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
Theban kings in Greek mythology no Theban leader is mentioned by Homer in the "Iliad". Theban kings in Greek mythology The dynastic history of Thebes in Greek mythology is crowded with a bewildering number of kings between the city's new foundation (by Cadmus) and the Trojan War (see Ogyges). This suggests several competing traditions, which mythographers were forced to reconcile. The first kings of the Boeotia region (before Cadmus and the flood of Deucalion) were Calydnus and Ogyges (Ogygos). The first king of the settlement that would become Thebes was Cadmus, after whom the city was originally called Cadmeia. It only became known as Thebes