chanced to catch a glimpse of her and had been petrified at the sight. Perseus, favored by Minerva and Mercury, set out against the Gorgon, and approached first the cave of the three Grææ:

There sat the crones that had the single eye,

Clad in blue sweeping cloak and snow-white gown;

While o'er their backs their straight white hair hung down

In long thin locks; dreadful their

Snatching the eye, Perseus compelled the Grææ, as the price of its restoration, to tell him how he might obtain the helmet of

1 William Morris, The Doom of King Acrisius, in The Earthly Paradise.

On to her breast, or shuddering shoulders white;
Or, falling down, the hideous things would light

Upon her feet, and crawling thence would twine
Their slimy folds about her ankles fine.1

This was Medusa. Her, while she was praying the gods to end her misery, or, as some say, while she was sleeping, Perseus ap

1 William Morris, The Doom of King Acrisius, in The Earthly Paradise.

? From Shelley's lines On the Medusa of Leonardo Da Vinci in the Florentine Gallery.

153. Perseus and Atlas. From the body of Medusa sprang the winged horse Pegasus, of whose rider, Bellerophon, we shall presently be informed.

After the slaughter of Medusa, Perseus, bearing with him the head of the Gorgon, flew far and wide, over land and sea. As night came on, he reached the western limit of the earth, and would gladly have rested till morning. Here was the realm of Atlas, whose bulk surpassed that of all other men. He was rich in flocks and herds, but his chief pride was his garden of the Hesperides, whose fruit was of gold, hanging from golden branches,

half hid with golden leaves. Perseus said to him, "I come as a guest. If thou holdest in honor illustrious descent, I claim Jupiter for my father; if mighty deeds, I plead the conquest of the Gorgon. I seek rest and food." But Atlas, remembering an ancient prophecy that had warned him against a son of Jove who should one day rob him of his golden apples, attempted to thrust the youth out. Whereupon Perseus, finding the giant too strong for him, held up the Gorgon's head. Atlas, with all his bulk, was changed into stone. His beard and hair became forests, his arms and shoulders cliffs, his head a summit, and his bones rocks. Each part increased in mass till the giant became the mountain upon whose shoulders rests heaven with all its stars.

FIG. 120. PERSEUS WITH
HEAD OF MEDUSA

154. Perseus and Andromeda. On his way back to Seriphus, the Gorgon-slayer arrived at the country of the Æthiopians, over whom Cepheus was king. His wife was Cassiopea

That starred Æthiope queen that strove

To set her beauty's praise above

The sea-nymphs, and their powers offended.1

These nymphs had consequently sent a sea monster to ravage the coast. To appease the deities, Cepheus was directed by the

1 Milton, Il Penseroso, l. 19.

oracle to devote his daughter Andromeda to the ravening maw of the prodigy. As Perseus looked down from his aërial height, he beheld the virgin chained to a rock. Drawing nearer he pitied, then comforted her, and sought the reason of her disgrace. At first from modesty she was silent; but when he repeated his questions, for fear she might be thought guilty of some offense which she dared not tell, she disclosed her name and that of her country, and her mother's pride of beauty. Before she had done speaking, a sound was heard upon the water, and the monster appeared. The virgin shrieked; the father and mother, who had now arrived, poured

forth lamentations and threw their arms about the victim. But the hero himself undertook to slay the monster, on condition that, if the maiden were rescued by his valor, she should be his reward. The parents consented. Perseus embraced his promised bride; then

Loosing his arms from her waist he flew upward, awaiting the sea beast.
Onward it came from the southward, as bulky and black as a galley,
Lazily coasting along, as the fish fled leaping before it;

Lazily breasting the ripple, and watching by sand bar and headland,
Listening for laughter of maidens at bleaching, or song of the fisher,
Children at play on the pebbles, or cattle that passed on the sand hills.
Rolling and dripping it came, where bedded in glistening purple
Cold on the cold seaweeds lay the long white sides of the maiden,
Trembling, her face in her hands, and her tresses afloat on the water.1

1 From Charles Kingsley's Andromeda.