Reader

TRITON Your monster of the deep, my dear Nereids, the one of you sent against Andromeda, the daughter of Cepheus, didn’t harm the girl, as you’ve been thinking it would, but is now dead itself. NEREIDS Who killed it, Triton? Did Cepheus set the girl there like a bait, and then attack and kill it, after lying in wait for it with a large force? TRITON No. But I imagine, Iphianassa, you all know what happened to Perseus, Danae’s child, whom his mother’s father threw into the sea in a chest with his mother, and you saved out out of pity. IPHIANASSA I know whom you mean. He must be a young man by now, and a very fine handsome fellow. TRITON It was he who killed the monster. IPHIANASSA Why, Triton? He shouldn’t have paid us in this coin for saving him.

TRITON I’ll tell you everything, just as it happened. He was sent against the Gorgons, to carry out a task for the king. Polydectes, king of Seriphos, who wished to be rid of Perseus and marry Danae. But when he reached Libya— IPHIANASSA How did he do it, Triton? By himself? Did he take others to help him? Otherwise it’s a difficult journey. TRITON He went through the air. Athena had given him wings on his feet. Well, when he’d reached where they lived, they must all have been asleep, and Perseus cut off Medusa’s head and flew away. IPHIANASSA How could he see? They are not for the eye to behold. Anyone who sees them won’t see anything afterwards. TRITON Athena held up her shield—I heard him describe it to Andromeda and later to Cepheus—and let him see the reflection of Medusa on that bright shield as though on a mirror; then, looking at the reflection, he caught her hair in his left hand, and holding his scimitar in his right, cut off her head, and flew away before her sisters woke up.

TRITON

When he was at the Ethiopian shore here, and now flying low, he saw Andromeda lying fastened to a projecting rock—ye gods, what a beautiful sight she was!—with her hair let down, but largely uncovered from the breasts downwards. At first he pitied her fate and asked the reason for her punishment, but little by little he succumbed to love, and decided to help, since she had to be saved. So when the monster came—a fearsome sight it was too!—to gulp her down, the young man hovered above it with his scimitar unsheathed, and, striking with one hand, showed it the Gorgon with the other, and turned it into stone. At one and the same time was the monster killed, and most of it, all of it that faced Medusa, petrified. Then Perseus undid the maiden’s chains, and supported her with his hand as she tip-toed down from the slippery rock. Now he’s marrying her in Cepheus’ palace and will take her away to Argos, so that, instead of dying, she’s come by an uncommonly good marriage.

IPHIANASSA I, for one, am not sorry to hear it. What harm did the girl do to us, if her mother was always boasting and claiming to be more beautiful than we are? DORIS Well that way as a mother she would have suffered through her daughter. IPHIANASSA Let’s forget all that, Doris, if a barbarian woman’s talk has been too big. She’s paid us penalty enough by being frightened for her daughter. So let’s accept the marriage with a good grace.