Monsters

Goddess Athena changed the beautiful Medusa into a monster whose terrifying sight was enough to change every onlooker into a stone. As a gift to King Polydectes of Seriphos, whom he hated profoundly, the brave Perseus undertook to kill her and bring her head to him.

Perseus flew on the horse Pegasus as far as the land of the Hyperboreans in the Far North where he found Medusa and first shot with his bow a lump of lead into her mouth. It melted by the fire of her breath and trickled down her throat, scorching her vitals. Then, he approached her, beheaded her, placed her head in his bag and flew away at once to the south in northwest Africa where he showed Medusa's head to the titan Atlas who was changed instantly into the mount called after his name.

Then, Perseus used Pegasus' wings to fly east as far as Ethiopia where the land was flooded at this time and the people afflicted with a plague by a sea monster. In order to stop the calamity, the Ethiopian king Cepheus had chained his daughter Andromeda to a rock facing the Red Sea. Perseus removed the Medusa's head from his bag and showed it to the sea monster who was at once changed into a stone. Then, he freed Andromeda and asked her father for her hand in marriage.

This long story from beginning to end appears on pages 20 to 24.