Sicilian transformations

Aeneas's arrival in Trinacria is barely mentioned when Metamorphoses 13 launches a series of rich and strange tales involving love triangles, aversion, monsters, transformations from mortals to gods, or from modalities of earth to those of the deep sea.

Acis and Faunus

Acis, the beloved of Galatea, is the child of Faunus, an indigenous Italian deity -- he was blended with Pan, or another Greek figure back-formed from the Italian god. Acis is transformed, at his murder, into the river Acis, which flows by Mt. Aetna. Faunus was also believed to be the son of Picus, the original king of Latium, who was both the root of the Latin kings, and, after his transformation into a woodpecker, the leader of children expelled from the community in a practice known as the sacred spring (Ver sacrum).

Phorkys, Polyphemus and Scylla

The genealogies of both Polyphemus and Scylla lead back to the ancient Phorkys and Keto (aka Phorcys and Ceto). According to Theoi, Phorkys was depicted in ancient mosaic as a grey-haired, fish-tailed god, with spiky crab-like skin and crab-claw forelegs. His attribute was a torch:

Phorkys and Dynamene

Their children were dangerous sea-monsters: Skylla (the crab) a monster who devoured passing sailors, Thoosa (the swift) mother of the rock-tossing cyclops Polyphemos, Ladon (strong flowing) a hundred-headed sea-serpent, Ekhidna (viper) a she-dragon, the Graiai (grey ones) spirits of the sea-foam, and the Gorgones (terrifying ones) whose petrifying gaze probably created the dangerous rocks and reefs of the sea.

We met some of these creatures earlier in the tales of Perseus in Metamorphoses 4, particularly the Graiai and Medusa, both of whom were overcome by the Greek hero.

Now we're encountering Polyphemus and Scylla, who were successfully evaded by Odysseus, and are now encountered, indirectly, by Aeneas. He will hear of them in Book 14, and avoid them. But their stories rise up here, front and center, displacing the Roman hero nearly to the point of vanishing altogether.

We'll want to consider this suggestive coincidence of Trinacria, the triangular island, with these fatal love triangles, and novel transformations that mix the human, the god, and the monstrous.

Three Key Ancestors

According to Carlos Parada's Greek Mythology Link, the key ancestors of the major Greek families were three: Deucalion (& Pyrrha), Atlas (through his daughters the Pleiades), and Io.

Atlas 

The Pelopides 

Pelops 1 was son of Tantalus 1, son of Zeus and the Pleiad Dione 3, daughter of Atlas. Pelops 1's wife Hippodamia 3 was daughter of the Pleiad Sterope 3. The PLEIADES are daughters of Atlas. The Pelopides ruled Mycenae until the return of the HERACLIDES (descendants of Heracles 1, a descendant of Io). Pelops 1 came from Phrygia to Hellas, whereas Dardanus 1 emigrated from Hellas to Phrygia.

The Trojans 

The Trojans were also descendants of Atlas. Dardanus 1, son of Electra 3, daughter of Atlas, is at the beginning of the house of Troy, for Dardanus 1 is father of Erichthonius 1, father of Tros 1 (after whom the Trojans are called), father of Ilus 2 (founder of Ilium, that is, Troy), father of Laomedon 1, father of Priam 1, who was king when the city was destroyed. 

Some Thebans 

Among the Thebans, the usurpers Nycteus 2 and Lycus 5 were said to have come from Euboea, but they too might be descendants of Atlas, and so could beAmphion 1, grandson of Nycteus 2. Amphion 1 married Pelops 1's sister, the mother of the NIOBIDS.

Deucalion

The descendants of Deucalion 1 (and Aeolus 1) founded and ruled Thessalian cities such as Pherae, Phthia and Iolcus, but were periodically influential inThebes, Argos, Athens, and Messenia. 

Deucalion 1, the first mortal of this line and son of the Titan Prometheus 1, is father of Hellen 1, eponym of the Hellenes. From Hellen 1 sprang Dorus 1 (eponym of the Dorians), Xuthus 1, and Aeolus 1. Xuthus 1 is father of Achaeus 1 (eponym of the Achaeans), and of Ion 1 (eponym of the Ionians). The Thessalian king Aeolus 1 (different from the keeper of the winds) had many important descendants.

Io 

Ancestors and founders of important cities auch as Mycenae, Thebes, and Argos were descendants of Io. These also controlled Crete, Laconia, and perhaps Arcadia. The HERACLIDES were descendants of Io. Their house evolved first in north-east Africa, and in the mideast (Phoenicia). 

