Perseus, blah, blah, blah

I had a hum­bling expe­ri­ence at last Friday’s pro­gram at Perkins Obser­va­tory. As I gave the usual talk, I paused dra­mat­i­cally to begin my “big fin­ish,” and a six-month-old babe in arms named Gabriella began to speak. “Blah, blah, blah, blah,” she bab­bled cheer­fully. The audi­ence erupted with laugh­ter, and so did I.

Yes, that’s right. You can talk about the won­ders of the uni­verse to exhaus­tion, but noth­ing beats the direct expe­ri­ence of its beauty.

Of course, it helps to know that peo­ple have been doing the same thing for mil­len­nia. The con­stel­la­tions must have been impor­tant to our ancient fore­bears. After all, they put their great­est heroes among the stars.

Perseus is a case in point. You’ll find it high in the north­west­ern sky just after dark. Look espe­cially for Mir­phak, its bright­est star, which forms the hero’s chest. Down and to the left is Algol, the wink­ing eye of the Gor­gon Medusa. Why is Perseus hold­ing an eye­ball? Read on, gen­tle stargaz­ers. Yes, blah, blah, blah.

King Acri­sius should have been a happy man. He ruled the boun­ti­ful land of Argos. His daugh­ter Danae charmed every­one with her intel­li­gence and beauty. But Acri­sius was dri­ven nearly insane by a prophecy that fore­told his death by a son, yet unborn, of his inno­cent daughter.

To pre­vent Danae from mar­ry­ing, the king locked her in a tower, vow­ing that the all-to-human eyes of poten­tial suit­ors would never again gaze upon her. The unlucky king didn’t fig­ure on immor­tal eyes, how­ever. Zeus, king of all the gods, eas­ily saw through the tower walls. “Wowza,” he said in ancient Greek, turned him­self into a shower of gold coins, and rained him­self down on Danae’s lap through a skylight.

Nine months later, Perseus was born. In anger and fear, Acri­sius set his daugh­ter and grand­son adrift into the sea in a wooden chest. This was, of course, very bad par­ent­ing, but Danae’s des­per­ate plead­ing must have sounded false. “It was the coins, Dad, the COINS, honest.”

The chest came to ground at Seriphos, an island ruled by the vicious Poly­dectes. Perseus grew to young man­hood. All the while, Poly­dectes kept a lust­ful eye on Danae. After his wife died, Poly­dectes asked the comely woman to marry him.

She said no. Poly­dectes impris­oned her in his palace for immoral purposes.

Poly­dectes knew that he had to rid him­self of Perseus, so he gave him an impos­si­ble task — to bring home the head of Medusa, the Gor­gon. The Gor­gons were three sis­ters with live snakes for hair and a sin­gle eye and tooth, which they had to share among them­selves. Medusa was so ugly that a sin­gle glance at her face turned the unfor­tu­nate viewer to stone.

Tough job, but Perseus under­took it, hop­ing that he could even­tu­ally find a way of lib­er­at­ing his mother. Using only the reflec­tion of Medusa in his shield, he lopped off the Gorgon’s head and put it in a sack.

Perseus had many adven­tures on the way home. Among other things, he res­cued his future wife Androm­eda from the clutches of the sea mon­ster Cetus, but that’s another con­stel­la­tion story.

Poly­dectes was sur­prised to see Perseus return. He fig­ured that the hero would not sur­vive his encounter with the Gor­gon. He was even more sur­prised, but only for a split sec­ond, when Perseus pulled Medusa’s head out of the sack and turned him into a statue.

After many great adven­tures, Perseus returned with his mother and wife to Argos, the land of his birth. His grand­fa­ther, Acri­sius, had been dri­ven from power dur­ing their absence, and Perseus became king. Despite his high sta­tus, he was a man of the peo­ple, often par­tic­i­pat­ing in their ath­letic com­pe­ti­tions. At one such con­test, he threw a dis­cus with such force that he acci­den­tally killed some­one in the crowd. It was thus that the prophecy that began this tale came true. The unfor­tu­nate bystander was none other than Acrisius.

As for Perseus, he lives now among the stars, the head of Medusa with its sin­gle eye still clutched in his hand. From his lofty perch, he speaks to us from our ancient past, when good deeds, long suf­fer­ing, and a sym­pa­thetic heart never went unrewarded.

Now go out and see Perseus. Doesn’t a lit­tle “blah, blah, blah” enhance the experience?

Tom Burns is the direc­tor of Perkins Obser­va­tory. He can be reached at tlburns@owu.edu.

Posted by Tom Burns on Feb 3 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.