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Gorgo and the Origins of Fear

Author(s): Thalia Feldman
Source: Arion, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Autumn, 1965), pp. 484-494
Published by: Trustees of Boston University
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GORGO AND THE ORIGINS OF FEAR

Thalia Feldman

In an age as analytical as
I
ours is one of the areas under constant
myth larger scrutiny. Just
as we our to ourselves as individuals,
probe psyches comprehend
we our modern to understand the collective wishes,
explore myths
fantasies, and fears of our society. Modern myth and social

psychologists keep close company, like weather and meteorolo

gists plotting and gauging shifts in temperature and new direc
tions of the wind. Such trends inmodern myth are usually docu
mented in films, novels and, most in cartoons and
simplistically,
comic books. of theme are often swift but mean
Changes always
even when are most au courant are at once
ingful; they they
eternal.
No one will have much difficulty in accepting the fact, for
example, that in his day during World War II, Superman of the
comic books was as the G.I. hero. Un
singularly appropriate
encumbered by army pack, flying about at will in his red cape,
he was able to bullets, hostile automobiles, any
stop aggressive
force by merely lifting his hand. Superman the Invulnerable was
the noble hero who was always righting wrong, and his notions of
sex were on the level of Robin Hood's, or of his countless boy
readers in uniform away from home for the first time. Trains,
lunch-counters, all public places rustled with the sad litter of
comics, the matter of the who were
Superman reading young
afraid and only wanted to stay alive. Today the image has shifted,
but somewhat, to 007. Rather more mature in age
only Agent
and conception, Everyman's hero is now truly an Agent, literally
not the wish to stay alive
Actor-Doer-Operator, representing only
but to be in control of and enjoy contemporary affluence. The
small boy's invulnerability, expressed by a raised hand, depends
now on a automobile the
super-charged employing gadgeteer's
dream of protection. But the automobile, like the upraised hand,
is no more than a wishful extension of the self. And as for the
sex-life of 007?it is again part of the wish to stay alive, actively.
This is simplistic analysis, but illustrating certain basic rules for
myth: the heroes, their behavior, and the themes of Life and
Death are eternal; the costumes, the and man
only background
ners and tastes are The of most
contemporary. ground-rules
have been much the same, even ancient
myths always myths.
The old familiar Greek stories known to every child, like the
Perseus and the
Legend of Jason and the Golden Fleece, and of

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 Thalia Feldman 485

Gorgon-head, these too arose swiftly in their day and enjoyed a

a limited time. We tend to
complex, rapid development within
take a monolithic, stagnant view of these old myths, ignoring the
fact that they too were charged into sudden being, like Superman,
the intense of a time and circumstance.
by pressures particular
They were developed further, however, and had a longer period
of survival because, in were taken over
part, they by genuine
artists and not cartoonists. Moreover, as circumstances changed,
the hero was not totally dropped for another, but new episodes
were added for a time which these
encompassed changes.
Normally it is assumed that popular old myths like the Gorgo
are ancient, even in times.
legend very originating prehistoric
And, in part they do. But it simply goes against habit, so to speak,
to have to reorient oneself to the idea of the Perseus myth as a
whole as new as the Iliad, and not of time immemorial.
being
Yet there ismuch evidence to that effect as I tried to demonstrate
several years ago in an piece.1 The evidence from
archaeological
the sources of the Perseus-Gorgo show most con
early myth
a late incep
sistently and strikingly that most of this legend had
tion, in fact the 8th and 7th centuries b.c.
The evidence in summary is this: the gorgoneion, which is the
bodiless head, is first represented inworks of the early 7th c. and,
apparently, antedated representations of the full-bodied Gorgo.
It is in Corinthian painting during the course of that century that
the iconography of Gorgo evolves, with several false starts and
to the
fumblings until the whole creature is finally conceptualized
last detail. But not until 580 B.c. is the Gorgo-Medusa complete
and at her acme, on the pediment of the Temple of Artemis at
There she is in her characteristic bent-knee wear
Corcyra. pose,
ing her snake-girdled chiton, her winged sandals and the great
shoulder-wings beneath which are sheltered both her off-spring
by Poseidon, the winged colt Pegasos, and Chrysaor, the youth
"of the golden sword." Most typical of her is the face with its
snaky locks, huge distended mouth, pendent tongue and the
However, it had taken more than a century
"gorgon-glaring" eyes.
of experiments in and in terra cotta before all these features
paint
and atttributes were realized one one.
by
Yet, in spite of that evidence one may still feel inclined to shrug
these scrawls on little vases and even architectural decora
away
tions. Besides, the evidence still goes against beliefs about myth
which are so seem almost "instinctive."
thoroughly grounded they
One just knows in one's bones that Gorgo is an evil thing of great
Moreover, it seems not to make sense that the
antiquity. quite
kind of men of the 7th century and even of the 6th, who were
the of the the supreme urban achieve
marking beginnings polis,
ment of the Greeks and all that it meant, would so as to
regress
at the very same time so a creature.
produce primitive
Yet, Homer himself seems to corroborate the contemporary

