that dropped from the wound produced the innumerable serpents that infest Africa. The conqueror placed Medusa's head on the shield of Minerva, which he had used in his expedition. The head still retained the same petrifying power as before, as it was fatally known in the court of Cepheus.. Some suppose that the Gorgons were a nation of women, whom Perseus conquered.

Medusa's head is both a mirror and a mask. It is the mirror of collective violence which leaves the Devil's mark on the individual, as well as being the image of death for those who look at it.

Key Words: Medusa; head;women

Gorgom are three sisters of Greek mythology，they living in the remote of western, they are the daughter of Phorcydes. Their head and neck are full of scales, the hair are many snakes, with a wild boar tusks and a pair of iron hand and golden wings, any see them will immediately turned into stone. Medusa is one of three sisters of Gorgon. Her father is the Nept Poseido while his mother is the see monster Ceto, her hair are many snakes. Three sisters of Gorgon, only Medusa was physically, her sister Cecillia and Euryale is magic body. Allegedly Medusa once was a beautiful girl, because boasted good-looking than Athena.

Medusa began her life as a beautiful human, admired for her long, flowing hair. When the sea god Neptune (the Greek god Poseidon) began to fall in love with her, the goddess Minerva (the Greek goddess Athena) became jealous, took away all of her beautiful, leaving her an ugly monster form, beauty became the devil and changed Medusa into a hideous Gorgon, a creature with a head full of snakes. Y ears later Minerva completed her destruction of Medusa when she helped the young hero Perseus slay the hideous Gorgon. In order to save his mother, Perseus was ordered by Polydectes, the cruel king of the island Seriphos to kill and behead Medusa. Minerva helped him by giving him her shield as protection. After days of traveling, Perseus finally spotted Medusa. To avoid being turned to stone, Perseus looked at the monster through her reflection in Minerva's shield. As he moved nearer, he grew more and more horrified by her repulsive appearance. With one sweep of his sword, Perseus severed Medusa's head from her body. Perseus quickly stuffed Medusa's head inside his sack.When Perseus decapitated the gorgon Medusa, she was already pregnant by the sea god Poseidon who had visited her in the form of a stallion. As her body fell to the ground, the two offspring of this union. Pegasus and the warrior Chrysaor leapt fully developed from her body. The young hero took flight for the island of Seriphos in the winged sandals given to him by the god Dis (the Greek god Hades). When Perseus arrived on Seriphos, he rescued his mother from Polydectes by turning him to stone with Medusa's still deadly head. He then gave the head to the goddess Minerva, who attached the head to her shield to help her in future battles. In Roman and Greek Mythology; Medusa is one of three terrible Gorgon sisters. She has snakes in her hair and bronze claws on her hands. Anyone who looks directly at Medusa immediately turns to stone.

Medusa's head, an apparently simple motif linked to the myth of Perseus, was freed through being severed and cut loose from its 'moorings' by the hero in the remote depths of the world. There is something paradoxical about the story since the monster was all the more indestructible because it had been killed. Indeed, the figure of Medusa is characterized by paradox, both in terms of the actual mythical stare, which turned men to stone, and in the interpretations that have been given to it. The fascination that she exerts arises from a combination of beauty and horror. Her head was used, in Ancient times, as an apotropaic mask -- a sort of talisman which both killed and redeemed.

As well as being the very symbol of ambiguity, Medusa's head is also one of the most archaic mythical figures, perhaps an echo of the demon Humbaba who was decapitated by Gilgamesh. Everything implies that it is a 'representation' of the most

meaningful aspect of the sacred. Insofar as it is the role of literature to assume responsibility for the sacred, each era, when confronted with the mystery of the 'origins', has re-examined Medusa's head with its mesmerizing stare as something which conceals the secret of the sacred.

In Christian symbolism, Medusa represents the dreaded enemy and death, and thus becomes an embodiment of the Devil. She appears in this guise in a passage in the Book of Arthur which belongs to the cycle of the Holy Grail. In fact, this is a female monster, the 'Ugly Semblance', who lives at the bottom of a river. She does not exercise her powers by turning people to stone, but by causing the waters to swallow them up. Similarly, a play by Calder, which tells of the adventures of Andromeda and Perseus, has the hero, a new incarnation of the Saviour, defeating Medusa who is the personification of Death and Sin.

At first glance, therefore, Medusa's head is very much a representation of the terrifying other, of absolute negativity. She continues to fulfill this function in the twentieth-century trilogy by the Greek writer Pandelis Prevelakis, The Ways of Creation, which comprises The Sun of Death , The Head of the Medusa and The Bread of the Angels. In the trilogy, the Gorgon represents both 'Nietzschian nihilism' and the foreign ideologies which threaten Hellenism. The hero sets out to free Greece once again from the monster, but he fails and realizes that there is no longer a single piece of untaited land in his country. Everything points to the fact that the malady specific to modern Greece, and the country's inability to accommodate, change, have provoked this monstrous 'representation' of the other. Medusa's head does indeed seem to be a mask which serves to justify her absolute and evil strangeness.