Io is the first mortal of this line. She is usually regarded as daughter of the river god Inachus, her other genealogies being more uncertain. After Io comes Epaphus 1, king of Egypt and father of Libya. Her descendants are Agenor 1, Belus 1, and Lelex 2. From Agenor 1 descended Europa and Cadmus, which is to say the houses of Crete and Thebes respectively. From Belus 1 descended Aegyptus 1 and Danaus 1, that is, the houses of Argos, and Mycenae. 

Perseus 1 (descendant of Danaus 1 and Aegyptus 1), and his own descendants reigned in Mycenae. But during Eurystheus' time or after him Mycenae came under the rule of the Pelopides, who are descendants of Atlas. The Pelopides were expelled by the HERACLIDES after the Trojan War.

Interestingly, tradition says the Athenians were a distinct group:

The Athenians do not belong originally to any of the mentioned primary families. They were the children of Gaia, or else "sons of the soil." Later Aegeus 1 married the daughter of a Pelopid, and Theseus married a descendant of Io. Even later the throne was seized by Melanthus 1, a descendant of Deucalion 1. 

The Colchians (for example Medea) are descendants of Helius, and so are the first Corinthians [see Corinth]. The Troezenians had their own origin, but afterwards Troezen was ruled by the descendants of Atlas.

Parada's page of ancestors has detailed lists of members from each family.

The metamorphosis of Costanza

Jutta shared this story about the great Italian sculptor, his mistress, his rage, and her transformation into the Gorgon, as per the story Perseus tells at the end of Book 4 of the Metamorphoses.

In the 1630s, Bernini began a tempestuous affair with Costanza Bonarelli, the wife of an assistant. Around 1636-38, working for the Borghese family, he portrayed her in a tender, lifelike rendering now in the collection of the Bargello Museum in Florence. 

But their idyll was ruined when Bernini caught his brother Luigi sneaking away from her quarters and exploded with rage. The artist sent his servant to her with orders to slash her face. Thus when Bernini carved "Medusa," he viewed her as the mythical creature, a Gorgon, who had been caught having an affair with Neptune. Medusa is being punished—with her hair transformed into writhing snakes and crying out with anguish.

When I pointed out the story to Peter D'Epiro, he quickly shared an image of Costanza Bonarelli made before the provocation (this copy is from this interesting blog):

Here is the more famous After:

Divorcing the source: Perseus' unharmonious wedding feast

Ovid's swift-moving account of the bloodshed at Perseus and Andromeda's wedding celebration in Metamorphoses 5 makes no effort to build suspense or the sense of a real contest. Perseus is so clearly going to win this rigged game that all the attention turns to how the losers die. The poet deftly offers us a variety of such losers. Here's 16-year-old Athis:

. . . of outstanding beauty, his sixteen years unimpaired, enhanced by his rich robes, wearing his military cloak of Tyrian purple, fringed with gold. A gold collar ornamented his neck, and a curved coronet his myrrh-drenched hair. He was skilled at piercing anything with the javelins he launched, however distant, but was even more skilled at shooting with the bow. While he was bending the pliant tips in his hands, Perseus struck him, with a log that had been smouldering in the middle of the altar, and shattered his face to splintered bone. (All translations from Kline).

There's Idas, who is killed while trying to remain neutral, and aged Emathion:

One very old man, Emathion, was there who upheld justice, and feared the gods. He stepped forward, and since his age prevented him fighting, he warred in words, cursing their sinful weapons. Chromis decapitated him with his sword, as he clung to the altar with trembling hands, and the head fell straight on to the hearth, and there the half living tongue still uttered imprecations, and its life expired in the midst of the flames.

The narrative spotlights others who have no business fighting. Like Emathion, Lampetides the lute player is one who thrives in times of peace, as does Ampycus, the priest of Ceres.

If nothing else, the spectacle of Perseus's single-handed slaughter of these innocents puts the emphasis on the harsh violence of the work of war. The gruesome vignettes of those killed leave us with a jangled sense of epic gone haywire, grotesque in some places, bordering on farce in others (Calliope meets Angry Birds):

Pelates, from the banks of Cinyps, tried to take the bar from the left door, and, while attempting to do so, his right hand was transfixed by the spear of Corythus, from Marmarica, and pinned to the wood. Abas pierced him in the side as he was fastened there, and he did not fall, but hung there, dying, from the post to which his hand was nailed.

