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Greek city of Apollonia Pontika of the
Black Sea Area
Silver Drachm 14mm (3.39 grams) Struck 450-400 B.C.
Reference: Sear 1655; B.M.C. 15. (Mysia) p. 8, 5-7; SNG
BM Black Sea 157
Anchor; A to right, crayfish to left.
Gorgoneion (Medusa).
A colony of Miletos, the city boasted
a fine temple of Apollo with a statue by the sculptor
Kalamis.
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In
Greek mythology Medusa (Greek:
Μέδουσα (Médousa), "guardian, protectress")
was a
monster, a
Gorgon, generally described as having the face
of a hideous human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Gazing
directly upon her would turn onlookers to stone. Most sources describe her as
the daughter of
Phorcys and
Ceto, though the author
Hyginus (Fabulae,
151) interposes a generation and gives Medusa another chthonic pair as parents.
Medusa was beheaded by the hero
Perseus, who thereafter used her head 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.
Medusa in
classical mythology
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
Aeschylus's
Prometheus Bound, which places both
trinities of sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":
Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
With snakes for hair— hated of mortal man—
While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her
sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the
fifth century began to envisage her as being beautiful as well as terrifying. In
an ode written in 490 BC
Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa".
In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet
Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a
ravishingly beautiful maiden, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors,"
priestess in Athena's temple, but when she was caught being raped by the "Lord
of the Sea"
Poseidon in
Athena's temple, the enraged Athena transformed
Medusa's beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that
the mere sight of it would turn onlookers to stone. In Ovid's telling, Perseus
describes Medusa's punishment by Minerva (Athena) as just and well earned.
Death
In most versions of the story, she was
beheaded by the
hero
Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King
Polydectes of Seriphus. In his conquest, he
received a mirrored shield from
Athena, gold, winged sandals from
Hermes, a sword from
Hephaestus and Hades' helm of invisibility.
Medusa was the only one of the three Gorgons who was mortal, so Perseus was able
to slay her while looking at the reflection from the mirrored shield he received
from Athena. During that time, Medusa was pregnant by
Poseidon. When Perseus beheaded her,
Pegasus, a winged horse, and
Chrysaor, a golden sword-wielding giant, sprang
from her body.
Jane Ellen Harrison argues that "her potency
only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she
is in a word a mask with a body later appended... the basis of the
Gorgoneion is a
cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood."[6]
In the
Odyssey xi,
Homer does not specifically mention the
Gorgon Medusa:
Lest for my daring
Persephone the dread,
From Hades should send up an awful monster's grisly head.
Harrison's translation states "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the
terror out of the Gorgon."According to
Ovid, in northwest Africa, Perseus flew past the
Titan
Atlas, who stood holding the sky aloft, and
transformed him into stone when he tried to attack him. In a similar manner, the
corals of the
Red Sea were said to have been formed of
Medusa's blood spilled onto
seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying
head beside the shore during his short stay in
Ethiopia where he saved and wed his future
wife, the lovely princess
Andromeda. Furthermore the poisonous vipers of
the
Sahara, in the
Argonautica 4.1515, Ovid's
Metamorphoses 4.770 and Lucan's
Pharsalia 9.820, were said to have grown
from spilt drops of her blood. The blood of Medusa also spawned the
Amphisbaena (a horned dragon-like creature with
a snake-headed tail).
Perseus then flew to Seriphos, where his mother was about to be forced into
marriage with the king. King Polydectes was turned into stone by the gaze of
Medusa's 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:
The triple form is not primitive, it is merely an instance of a general
tendency... which makes of each woman goddess a trinity, which has given
us the
Horae, the
Charites, the
Semnai, and a host of other triple
groups. It is immediately obvious that the Gorgons are not really three
but one + two. The two unslain sisters are mere appendages due to
custom; the real Gorgon is Medusa.
Modern interpretations
Psychoanalysis
In 1940,
Sigmund Freud's Das Medusenhaupt (Medusa's
Head) was published posthumously. This article laid the framework
for his significant contribution to a body of criticism surrounding the monster.