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486 GORGO AND THE ORIGINS OF FEAR

evidence as well. After an of the two

archaeological analysis epics
one is forced to confess that it is odd that although the two
protagonists are cited, they are never mentioned either together
or in reference to their mutual interaction which forms the core
of their myth, namely Perseus' beheading of Gorgo. Instead, both
are evoked and cursorily as though their
figures independently
legend had not been quite yet consummated. Moreover, Homer
barely treats of Perseus, only stating his distinguished parentage
from Zeus and Danae (II. 14. 319), and in a stock epithet, that
the hero was "preeminent above all warriors" (II. 19. 116). Thus
Perseus as no different from a score of brave other
emerges yet
wise undifferentiated, epic young men of royal blood. Did we not
know already, as informed by later writers such as Hesiod, that
this son of Zeus and Danae was the same one who slew we
Gorgo,
might regard this "Perseus" of the Iliad as just another fine
more epic dimension than that "Perseus" of
sounding name, of no
the Odyssey who was the well-bred son of Nestor (Od. 3. 414,
444).
There is no such ambiguity in the Homeric references to Gorgo
and the gorgoneion even though these indicate no knowledge of
her vanquisher. Here, the gorgoneion especially seems more like
the familiar menacing image. But gradually, as we examine the
references critically, our suspicions are aroused by the limited
specific detail used in describing her. In Iliad 8. 349, in describing
Hektor raging in battle the poet focuses on the devastating eyes
of Gorgo:2
But Hektor wheeled this way and that his fair-maned horses
and his eyes were as the eyes of the Gorgon or of Ares,
destroyer of men [brotoloigou].
The adjective brotoloigos is usually translated as bane or plague
of mortals. But it ismisleading to regard it as denoting destruction
alone, for it can also mean an act of overt as
by plague aggression
well, inwarfare or as in the destruction of ships. Hence brotoloigos
suggests not only wasting sickness but also sudden disintegration
which is an effect one would expect of Ares, God of War. There
fore, as the poet implies, by the power of their eyes Gorgo and
Ares unnerve men and make them In fact, we also find
collapse.
two or three adjectives which connote this power of Gorgo such
as gorgopis, meaning gorgon-glaring, in Euripides especially.
Also, in a related vein, it has long been noted that such gorgon
are quite close to the primitive concept of the
glaring references
Evil Eye.
The terrible power of her eyes is reiterated by Homer in his
description of the shield of Agamemnon. In this passage (II. 11.
36) although the poet speaks of Gorgo, the full figure presumably,
he is again concerned only with the head:
And thereon was set as a crown, of
Gorgo, grim aspect,
glaring terribly, and about her were Terror and Fear.

