Unforeseen Medusas
Patricia Galloway, Snake Dreamer (New York: Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 1998). ISBN 9780385322645.
Nancy Springer, Dusssie (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing USA, 2007). ISBN 9780802796493.
Julie Berry, If Looks Could Kill (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2025). ISBN 9781534470835.
Reviewed by Nava R. Cohen, Northwestern University, navacohen2007@u.northwestern.edu
Our definition of a hero has expanded in recent decades to include figures not traditionally understood within this category. As they say on the Internet, “not all heroes wear capes!” One particularly unlikely hero to emerge is the iconic Medusa, whose appearance is familiar even to those not well-versed in mythology. Traditionally depicted as a terrifying monster, modern Medusa has become relatable, with her representations spanning a wide variety of media. One popular example is Luciano Garbati’s 2008 statue, “Medusa With the Head of Perseus,” which, capitalizing on a “girlboss” empowerment vibe, has been repurposed as an emblem of the #MeToo era.1
Advertisements featuring Medusa, of which there are many, may suggest eroticism, not horror. Cartoons with her snaky head also abound, and these representations tend to portray her everyday struggles with hair care, dating, and home management.2 Beyond the trajectory of monster to femme fatale to feminist heroine traced by Leeming,3 Medusa has evolved to speak directly to girls and women.
In recent Anglophone literature, there has been an explosion of Medusa stories, written for a variety of audiences. Depicted as the garden shop owner Aunty Em who is “still sweet on” Poseidon in Rick Riordan’s The Lightning Thief,4 she more recently appeared in Natalie Haynes’s Stone Blind as a tenderhearted woman who submits to Poseidon to prevent him from killing innocent girls.5 In Ayana Gray’s retelling, I, Medusa, loc-wearing teenaged Medusa becomes a vigilante who protects vulnerable women after enduring Poseidon’s assault.6 Authors address audiences who range from toddlers7 to middle school readers;8 multiple books for teenagers and adults have been published in the last five years, even adapting her myth beyond the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia.9 To judge from the volume and acceleration of publications, the popularity of Medusa’s story has grown with time. Hopman points out that Medusa (among other hybrid creatures) “can hardly be described in relation to a stable appearance or recurring character traits”10 and yet, young readers familiar with Medusa approach her character with set expectations. As such, some of these tales take an expected path, but others open up the character of Medusa to new and expansive interpretations. Medusa can now be found as a mother, aunt, sister, or friend; a nurturing mentor, a young girl discovering herself, or a survivor ensuring that other young women need not experience the violence she has endured. All of these identities merit consideration as we decide anew what Medusa means to us in the 21st century.
The scope of this review pales in comparison to the number of titles published in the last 30 years, and a comprehensive study of Medusa’s portrayal for children and adult readers would be a useful tool for scholars, librarians, teachers, and the reading public. In the meantime, I would like to introduce the works of three authors of YA and middle grade fiction who, over the past three decades, have taken Medusa in unexpected directions. A recent New Yorker article considering how monsters have become “so awfully nice” explains that modernity has “shifted the coördinates of monstrosity” so that we “see the humanity in the monstrous—and … see as monstrous those we think fail to do the same.”11 In this vein, and despite diverse narrative circumstances, these three authors have converged in creating Medusa figures that support young readers navigating the process of growing up.
Patricia Galloway creates a horror story with both a predictable outcome and an unexpected ending in her out-of-print 1998 YA novel Snake Dreamer. Throughout the novel the reader—and to a lesser extent the protagonist Dusa—suspects that the mysterious Doctors Teno and Yali Gordon are not actually child psychologists. The two doctors run a clinic on an isolated Mediterranean island for young girls suffering from dreams filled with snakes. They recruit sixteen-year-old Dusa, whose snaky dreams started with menarche and have since increased to seizure-inducing, life-threatening intensity. While Teno and Yali have promised Dusa and her mother that they can treat Dusa’s symptoms, their actual motivation involves using Dusa’s visions to locate something that is buried on their island. Radically isolated, Dusa finds both skeletal and living evidence of victimized patients whom the doctors discarded. When Dusa finds and identifies the buried object as Medusa’s head, her expectations are realized: the Gordons are Gorgons. However—spoiler warning! – she, along with the reader, does not expect what happens next. It is Medusa, decapitated and dormant, but still alive, who, for reasons that remain unclear, has sent the snake dreams to girls whom she identifies as her daughters, “blood of my blood” (p. 202). And when Dusa questions Medusa about the violence of her past, Medusa reorients Dusa’s perspective: “I never wished to kill anyone. Dusa, you have read the old stories as they have come down to your time. Do those stories show me seeking out humans to destroy them?” (p. 204). Medusa herself excavates a counternarrative that has never actually been hidden. Her nurturing voice prompts the protagonist – and readers – to read against the grain of received tradition.
The horror of this text is amplified by its lack of clarity regarding Teno/Stheno’s and Yali/Euryale’s project. The book never resolves their purposes; all that is clear is that Dusa is in mortal danger on the island. In a surprising twist, Dusa finds that she has grown fond of the snakes that populate her dreams, comforting her throughout her terrifying sojourn in the Gor(d/g)ons’ clinic. Medusa, helping Dusa escape, reassures her that she can always summon her snakes to serve as a connection between girl and Gorgon.
