Costumes Directory - Medusa in Patriarchal Greece

Medusa in Patriarchal Greece

Patriarchy began in the bronze and Iron Age of first millennia Greece. In this mind the world is no longer born of a sacred mother deity but from a supreme father. Earth and heaven are split eternally. In myth heroes and gods are created to dominate and subjugate the female and natural forces over and over again in various forms, the most common of them being gigantic snakes and serpent monsters. A prime example of this is the serpent dragon called Eurinaes who is overpowered by Apollo.

The god Apollo represents the rising patriarchy and the contemporary male interests. The Eurinaes is a dynamic female force representing the old, matrifocal civilizations, and the female values that pre-date the Olympian gods. The Eurinaes is subordinated, mastered and tamed by Apollo as she is forced to leave the sanctuary so he can establish his shrine at the temple of Delphi. Through domination the hero constantly conquers the cyclical pattern of nature and tries to make it linear. He tames the wild feminine forces and makes women conform to male-servicing gender roles.

Soon the holy image of the Gorgon Medusa as an ancient symbol of female power and wisdom became totally unacceptable. By the 6th c. BC her rites were disrupted, her sanctuaries invaded, the sacred groves were cut down, her priestesses were violated and her image defiled. Her images, (as well as women), are mastered and domesticated. Her mask was used on elaborate Etruscan lantern fixtures and stoves, probably for her relation to alchemical fire. Although the mask was widely used by country-folk, her female wisdom, natural forces, powers of creativity, destruction and regeneration were demonized and made evil. She was made into a horrid, ugly monster, (most monsters were female or born of the Earth). Her most popular image became that of her defeat in the Athenian myth of Perseus.

In Archaic art the moment in the story most often depicted is the chase after the beheading, when Perseus flees with the severed head pursued by the Medusas' Gorgon sisters. In 550-450 BC, painted mainly in early and proto-attic black figure vases was the image of the hero sneaking up on his victim while she sleeps or cutting her throat while the gods look on. On these she is represented as a hideous snaky monster. At his time the remaining rituals of Medusa were allowed only for military function and her image was reserved for armor, on the breat plate or on their shield.