149 Medusa 149 Medusa Medusa (minor planet designation: 149 Medusa) is a bright-coloured, stony main-belt asteroid that was discovered by French astronomer J. Perrotin on September 21, 1875, and named after the Gorgon Medusa, a snake-haired monster in Greek mythology. When it was discovered, Medusa was by far the smallest asteroid found (although this was not known at that time). Since then, many thousands of smaller asteroids have been found. It was also the closest asteroid to the Sun discovered up to that point, beating the long-held record of 8 Flora. It remained the closest asteroid to the Sun until 433 Eros
Greek mythology in popular culture Lord Tennyson's "Oenone" is her lament that Paris deserted her for Helen. When poets of the German Romantic tradition, such as Friedrich Schiller, wrote about the Greek gods, their works were frequently "erotically charged", "openly sensual and hedonistic". In his poem "The Waste Land", T. S. Eliot incorporates a range of elements and inspirations from Greek mythology to pop music to Elizabethan history to create a ""tour-de-force" exposition of Western culture, from the elite to the folk to the utterly primitive". The Indian poet Henry Louis Vivian Derozio's work was heavily influenced by Greek mythology. Nina Kosman published a book