Snake Dreamer is a quirky novel that did not receive much attention beyond book reviews aimed at librarians and teachers. The one critical piece that addresses the novel, in an edited volume considering women’s literary responses to male-centered stories, finds the novel disappointing.12 The author, Elise Earthman, criticizes Galloway for failing to “tell a story that could be more empowering to girls like Dusa who are reading” (p. 166). She characterizes Dusa as “terribly shallow,” given her enjoyment of “creature comforts” and “more than a little dense” because she does not identify the mythological story she inhabits sooner (p. 166). (This second criticism strikes me as terribly unfair to both Dusa, who does not have the advantage of our bird’s-eye view, as well as the genre: in this quasi-realistic novel, a supernatural explanation must be delayed as long as possible.) Earthman further bemoans the lost opportunity to give Medusa agency, leaving her “only a weapon in the hands of others” (p. 167). A final criticism, rooted in late twentieth-century discourse and second-wave feminism, focuses on the portrayal of Teno and Yali. Earthman claims that rather than celebrate them as “two wonderfully competent and powerful women,” Galloway takes “an extremely conservative vision of the modern career woman” by maintaining their status as villainous monsters (p. 167). Reading this novel almost three decades later, however, I see Galloway’s choice as a significant support for her young readers: although we may crave the solidarity of sisterhood, not all powerful women are allies. Evidence of this truth makes the news on a regular basis, but a narrative story’s ability to convince exceeds that of news stories. As such, the shocking reveal of Teno and Yali’s true nature emphatically reinforces the necessity of making judicious choices about whom to trust.Trust also underlies a second significant support Galloway provides readers. Careful evaluation of sources has, in recent years, become of utmost importance. Dusa does not need to be told she must evaluate received ideas carefully; this conclusion becomes self-evident to both Dusa and readers once Medusa has told her own story. The lesson, certainly valuable for impetuous youth in any era, takes on added urgency with the advent of readily available artificial intelligence bearing plausible false narratives. What better message to provide young readers who inhabit 2026’s accelerating digital dystopia than the urgency of reading our reality more critically?
Nancy Springer’s 2007 middle grade novel Dusssie addresses a more personal concern: the angst teenagers experience over their changing bodies. Thirteen-year-old Dusie believed that “everything depended on how I looked” (p. 2). Annoyed by the onset of her first period overnight, she is even more annoyed by her mother’s sentimental response at which young readers may cringe in horror or horrified recognition. In the morning, worrying about clothing choices and “whether boys could tell when you got your period” (p. 2), Dusie suddenly realizes that twenty-seven snakes are growing out of her head. The anagnorisis she experiences, paired with a profound (and developmentally appropriate) desire to be like everyone else, provides the motivation for Dusie’s quest throughout the novel, which takes place over a single month, from new moon to new moon.
The author, who published her first Enola Holmes novel the year before Dusssie, draws on themes young readers have found in media ranging from Judy Blume’s 1970 Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret to the 2022 Pixar film Turning Red. Intertwined with issues of emerging womanhood are concerns about coming to terms with family heritage and developing independent values and identity. Dusie – as you might have guessed – is short for Medusa, but Dusie is not the ancient mythical creature. Named after her long-dead aunt Medusa, she is the daughter of the glamorous celebrity sculptor Euryale Gorgon, who, it turns out, has used neither her hands nor a chisel to create her critically acclaimed masterpieces. As a single mother, Euryale relies on the advice of “the Sisterhood,” a group of mythical and monstrous women who live in New York because they are artists—glamorous, grotesque, and non-conforming.
Dusie—like most teenagers would do—blames her mother for her abnormality and rejects the help of her Sisterhood, whose irregularities she sees as freakishness barely disguised under a pseudo-normal facade. She is desperate to be truly normal. In this early-millennium narrative—which I am tempted to call a period piece—Dusie turns off her phone and heads to the New York Public Library to find a remedy.
Complicating matters is that Dusie does not know who her (human) father was. Angry at Euryale for her secrecy, Dusie rejects her mother’s overtures, responding monosyllabically to Euryale’s ongoing inquiries about her activities and emotional state. Eventually Euryale relents and brings Dusie to the Whitney Museum to see her most famous sculpture: this is her father. Euryale explains—with details that could have been ripped from today’s headlines—that when immigration officials came to deport him, he refused to allow her to hurt them, even to save his life. Dusie begins to understand that her “quirky” father’s unconditional love changed Euryale from “venomous” and “slug-ugly” to the nurturing woman Dusie knows (pp. 146 and 160). She is inspired to emulate him and the resulting compassion extends even to her snakes.
Retellings and adaptations may alter many variables of myth, but there is no Medusa without snakes. Dusie initially encounters her snakes as antagonists, and an early quarrel with them leads her to put her head in the freezer after they bite her. As their relationship evolves, however, Dusie finds that the snakes provide her with both reflections of and counterpoints to her own thoughts. When they speak to her, it is with hissing voices (thus the extra –ss– of her name in the title), but their antagonistic voices soon become affectionate. When the remedy she locates would eliminate them, the way that her snakes prioritize Dusie’s well-being over their own demonstrates a serpentine version of humanity. Like Galloway’s Dusa, Dusie grows to love her head snakes, and their mutual love allows her to embrace her uniqueness. She explains this result to the Sisterhood: ”They make me be myself, not just what other people want me to be….They’re me but they’re themselves, too” (p. 153). Dusie credits the snakes with uncovering her latent abilities: “They’re strong, so I’m strong, too, and I never knew I could be strong. And I never knew I could enjoy myself by myself” (p. 153). By the end of the novel, Dusie has found a way (no spoiler this time!) to integrate her uniqueness into a suitably conventional outward appearance, and, armed with hybrid identity, return to her friends, her school, and the typical pursuits of a twenty-first century teenager.