The honorable heroics of Odysseus reclaiming his home and family from predators -- the epic subtext of this scene -- serves as a foil to highlight this narrative's obsessive interest in novel ways of depicting slaughter -- the sort of gremlin delight associated with the special effects departments of B movie studios.

This is not to suggest that Ovid's metamorphic shredding of the Perseus myth is without serious artistic purpose. First, he chooses to focus on the hero whose exploits and legacy led to the epics of Homer. Second, he introduces the theme of contested modes of legitimation: Who has the right to Andromeda -- the hero whose sword saved her from death, or the uncle who was affianced to her by ties of family, of tradition, and cultural norms?

Under normal circumstances, Phineus's right to marry his niece would be above challenge. But at the moment of crisis, when, thanks to Cassiopeia's boast about her beauty, the daughter of Cephus is completely defenseless and in radical peril; only the power of technologically-blessed Perseus can save her from a horrible fate. After he saves her from Neptune's sea monster, the question of who has the superior claim is not easily decided. Two different kinds of legitimacy are in conflict, and whether superior force should always prevail is surely not a conclusion anyone troubled by the ensuing violence is likely to find comforting.

Cutting to the chase: The gruesome, ugly, comic-violent-tacky tale of the wedding feast offers a discordant variation upon (or root critique of) Homeric epic. Ovid wants us neither to merely celebrate epic valor or simply condemn it -- he'd prefer we think about it. He is a poet, not a moralist setting out to write a discursive screed, so what he's doing is writing a kind of poetry that both is about poetry and transformative of it -- a metamorphic metapoetry that foregrounds a strikingly modern dissonance from its source, the Homeric song it recasts (not unlike, for example, Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida).

Instead of offering us a sober thesis that "war is hell," followed by a serious war movie (Saving Private Ryan, All Quiet on the Western Front), Ovid does something less direct. From the vantage of the theme, the necessity of heroic uses of power is never in dispute, but the horror of deadly force deprived of rational, just administration is on full display. What remains at the end of the scene is a blood-soaked banquet in which (1) innocent men of culture and erudition have died horrifically, (2) Phineus and 200 of his foolish supporters have frozen into monuments to their own mortal folly, and (3) the chosen scion of Zeus and favorite of Athena and Hermes has the means to return to Seriphos and confront the king who threatens his mother, Danae.

Eventually Perseus and Andromeda (along with Cepheus and Pegasus) will join the constellations, but while on Earth, they go on to propagate future generations of warriors whose exploits will live in immortal poems -- poetry in which graceless notes of questionable taste, violent injustice, and sheer amoral power will be suitably subjugated to the poetic requirements of soaring Homeric epic song.

"et Pegasus huius origo fontis"

As usual, Ovid has woven a thick web of interrelating tales, motifs, parallels and symmetries in Metamorphoses 5. The more we read him, the more convinced I become that one must not only attend to the particular tales, but to larger patterns, as we saw in the story of Cadmus in Books 3 and 4.

In Book 5, it's at least worth considering the pairing of two stories that at first sight don't seem to have much to do with one another -- the tale of Perseus, Medusa and Andromeda comes first (a good summary can be found here), followed by Calliope's account of how the Muses triumphed over the Pierides with their song of the rape of Persephone.

Note that the link between the two tales is Athena -- she's with Perseus until his tale ends in Seriphos, then immediately hies to Helicon to see where Pegasus scuffed the ground bringing forth Hippocrene ("Horse Fountain") the sacred spring. There she meets the Muses. Athena, bearing Medusa's head on the Aegis, is desirous to see where the "child" of Medusa, the winged horse sprung from her blood, touched the earth.

"Volui mirabile factum cernere"

          I wanted to see the wonder made there. 

Urania, muse of astronomy, points out the place saying,  

"Vera tamen fama est,
et Pegasus huius origo fontis"

          But the tale is true, Pegasus is the source of this fountain.

Ovid is linking the terror of the Gorgon's visage and death to the fountain of the Muses, thus to art, song, beauty. And he's not alone. In the 12th Pythian Ode, Pindar follows the same pattern. In this Ode, which celebrates the victory of Midas in αὐλῳδία, an artistic contest of songs with flute accompaniment, Pindar first praises Akragas (Sicilian Agrigentum) as the "splendor loving" home of Persephone. He then turns to the story of Perseus and Medusa to speak of the origin of the song of flutes:

But when the virgin goddess had released that beloved man from those labors, she created the many-voiced song of flutes so that she could imitate with musical instruments the shrill cry that reached her ears from the fast-moving jaws of Euryale

The pattern is clear: Pindar says the "many voiced" music of flutes began in the horror of Perseus's murder of Medusa, and specifically in the hideous wails of her Gorgon-sister, Euryale. In moving from the Perseus-Medusa tale to that of Athena and the Muses, Ovid is retracing Pindar's poetic steps.