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 Thalia Feldman 487

In the Greek, Homer is speaking of her as Gorgo blosuropis, which

connotes more than of The means
merely "grim aspect." opis face
or eye, while blosuros means literally shaggy or bristly-haired,
an adjective which in ancient literature is used in reference to
to women. Hence the head of Gorgo
shaggy Ajax, to lions, and
not only glares fearfully, it is also shaggy-maned like an animal.
Thus the hair is part of her initial portrait and remains integral to
her even when, the locks were converted
iconography eventually,
to the characteristic writhing snakes. Parallel to this description
on the shield of Agamemnon is the one of the gorgoneion that
filled the center of the aegis of the warrior-goddess Athena, the
loose whose was more
goat-skin garment appearance devastating
than any body-armor or weapon (II. 5. 741 ) :
And across her shoulders she threw the betasselled, terrible
aegis, all about which Terror hangs like a garland,
and Hatred is there, and Battle Strength, and heart-freezing
Onslaught
and thereon is set....
We continue:
?V 8c re Topye?rj Ke<f>aXrj Sctvoto weX?pov,
re re . . .
8ewr? apepSvrj

"on it the Gorgo-head of the fearful prodigy,

fearful and terrible ..."
The last two adjectives, dein? te smerdn?, modify the head, not
the prodigy. In short, Homer is not speaking of Gorgo-Medusa
herself or of one of her sister-Gorgons, but of a gorgoneion, a
head without a body which was indeed a "fearful prodigy" and as
Homer reiterates, "fearful and From this we
terrifying." passage
grasp the quintessential nature, if not the specific features, of this
bodiless head: fearful and aggressive, its immediate peers Terror,
Hatred, Battle-Strength, Onslaught, and the rest. By his choice of
Homer thrusts at his readers the nature of that Terror.
adjectives
The deine denotes that the gorgoneion is truly fearful or wonder
ful, like the Latin monstrum, something to be pointed at in won
der and horror. The second smerdn?, is more
adjective, significant
meaning terrible to look at, terrible to hear. Its root is also prob
ably cognate with the Sanskrit mardati, to crush or crumble, so
that all in all, the epithet might best be translated as blasting,
denoting both noise and smashing. Fearful noise is of the essence
of the nature of this head as is its terrifying appearance, both of
which have the to blast men. In addition, as was demon
power
strated in the former article, the etymology of the name Gorgo
vividly bears out Homer's pointed epithets, especially as they
pertain to noise. Its root which in Sanskrit appears as garg and
occurs in numerous forms in
Indo-European languages, is defined
as a sound, sometimes human, sometimes ani
gwrgfing, guttural
mal, closest to the grrr of a beast. From her
perhaps growling

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488 GORGO AND THE ORIGINS OF FEAR

earliest illustrations we find also that Gorgo's mouth is always

open wide, and indeed, she was not to close it for centuries. At
the heart of Gorgo's myth was this blasting, grrrowling roar, a
sonant terrorism around which was enfolded the gorgoneion, The
Blasting Thing, a head to give the cry substance. In due time
there gradually was attached to it a Gorgo, A Blaster or Roarer,
a body to give the
thing mobility and dramatic action.
The gorgoneion or Gorgo evoked by all this, however, is not
yet graphic and visual, lending itself to ready illustration; it is
and emotive, an effect rather than an
literary producing image.
Moreover, nowhere in Homer is there any reference to the familiar

snaky locks or girdle, to the great wings on her shoulders, and to

the small pair on her boots. Nowhere, in short, is there any visual
conception of a body. From where did these elements and at
tributes come therefore? Who can tell? We can, perhaps, derive
some inkling ifwe take note of an arresting description a few lines
beyond the aforementioned gorgoneion on the shield of Agamem
non. In it Agamemnon continues to don his war-gear, including
his silver shield-strap:
And thereon writhed a serpent of cyme [cobalt blue], that
had three heads turned this way and that, growing from one
neck. And upon his head he set his helmet with two horns
and with bosses four, with horse hair crest, and terribly did
the plume nod from above.
It is remarkable indeed, that soon after the of this
composition
passage the gorgoneion image itself began to appear and be
graphically detailed with some of these very elements.3 It, too,
had elaborate hair, many-headed snakes turning this way and
that, growing fro mher neck and head; the earliest gorgoneia
had, in fact, just such horns and bosses, and all were fearful and
marvellous. Is it possible that some quick, artistic mind took the
suggestive elements from this very passage and drew a specific,
graphic image from it?the gorgoneion?
The analysis of the earliest source material seems to indicate
that the image of the gorgoneion with the characteristic snaky
locks, the wide-mouthed grimace, pendent tongue, and glaring
eyes is a late one, of early 7th century invention. On the other
hand, the idea of a gorgoneion, a bodiless head of fright, is very
old. So at least the etymological interpretation of her name would
convey.4 Integral to the idea is her devastating glare, her fearful
and animaloid As such, her sources are
outcry, shaggy, visage.
and earlier; her are found the
proto-Indo-European counterparts
world over in the countless masks of primitive peoples for whom
function, in as fearsome used to fend
they part, apotropaia, things
off harm or evil.5 Among the Greeks of the 7th century and later,
the gorgoneion's function was chiefly in that capacity so that she
was used to architecture, important
extensively protect temple
domestic furnishings, the coinage of several
private dwellings,

