Euryale- Greek CreatureCreature · Monster

The Immortal Gorgon

Euryale was one of three Gorgon sisters, daughters of the primordial sea deities Phorcys and Ceto. Her name means "far-roaming." The sisters dwelt beyond the stream of Ocean, at the edge of the world near the realm of Night — in the same desolate region as the Graeae, their gray-haired siblings who shared a single eye and tooth between them. All three Gorgons bore the same terrible form: serpents writhing in place of hair, tusks like boars, hands of bronze, and golden wings. Their gaze turned the living to stone. But where Medusa was mortal, Euryale and Stheno could not be killed.

When Perseus came for Medusa — guided by Athena and Hermes, watching only the reflection in his polished shield — he found the three sisters sleeping and took Medusa's head with a curved sword. From the severed neck sprang Pegasus and Chrysaor, Medusa's unborn children by Poseidon. Euryale and Stheno woke to find their sister dead. They pursued Perseus in grief and fury, but he vanished beneath the cap of Hades. The two immortal Gorgons were left with nothing but the body.

The Gorgon's Cry

Pindar tells what followed. Athena heard Euryale's wail over her sister's corpse — a piercing, unearthly sound that the goddess resolved to preserve. She crafted the aulos, the double-reed instrument, to imitate the Gorgon's mourning, and Pindar calls the result the "many-headed melody," named for the serpent-hair of the sisters who first produced it. The music passed to mortals.

Hesiod's Astronomy names Euryale as the mother of the hunter Orion by Poseidon — the same god who had fathered the children in Medusa's womb. Poseidon gave Orion the power to walk across the surface of the sea.