Snake Dreamer explicitly focuses on issues of survival. Although Dusssie centers on identity, the underlying questions this novel raises – “am I normal?” and “will anyone ever love me?” are ultimately also timeless questions of survival. The novel shows young readers that even those with differences – which is, of course, all of us – can give and receive love. Dusssie demonstrates that choosing to accept ourselves for who we are also allows us to direct that same compassion outward.
Julie Berry’s 2025 If Looks Could Kill takes an entirely different approach to the Medusa myth. This YA novel, a fusion of fantasy and historical fiction, does not retell the ancient story, nor does it feature ancient Medusa or her descendants. Berry sets her novel in 1888-1889, alternating perspectives between Tabitha, a teenage Salvation Army “soldier” ministering to the poor on New York’s Lower East Side and Jack, a doctor trying to cure his fatal wasting illness by grisly means: consuming the organs of young women he has murdered. Clearly, this book does not need a third plot, and for the most part, Berry avoids Greek mythology. Instead, she depicts women turned into Medusas by incidental contact with Jack. The women do not understand what has happened or why, but they “feel the pull,” sensing men who have hurt women and whom they are irresistibly drawn to punish (p. 197).The book begins with a striking frontispiece, reproduced with less detail on the cover.
An attractive woman with loose hair trains her gaze to the reader’s right. Her head and bare shoulders fill the top two-thirds of the page, then fade to a grimy late nineteenth century urban scene filled with smokestacks and industrial buildings, train tracks and smoke, and tiny people making their way through a downtown. Her expression is predatory and interspersed among her locks are, of course, snakes, tongues out, hissing, and ready to strike. On the recto, in place of an epigraph, are two definitions of the verb petrify,the first figurative and the second literal. The effect is eerie, and the reader might expect the story to focus immediately on this Medusa, but it does not.The book starts, instead, with Jack, considering his “fleshy handiwork” (p. 2), and then follows the book’s protagonist Tabitha, who has left upstate New York to chase “the fire of the Spirit” to the city, hoping to do good works with the Salvation Army (p. 3). Along with her fellow transplant and Salvation Army worker Pearl, Tabitha comes to realize that many of the other girls who have come to the city have been trafficked and are prisoners in brothels. Tabitha and Pearl launch a project to rescue one of these girls, but suddenly in the midst of their adventure, Pearl falls ill, and when she arises, she has snakes as hair and the ability to petrify.13
In the meantime, Jack has sailed to New York, fleeing the London police who suspect that he is—did you guess?—Jack the Ripper. When a chambermaid who turns out to be a Gorgon (one of many such anonymous women who pass briefly through the book) stuns him, his thoughts approach an understanding: “Gorgons of legend could turn you to stone. Gorgons today aren’t what they used to be” (114). Jack is unaware that the actual change is that men like him—not Athena – create Medusas. Passing by Pearl in New York City, they make some accidental contact, and this contact triggers her metamorphosis.
Like the other Medusas, Pearl is unaware of what has happened to her. Medusa’s voice speaks from her body: “We are Pearl, and we are Medusa….We will find…the men who slay and wound us without pity” (p. 127). When Pearl does returns to her senses, she feels a bodily desire to find Jack and kill him. She does not know who he is or what he has done. She does not know his name or how he looks. But she knows exactly where he is. She can smell him. Pearl, however, is a devout Christian. She tries to resist her desire, reject the underlying paganism, and return to her Salvation Army mission, but she cannot overpower her Medusa urge.
Throughout this book, gestures are made to the Perseus story, but it is clear that the characters have only minimal knowledge of classical mythology. (This, too, differentiates the novel from many reception pieces for young readers, in which characters are as excited about mythology as the readers.) Passing by the Bowery dime museum, Tabitha sees an advertisement for “Giselle the Gorgon of Gotham” and her reaction displays her disconnection from mythology: “Gorgon…had something to do with Medusa. Was that what had killed her in the myths?” (p. 135). Seeing a pair of giants, she reflects that they “looked like paintings of Atlas, holding up the sky” (p. 139). Tabitha, like viewers of contemporary Medusa images, understands mythology through iconography, not narrative. The freedom that this visual engagement with mythology engenders allows for the story to take its own form, unbound by received tradition.
The girls’ quest provides the reader a colorful adventure through late nineteenth century New York City, but, just like the elided Medusa narrative, this novel is ultimately a story about the mistreatment of women and girls. Pearl, like Dusie, after initial resistance, finds a way to integrate monstrosity with compassion, incorporating Christianity into her Medusa-fueled quests. She and Tabitha, identifying themselves as “Slum Sisters” of the Salvation Army, offer women help in their homes: with their chores, with their children, and with their husbands. When it becomes apparent that a man has been violent with his family, Pearl uses her powers in a non-lethal, but convincing manner to eradicate that behavior. (The less gentle eradication of Jack’s behavior happens at the hands of one of the anonymous Medusas, and, like a good tragedy, offstage.) In the end, this Medusa story keeps our Medusa alive, and it makes her a fighter for justice through nonviolence: Pearl lifts women up as she suppresses evil. This conclusion lays out a revision sorely needed in our times: a roadmap for transforming violence into compassion and a model to prevent readers angry at injustice from creating further injustice.
This summer everyone seems to be talking about adaptation. The way these three novelists adapt the story of Medusa takes her in entirely different directions, yet a common thread connects all three. In their resistance to the ancient story of violence and monstrosity, all three authors weave tales of compassion. Mary Beard has recently commented on the peculiarity of assuming that classicists affirm the values of antiquity, contrasting that assumption with the understanding that virologists do not support the goals of viruses, for example.14 Beard’s point is that we can find antiquity interesting and productive without endorsing its messages. These three novelists do precisely this: they reject the traditional framing and create adaptations that support young readers in accepting themselves, understanding their world, and taking what steps they can to address its imperfections. Their novels reconfigure the old stories for our times, and by revising them, preserve them for us to continue the process of modifying in ways both foreseen and unforeseen.