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 Thalia Feldman 489

states, individual seals, accoutrements, and whatever

personal
else of value it was felt that evil powers might harm.
There could hardly be a more generally primitive beginning for
this fearful head. But there was more to it than that. There are
indications, based on a reading of Odyssey 11. 634 ff., that Gorgo
and her head have their source not only in man's prehistoric
as
beginnings but also from within his early infantile experiences
an individual. Let it only be simply stated, first, that it has been
demonstrated that the infant, both in the process of birth and in
the subsequent period, manifestly experiences considerable dis
comfort. Some psychologists believe therefore that because the
infant is not able to grasp the predicament intellectually, every
as
discomfort is regarded unconsciously though it were being
inflicted on him by hostile forces.6 It is in this condition, of
persecutory that fears of unknown, forces
anxiety, malignant
arise and may remain with him all his life. Moreover, it seems
likely that it is in this stage that infantilism and primitivism
can be co-related. Primitive man does not seem to this
outgrow
stage in some cultures, and all, at the beginning, universally
suffer from fears of unknown, forces. Primitive man
malignant
normally spends much of his short life pacifying or at least
working out a modus vivendi with such preying fears, frequently,
in part, by devising apotropaia which he can control and use as
counterforces. But it is a mistake to carry this
correspondence
between primitivism and infantilism too far, especially if one
regards it as the total answer. Yet to a modest degree these two
main sources of man's are woven
experience inextricably together
and continue to affect him.
There is an indication, moreover, that this fear of a dismem
bered head has a third source, a sub-human one even.
possible
Among the experiments conducted at the Yerkes Laboratory of
Primate Biology attempts were made to ascertain what it is that
fear.7 Of the materials
chimpanzees, specifically, experimental
utilized, first, such as
including, non-primate objects pictures,
then snakes, cloth etc., and a third category
rubber-dogs, bugs,
of primate objects either whole or dismembered, it was the last
objects which evoked a markedly higher response of fear. The
conclusions were so as to be a human
positive quite significant:
head from a the severed head of a monkey, and
store-dummy,
most of all, the sight of a monkey's skull aroused the greatest
Great fear was evidenced when even the eye and eye
panic. only
brow of the dummy was displayed. Yet when a live person sat
immobile with only his head exposed, the subject exhibited only
and We are certain, therefore, that
suspicion curiosity. reasonably
among the primates probably the deepest and most fundamental
fear of all is that of dismemberment, particularly of the severing
of the head. Whether we link man directly to the apes, or allow at
least that he had in some respects a parallel evolution, how can

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490 GORGO AND THE ORIGINS OF FEAR

we not believe that he too has a similar

deep anxiety? The forma
tion of masks would seem to have a long history, and indeed,
would seem to a of man's
represent vitally necessary part process
of toward rationalism. To cope with it is necessary
fear at
growth
times to reconstruct or reconstitute it and see what makes it work.