What can it mean that music and Pegasus find their origins linked to the Gorgon raped by Neptune and beheaded by Perseus? If nothing else, we might be reminded of Nietzsche's insight, in his Birth of Tragedy, that the bright Apollonian gleam of appearance had its source in gazing upon the tragic realm of Dionysus.

So while reading Book 5, it might reward our time to have a look both at Pindar's Pythian 12 and also at the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, which provided a great deal of poetic antecedent matter for Ovid's muse.

The Origin of Coral

One cannot afford to be naive in dealing with dreams. They originate in a spirit that is not quite human, but is rather a breath of nature -- a spirit of the beautiful and generous as well as of the cruel goddess. If we want to characterize this spirit, we shall certainly get closer to it in the sphere of ancient mythologies, or the fables of the primeval forest, than in the consciousness of modern man. ~ Carl G. Jung, Man and his Symbols.

More than once we've noted that Metamorphoses is more like a dream-book than a wide-awake tale hewn from legend to serve the agenda of history, such as the Aeneid. Ovid's poem seems to hover over some border between the human and, as Jung noted, something that is not quite human. Perhaps we can look more closely at a sample passage to see how this works.

The other day we noted the oddity of how the tale (in Bk. 4) of Perseus's defeat of the sea monster and rescue of the maiden concludes:

Perseus evades the eager jaws on swift wings, and strikes with his curved sword wherever the monster is exposed, now at the back encrusted with barnacles, now at the sides of the body, now where the tail is slenderest, ending fishlike. The beast vomits seawater mixed with purplish blood. The pinions grow heavy, soaked with spray. Not daring to trust his drenched wings any further, he sees a rock whose highest point stands above quiet water, hidden by rough seas. Resting there, and holding on to the topmost pinnacle with his left hand, he drives his sword in three or four times, repeatedly.

Given the nature of the story -- furious combat motivated by love for the young maiden Andromeda threatened by the sea-monster -- every expectation is that the hero will at least courteously approach the girl, the "prize and cause of his efforts" and perhaps receive a chaste kiss -- some sort of romantic moment of recognition.

Instead, the sightline of the narrator goes insensibly past all that "human interest" to fix upon certain seemingly irrelevant details pertaining to the care and tender handling of Medusa's head, leading in turn to a seemingly unrelated "cause," an explanation of the origin of coral:

The shores, and the high places of the gods, fill with the clamor of applause. Cassiope and Cepheus rejoice, and greet their son-in-law, acknowledging him as the pillar of their house, and their deliverer. Released from her chains, the girl comes forward, the prize and the cause of his efforts. He washes his hands, after the victory, in seawater drawn for him, and, so that Medusa’s head, covered with its snakes, is not bruised by the harsh sand, he makes the ground soft with leaves, and spreads out plants from below the waves, and places the head of that daughter of Phorcys on them. The fresh plants, still living inside, and absorbent, respond to the influence of the Gorgon’s head, and harden at its touch, acquiring a new rigidity in branches and fronds. And the ocean nymphs try out this wonder on more plants, and are delighted that the same thing happens at its touch, and repeat it by scattering the seeds from the plants through the waves. Even now corals have the same nature, hardening at a touch of air, and what was alive, under the water, above water is turned to stone. Kline, 4.730-52

Litora cum plausu clamor superasque deorum
inplevere domos: gaudent generumque salutant
auxiliumque domus servatoremque fatentur
Cassiope Cepheusque pater. Resoluta catenis
incedit virgo, pretiumque et causa laboris.
740Ipse manus hausta victrices abluit unda,
anguiferumque caput dura ne laedat harena,
mollit humum foliis natasque sub aequore virgas
sternit et inponit Phorcynidos ora Medusae.
Virga recens bibulaque etiamnum viva medulla
745vim rapuit monstri tactuque induruit huius
percepitque novum ramis et fronde rigorem.
At pelagi nymphae factum mirabile temptant
pluribus in virgis et idem contingere gaudent
seminaque ex illis iterant iactata per undas.
750Nunc quoque curaliis eadem natura remansit,
duritiam tacto capiant ut ab aere, quodque
vimen in aequore erat, fiat super aequora saxum. ##

What fascinates the nymphae and the narrator is something that is mirabile, i.e., marvellous: the virga -- plants that are soft and alive beneath the surface of the water -- turn to stone upon contact with air. Within our "human" scheme of things, air gives life, makes our organic life possible. But here is something quite otherwise. Ovid is fascinated with thresholds between realms, and what happens when, as things cross over, they metamorphose.