Notes
- “MWTH – Artist-Led Project & Iconographic Representations,” MWTH Project, accessed July 27, 2026 and Julia Jacobs, “How a Medusa Sculpture From a Decade Ago Became #MeToo Art,” The New York Times, October 13, 2020. ↩︎
- danpiraro (@danpiraro), Instagram, among others. ↩︎
- David Leeming, Medusa: In the Mirror of Time (London: Reaktion Books, 2013). ↩︎
- Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief (New York: Hyperion Books for Children, 2005), 185. ↩︎
- Natalie Haynes, Stone Blind (New York: HarperCollins, 2023). ↩︎
- Ayana Gray, I, Medusa (New York: Random House, 2025). ↩︎
- Joan Holub, Brush Your Hair, Medusa! Mini Myths (New York: Abrams, 2015). ↩︎
- Joan Holub and Suzanne Williams, Medusa the Mean (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2012). ↩︎
- Sajni Patel, A Drop of Venom (New York: Hyperion, 2024). ↩︎
- Marianne Govers Hopman, Scylla: Myth, Metaphor, Paradox (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 259. ↩︎
- Manvir Singh, “How Monsters Went from Menacing to Misunderstood,” A Critic at Large, The New Yorker, November 3, 2025, 58. ↩︎
- Elise Earthman, “Instructions for Survival–or Plans for Disaster? Young Adult Novels with Mythological Themes,” in He Said, She Says: An RSVP to the Male Text, ed. Mica Howe and Sarah Appleton Aguiar (Madison, New Jersey: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2001), 161-175. ↩︎
- An interesting detail: Pearl, like both Dusa and Dusie, is fatherless. Unlike the other two, however, Pearl remembers and mourns for her dead father. ↩︎
- Mary Beard, Talking Classics: The Shock of the Old (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2026). ↩︎
Persepolis Reimagined
Getty’s “Persepolis Reimagined” virtual online experience (part of the “Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World” exhibit in 2022) curated by Timothy Potts, Jeffrey Spier, and Sara E. Cole
Reviewed by Stacy Rose Henning, B.A., MLIS student, hensr75@gmail.com.
Approaching the ancient site of Persepolis and walking up the entrance steps, one is immediately humbled and overwhelmed by the largesse and beauty of the monument. Tall limestone walls protect the various buildings inside the site walls. But wait – isn’t Persepolis in ruins from its fiery destruction in 330 BCE and the ravages of time? Yes, that’s true, but by taking a virtual tour online using modern-day technology, one is transported back in time to the reconstructed palace on a hillside of southern Iran.
As digitization of museum, archives, and library collections increases, I was interested in taking an immersive virtual tour of Persepolis to explore what is possible and how effective an online interactive exhibit can be. By entering the website portal (https://persepolis.getty.edu/) of the reimagined Persepolis grounds, I was treated to a feast for the eyes as I ‘walked’ through the different rooms and courtyards. For people who have an interest in history, archaeology, or cultural anthropology, but can’t visit Persepolis in person, this virtual means of exploration is a valid way of scratching that itch.
The exhibit was created and maintained by The Getty, a privately funded two-site (Getty Center and Getty Villa) museum located in California. The J. Paul Getty Trust operates both locations, which house some of the most valuable art and artifacts in America. In 2022, The Getty put on the exhibition “Persia: Ancient Iran and the Classical World”, and the online virtual tour “Persepolis Reimagined” is an extension of this exhibit.
Entering the exhibit’s exploration portal online, ancient-sounding music plays in the background to set the scene. As I followed the prompts on the screen, introductory information is presented to set the stage for the experience via Persepolis’ size, date and purpose. The website does an excellent job of placing icons to zoom out and view the complex from a drone-type overhead view for reference and scale. There are also icons to click that allow me to jump to other locations in the exhibit. Sections that are included in the virtual site visit are numbered one through six, and you can hop to different sections non-sequentially, but I would not recommend this.
Towards the left side of the building complex, I approach the 111 steps which lead to the Gate of All Nations (Section 1). Scrolling down, I virtually move through the gate flanked by two colorful bull statues, through the columned interior, and then through the Iamassu statues guarding the palace’s interior.
I am given the option to see a view of what the statues look like in the present day and their imperial iconographical influences- Iranian, Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and Greek architecture as well as the trilingual inscriptions (Old Persian, Elamite, and Babylonian languages) throughout the palace. I click to hear the spoken English translation of the inscriptions. So far, I am impressed by the easy navigation and explanatory aspects of the exhibit. The content in the clickable buttons serves as a virtual docent of sorts, providing information on specific features of the palace.
For Section 2 (Apadana), I continue ‘walking’ through a large courtyard with an imposing audience hall opposite. Relief sculptures of envoys from the empire’s 23 nations decorate this staircase entrance to the hall, as well as an inscription on the stairway which declares Xerxes as the builder of Apadana and praises the Zoroastrian god Ahura Mazda.
As I navigate up the entrance stairs, I am informed that the sculptural delegations illustrate real-life visiting envoys who brought the king gifts of native tributes. Once inside the great hall, 72 red sixty-foot columns overwhelm me. It is a dark red room, the only light furnished by a few doorways and fire sconces on some columns. I learn that opulent royal feasts took place here, with courtiers using gold and silver vessels, drinking horns, and decorated wine jars. Clicking on the info button, more information on banquets is provided.