Odysseus, at least, would seem in the following passage to give

a total response to that at
long history. When he has wandered
length in the Underworld and even though he expressly yearns to
see more, something causes him to flee with extraordinary
abrupt
ness as if suddenly at the end of his nerve:
And I should have seen yet others of the men of former
times, whom I was fain to behold, even Theseus and Peiri
thous, glorious children of the gods, but ere that the myriad
tribes of the dead came thronging up with a wondrous cry,
and pale fear seized me, lest August Persephone might send
forth upon me from out the house of Hades the head of the
that awful monster.
Gorgon,
At this, the mighty Odysseus, who undaunted had confronted
one runs as if from
anguished shade after another, turns tail and
a of his childhood. Which is what he is doing.
bogey precisely
In her Underworld aspect Gorgo evoked the most primitive fears
of the kind that men have dreaded since earliest times. To the
ancient Greek the Underworld was full of other clamorous bogeys
as well, such as Mormo, Baubo and Gello, who have been recog
nized as various of
onomatopoetic personifications terrifying
sounds.8 The name Mormo means like water
murmuring, boiling
or a or It is also to formido, the Latin
growling roaring. cognate
horror, and both in fact are also used to denote Fear. Mormo
at times connotes specifically the fears of children, as when
Xenophon in his Hellenica (4. 4. 17) states that certain fighters
of Mantineia were mocked by their Spartan allies for having run
from the field "like little boys from bogeys," "h?sper mormonas
Gello, like Mormo, is an associate of Hekate in the
paidaria."
Underworld and is differentiated by Sappho (frg. 178(61) as the
spirit who snatches away new-born babes. Etymologically, Gello
is cognate to our English ghoul, a grave-robbing spirit. Finally,
Baubo, whose name means a as of a hound, was
literally baying,
respectable or fearful enough to be accorded a cult on the island
of Paros, which was linked with Demeter and Kore, who wedded
Pluto. Thus Baubo's Underworld background is attested to. In
modern Greek, Baubo, pronounced Bah-bo?, is the bogey non
pareil invoked by every mother against her naughty child. It is
she, most likely, who has come echoing down to us in English,
still vivid in our exclamation BOO! a reverberation from
Again,
our both and infantile.
past, prehistoric
It should not surprise anyone that Odysseus, after having
steeled himself to converse with one ghost after another, suddenly
fearful of even merrier company such as the head of Gorgo, bolts

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 Thalia Feldman 491

like a schoolboy alone in the cemetery at midnight. Homer did

not have to spell all this out as we have had to for he could rely
on his audience to understand his and
contemporary meaning
respond with the shudders of childhood. On the other hand we
a mature person and a man's man like
might well ask why
Odysseus should have to fear such bogeys? It is when we con
sider the total image of that hero in his epic that we realize that
Homer as the ancient of man as
shaped Odysseus archetype
Mensch. It is part of his genius that he recognized how in such an
image there must be somewhere, however fleetingly, the Small
Boy. In what better place to display that side of him than in
Hades before whose creatures all men are are as children?
helpless
Moreover, anyone with the dramatic sense of
incomparable
Homer understood how his listeners had to be pulled, along with
the hero, out of that scene of morbidity. So he gave them all,
and audience, a dream-censor so horrible that it
protagonist
awakened them with a shudder of relief, and the Passage to the
Underworld was finished.
Although Homer does not refer to other bogeys besides Gorgo,
it is reasonable to that for most Greeks,
suppose pre-Homeric
especially, the Underworld was peopled not only by the shades of
the dead, heroic and otherwise, but by these phantasmagoric
creatures. In addition, these popular beliefs continued for a long
time, ifwe are to believe the attacks which later philosophers, the
Stoic as well as the Epicurean, vented on them.9 In the light of
the long history of intense popular belief in such creatures of
Hades, the Homeric references seem very mild indeed. It comes
as a surprise, therefore, to find that the philosophers in fact re
Homer as the foremost teacher of the
garded ignorant, super
stitious in such matters. Yet, on the the modern
populace contrary,
reader ismore than ready to come away believing, though unable
to prove, that itwas the poet himself who chose to expunge such
references to other even as Shades. Homer have sent
bogeys, may
his Odysseus to the extremities of the Upper World, which lay
well beyond Greece, to encounter Scyllas and Cyclops, but in the
Greek Hades as in the homeland proper, he would seem reluctant
to admit creatures. Civilized and
occupancy by supernatural
cultivated men, Greeks of the kind he, as their teacher, hoped to
cultivate, were not to rub elbows with barbaroi or monsters even
in Hades. Only Gorgo herself, who like the Furies was soon to
undergo taming by intellectuals and artists, was dramatically
kept in the poem as part of the primordial past, both cultural and
psychic.
The Gorgo of Odysseus then, was but another one of those
personalities that haunted the Underworld, such as Mormo, Gello,
Baubo as well as Lamia and and who, in turn, were all
Empousa,
identified with the best known of them, Hekate, the arch-daimon
of their realm. Surely, however, it is of considerable significance

