By the dark stream, where the yellow light brooded
everlastingly, he reached at last that cave of horrors. Well was it then
for Perseus that he was invisible, for the snakes that were Medusa's
hair could see all round. But at that time Medusa was asleep and the
snakes asleep, and in the silence and twilight of the land where there
is "neither night nor day, nor cloud nor breeze nor storm," he held the
magic mirror over against the monster, beheld her in it without change
or injury to himself, severed the head, and bore it away to place it on
Athene's shield.
It is very interesting to notice how Art has treated the legend. It was
natural that so vivid an image should become a favourite alike with
poets and with sculptors, but there was a gradual development from the
old hideous and terrible representations, back to the calm repose of a
beautiful dead face. This might indeed more worthily record the maiden's
tragedy, but it missed entirely the thing that the old myth had said.
The oldest idea was horrible beyond horror, for the darker side of
things is always the most impressive to primitive man, and sheer
ugliness is a category with which it is easy to work on simple minds.
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