The Palace of Xerxes is the third section of the virtual walkthrough. The tour begins in a courtyard and the entrance to the building itself is similarly a sculpted staircase, displaying reliefs of bulls and lions in combat, the Persian Guard, and tribute bearers. Colors of red, blue, brown, yellow, orange and green are used on the stair reliefs. The Palace held royal feasts, which featured riches such as gold and silver vessels, drinking horns, and decorated wine jars. I click for more information about these banquets. Photos of found items are presented along with short explanations of each.
The fourth section of the virtual tour of the Persepolis complex is the Southeastern Palace, the private royal residence. The buildings are much shorter in height than the others and feel cozy in comparison, accentuated by a virtual open-air courtyard filled with trees, small shrubs, and plants as well as birdsong. The greenery alone would absorb some of the noise found in other areas of the citadel. This structure’s didactic experience focuses upon Persian court dress, which allows me to see the elaborate finery that was worn in the time period.
The Royal Treasury is the fifth section of the virtual tour. This was the oldest structure and was used as an armory and storehouse, necessitating two entries.
The sixth and last section of the virtual tour is the Hall of 100 Columns. Close in size to Apadana, the audience hall was eventually used as an extension of the treasury nearby.
The tour ends with Persepolis’ fall to Alexander the Great of Macedonia in 330 BCE, when it was subsequently burned and looted. I click on an icon to learn more about the recovery of this ancient site. Images of the complex present-day show rubble of the many columns, and royal tombs. The ruins of Persepolis are a source of pride for today’s Iranians. Archaeological digs began there in the 1930s, and in 1979 it was given protection as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Prior to this article, I had not gone on an immersive virtual reality museum exhibit. I was aware that during and post-Covid, museums, archives, and libraries were making more of their collections available online since in-person visits were unavailable for the time being. I located a number of other virtual reality tours of historic sites as well as museums integrating VR into their collections, which I am interested in exploring now that I have experienced the online Persepolis exhibit via The Getty. One website that hosts a variety of AR VR site tours is Cyark (https://www.cyark.org/3dvirtualtours/), while Google Arts and Culture offers VR access to many global museums and exhibits (such as The Louvre in Paris, The Guggenheim Museum in New York, and the VanGogh Museum in Amsterdam). Other cultural institutions are also hosting VR experiences, such as The Canterbury Tales Immersive Exhibit at St. Margaret’s Church in Canterbury, UK.
The digitized tour of Persepolis allowed me to explore a site I will never visit in person. Due to strict Iranian travel regulations and current geopolitics, not many people can currently tour the Persepolis ruins, which is one reason why an exhibit like this is popular and effective: accessibility.1 VR tours are a bridge of access for those of curious mind who face obstacles to travel themselves. A second reason this VR tour works is that it attracts different audiences. From history buffs and travelers to students and the curious, the historical site can still be a learning tool from half a world away. A third positive of a site exhibit via VR is that virtual visitors leave no wear and tear on the physical site. As tourism continues to increase globally, cultural and heritage sites may need to embrace VR as a way to protect and preserve sites.
Constantly evolving advancements in technology allow VR tours of historic sites. This includes the quick progression and capabilities of artificial intelligence (AI), as well as digitization tools such as 3D scanning, LiDAR, photogrammetry, and video game development engines. Software that supports these tools allows for digital information to be integrated with historical sites or institutions in constantly improving methods.
The interactive experiences on the virtual Persepolis tour presented deeper dives about certain aspects of the building complex; the clickable information buttons acted rather like a docent, presenting additional information at specific waypoints. Photos of specific finds (pottery, jewelry, etc.) and explanations about their purposes at Persepolis enhanced the tour experience by providing context of ancient use. Touring the site virtually as a recreated site allows the viewer to more easily imagine what Persepolis would have looked like and how it functioned 2500 years ago, something that is simply not possible at the physical locale.
However, VR exhibits also face headwinds. One of the issues that must be considered for an institution to create a VR tour like this one is that of funding.2 In an era when funds for museums and cultural institutions are dwindling, private funding is the best option (in this case, The Getty is well covered.) Other fundraising initiatives can include endowments, grants, academic support, and general fundraising, but with many countries experiencing economic instability, these can’t necessarily be relied upon, unfortunately. Another issue with the use of immersive VR for historical and archaeological sites is the storytelling itself; exhibit curators need to fill in many informational gaps for people taking the VR tour, but they mustn’t cross the ethical line and start creating a fictitious narrative of the site. Possible scenarios can be suggested, but unless backed by valid sources, should not be presented as absolute truth. Lastly, the issue of accessibility presents as a double-edged sword. As mentioned above, a VR site tour can reach many more people than a physical site alone, enlarging the participant audience. However, there is also a downside to accessibility. Created using specific computer hardware versions, will the VR site tour still be accessible online a decade from now when technology has advanced? Will the tour need constant updating? Will ‘visitors’ using an outdated home computer or slow Wi-Fi connection still be able to access the tour if the systems aren’t compatible? For an example of this issue already presenting itself, I was able to locate a few inaccessible VR tours which stated they were ‘no longer available.’3 Museums, cultural institutions, and heritage sites have a lot of things to consider when deciding on whether to create an immersive online VR site tour.
