Medusa who was turned into stone by the head. Then Perseus gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis. Some classical references refer to three Gorgons; Harrison considered that the tripling of Medusa into a trio of sisters was a secondary feature in the myth: A number of early classics scholars interpreted the myth of the Medusa as a quasi-historical – "based on or reconstructed from an event, custom, style, etc., in the past", or "sublimated" memory of an actual invasion. According to Joseph Campbell: In 1940, Sigmund Freud's "Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's Head)" was published
Dragons in Greek mythology Dragons in Greek mythology Dragons play a significant role in Greek mythology. The word dragon derives from the Greek δράκων (drakōn) and its Latin cognate draco. Ancient Greeks applied the term to large, constricting snakes. Daniel Ogden speaks of three ways to explain the origins of Greek dragon myths: as "vertical" evolution from (reconstructed) Proto-Indo-European mythology, as "horizontal" adaptation from Ancient Near Eastern mythology, or as sitting within "the cloud of international folktale". Regarding theories of vertical transmission, Ogden argues that they carry "an unspoken assumption that prior to such a transfer the Greeks' own myth-world was a "tabula rasa"",