Earlier we noted the motif of things either turning into stone or rising into the air coming into play in the transition from the Cadmus legend to that of Perseus. In Book 5, Perseus is about to turn a few hundred enemies, supporters of Phineus, his rival for Andromeda, into stone. The narrator is fascinated with this transformation. Here's Eryx, one of them, turning:

Increpat hos “vitio” que “animi, non viribus” inquit
“Gorgoneis torpetis” Eryx: “incurrite mecum
et prosternite humi iuvenem magica arma moventem!”
Incursurus erat: tenuit vestigia tellus,
inmotusque silex armataque mansit imago.

Eryx rebuked them, saying, ‘Lack of courage, not the power of the Gorgon, freezes you. Rush in with me and knock this youth and his magic weapon to the ground!’ He had started his rush, but the floor held his feet fast, and there he stayed, unmoving stone, a fully-armed statue. ##

Ovid's word which most translate as "statue" here is imago -- image. In other places, those hastening to kill Perseus are frozen into simulacra. Whatever else Metamorphoses is about, it is about things and images of things, and the metamorphic powers in between.

Perseus and the Graiai

Sea-foam and stars

Ovid's Graiai, daughters of Phorkys, are part of a cluster of entities linked to the sea. Indeed, according to sources, Phorkys was

an ancient sea-god who presided over the hidden dangers of the deep. He and his wife Keto were also the gods of all the large creatures which inhabited the depths of the sea. Keto's name means the "whale" or "sea-monster" ... Their children were dangerous sea-monsters : Skylla (the crab) a monster who devoured passing sailors, Thoosa (the swift) mother of the rock-tossing cyclops Polyphemos, Ladon (strong flowing) a hundred-headed sea-serpent, Ekhidna (viper) a she-dragon, the Graiai (grey ones) spirits of the sea-foam, and the Gorgones (terrifying ones) whose petrifying gaze probably created the dangerous rocks and reefs of the sea.

We noted the other day that the story of Medusa begins with the tale Perseus tells at the end of Book 4, the story of a beautiful girl raped by Neptune in the temple of Athena. We have no idea what she was doing there, but the upshot is Medusa is transformed into the hideous Gorgon, and all of this seems to have something to do with the oceanic world.

This might be why book 4 comes to be dominated by the imagery of the rocky cliffs overhanging the sea - which is where Perseus first sees Andromeda, who, bound to the rock, seems like a marble statue, and where he fights and kills the belua, the sea monster.

Perseus recounts how he got to Medusa - via her sisters, the Graiai:

THE GRAIAI (or Graeae) were two, or some say three, ancient sea-daimones (spirits) who personified the white foam of the sea. They were grey from birth, and shared among themselves a single detatchable eye and tooth. Perseus stole these and compelled the sisters to reveal the hidden location of their sister Gorgones. Three of their names suggest rather dire monsters--Deino "the terrible." Enyo "the warlike" and Persis "the destroyer." Another name, Pemphredo, "she who guides the way," simply refers to their role in the Perseus story.

Here's something to ponder: why do the Graiai become the ones who "guide" Perseus to Medusa? Medusa is she who cannot be looked upon without petrifaction. He finds his way by stealing their eye, disrupting the continuity of their vision.

Leaving that aside for now, there are several interrelated motifs (leitmotifs, as it were) going on here at the point where the Cadmus story ends and the Perseus story begins, and we might as well note them now. First, if the Graiai are the white foam of the sea, then they are somehow linked to Venus, who in Book 4, precisely at the moment of transition, at the rocky cliff overhanging the sea, reminded everyone of her birth from the foam, the spuma:

“O numen aquarum,
proxima cui caelo cessit, Neptune, potestas,
magna quidem posco, sed tu miserere meorum,
535iactari quos cernis in Ionio inmenso,
et dis adde tuis. Aliqua et mihi gratia ponto est,
si tamen in medio quondam concreta profundo
spuma fui Graiumque manet mihi nomen ab illa.” 4.532 ff.

“O Neptune, ruler of the deep, to whom,
next to the Power in Heaven, was given sway,
consider my request! Open thy heart
to my descendants, which thine eyes behold,
tossed on the wild Ionian Sea! I do implore thee,
remember they are thy true Deities—
are thine as well as mine—for it is known
my birth was from the white foam of thy sea;—
a truth made certain by my Grecian name.”