Coming from a background in libraries and archives, I am aware that people in the museum and library fields have complex and conflicting opinions about certain technologies, especially AI. Some fear that technology could remove the human from humanities fields. However, there is an increasing demand to experience cool, cutting-edge experiences in virtual worlds, and the museum/archives/library sectors need to start (or continue) embracing new ways to reach a larger audience. Fear of adaptation needs to be squashed, and employees in these sectors need to be informed and learn about the benefits of AI usage. Younger people want to experience something novel and modern (think Instagrammable selfies), not simply walk around a cold museum with items behind protective plexiglass. Globally, cultural institutions are currently attempting to pull in younger and wider audiences. I believe the advancements and implementation of technology-based cultural heritage outreach is the future for the historical and cultural sectors. An expansion of access, meeting audiences in new and interesting ways, will bring collections and historic sites to life in a way that inspires people to experience, appreciate, and preserve these gems.
I found the online immersive exhibit of the Persepolis complex by The Getty to be highly effective as an example of what can be accomplished when technology meets historical preservation and education. The experience was top-notch: from the ethereal soundtrack to the presentation of structures and information, I walked away from my desk with an effective image of the site and basic understanding of its role in Iran’s history. I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested in the ancient world to take this VR tour and see for themselves what may be the future of public humanities in museum and historic site exhibitions. Hopefully in the near future, we will see more VR exhibits and experiences in cultural institutions.
Notes
1. Amy Isaacson. 2014. “How Museums Use Virtual Reality to Reach New Audiences”. The VR Collective. July 12 2024. https://thevrcollective.com/how-museums-use-virtual-reality-to-reach-new-audiences/
2. Marcia Spicer. “Digitization of Museums: Transforming Experience in the Digital Age”. Anderson Archival. https://andersonarchival.com/blog/digitization-of-museums/
3. See, e.g., the Pu’uhonua o Hōnaunau Virtual Tour: https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/pu-uhonua-o-honaunau-tour.htm
Triumpher and Greek Heavy Metal’s Reclamation of Homer
Triumpher and Greek Heavy Metal’s Reclamation of Homer
Reviewed by Jeremy Swist, Michigan State University, swistjer@msu.edu
Throughout its over half-century history, heavy metal music has frequently drawn inspiration from film. Black Sabbath had given birth to heavy metal itself by translating the occult themes of 60s horror movies into bluesy rock music, while 80s zombie and slasher flicks influenced the evolution of the death metal subgenre. The renaissance of sword-and-sandal Hollywood epics at the turn of the millennium—e.g. Gladiator, Troy, Alexander, and 300—likewise sparked an exponential uptick in metal bands of various subgenres producing songs and albums about ancient Greece and Rome. The spike following Zak Snyder’s 300 in 2007 is especially telling.
A proper analysis of this form of reception, however, should focus not only on what elements of myth/history in a heavy metal song are mediated by Hollywood, but also on how the musicians themselves make myth/history in their own image and adapt it to the aesthetics of the metal genre. This of course includes bands from the countries that lay the strongest claim to legacies of, for instance, classical Greece.
A vivid example of the “300 effect” on heavy metal is the music video for the song “Ode to Leonidas” by Greek power metal band Firewind (from their 2017 album Immortals, released on the popular metal label Century Media Records). The power metal subgenre is more or less defined by uplifting melodies and rhythms, with lyrical themes of fantasy, adventure, and often mythology and history as well. The fact that the music video debuted a whole decade after 300’s premier testifies to the staying power of the film (for better or, more often, worse), and the video on YouTube has since received over 1.2 million views.
On the surface, the music video itself is a low-budget ripoff of 300’s scenery and costuming, interspersed with shots of the band itself performing on the (computer-generated) battlefield of Thermopylae. Despite the superficial cheesiness that comes with the territory of European power metal, it became apparent in our analysis of the video that Firewind weren’t just inspired by the Hollywood film. All the actors playing the Spartans, including Leonidas himself, are Greek—something that cannot be said for the cast of 300, comprised mainly of Brits like Lena Headey and Gerard Butler, Germans like Michael Fassbender, and Australians like David Wenham. Not only the Greek actors in the music video, but also the band itself identify as Spartans, with Spartan lambda shields heaped in front of the keyboardist’s synthesizer. Nonetheless, one of the guitarists wears a silver cross around his neck, signaling his Orthodox faith. There is no contradiction, but instead harmony of Hellenic traditions forming a proud modern identity (e.g. a tradition of self-sacrifice). The band performing on the battlefield reminds the audience that this has been their homeland both then and now. The intent behind the song and video becomes clear. These Greeks are taking the story back from Hollywood and its long exclusion of Greeks from blockbuster epics based on their own mythology and history.
Two decades after 300, little has changed. While right-wing commentators’ objections to the casting of Lupita Nyong’o as Helen and Elliot Paige as Achilles in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey amount to little more than racism and transphobia, they seem to have no qualms at all about the fact that Page is Anglo-Canadian, or that an Anglo-American is playing Odysseus. While there is nothing wrong with a diversity of racial and national backgrounds among actors in a film portraying classical mythology, it is nonetheless a legitimate criticism that none of the cast of Nolan’s Odyssey is Greek or even of Greek ancestry. Not just that, but the film’s international press tour skipped Greece entirely.
This may seem deeply ironic, but this is precisely how cultural appropriation operates: a love of a culture does not translate to a love of its people. It is also part of a wider erasure of modern Greeks from the Western reception and study of Greek antiquity, which is also reflected in the fact that the fields of ancient Greek history, philology, and archaeology have long been dominated by northern and western Europeans and their diaspora. Graduate programs for these fields expect students to learn to read scholarship in English, German, and French, but modern Greek has traditionally been excluded. This is a legacy of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century racism and Orientalism, whereby modern Greeks were seen as culturally and biologically severed from their ancient Hellenic ancestors by centuries of Romanization, Christianization, and Ottoman occupation. Even the medieval Greek continuation of the Roman Empire, which was responsible for preserving most of our surviving ancient Greek literature, was redubbed the Byzantine Empire by the West to further alienate the Greeks’ Christian inheritance from their pagan forefathers.
