The Perseus Digital Library Project recently received a $285,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to use government supercomputers to research methods of automatically ...
Perseus, son of Zeus, was a Greek hero from Argos. He is best remembered for killing Medusa, rescuing Andromeda, and founding the city of Mycenae.
Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia, was a beautiful princess of Ethiopia. Offered up as a sacrifice to Poseidon as punishment for her mother’s foolish boasts, Andromeda was rescued from death by Perseus, who took her back to Greece to be his queen.
Medusa, one of the three monstrous Gorgons, was a snake-haired female who turned anybody who looked upon her to stone. She was finally killed by the hero Perseus, who used her severed head as a weapon against his enemies.
Danae, daughter of Acrisius, was a princess of Argos who was imprisoned by her own father. After Zeus seduced her as a shower of gold dust, she gave birth to the hero Perseus. Acrisius locked Danae and her child in a chest and threw it into the sea, but they were ultimately rescued by a fisherman in Seriphos.
The Gorgons were three monstrous sisters who lived at the edge of the world; they are perhaps best remembered for their snake hair and fearsome appearance. Two of the Gorgons were immortal, but the third—Medusa—was mortal and eventually slain by the hero Perseus.
Perseus, however, was no ordinary man: he was the son of Zeus himself, and the gods rallied to help him defeat his foe. But Perseus also needed the help of the Graeae—a difficult thing to obtain, given that Medusa was their sister. There are different versions of what Perseus needed from the Graeae.