Perseus covered his back by standing up against a column and from this point of vantage turned upon his foes, checked their forward surge, and slew one after another. But there were too many of them, and only when he realized that valor alone would not avail him here did he resort to the last sure means at his disposal. “Since you force me to it,” he cried, “my old enemy shall help me! Let whatever friend I have here turn his head away!” With this he drew the Medusa’s head from the wallet he always wore slung across his shoulder and held it up to the nearest assailant. The man cast a rapid glance at the object before him and laughed in derision. “Go, find someone else to impress with your miracles,” he shouted. But even as he lifted his hand to throw the javelin, he turned to stone, his hand still raised in mid-air. And the same thing happened to one after another. When only two hundred were left, Perseus held the head of the Medusa so high that all could see it at once, and the whole two hundred stopped in their tracks and became rock. Not until then did Phineus feel a qualm at his unrighteous warfare. Right and left he saw nothing but statues, and when he called to his friends, no one answered. He touched the flesh of those nearest him with unbelieving fingers, but it had turned to marble! Then at last he succumbed to terror, and his defiance changed to confusion. “Only leave me my life,” he pleaded. “The bride and the realm shall be yours!” But in his sadness at the death of his new friends, Perseus was implacable. “Traitor,” he replied, “I shall found an enduring monument to you in the house of my parents-in-law,” and though Phineus tried to evade it, he was forced to look upon that awful head. The tears in his eyes stiffened to stone, and there he stood with cowardly mien, arms hanging at his sides, in the humble attitude of a servant.

And now Perseus could take home his beloved Andromeda. Long, radiant days lay in store for him, and he even found his mother Danae again. But he could not escape being the tool which brought disaster to his grandfather Acrisius, who, for fear of the oracle, had fled to an alien land, to the king of the Pelasgians. Here he was attending athletic contests, held on a certain festival day, when Perseus, bound on a voyage to Argos, arrived on the scene. He took part in the games and by unlucky chance struck Acrisius with the discus. When he knew what he had done, and who it was he had killed, he deeply mourned the dead, buried his grandfather beyond the confines of the city, and bartered the kingdom he had inherited. And now envious Fate stopped persecuting him. Andromeda bore him many beautiful sons, and in them their father’s glory lived on.

CREUSA AND ION

ERECHTHEUS, king of Athens, had a beautiful daughter named Creusa. Without her parents’ knowledge she had become the bride of Apollo and borne him a son whom, for fear of her father’s wrath, she hid in a basket and placed in the grotto where she and the sun-god had so often met secretly. Her hope was that the immortals would have pity on the child. In order that the newborn boy might not be without some token of his identity, she put upon him a necklace linked of small golden dragons, which she had worn as a girl. Apollo, whose divine insight revealed to him the birth of his son, did not want to betray his beloved nor fail to help the boy, so he turned to his brother Hermes, the messenger of the gods, for—since he was a go-between familiar to both heaven and earth—he could walk among men without attracting undue attention.

“Dear brother,” said Phoebus, “a mortal, the daughter of the king of Athens, has borne me a child and, for fear of her father, has hidden it in a grotto. Help me rescue my son! Take him to my oracle at Delphi in the basket in which you will find him, and with the linen in which he is wrapped, and lay him down on the threshold of the temple. The rest you may leave to me, for he is my own child, and I shall see to him.”

And Hermes, the winged god, sped to Athens, found the boy in the hiding-place Apollo had described, and carried him to Delphi in the basket woven of willow withes. There he set it down at the gates of the temple and raised the lid a little, so that the child might be seen easily. This he did by night.