Most people picture Medusa as a snake-haired monster whose gaze turns flesh to stone, but some of the oldest sources describe a beautiful mortal woman who was violently wronged and then rewritten by the powers that destroyed her. This deep dive builds a narrative biography of Medusa from Hesiod, Apollodorus and Ovid, through classical vase painting and Renaissance imagery, to Freud, Jane Ellen Harrison, Joseph Campbell and the feminist reclamations of the 20th and 21st centuries.

We examine why Medusa alone among the Gorgon sisters was mortal, how Athena punished her rather than Poseidon after the temple assault, and why Perseus' divine loadout of winged sandals, invisibility helm, unbreakable sword and mirrored shield makes the beheading look less like a duel and more like an asymmetrical assassination. The episode then follows the severed ...