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
The Adventures of Hercules help, Hercules also teams up with Glaucia and rescues her sister Urania from hideous monsters called the Slime People. They are overwhelmed by their huge numbers and they flee into a cave where they meet Euryale. The cave is full of stone statues and Hercules and the sisters battle some more monsters, while Euryale walks away and reveals herself to be a snake-haired, half-woman, half-scorpion Gorgon. Using his shield as a mirror, Hercules avoids getting turned into stone and manages to decapitate Euryale, and retrieves the second thunderbolt. Hercules and the two sisters sail to an island and enter an