These modern or mediaeval descriptions of the Gorgons, though they are by no means consistent one with another, offer four main aspects in which the modern Gorgon may be compared with the creatures of ancient mythology. Her face is terrible either in its surpassing loveliness or in its overwhelming hideousness. She possesses the gift of entrancing melody. She is voluptuous. She dwells in the sea.
The first aspect may be derived directly from the ancient conception of the Gorgons. The word Γοργώ itself is a name formed from the adjective γοργός and means simply ‘fierce’ or ‘terrible’ in look, without implying anything of beauty or the opposite; while of Medusa, the Gorgon _par excellence_, tradition relates that once she was a beautiful maiden beloved of Poseidon, and that it was only through the wrath of Athena that her hair was changed into writhing snakes and her loveliness lost in horror. Moreover in ancient works of art the representation of the Gorgon’s head varies from a type of cruel beauty to a grinning mask. But it is also possible that the idea of their beauty is due to a confusion of Gorgons with Sirens, from whom, as we shall see, certain traits have certainly been borrowed.
These traits are the two next aspects of the modern Gorgons which we have to consider, the sweetness of their singing and their voluptuousness. These were the essential qualities of the Sirens, and have undoubtedly been transferred to the Gorgons no less than to the Lamia of the Sea[499].
Possibly also from the same source comes the mixed shape, half woman and half fish, in which the Gorgon is now pourtrayed. The Sirens were indeed originally terrestrial, dwelling in a meadow near the sea, yet not venturing in the deep themselves, but luring men to shipwreck on the coast by the spell of their song; and an echo perhaps of this conception, though the Sirens themselves are no longer known, lives on in a folk-song which pictures the enchantment of a maiden’s love-song wafted to seafarers’ ears from off the shore: ‘Thereby a ship was passing with sails outspread. Sailors that hearken to that voice and look upon such beauty, forget their sails and forsake their oars; they cannot voyage any more; they know not how to set sail[500].’ But by the sixth century[501] the traditional habitat of the Sirens had changed. ‘The Sirens,’ says an anonymous work on monsters and great beasts, ‘are mermaids, who by their exceeding beauty and winning song ensnare mariners; from the head to the navel they are of human and maidenly form, but they have the scaly tails of fishes[502].’ This description establishes an unquestionable connexion between the Sirens and the modern Gorgons.