Unlike with Firewind and 300, we thankfully don’t have to wait a whole decade for a Greek heavy metal response to this film. Enter Triumpher. Formed in Athens in 2019, their current lineup consists of Antonis Valias (stage name Mars Triumph) on vocals, Christopher Tsakiropouolos and Marios Petropoulos on guitars, Stelios Zoumis on bass, and Agis Tzoukopoulos on drums. They have thus far released three studio albums within an impressively short span of four years: Storming the Walls (independent, 2023), Spirit Invictus (No Remorse Records, 2024), and Piercing the Heart of the World (No Remorse Records, 2026). Mythology and history are predominant lyrical themes throughout, especially from their Hellenic heritage. For example, Storming the Walls devotes a song to Zeus (“The Thunderer”), while the title track of Spirit Invictus honors Leonidas and the 300 Spartans.
Triumpher deliver a mixture of power metal and more traditional heavy metal, with a healthy dose of extreme metal aggression reminiscent of their country’s black metal scene—think Manowar meets Judas Priest meets Rotting Christ. The American band Manowar, in fact, were among the first to introduce fantasy and mythology into metal lyrics in the 1980s, and their album The Triumph of Steel (Atlantic Records, 1992) opens with “Achilles, Agony and Ecstasy in Eight Parts,” an adaptation of Homer’s Iliad clocking in at a truly epic 28 and a half minutes. The most well known heavy metal adaptation of the Odyssey, in turn, came a decade later with the American progressive power metal band Symphony X’s album The Odyssey (InsideOut Music, 2002), whose title track’s length of 24 minutes corresponds to the number of books of the Homeric original. But we are now noticing a familiar pattern, with the “classic” adaptations of classical mythology produced by Anglo-Americans (the same can be said for the reception of Alexander the Great by both Oliver Stone and Iron Maiden).
Triumpher are far from the first Greek metal band to tell their own stories (Northwind from Thessaloniki were doing it back in 1987), and today there are scores of them. Of course, Homeric poetry is a major inspiration—take the track “Epitaphios” from Triumpher’s debut record.
Its lyrics are entirely a quotation of Iliad 6.146–149, the famous meditation on human mortality and ephemerality delivered by Glaucus. The first section of the song uses Robert Fagles’ 1996 English translation:
Like the generations of leaves, the lives of mortal men.
Now the wind scatters the old leaves across the earth,
now the living timber bursts with the new buds
and spring comes round again. And so with men:
as one generation comes to life, another dies away.
These lines are recited against typical heavy metal power chords played with a slow drum rhythm mimicking a funeral march, while Mars Triumph delivers the Homeric lines in whispers and wails. Next, the second section (starting at 1:04) transitions into the tremolo guitar picking and blast beat drum pattern typical of black metal and death metal, befitting the dark subject matter of the Homeric lines (though this section is without lyrics). Then at 1:42 comes the sound of a thunderclap and the metal music fades out, replaced by a male choir singing somber, Byzantine-style chants. Amid this gloomy, stormy atmosphere, Mars Triumph reprises the Homeric quotation in whispers—but this time, the translation is in modern Greek:
Η Γενιά των ανθρώπων είναι σαν τη γενιά των φύλλων, που αλλά φύλλα ο άνεμος σκορπά χάμω αλλά πάλι φυτρώνουν όπως η άνοιξη αναχλωραίνει τα πράσινα δέντρα. Έτσι και η γενιά των ανθρώπων, η μία φυτρώνει και η άλλη χάνεται.
I Geniá tōn anthrópon ínai san ti geniá ton fíllon, pou allá fílla o ánemos skorpá hámo allá pálifitrónoun ópos i ánixi anahloraíni ta prásina dédra. Étsi kai i geniá ton anthrópon, i mía fitróni kai i állihánetai.
As Greek classicist Marios Koutsoukos observes, this particular translation is heavily based on the poetic rendering by Iakovos Polilas used in Greek schools, but adapted into a modernized prose version of the quotation found on websites devoted to Hellenism. To listeners raised in the Greek Orthodox Church, the choral music in the background would have also reminded them of liturgical hymns sung on Good Friday, which marks Christ’s crucifixion, specifically the Epitáfios Thrínos (“Lament upon the Tomb”). In an Orthodox context, Epitáfios also refers to an iconic shroud illustrating the entombed Christ used in Holy Saturday services. The title of Triumpher’s song “Epitaphios” certainly refers to the liturgical dirge—though with its quotation of Homer it may also evoke the classical meaning of the word, epitaphios (logos), referring to a “funeral oration” such as that delivered by Pericles over those who fell in the Peloponnesian War (Thuc. 2.35-46). In “Epitaphios,” like the Greek band Firewind before them, Triumpher weave together the inherited conglomerate of their heritage from classical, to medieval, to modern—taking a “timeless” excerpt from the Iliad and representing and reclaiming it in their own image as proud Greeks.
On March 6th of this year, Triumpher returned with their own answer to the Odyssey as well, in not one but two tracks on Piercing the Heart of the World: “Ithaca (Return of the Eternal King)” and “Naus Apidalia.”1 On the vinyl release, both songs conclude either half of the record and musically stand somewhat in contrast to the album’s other six tracks, such as the galloping, Spartan-themed opener “Black Blood” and the brutal, sinister “Erinyes,” whose placement right before “Naus Apidalia” portends Odysseus’s return as divine vengeance.
