Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Stheno.
The gallery
The Gorgons Stheno and Euryale Pursuing Perseus (Attic black-figure lekythos)
Unknown (Attic vase-painter), c. 530–500 BC
On this Attic black-figure lekythos, the two surviving Gorgon sisters — Stheno and Euryale, the immortal ones who could not be slain — race in furious pursuit of Perseus, who has just beheaded their mortal sister Medusa. The painter renders the Gorgons in the canonical archaic 'running' pose, knees bent and wings spread, their grimacing frontal masks fixed on the fleeing hero. The image captures the moment of vengeance left unresolved by the myth: where Medusa dies, Stheno and Euryale endure, and only Perseus's flight (and his cap of invisibility) saves him. The vessel is held in the Cabinet des médailles of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris (Inv. 277).
Perseus Fleeing the Gorgons (Dinos of the Gorgon Painter, Louvre E 874)
The Gorgon Painter, c. 580 BC
The name-vase of the Gorgon Painter, a monumental Attic black-figure dinos (mixing bowl on stand) made in Athens and found at Caere in Etruria. Around its shoulder runs the pursuit of Perseus by the Gorgons after the murder of Medusa: the hero sprints away at the left while behind him surge his immortal pursuers, Stheno and Euryale, their winged bodies and tusked, frontal faces enlivened with crimson detail. The scene is one of the earliest and most influential depictions of the Gorgon chase in Greek art, defining the running winged type that would echo across vase-painting for a century. The vessel (height c. 93 cm) entered the Louvre with the Campana Collection in 1861 (Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities, accession E 874).