Author Information
The Medusa Do
The Medusa Hairdo
"Medusa loved to feel the serpents which served for hair curled close to her neck and dangling down her back, but with their heads raised to form an impressive bang over her forehead - in what has since become the fashionable style at Rome. And when she used a comb, their poison would flow freely," wrote the poet Lucan.
Medusa, as we know so well, could turn anything into stone with a mere glance. "No living creature, in fact, could bear to look at that face, not even the serpents on her head; which explains why they curled back from her forehead."
Nero himself adopted the Medusa Do. Maybe the style will become the rage again in our own time if we can find a suitable model - how about Sharon Stone? After all, Elizabeth Taylor's adoption of ancient Egyptian garb and cosmetics was all the rage at one point time - a girl could not wear too much blue eye shadow.
We can be certain of one thing - Muslim women could drop the veil if the Medusa Hairdo were effectively styled. That would suit two prehistoric cosmetic purposes: disguise the creature oft preyed upon; frighten away would-be attackers - turning them into stone would no doubt suffice. Cosmetic camouflage became ritualized hence we have social camouflage; stereotypical facial characteristics emerge as images of beauty, and vary over time. Perhaps the "stony look" we observe in some men and women today is a vestige of the Roman Medusa Do.
Women employ cosmetics to put their cosmos in order. The cosmetic art of kosmetikos was not only a matter of camouflage and adornment but was a medical art as well. Cosmetics had hygienic uses and were employed as medicines for disease, such as the eye paint used by Egyptians to protect their eyes from a disease caused by exposure to the Sun. Cleopatra wrote a book about alchemical cosmetics. And of course there are psychological advantages to putting on one's face or war paint: a woman feels more beautiful and secure. However, "painting her eyes and arranging her hair" did not save Jezebel from her fate, as we see in 2 Kings 9:30.
All sorts of substances were used. For example, pomades for damaged hair were made of sheep and bear grease; hellebore and pepper mixed with rat's heads and excrement; bone marrow of the deer; and so on. As for beauty, coiffures for men and women even in prehistorical times included permanent waving and bleaching - urine was used as bleach.
The Romans set the standard for civilized elegance with their attitude towards hygiene and their liberal employment of perfumes and cosmetics. What Ovid said of the art of cosmetics applies to many artistic techniques to this very day: "Artifice is a fine thing when it's not perceived.... The art that adorns you should be unsuspected."
Both sexes of the Roman upper class invested several hours each day in their toilet. Caesar himself was in the wig business: he reportedly forced Gauls to cut their hair as a sign of submission, hence blondish wigs were plentiful in Rome where blondes were having more fun. Portraits in those days had detachable hairstyles to keep up with fashion. Since razors were dull, Caesar preferred to have his facial hairs plucked out one by one; there were depilatories available, made of such substances as resin, pitch, ivy gum extract, ass's fat, she-goat's gall, bat's blood, and powdered viper.
As for the Medusa Hairdo, Lucan mentions it in his Pharsalia. Cato is marching in Africa at the head of a remnant of the republican forces during the Civil War - supreme commanders of the opposing forces were Pompey and Caesar. A spring surrounded and inhabited by all sorts of snakes was encountered in the middle of the desert. The men, fearing the water was contaminated by snake poison, would not drink, but Cato assured them that snake venom has no effect unless a person is bitten; he took a gulp of the spring water himself to prove his point, the only time he had ever taken a drink before his men instead of after all of them.
Lucan did not know why Libya was beset with snakes, so he turned to mythology. "Having been unable to ascertain why the soil of Libya is mysteriously plagued with such myriads of venomous reptiles, I can do no better than record the delusive but widespread legend of Medusa, daughter of Phorcys. Medusa is said to have lived in the far west of Africa, at the point where the ocean laps against the hot earth, in a wide, untilled, treeless region which she had turned to stone merely by gazing around her. The story is that, when her head was cut off, serpents were bred from the fallen blood and came hissing out to display their forked tongues."
Lucan further notes in respect to Libya that Athene wanted Medusa's head for a trophy, so she advised Perseus how to cut it off. She gave Perseus a bronze shield, and instructed him to fly backwards, using the shield as a mirror, when he reached the Libyan frontier, thereby avoiding petrification. Perseus found Medusa asleep and cut off her head. He wanted to fly over Europe with it but Athene forbade him from doing so because Europeans would look up and be turned to stone. So Perseus flew back over Libya with the head; the blood dripped onto its soil, wherefore the extraordinary abundance of snakes in that particular region of Africa.
Note: Translation by Robert Graves appears in the Penguin edition of Lucan's Pharsalia
ON THE MEDUSE OF LEONARDO DA VINCI, IN THE FLORENTINE GALLERY by Percy B. Shelley
It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.
Yet it is less the horror than the grace
Which turns the gazer's spirit into stone;
Whereon the lineaments of that dead face
Are graven, till the characters be grown
Into itself, and thought no more can trace;
'Tis the melodious hue of beauty thrown
Athwart the darkness and the glare of pain,
Which humanize and harmonize the strain.
And from its head as from one body grow,
As [ ] grass out of a watery rock,
Hairs which are vipers, and they curl and flow
And their long tangles in each other lock,
And with unending involutions shew
Their mailed radiance, as it were to mock
The torture and the death within, and saw
The solid air with many a ragged jaw.
And from a stone beside, a poisonous eft
Peeps idly into those Gorgonian eyes;
Whilst in the air a ghastly bat, bereft
Of sense, has flitted with a mad surprise
Out of the cave this hideous light had cleft,
And he comes hastening like a moth that hies
After a taper; and the midnight sky
Flares, a light more dread than obscurity.
'Tis the tempestuous loveliness of terror;
For from the serpents gleams a brazen glare
Kindled by that inextricable error,
Which makes a thrilling vapour of the air
Become a [ ] and ever-shifting mirror
Of all the beauty and the terror there -
A woman's countenance, with serpent locks,
Gazing in death on heaven from those wet rocks.
