Gods, Men and Monsters. And Snakes... Oh, and Women!

   For centuries, it seems, the defining characteristic of a gorgon was actually her tusks. This two-and-a-half-thousand year old antefix from the island of Thasos for example doesn't even bother with snakes in the hair. I hadn't realised not having snakes in the hair was an option. I wish I'd known that when I was nine.

 I just assumed you really had to commit to the snakes. I also thought you had to give a gorgon breasts, which as a nine-year-old I would definitely have found harder to draw than snakes; but the Medusa in Clash of the Titans had breasts, and the Medusa on the front cover of my school's copy of Gods, Men and Monsters clearly had breasts, so in the best traditions of Classical Sculpture, room was made. And speaking of grotesque misrepresentations of women from Greek Mythology: my friend and teacher Natalie Haynes has a new book out to set the record straight called Pandora's Jar, which she talks about on a very fun Book Shambles HERE! 

 Here's another misrepresentation: the Pythia at Delphi, showing a lot less skin than Medusa, and surrounded by big, scary Dangermouse eyes in tunnels. I've clearly misunderstood "Pythia" to mean "half-lady-half-python" which it didn't at all. It just meant "priestess". Still it gave me a chance to draw more snakes. And here are more: the giant cobra that apparently guards the Golden Fleece, facing Jason in his Speedos over on the right...

 And one of the heads of the magic deity Hecate up in the centre, whom I have also given hairy legs, knee windows and a nighty. On the bottom left is Medea, single-handedly taking on the bronze giant Talos. Not Jason at all. I'd forgotten this, but Natalie mentions it in the Shambles so I'm happy to see this was also the version I was taught. And fuck it, here's a slime monster.

 Now a plug: On Friday I'll be one of seventy-two actors reading The Odyssey aloud in its entirety on the Jermyn Street Theatre's live stream here. I'll be on around 4pm, I think (after Mark Corrigan's mum!) telling of Odysseus' conversations with ghosts in Hades, including the ghost of Agamemnon who sacrificed his own daughter Iphigenia and was in turn murdered by his wife Clytemnestra. "She has poured down shame on her own head," Agamemnon moans, "and on all other women, even good ones." The italics are mine, but I'll be the one reading it so they're staying. Natalie also talks about Agamemnon. She says her next book will be a novel about Medusa. I can't wait.