GORGONS, in antiquity. Authors are not agreed in the accounts they give of the Gorgons. Diiodorus Siculus will have the Gorgons and Amazons to have been two warlike nations of women who inhabited that part of Libya which lay on the lake Tritonidis. We may well imagine, says that author, that they had frequent quarrels together; as being women and neighbours. He goes on to give an account of a most bloody engagement between them, wherein the Amazons had the better; three thousand of the Gorgons being made prisoners, and the rest obliged to take shelter in a wood, to which the Amazons set fire, with an intention to destroy the whole nation of Gorgons; but as the wind did not prove favourable, they were obliged to desist, and retire to their own territories. Here the Amazons, intoxicated with their victory, gave themselves up to feasting and mirth; and as the guard was very negligently kept in the night-time, the 3000 prisoners laid hold of the opportunity, and, seizing the swords of these imprudent females, massacred a great number of them; but were themselves at last overpowered and cut to pieces. Myrine, the queen of the Amazons, caused monuments to be erected to her female warriors who had been slain on this occasion; which monuments were still to be seen, says our author, in his days. These female nations are said to have been exterminated by Hercules.
Paufanias's account of the Gorgons is much to the same purpose. They were, says he, the daughters of Phorbus; after whose death one of them, named Medusa, reigned over the people dwelling near the lake Tritonidis. The queen was passionately fond of hunting and war, so that she laid the neighbouring countries quite waste. At last, Perseus having made war on the Gorgons, and killed the queen herself, when he came to take a view of the field of battle, he found the queen's corpse so extremely beautiful, that he ordered her head to be cut off, which he carried home with him to shew to his countrymen the Greeks, who could not behold it without astonishment.
These accounts appear somewhat credible; but others represent the Gorgons in a very incredible manner, making them to be a kind of monstrous women, all covered over with hair, who lived in woods and forests. Others again, make them a kind of animal resembling a sheep, with such long hair on their faces, that it required their utmost efforts to clear it away before they could see any thing; but when once they had effected this, they killed all they saw with the poisonous influence of their eyes.