All that remained of Medusa was a horrid thing, a mere grinning
mask with protruding beast-like tusks and tongue hanging out. So
dreadful was the aspect of the changed priestess, that her face turned
all those who chanced to catch sight of it to stone. There is a degree
of hideousness which no eyes can endure; and so it came to pass that the
cave wherein she dwelt, and all the woods around it, were full of men
and wild beasts who had been petrified by a glance of her,--grim fossils
immortalised in stone,--while the snakes writhed and the red eyes
rolled, waiting for another victim.
This was not a case into which any hope of redemption could enter, and
there was nothing for it but to slay her. To do this, Perseus set out
upon his long journey, equipped with the magic gifts of swiftness and
invisibility, and bearing on his arm the shield that was also a mirror.
The whole picture is infinitely dreary. As he travels across the dark
sea to the land where the pillars of Atlas are visible far off, towering
into the sky, the light decreases. In the murky and dangerous twilight
he forces the Graiai, those grey-haired sisters with their miserable
fragmentary life, to bestir their aged limbs and guide him to the
Gorgons' den.
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