Two different versions
Three monster sisters, daughters of ancient sea gods. Medusa is the only mortal one. There is no transformation and no backstory.
A beautiful priestess assaulted by a sea god in a temple. The goddess punishes her, not him, and turns her hair into snakes.
The versions are about seven hundred years apart. The early one is known from poems of the Archaic period; the later one comes from a work by a Roman poet at the beginning of the Common Era, who retold many myths in his own way.
It was the later version that spread. It is more dramatic, with a plot and an injustice - and European culture mostly retold that version, rather than the dry list of sisters.
Why it matters
The same name gives us two different characters. In the early version, a hero kills a monster; in the later one, he kills a victim of unjust punishment - and the whole story changes from a heroic deed into a tragedy.
That is where the modern reading comes from. Over the past few decades, the figure has been reinterpreted as a symbol of a victim punished unjustly, and it entered culture in that role - even though that reading is based on the later literary version.
It is also worth remembering what the image itself was for. A head with a frozen face and snakes was an ancient protective charm, placed on shields, walls and pottery to ward off harm; it is older than any connected story.
This is a common pattern with myths. An image or name exists first, and an explanation is created later - with different eras creating different explanations for the same image.
How was Medusa described in the earliest texts?
Which version became famous?
Sources
- In the early Greek tradition, the character is described as one of three monster sisters, with no backstory of transformation
- the version involving punishment by transformation is known from a Roman poem at the beginning of the Common Era and became the dominant version in European culture. The image of a head with snakes was used as an apotropaic sign
Next in the “Greek Myths” series
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