Medusa part of their religion. Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the "Gorgoneion". The three Gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were all children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys (or "Phorkys") and his sister Ceto (or "Keto"), chthonic monsters from an archaic world. Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graeae, as in
Ino (Greek mythology) at Magnesia (Burkert 1992:44). Ino (Greek mythology) In Greek mythology Ino (; Ancient Greek: Ἰνώ, ) was a mortal queen of Boeotia, who after her death and transfiguration was worshiped as a goddess under her epithet Leucothea, the "white goddess." Alcman called her "Queen of the Sea" (), which, if not hyperbole, would make her a doublet of Amphitrite. Ino was the second wife of the Minyan king Athamas, mother of Learches and Melicertes and stepmother of Phrixus and Helle. She was the second daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia and one of the three sisters of Semele, the mortal woman