Medusa is presented as "the supreme
talisman who provides the image of
castration — associated in the child's mind
with the discovery of maternal sexuality — and its denial."
Psychoanalysis continue
archetypal literary criticism to the present
day:
Beth Seelig analyzes Medusa's punishment from
the aspect of the crime of having been raped rather than having willingly
consented in Athena's temple as an outcome of the goddess' unresolved conflicts
with her own father,
Zeus.
Feminism
In the 20th century,
feminists reassessed Medusa's appearances in
literature and in modern culture, including the use of Medusa as a
logo by fashion company
Versace. The name "Medusa" itself is often used
in ways not directly connected to the mythological figure but to suggest the
gorgon's abilities or to
connote malevolence; despite her origins as a
beauty, the name in common usage "came to mean monster." The book Female
Rage: Unlocking Its Secrets, Claiming Its Power by Mary Valentis and Anne
Devane notes that "When we asked women what female rage looks like to them, it
was always Medusa, the snaky-haired monster of myth, who came to mind ... In one
interview after another we were told that Medusa is 'the most horrific woman in
the world' ... [though] none of the women we interviewed could remember the
details of the myth."[15]
Medusa's visage has since been adopted by many women as a symbol of female
rage; one of the first publications to express this idea was a 1978 issue of
Women: A Journal of Liberation. The cover featured the image of a Gorgon,
which the editors explained "can be a map to guide us through our terrors,
through the depths of our anger into the sources of our power as women."[15]
In a 1986 article for Women of Power magazine called "Ancient Gorgons: A
Face for Contemporary Women's Rage," Emily Erwin Culpepper wrote that "The
Amazon Gorgon face is female fury personified. The Gorgon/Medusa image has been
rapidly adopted by large numbers of feminists who recognize her as one face of
our own rage."
In
Ancient Greece, the Gorgoneion (Γοργόνειον)
was originally a horror-creating
apotropaic
amulet showing the
Gorgon's head.
It was associated with the deities
Zeus and
Athena; both are said to have worn it as a
pendant.
It was also popular as a royal
aegis, as shown, for instance, on the
Alexander Mosaic and the
Gonzaga Cameo.
Sozopol (Bulgarian:
Созопол) is an
ancient town and seaside resort located 35
km south of
Burgas on the southern
Black Sea Coast of
Bulgaria. Today the town is mostly a seaside resort
known for the Apollonia art and film festival
(which takes place in early September) and is named
after one of Sozopol's ancient names.
The busiest times of the year are the summer months,
ranging from May to September as tourists from around
the world come to enjoy the weather, sandy beaches,
history and culture, fusion cuisine (Bulgarian, Greek,
Turkish), and atmosphere of the colourful resort. The
increasing popularity of the town has led to it being
dubbed the Bulgarian
St. Tropez, seeing stars like
Ralph Fiennes,
Brad Pitt,
Angelina Jolie and
Goldfrapp exploring its beauty and charm.
Part of
Burgas Province, as of September 2005[update]
Sozopol has a population of 4,641. The town is located
at
 42°25′N
27°42′E
/ 42.417°N
27.7°E /
42.417; 27.7
and the mayor is Panaiot Reyzi. One of the most active
and popular mayors had been
Nikola Kaloyanov, who initiated numerous
infrastructure changes to modernize the town in the 70s.
History
Sozopol is one of the oldest towns on
Bulgarian Thrace's
Black Sea coast. The first settlement on the site
dates back to the
Bronze Age. Undersea explorations in the region of
the port reveal relics of dwellings, ceramic pottery,
stone and bone tools from that era. Many anchors from
the second and first millennium BC have been discovered
in the town's bay, a proof of active shipping since
ancient times.
The town, at first called Antheia, was
colonized in Thrace on the shore of the Pontus Euxinus,
principally on a little island, by
Anaximander (born 610-609 BC) at the head of
Milesian colonists. The name was soon changed to
Apollonia, on account of a temple dedicated to
Apollo in the town, containing a famous colossal
statue of the god Apollo by
Calamis, 30 cubits high, transported later to Rome
by
Lucullus and placed in the
Capitol. At various times, Apollonia was known as
Apollonia Pontica (that is, Apollonia on the
Black Sea, the ancient Pontus Euxinus) and
Apollonia Magna (Great Apollonia).