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 492 GORGO AND THE ORIGINS OF FEAR

for our understanding of Greek thought to grasp clearly that all

these unpleasant creatures of childhood were female. In fact
practically all the supernatural monsters and evil creatures of the
Upper World as well were of that gender, such as the Sirens, the
Harpies, Scylla, Charybdis et al.10 To grasp something of what
this implies we need only contrast the concept of Hell in Christian
times. The arch-demon there is Satan who is as male as God the
Father.11 It should come as no surprise that the chief deity and
the satanic hosts will be of the same In the same a
gender. way,
female Hekate and attendants in the Underworld are
entirely
consistent with the concept of the Great Mother Goddess Figure,
or rather,
simply the Great Mother Figure who may or may not
have been actively worshipped, but seems to have dominated the
Eastern Mediterranean world from very times. In contrast
early
to them Pluto is a late-comer to Greek society, as indeed he was,
he and his brother Poseidon, and even Zeus arrived only with the
Hellenes.12 Thus it appears that whichever gender is dominant in
a that also seems to have the power to haunt
given society gender
and terrorize not only in the other world but also in the dream
world. Studies being made at the present time on themes of night
mare of individuals seem to indicate that the contemporary
central in these is a male What
aggressor virtually always image.13
Homer seems to be suppressing then, in
excluding all of Gorgo's
companions from Hades, is not only primitivism but one con
trolled by the female element. He will no longer acknowledge a
female-centered Greek world even though most of his com
patriots are still in the spell of female bogeys of the Underworld,
and indeed, will continue to be so for some time.
Such was the social temper of the times inwhich Gorgo herself
arose as a defined She was evoked from a
clearly personality.
of sources, from elements very and ancient, from
variety primitive
elements very deep in the infantile psyche, and from others of a
and immediate social crisis. She as a
particular began menacing,
an animaloid outcry, and a devastating
shaggy, feline head, look
which came more and more to have the to turn men to
power
stone, to castrate, in effect. To control her power it was necessary
in turn to endow her with the body of a woman and to cut off her
head, the source of the danger. For that purpose, by the 8th
century a myth began to be invented and a hero devised by the
name of "Perseus," for his name means "The Cutter."14
literally,
Why this myth was created and rapidly evolved in the 8th-6th
centuries and why it took on the particular aspect it did of male
and female conflict?that is a very large question and requires a
amount of to to answer. Let me indicate
large space attempt only
that something more is involved than changing beliefs in Mother
Goddess figures and in the rise of the Polis. Although these re
ligious, pofitical, and economic factors left a very deep mark on
this myth, the male and female conflict was probably more im

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 Thalia Feldman 493

mediately conditioned by changes in the family structure. Myth

is a reflection of the total growth process of a society within a
given, limited period, and itmay range thus from attitudes toward
the mother to the Mother Goddess and all of life in between. To
track it down in all its aspects becomes more than an exercise in
social history and psychology; it is to experience something of
the creative act of poesis itself.

