Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/252

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226
A Solution of the Gorgon Myth.

tinctly horned; and, moreover, it is of the early protruded spht-tongued kind, clearly proving that the early Greek type was still considered the potent form, or it would hardly have been placed where it is, on the breast of a late Emperor.

In the Museum at Perugia is a terra-cotta head, said to be late Etruscan, of which the facial expression is of the same type as the Greek from Taranto, but it has even more of the horror-struck, agonised look. On this Etruscan head the horns are as distinct and as prominent as upon the preafhxes. Later still, upon Roman cinerary urns of about the late Empire period, we find the same thing. At the Uffizi

Fig. 12.

Gallery in Florence is a small marble house-like box, which has contained charred remains. I show a sketch of the front in Fig. 12 and I think every beholder will admit this head to be intended for Medusa, and that it is horned. In the Museum at Palermo are two urns (Nos. 5057 and 6995) precisely similar, though of terra-cotta and inferior work, and two others in stone—all are from Chiusi. Also at the Kircherian Museum in Rome there is another marble urn having a front identical in all respects with this, showing the type to be a common one. I might produce many more examples, but I submit that the question of horns