The fact that Medusa is a mask and that this mask hides a more human face, is borne out by the way in which her portrayal is developed from the pre-Classical era to the Hellenistic period. There is a dual transformation i.e. the disappearance of both facial quality and ugliness. Beneath the mask lies what could be called Medusa's 'tragic beauty'.

Many elements of the myth suggest, through its basic ambiguity, the tragic nature of Medusa. One of the most revealing of these is the gift from Athena to Asclepius of two drops of the Gorgon's blood, one of which has the power to cure and even resurrect, while the other is a deadly poison. Medusa's blood is therefore the epitome of the 'pharmakon', while she herself -- as is shown by the apotropaic function of her mask -- is a 'pharmakos'. As has been demonstrated by Ren Girard, the 'pharmakos' is the scapegoat whose sacrifice establishes the dual nature of the sacred and reinforces the separation of the monster and the god. However, it is for literature and the arts to reveal the close relationship between opposites and the 'innocence' of the victim. In this respect, the myth of Medusa is revealing.

In the same way that there is a hidden similarity between Athena, Goddess of Wisdom, and Medusa, a similarity also exists between the sun, symbol of the Ideal and the Gorgon's mask. Although they are both objects of desire, Athena and the sun are unapproachable and terrifying for those who come too close. This danger is illustrated by the Platonic myth of Phaedrus in which the downfall of souls is brought about by an overpowering desire to see the sun.

According to Ovid . the reason for the dispute lay in Poseidon's rape of Medusa inside the temple of the virgin goddess. The goddess is supposed to have punished Medusa by transforming her face, which therefore made Medusa an innocent victim for the second time. Medusa had boasted that she was more beautiful than Athena. Everything points to the face that the goddess found it necessary to set herself apart from her negative double in order to assert her 'own' identity. Common features are numerous. For example, snakes are the attribute of Athena, Moreover, the hypnotic stare is one of the features of the goddess 'with blue-green eyes', whose bird is the owl, depicted with an unblinking gaze. Finally, because she has affixed Medusa's head to her shield, in battle or in anger she assumes the terrifying appearance of the monster. Thus, in the Aeneid , she expresses her wrath by making flames shoot forth from her eyes. These observations are intended to show that Athena and Medusa are the two indissociable aspects of the same sacred power.

In this interplay of doubles, the theme of reflection is fundamental. It explains the process of victimization to which Medusa was subjected, and which falls within the province of the superstition of the 'evil eye'. The way to respond to the 'evil eye' is either to use a third eye -- the one that Perseus threw at the Graiae - or to deflect the evil spell by using a mirror. Ovid, in particular, stressed the significance of the shield in which Perseus was able to see the Gorgon without being turned to stone, and which was given to him by Athena. Everything indicates that the mirror was the real weapon.

Ovid was responsible for establishing the link with Narcissus, a myth that he made famous. It seems that the same process of victimization is at work here. The individual is considered to have been the victim of his own reflection, which absolves the victimizer from all blame. This association of the two myths appears in a passage in Desportes' Amours d’Hyppolite where the poet tells his lady that she is in danger of seeing herself changed 'into some hard rock' by her 'Medusa's eye'. Even more revealing is Gautier's story Jettatura in which the hero, accused of having the 'evil eye', eventually believes it to be true and watches the monstrous transformation of his face in the mirror: 'Imagine Medusa looking at her horrible, hypnotic face in the lurid reflection of the bronze shield.

Conclusion

This terrible woman, the paragon of all women, whom every man simultaneously fears and seeks and for whom Medusa is the mask, is in fact the mother, i.e. the great Goddess Mother whose rites were concealed by the Gorgon's face. Countless texts illustrate Medusa's affinity with the depths of the sea and the terrible power of nature, The snakes are multiple phalluses and petrifaction represents the comforting erection.

From this point onwards, the myth of Perseus takes on a new psychological meaning. It tells of the exploit of the hero who, because he has conquered ‘castrating' woman and armed himself with the talisman of Medusa's head, is able to conquer Andromeda, the terrifying virgin, and kill the sea monster which represents the evil aspect of woman. A 'sacred' man must perform the first sexual act with a woman.

Gods are a reflection of human and the world in the mythology can be seen as a record of the early life in Greece and Rome However, the myth reveals and this seems

that woman's 'castration' is a result of the violence imposed on her by the original hero. Woman only appears in the story divided by separative decapitation, casting off the feminine in the remote depths of the world. Cast down, the feminine remains unrecognized within its innermost recess and it is this 'abject' void which maintains the theatre of the world and the logic of the talisman.

In this theatre, woman occupies the two opposite extremes of evil and their recess cure. That is why, despite her terrifying power, she is fascinating. 'Fascinum' means 'charm' and 'evil spell', but also 'virile member'. Between the 'emptiness' a nd the Idol represented by the division of woman, yawns the gulf of male Desire. This persistent ambiguity can be found in the classification of the creature called the Medusa. It owes its name to its resemblance to Medusa's head. Medusa keeps her secret behind the ambiguous mask. Although she is 'representable', she is never 'presentable' and even Perseus only sees her reflected in his shield.

In a word, no matter weather she is truly live in this world, she is mysterious and because of her enables the beautiful myth to be played out year and year.