Perseus was the son of Zeus and the mortal princess Danaë, the hero who slew the Gorgon Medusa and rescued the princess Andromeda from a sea-monster. He is one of the oldest of the Greek heroes, the legendary founder of Mycenae, and the great-grandfather of the heroes of the Trojan War, including Heracles and Helen of Troy. His story is the archetypal hero-quest: a divinely favored hero, an impossible task, divine helpers, magical weapons, the slaying of a monster, the rescue of a maiden, and a tragic end. The constellation Perseus bears his name.
Perseus is the slayer of Medusa, the rescuer of Andromeda, the founder of Mycenae, and one of the oldest of the Greek heroes. The standard biographical source is Apollodorus’ Bibliotheca 2.4.1–4.5; the Iliad (Book XIV) contains the famous verses in which the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (much older than the Iliad) credits Perseus’s great-grandmother with the lineage that leads to Helen of Troy; the Odyssey (Book XI) contains the prophecy by the ghost of Teiresias of Perseus’s role in the death of his grandfather Acrisius. This profile treats the myth, the killing of Medusa, the rescue of Andromeda, and the death of Perseus in that order.
The Birth and Early Life of Perseus
Perseus was the son of Zeus and the mortal princess Danaë, the daughter of King Acrisius of Argos. Acrisius had received a prophecy that he would be killed by the son of his daughter, so he locked Danaë in a bronze chamber to keep her from any man. Zeus, however, came to her in the form of a shower of gold, and she conceived Perseus.
When Acrisius discovered that Danaë had borne a child, he refused to believe that the father was Zeus. He locked Danaë and the infant Perseus in a chest and set them adrift on the sea. They drifted to the island of Serifos, where they were rescued by the fisherman Dictys. Dictys took them to his brother, King Polydectes, who raised Perseus as his foster son.
According to some traditions, the chest landed in Italy, and Danaë was cared for by a local fisherman. According to others, the chest landed on the island of Serifos, the most common version.
The Quest for Medusa
As Perseus grew to manhood, King Polydectes fell in love with his mother Danaë and wanted to marry her. Perseus opposed the match, so Polydectes devised a trick. He announced that he was going to marry the daughter of a friend, and he asked all the eligible young men of the island to bring him a gift of horses. Perseus had no horses and could not afford a gift, so he rashly offered to bring the king the head of the Gorgon Medusa, one of the most dangerous beings in the world.
Perseus set off on the quest, and the gods came to his aid. Athena gave him a polished bronze shield, which he could use as a mirror to look at Medusa without being turned to stone. Hermes gave him winged sandals to fly, a magical cap of invisibility, and a special curved sword, the harpe. Hades, the god of the underworld, also lent him his helm of darkness, which made the wearer invisible.
Perseus flew to the ends of the earth, where the three Gorgons lived. He found the Gorgons asleep, and using Athena’s shield as a mirror, he cut off Medusa’s head with a single stroke of his sword. From the blood of Medusa, two beings sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor, both conceived by Poseidon when he had raped Medusa in Athena’s temple.
Perseus put Medusa’s head in a special bag and flew away. The other two Gorgons, Stheno and Euryale, woke up and pursued him, but the cap of darkness made him invisible, and he escaped.
The Rescue of Andromeda
On his way back to Serifos, Perseus flew over the kingdom of Aethiopia (in some versions, Phoenicia or the land of the Philistines). He saw the princess Andromeda, the daughter of King Cepheus and Queen Cassiopeia, chained to a rock by the sea, about to be devoured by a sea-monster. The monster had been sent by Poseidon to punish Cassiopeia for her boast that she (or, in some versions, her daughter) was more beautiful than the Nereids.
Perseus fell in love with Andromeda at first sight, and he offered to kill the monster in exchange for her hand. Cepheus and Cassiopeia agreed, and Perseus killed the sea-monster, in some versions by showing it the head of Medusa and turning it to stone. He married Andromeda, and they had several children, including Perses, who became the ancestor of the Persians (in the Greek version of the myth), and Electryon, the grandfather of Heracles.
The wedding was disrupted by Phineus, Andromeda’s uncle and original fiancé, who claimed her as his bride. Perseus turned him and his followers to stone by showing them the Gorgon’s head.
The Return to Serifos
Perseus returned to Serifos with Andromeda and found that Polydectes had finally forced Danaë to marry him. Perseus went to the palace, where Polydectes was feasting with his friends. Perseus refused to give him the Gorgon’s head, and Polydectes attacked him. Perseus drew the head from the bag and turned Polydectes and all his friends to stone. He made Dictys, the fisherman who had saved his mother, the new king of Serifos.
Perseus then returned the magical weapons: the winged sandals and the cap of darkness to Hermes, and the Gorgon’s head to Athena, who mounted it on her aegis, where it continued to terrify the enemies of the gods.
The Founding of Mycenae
Perseus, with his wife Andromeda, traveled to the Peloponnese, where he founded the city of Mycenae. According to the myth, he was wandering in search of water when he saw a mushroom growing from the ground. He struck the mushroom with his sword, and water gushed forth. He named the city Mycenae after the mushroom (myces in Greek).
Perseus was unable to enter the city of Argos, his grandfather Acrisius’s kingdom, because of the prophecy that he would kill his grandfather. He exchanged kingdoms with Megapenthes, the king of Tiryns, and ruled Tiryns instead. But fate, as it always does in Greek myth, caught up with him.
The Death of Perseus
According to the prophecy, Perseus was destined to kill his grandfather Acrisius. The opportunity came when Perseus was competing in athletic games at Larissa. He threw a discus, and the wind carried it into the crowd, where it struck and killed an old man. The old man turned out to be Acrisius, who had come to the games.
Perseus was filled with grief at having killed his grandfather, and he refused to return to Argos. He went to Tiryns and ruled there for a time, and was eventually buried in the city. According to Pausanias, his tomb was at the head of the road leading to Mycenae.
The Children of Perseus
Perseus and Andromeda had several children:
- Perses, the ancestor of the Persians
- Electryon, the grandfather of Heracles and the father of Alcmene
- Sthenelus, the king of Mycenae who was the father of Eurystheus, the king who set Heracles the Twelve Labors
- Heleus, in some traditions
- Cassiopeia, in some traditions
- Gorgophone, who married two husbands in succession
The Legacy of Perseus
Perseus is the hero of the 1981 film Clash of the Titans and its 2010 remake, a recurring figure in the God of War franchise, and a mentor character in the Percy Jackson series. Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus with the Head of Medusa (1554, in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence) is one of the most-copied works of Renaissance sculpture. For the broader modern reception, see our guide to Greek mythology in modern culture.
A Note on Reading This Profile
A note on reading this profile. The Perseus of the Greek sources is a much darker figure than the Perseus of the modern popular reception. The Greek Perseus, in the older sources (Apollodorus 2.4.1–4.5), kills the Gorgon by beheading her in her sleep; in some versions, he uses a sickle, and the beheading is not the heroic act of the modern stories, but a kind of adultery and theft. The Greek readings of the myth are not the modern readings, and the reader should be careful about which tradition they are following.