NOTES

1AI A 58
( 1954) pp. 209-221, published under the name of Thalia
Phillies Howe. The present article is part of a book, Back
formcoming
for Myth, an of the of the Perseus-Gorgo
ground analysis development
myth.
2AU the translations from Homer are in the main
by A. T. Murray,
L b edition, with some minor for the sake of literalness.
changes
3H. Payne Necrocorinthia (Oxford 1931) Figs. 23 A-C. J. Friis
Johansen Les vases sicyoniens (Paris, Copenhagen 1923) pll. 31; 34,2;
39; 41,5.
4Greek a
and the Romance have of forms to
languages multiplicity
designate gargling, including the amusing French variation, gargotage,
badly cooked food that sticks in the throat. English also includes
a direct descendant of and pursuing her function as
gargoyle, Gorgo
on Christian also gorge (as noun and verb);
apotropaism temples;
gorget; gurgle. Note also Rabelais' ch. 7, J. Boulenger (Paris
Gargantua
1955) ?d. Gallimard, p. 25, note 2, on the naming of Gargantua, "Il

signifie grand gorge, c'est-?-dire goinfre et corre

[guzzler, gorger],
spond ? Grandgousier [G's father]." And, Sh. As You Like It 3.2.238.
5W. Wundt
V?lkerpsychologie (Leipzig 1909) 3, pp. 212ff. Regard
ing only Gorgo, A. in Roscher Lex. d. gr. u. ram.
Furtw?ngler Myth.
I. 2, pp. 1703 ff., back in 1884 had asserted that the idea of her pre
ceded her representation.

6Melanie Klein Our Adult World New York

( 1963) p. 2 and passim.
7D. Hebb "On the Nature of Fear"
Psych. Rev. 53 ( 1954) pp. 259
276; also, "Emotion in Man and Animal" ibid. 88-106.
pp.
*E. Rhode
Psyche (London 1950) II, Appendix 6, pp. 593 ff.
9Plutarch Moralia XIV
(1105 AB). Lucian De Luctu 2 to c.9.
10 The as male,
Cyclops,
is almost the only exception that comes to
mind, there is a curiously
yet suspect female side to his character. His
habit may be attributable to mariners' encounters with
man-eating
cannibals [but just where in the ancient Greek world??], as some would
have it. But it
might be more related to Melanie Klein's concept
readily
of the "devouring mother," a common infantile
fairly phobia arising
from frustrations attendant on and also, I should think,
breast-feeding,
from the mother's habit of zestfully and kissing her infant with
hugging

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 494 GORGO AND THE ORIGINS OF FEAR

a of at its and toes. M. Klein

loving pretense nibbling fingers (supra
also her
n.6) pp. 25-6; Psycho-Analysis of Children (London 1923).
The interpretation of the as the is further
Cyclops devouring parent
substantiated by the fact that, first, the monster is a giant, very big
that is in proportion to the infant, and he has one eye.
secondly, only
This Picasso-like view of the world is the infant's who gazes with his
eyes open on kissed. Modern literature offers a beautiful illus
being
tration of this, when, at the end of ch. 8 in Richard A
Hughes' High
Wind in lamaica (1928), the precocious little murderess
Emily, " play
ing games with the coos up at him: 'I wonder if you
pirate-captain,
make a good Cyclops?' she said; and holding his head firmly laid her
nose to his, her forehead to his forehead, both into each other's
staring
an inch till each saw the other's face grow narrow and two
eyes, apart,
to one in the middle. said
eyes converge large misty" eye 'Lovely!'
'You're just right for one.'
Emily.
11 It is
interesting to note, too, how the image of the same deity will
over the ages even while his gender remains constant. One need
change
note the difference in the appearance of Satan: the nude, red,
only
horned, and fork-tailed devil of Medieval times who and tor
frightens
ments his victims cruelly; the 19th c. figure in formal
evening attire,
cape and all, who seduces and overthrows his innocent female victims
them into he is a proper and the
by deluding thinking gentleman;
20th c. of the devil as seen in the movie, The Damned
image
Yankees, who disarms dressed like a suburbanite in tweed
by being
and flannels, and only a necktie and socks of vestigial scarlet
jacket
to his origins in a Hell. It will be amusing to see
symbolize flaming
how Satan comports himself in a Space Suit.

*2L. Farnell Cults of the Greek States (Oxford 1896-1909) I, ch.

4; III, ch. 5; IV, ch. 1.

13 research on the content of nightmares,

Unpublished analysis by
Prof. Marvin State University of New York at Buffalo.
J. Feldman,
thanks are due to my husband Dr. ITeldman, for this and other
Many
observations.

14 Howe n. 1.) p. 216.

(supra

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