We might note that the existence of the rocky cliffs themselves was credited by some to the petrifying powers of Medusa:

The poet Hesiod seems to have imagined the Gorgones as reef-creating sea-daemones, personifications of the deadly submerged reefs which posed such a danger to ancient mariners. As such he names the three petrifyers daughters of dangerous sea-gods. One also bears a distincty marine name, Euryale, "she of the wide briny sea". Later writers continue this tradition when they speak of reefs being created where Perseus had set the Gorgon's head and where he had turned a sea monster to stone. ##

At this point Ino, bearing her son, has leapt from a cliff into the foaming sea, and everyone thinks they have perished. Instead, at foam-born Venus's behest, Neptune transforms Ino into Leucothoe ("white goddess") and Melicertes into Palaemon, a guardian of ports. We will recall how Ino's servants turn either into stone statues, or into birds. This bifurcation of living beings into either rock (gravitas) or creatures of air (levitas) becomes structurally important in Book 5. But for now, let's note that several key players in the Perseus story eventually turn into constellations, including Keto or Cetus, the monster from deepest Ocean (vide supra).

A few images from Urania's Mirror, a deck of cards from 1825 depicting the constellations:

Root: πέρθειν

Never underestimate Ovid's wordplay. Here's an etymology of Perseus - note that, as in Book 5, Perseus leads to Persephone:

Because of the obscurity of the name Perseus and the legendary character of its bearer, most etymologists pass it by, on the presumption that it might be pre-Greek. However, the name of Perseus’s native city was Greek and so were the names of his wife and relatives. There is some prospect that it descended into Greek from the Proto-Indo-European language. In that regard Robert Graves has espoused the only Greek derivation available. Perseus might be from the ancient Greek verb, "πέρθειν" (perthein), “to waste, ravage, sack, destroy”, some form of which appears in Homeric epithets. According to Carl Darling Buck (Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin), the –eus suffix is typically used to form an agent noun, in this case from the aorist stem, pers-. Pers-eus therefore is a sacker of cities; that is, a soldier by occupation, a fitting name for the first Mycenaean warrior.

The origin of perth- is more obscure. J. B. Hofmann^[1] lists the possible root as *bher-, from which Latin ferio, "strike". This corresponds to Julius Pokorny’s *bher-(3), “scrape, cut.” Ordinarily *bh- descends to Greek as ph-. This difficulty can be overcome by presuming a dissimilation from the –th– in perthein; that is, the Greeks preferred not to say *pherthein. Graves carries the meaning still further, to the perse- in Persephone, goddess of death.

Persephone opening the liknon of the Mysteries (pinax from Locri, Magna Graecia

Perseus ancestor of Homer's characters

Tracing the lineage of Perseus helps clarify how intertwined he is with the Homeric stories. Like the heroes of the epics, he is favored by the gods:

From the Hesperides he received a knapsack (kibisis) to safely contain Medusa's head. Zeus gave him an adamantine sword and Hades' helm of darkness to hide. Hermes lent Perseus winged sandals to fly, while Athena gave him a polished shield. Perseus then proceeded to the Gorgons' cave.

He and Andromeda settled at Tiryns:

Andromeda followed her husband to Tiryns in Argos, and together they became the ancestors of the family of the Perseidae through the line of their son Perses. Perseus and Andromeda had seven sons: Perseides, Perses, Alcaeus, Heleus, Mestor, Sthenelus, and Electryon, and two daughters, Autochthoe and Gorgophone. Their descendants ruled Mycenae from Electryon down to Eurystheus, after whom Atreusattained the kingdom, and would also include the great hero Heracles.

Looking at just one of their children, we find numerous links to key Homeric figures:

In Greek mythology, Gorgophone (Greek: Γοργοφόνη) was a daughter of Perseus and Andromeda. Her name means "Gorgon Slayer", a tribute to her father who killed Medusa, the mortal Gorgon.

Gorgophone is a central figure in the history of Sparta, having been married to two kings, Oebalus of Laconia and Perieres of Messenia, and being considered the first woman to have married twice.. . . One of the sons of Oibalos and Gorgophone was Tyndareus, stepfather of Helen of Troy, Clytemnestra, Castor and Pollux, and another was Icarius, father of Odysseus's wife, Penelope. Thus, Perseus's descendants played a central role in the Homeric epics and the pre-history of Greece.