The title of “Naus Apidalia” is Greek for “ship without a steering oar” or “rudderless ship,” and refers to the ships of the Phaeacians, which Homer describes thus in Book 8 of the Odyssey (557–558, my translation):
οὐ γὰρ Φαιήκεσσι κυβερνητῆρες ἔασιν,
οὐδέ τι πηδάλι᾽ ἔστι, τά τ᾽ ἄλλαι νῆες ἔχουσιν.
ἀλλ᾽ αὐταὶ ἴσασι νοήματα καὶ φρένας ἀνδρῶν.
For the Phaeacians have no pilots,
nor any steering oars (pēdali’), which other ships (nēes) have.
Rather, the ships themselves understand men’s thoughts and minds.
The land of the Phaeacians has traditionally been identified with the Greek island of Corfu (Κέρκυρα, known classically as Corcyra), and the Apidalos Naus (Απήδαλος ναυς, “rudderless ship”) has been a popular motif there. A sculpture of such a vessel, by the artists Cleia Brenner and Kostas Panaretos, was erected in the island’s port city in 2003. Its pedestal bears a plaque inscribed with the above passage from Homer. It is a poetic irony of the Odyssey that it is a ship without a pilot or steering oar that successfully gets Odysseus home to Ithaca.
Triumpher’s “Naus Apidalia” is “epic” in length (clocking in at 9:27) and divided into multiple parts—suggesting that it’s a properly Greek answer to both Manowar’s “Achilles” and Symphony X’s “The Odyssey.” A proper analysis of the track would therefore be quite lengthy, but its music and lyrics are well worth a listen and/or read.
Both “Ithaca (Return of the Eternal King)” and “Naus Apidalia” are based on the events of Book 13 of the Odyssey, when a sleepy Odysseus is ferried by the Phaeacians on one of their “rudderless ships” back home. “Ithaca” is a power ballad—think of something structured like Led Zeppelin’s “Stairway to Heaven”—starting off mellow but concluding with heavy riffs and bells tolling in solemn grandeur.
Like Symphony X’s adaptation of the Odyssey, the lyrics to “Ithaca” are delivered from Odysseus’s first-person perspective. But while the former song covered the episodes that Odysseus himself narrates to the Phaeacians in Books 9–12, e.g. Cyclops, Circe, Sirens, Triumpher here focus on a specific moment in Book 13 (one that Homer’s Odysseus does not narrate), immediately after the events covered by “Naus Apidalia.” The Phaeacians had just transported Odysseus, who had fallen asleep on the voyage, safely back to Ithaca, and deposited him still sleeping on the beach. The lyrics begin as he awakens:
I wake
As the shoreline slowly sighs
Aura of scents
From jasmine and thyme
A palette of memories
From years long ago
The chariot of sun
Rides with its warming glow
Lighting the fields
Where the wild roses grow
They’re calling me home
Through the wind’s mighty blow
Through the rain
Through the snow
Carrying Nostos in my soul
Through the calmness
Through the storms
And the Fates now lead me home
I place my heart
On this sweet holy shore
She’s calling my name
From the king’s Mighty Throne
Seas open wide
Let the Heavens now sing
For the eternal king
Coming back home
I am crowned by the Gods
I shall step into the halls of your hearts
This is a moment in the story that’s not as fantastical or glamorous as the adventures that preceded it, but it is certainly one of the most emotional. It is the moment Odysseus realizes he is finally home after 20 years of violence, loss, and isolation. He takes it in through all his senses, and permits himself some time to be positive and comforted by the memories of life before he had left for Troy. He can briefly be satisfied that he has at last achieved his nostos, his homecoming, at least geographically, before he undergoes his remaining, fated trials through the second half of the epic. Penelope is calling him from his own throne. He knows how capable she is of holding her own for so long until the appointed time.
In “Ithaca,” Triumpher’s Odysseus not only expresses his emotions and sensations; he is also now fully aware of his role in the divine scheme, even far beyond its conclusion. He has consulted the shade of the prophet Tiresias during his necromantic rendezvous with the underworld in Book 11, and knows what he has to face back in Ithaca. He trusts in the gods’ plan for him, just before he even meets his patron Athena face-to-face. And with the final, triumphant line of the song, Odysseus reveals that he is not only to regain his mortal kingdom, but also immortal fame. Switching to a second-person address, he speaks across the ages directly to the listener. Call it Elysium or the halls of Valhalla, but true immortality is living on in the minds and hearts of posterity and being embodied by your descendants. That is how Triumpher lay claim to Odysseus and his story as their own.
Whether or not Triumpher composed “Ithaca” and “Naus Apidalos” in deliberate anticipation—or preemption—of Nolan’s Odyssey, these two songs make a powerful statement: the “tales of brave Ulysses” are theirs to be told, or rather sung, whether to a lyre or electric guitar—as they were originally a musical performance. Taking a look into how Greek heavy metal musicians reclaim the Homeric epics is not to argue that only Greeks can retell these stories. Rather, it is a reminder that their perspective is of paramount value, because these stories have been integral to their identity, from the poets of archaic Lesbos, to the scholar-monks of medieval Constantinople, to the heavy metal musicians of twenty-first-century Athens. So much is lost when they are excluded.
Jeremy gives special thanks to Christina Hotalen and Marios Koutsoukos for offering their assistance and perspectives in preparing this piece. Triumpher can be followed on Instagram and Facebook, and their music can be streamed and purchased via Bandcamp and YouTube.
Notes
1. Triumpher had already included the song ‘Arrival of the Avenger’ about Odysseus’s slaughter of the suitors on their previous record Spirit Invictus.