The coins, which begin in the fourth century BC, bear
the name Apollonia and the image of Apollo; the imperial
coins, which continue to the first half of the third
century AD, and the
Tabula Peutinger also contain the name Apollonia;
but the "Periplus
Ponti Euxini", 85, and the
Notitiæ episcopatuum have only the new name
Sozopolis. In 1328 Cantacuzene (ed. Bonn, I, 326) speaks
of it as a large and populous town. The islet on which
it stood is now connected with the mainland by a narrow
tongue of land. Sozopolis, in Greek Sozòpolis (Σωζωπολις,
meaning the "preserve" city), in Turkish Sizebolu,
in Bulgarian Sozopol, is in Burgas Province,
Bulgaria. Its inhabitants, in the past mostly Greeks,
lived by fishing and agriculture.
The town established itself as a trade and naval
centre in the following centuries. It kept strong
political and trade relations with the cities of
Ancient Greece –
Miletus,
Athens,
Corinth,
Heraclea Pontica and the islands
Rhodes,
Chios,
Lesbos, etc. Its trade influence in the
Thracian territories was based on a treaty with the
rulers of the
Odrysian kingdom dating from the fifth century BC.
The symbol of the town – the anchor, present on all
coins minted by Apollonia since the sixth century BC, is
proof of the importance of its maritime trade. The rich
town soon became an important cultural centre. At these
times it was called Apollonia Magna.
Ruled in turn by the
Byzantine,
Bulgarian and
Ottoman Empires, Sozopol was assigned to the newly
independent Bulgaria in the 19th century. Almost all of
its
Greek population
was exchanged with Bulgarians from
Eastern Thrace in the aftermath of the
Balkan Wars.
Ecclesiastical
history
Sozopol was Christianized early. Bishops are recorded
as resident there from at least 431. At least eight
bishops are known (Le
Quien, Oriens christianus, I, 1181):
Athanasius (431), Peter (680), Euthymius (787) and
Ignatius (869); Theodosius (1357), Joannicius, who
became
Patriarch of Constantinople (1524), Philotheus
(1564) and Joasaph (1721).
From being
suffragan to the
archbishopric of Adrianopolis, it became in the
fourteenth century a
metropolis without suffragan sees; it disappeared
perhaps temporarily with the Turkish conquest, but
reappeared later; in 1808 it was united to the See of
Agathopolis. The titular resided at
Agathopolis, in Ottoman days called Akhtébolou, in
the
vilayet of
Adrianopolis (Edirne, in European Turkey).
Eubel (Hierarchia catholica medii ævi, I,
194) mentions four Latin bishops of the fourteenth
century.
The city remains a
titular see of the Roman Catholic Church, that of
Sozopolis in Haemimonto, suffragan of Adrianopolis.
The seat has stood vacant since the death of the last
titular bishop in 2000.[2]
Art flourished in the Christian era. The ancient
icons and magnificent woodcarving in the
iconostases are a remarkable accomplishment of the
craftsmanship of these times. The architecture of the
houses in the old town from the
Renaissance period makes it a unique place to visit
today.
Names
The original name of the city is attested as
Antheia.[3]
Coins were minted in the town bearing the inscription
Apollonia, which date from the sixth century BC to the
first half of the third century AD. During this period,
appellations such as Apollonia Pontica (Apollonia
on the Black Sea) and Apollonia Magna (Great
Apollonia) have been recorded. By the first century
AD, the name Sozopolis began to appear in written
records (e.g., in the
Periplus Ponti Euxini). After the town became
part of the Ottoman Empire, the name was Turkified to
Sizeboli, Sizebolu or Sizebolou. After
Bulgaria took possession of the town, it was Slavicized
to Sozopol.
Sozopol Gap on
Livingston Island in the
South Shetland Islands,
Antarctica is named after Sozopol.
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