Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art: Chimerical Crea...

Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art, by John Vinycomb, [1909] Reference has already been made to the gorgon in a quotation from Milton. The name now denotes anything unusually hideous. In classic story there were three gorgons, with serpents on their heads instead of hair. Medusa was the chief of the three, and the only one that was mortal. So hideous was her face that whoever set eyes on it was instantly turned to stone. She was slain by Perseus, and her head placed upon the shield of Minerva (termed the Ægis of Minerva). Homer, in the "Odyssey," Book xi. thus alludes to the dread creature: [paragraph continues] And Shakespeare, in Macbeth, Act ii. sc. 3, uses the name to picture, in a word, the horrible discovery of the murdered Duncan: