Sally Jackson named Percy after the original hero from Greek mythology, Perseus. But are there more comparisons to be made? Welcome to the second episode of our two-part opener.
The next episode will be up next Tuesday! See you then!
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Perseus-Greek-mythology
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus2.html#4
https://www.jstor.org/stable/9d45c8c2-bcb3-349b-83ff-45092414814b?read-now=1&seq=9
Mythos- Stephen Fry
Heroes- Stephen Fry
Percy Jackson and the Olympians- Rick Riordan
https://www.theoi.com/
Sally Jackson named Percy after the original hero from Greek mythology, Perseus. But are there more comparisons to be made? Welcome to the second episode of our two-part opener.
The next episode will be up next Tuesday! See you then!
Sources:
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Perseus-Greek-mythology
https://www.theoi.com/Text/Apollodorus2.html#4
https://www.jstor.org/stable/9d45c8c2-bcb3-349b-83ff-45092414814b?read-now=1&seq=9
Mythos- Stephen Fry
Heroes- Stephen Fry
Percy Jackson and the Olympians- Rick Riordan
https://www.theoi.com/
Welcome to Greeks and Geeks the podcast where I take us on a persnickity but fun journey deep diving into the lore behind our favourite stories. I’m Sabrina and in todays episode, we’re going to explore the myths behind Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. This is the second of our two part series opener so if you haven’t listened to that episode, entitled Gods and Demigods, go give that a listen! This week we’ll be comparing the titular character Percy to his namesake Perseus. What do they have in common? Is it simply their name and the fact that they both meet Medusa? Or are there more comparisons to discover? The answer, actually, really surprised me when I was researching this episode, clacking away, doing my little goblin nerdy thing. Just imagine a 5ft1 lady version of L from Death Note crouching at her desk with coffee instead of sweets and you’ve got a vision of me when I’m in my research mode. Basically what I’m saying is I came into this thinking “Percy…Perseus…Medusa. Aiite. It aint that deep.” Oh but it is deep! You may even want to insert some form of Poseidon pun here, I would do that but my mum Athena would get mad at me probs.
ANYWAYS. I hope you’ll be a surprised as I was at just how much the stories of Percy and Perseus compare. If you already knew this though, do still stick around because I’m sure I would have missed something. The problem with talking about Greek Myths is…which version of the story do you even focus on? I believe Rick goes for the most well-known versions of the myths so I try to stick to the versions I think he used (for example I believe he chose the demigod version of the Dionysus origin story rather then the creepier ones like he was the product of Zeus and his daughter Persephone… for obvious reasons on that one considering he’s writing books for kids). As such, there’s always a comparison or something different or an interesting tidbit I could have missed. That’s the beauty of discovery! So yes I’m being a Teacher right now but, once this podcast is done, I encourage you to have a go at these myths yourselves. See if you can find anything I missed.
If you’re a fan of Rick Riordan you’ll know that his books borrow heavily from Greek Myths but he’ll often give the stories or characters a modern twist. We talked about that a lot in the last episode so if you’re curious go check that out. Percy Jackson and the original Greek Hero Perseus are no exception to that rule. Both are heroes and demigods in their own right, as the tagline for the Percy Jackson series is to have us believe.
Half boy. Half God. ALL HERO.
Which I’m sorry. That’s the most American tagline I’ve ever heard. I love you guys so much. It sounds like something Percy came up with himself. I just need like a bald eagle screech which, considering Zeus’ animal is an eagle, would actually be a pretty whacky link! But I digress. The tagline is true for both Percy and Perseus alike. But lets not jump ahead of ourselves. Lets start right at the beginning, with their origins.
Origin Story
Percy Jackson is the son of Poseidon and a mortal known as Sally Jackson. In The Lightning Thief we don’t know much about how the two met and fell in love. Most likely because the story is told from Percy’s point of view and he’s twelve and I don’t know about you but the idea of discussing my parents love life at that age was more painful that eating one of the 3 mini cacti currently facing me on my desk (both physically and emotionally, I love my mini cacti! I call them Legolas, Aragorn and Gimli and yes they are named based on their height order). When we get to the end of the book, Poseidon calls Sally “a queen amongst women” so we know that there were some genuine feelings there, if not love, then at the very least a mutual attraction and respect, though Percy does insist to Annabeth that Poseidon did love Sally.
Not enough to pay child support apparently but I cannot rant about that right now. It’s like the lava wall at camp half blood. I can’t not get mad at it and want to rant about it for days. Gotta nip it in the bud now before I go off script.
Right back to it. At this stage of the series, we don’t know much about Sally and Poseidon’s relationship or Percy’s err…shall we say….origins? And I know I’m speaking for all of us, including Percy himself when I say thank GOD. This is a kids story.
Which leads me onto Perseus’ origins, of which we know quite a bit more detail actually.
Now. Before I go further, I want you to level with me ok. Most of you know I’m a teacher by now. As such I need to be responsible with the content I create. No funny business alright? So what I’m about to talk about next, NO silliness in the comments alright? Don’t you go commenting stuff. Think of the ChILDREN alright? Alright.
So golden showers.
Wait hold on I’ve skipped too far.
Basically, we all know the way Gods had babies was VERY WEIRD and not like normal humans in which the…the stork brings it when a mummy and daddy love each other very much (you know the funny thing is I’m doing this to myself). Now how Perseus was born is probably the strangest of all, at least in my opinion, if you think something different please let me know!
Perseus’ mother Danae was locked away in a tower of bronze for reasons we’ll get to later on. Zeus found her and was able to get into the tower by transforming himself into golden rain. The golden rain fell onto Danae and that’s how she got pregnant with Perseus. It’s one of the weirder stories of gods and babies and stuff and when I heard this story as a kid I was terrified of the rain for about a week because I was nine years old and I did NOT want that kind of responsibility you know? Sheesh.
Well we’ve already stumbled onto the biggest difference, that even thought they’re demigods, Percy is the son of Poseidon and Perseus is the son of Zeus. But what about their similarities? Well I’ve already mentioned their mothers, so I’m going to discuss them in more detail now.
Mothers
What really surprised me going into this episode is just how much the Lightning Thief and the Perseus myth has in common when it comes to the mothers and cruel men in the tale.
Sally and Danae are both beloved by their sons. They have both suffered hardships. Sally is down on her luck and stuck married to a horrible abusive man (Smelly Gabe as Percy calls him). And Danae was literally locked in a tower by her own father and got pregnant via RAIN. When her father discovered the baby, he literally locked her and baby Perseus in a chest and set them off to sea, when they washed up on the island of Seriphos and NOT the island of Sephiroph which I totally didn’t misread it as when I first read the myth what you talking about? The Island of Sephiroph- SERIPHOS Sorry- is ruled by King Polydiktus who really lives up to the third syllable in his name if you catch my drift.
It's clear to me that the mother-son relationship is important for both Percy and Perseus. King Polydictus tricks Perseus into going on his quests because he wants Perseus off the island so that he can marry his mother. Smelly Gabe, whilst already married to Sally, hates Percy being around and the feeling is mutual. At the end of the stories, the cruelty towards both Percy and Perseus’ mothers leads to the two mens downfalls in similar but VERY distinct ways.
Perseus returns from his adventures and kills King Polydictus using the head of Medusa to turn him into stone. This makes sense for the time of the myths. Women’s lives revolved around motherhood and the home in Ancient Greece, though in different ways depending on what city you lived in. Mother goddesses were revered and worshipped, such as Rhea the mother of the gods. Historians are currently arguing if Spartan women who died in childbirth were offered the most honourable type of burial, based on a particular translation of Plutarch- it’s all super messy and I love it. We can also look to Orestes killing his mother Clytemnesta as an act of revenge for her killing her husband, which caused the Furies to hunt him down to near death and madness and for a trial for her murder to take place. Men were seen as the protectors in this patriarchal society, and so to kill anyone, let alone family was one of the worst crimes possible. Women were, in general, not expected to partake in any sort of defence of their homes, they weren’t allowed to join the army, and the only reason why they were allowed say in Sparta again- to exercise and train their bodies is because Spartans believed that strong mothers= strong babies. It all came back to motherhood for them, so it makes sense that Perseus, the big strong hero, would be honourable and save his mother from the evil Polydictus, rather than have her save herself. Saving his mother is the honourable, heroic thing to do, there’s no question on that.
Of course there are exceptions to the whole “not meant to defend the home” thing. There are real historical events depicted of women doing exactly that and they are usually savage and incredible and I love women SO MUCH.
But times have moved on, and whilst we still live in a patriarchal society which puts a lot of emphasis on women and motherhood, there’s a lot more that women can be. Women CAN be in the army, women can choose not to have children. Women in stories can have their own agency. Unfortunately, in childrens stories, this isn’t always the case still. Think about the evil stepmothers whose lives revolve around them hunting down their stepchildren, or even in romance or fantasy stories how a once powerful Queen or Ruler suddenly becomes weaker or softer, unable to fight because “she’s a mother now.” Note how that same rule never extends to men who become fathers? In children’s stories in particular, the mother character usually doesn’t have anything else going for them except the fact that they are the main characters mother.
So that’s why it was so surprising to me that Percy wasn’t the one to use Medusa’s head to kill Smelly Gabe. When he finds out how abusive Gabe is to Sally, of course he’s filled with that kind of rage. He WANTS to do what Perseus did, he WANTS to protect his mother and see justice served. He loves Sally, of course he does. But what does he do instead?
He offers her a choice.
Unlike Perseus, Percy gifts Medusa’s head to Sally so SHE can decide whether or not she uses it to free herself of Smelly Gabe’s abuse. In doing so Rick Riordan give Sally an agency that’s not just rare in Greek Myths, but in modern stories too. When I tell you I lost my entire mind when I read that part. I think that particular tiktok video involved me screaming into a pillow. Not just the fact that she was given the option, but that she TOOK IT?! Poseidon was right, Sally is in fact a queen amongst women.
So here we have it, two boys who love their mum, two cruel men getting their just desserts via Medusa’s severed head. We love to see it.
But why were these mothers down on their luck to begin with? Well, actually, again it was for fairly similar reasons and both of it had to do with their sons. To understand more we need to look at:
Prophecies
The ancient Greeks weren’t the only ones who used divination not just in their storytelling, but in reality too. Not by a long shot. In Greek and Roman times, high offices were held for diviners and a lot of respect was given to divination, the same couldn’t be said for witchcraft, which was treated with a lot more suspicion. Much like tragedy, which we talked about in our previous episode, prophecies in these poems and plays usually affect people of high rank, kings and demigods.
So what made prophecy so important to the Ancient Greeks? A Cognitive History of Divination in Ancient Greece, an essay by the classicist, Peter T. Struck, notes the following about what he calls “Surplus Knowledge”
So divination helped the Ancient Greeks make sense of the world and their own innate knowledge. Many scholars also believe that it was an important social and political component of ancient times and not just something magical or occult. Struck says that divination was as much part of the Ancient Greek life as something like intuition of a “gut feeling” is in todays day and age. The fact that they were of such importance in day to day life of course means that the same is true in Ancient Greek stories. You think how intuition is such a cliché in modern times, we’ve even turned a hightened sense of it into a superpower (like Spidey sense) It’s like there are two catergoies of Greek Tales: Gods Behaving Badly, and “Prophecy makes us all Panic! At the Disco.” Or maybe that should be Panic! At the Agora…
As such, it makes sense that both Percy and Perseus’ stories are so wrapped up in prophecy. For Perseus, it’s literally part of his origins story of why his mother was placed in a tower to begin with. His grandfather was the king of Argive and lost his mind, as most of these men do, when it was prophesized that “oh no! Your grandson is going to kill you one day” so instead of doing the sane thing of maybe raising the baby, informing him of the prophecy, living out their days in peace and being a Good Dude and a Good Grandpa, so maybe when he gets old or sick or injured, Grandson would help put him out of his misery or whatever I’m fanficing here I know, instead of that he decides “nah I’m gonna lock my daughter up so she can’t get pregnant” LIKE THAT’S EVER STOPPED THE GODS BEFORE. So one golden shower later (stop it) baby is here and again, he has a choice to not be an idiot, but instead decides to lock his daughter and the baby in a trunk and yeet them into the sea. BRILLIANT THINKING THERE.
Of course it doesn’t work and Perseus eventually ends up killing his grandfather by accident much later on in his story so, welp, there you have it ya dingus.
Meanwhile the Oracle of Delphi is perhaps one of the most famous of the historic ancient Greek diviners, and who served the Greek God Apollo. In Percy Jackson, she is the one to give out prophecies to anyone going a quest. But she also gave the Greek Gods a prophecy similar to the one Perseus’ grandfather was given, but obviously on a much grander scale.
Sometime around the end of World War II, the Oracle of Delphi gave the Olympians a prophecy. In it, she said that a child Big Three (that’s Zeus, Hades or Poseidon) could be responsible for saving or destroying Olympus once they turn 16 years old. This is one of the reasons why these three gods made a pact not to have any more children, which two of them went on to LIE about because they can’t resist temptation for more than five minutes apparently. It’s this reason why Percy shouldn’t exist but he does, against the oath the Big Three took. In the Lightning Thief, however, we don’t know this prophecy yet, so I shouldn’t really be focusing on it. The more important prophecy in The Lightning Thief is the one the Oracle gives Percy himself before he sets off on his quest.
But the parallels between The Big Three Propehecy and Perseus’ prophecy are quite clear so I thought it was important to go a little off topic, topic-adjescent if you will, and mention it. Besides this idea of killing fathers or overthrowing fathers, whether it’s via prophecy or as part of a coup or war is actually a very common in Greek myths. The ones that come to mind instantly, are of course Perseus but also Oedipus too. With the higher beings, the Titan Kronos overthrew his father Orunous, then Zeus along with the help of his siblings overthrew his father Kronos. It makes sense that the Gods fear a similar overthrowing, especially as there is an actual prophecy in Greek Myth similar to the Big Three prophecy in Percy Jackson. This prophecy states that Zeus’ son would be more powerful than him and eventually overthrow him. What I’m getting from all this is that the Greeks had a huge fear of fathers being killed by sons and sons being more powerful than their fathers. These stories speak to greater societal fears and political zeitgeist of the time, for example in the Orestia, Orestes kills his mother Clytemnesta and these actions cause Athena to assemble the first ever criminal trial. The move from tradition weregilds (or “blood price”) to a more judicial system was extremely relevant for the time the play was written.
Which leads me to Percy Jackson. Now I’m speaking as someone who is currently reading the first series so at the time of writing this script, I didn’t know how it ends. I didn’t know if Percy is going to save or destroy Olympus or, like a lot of prophecies, it’s going to be something completely unexpected yet make sense within the scope of the prophecy. But my current theory is that this Big Three prophecy also speaks to the current climate in which the book was written. Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief was published in 2005, and the political landscape at that time can be considered, to put it bluntly, Extremely Yikes. I’m not going to go into too much detail, but the 2000s was a time when a lot of Millennials were growing up to watch adults completely fumble the bag in terms of the response to things like 9/11, climate change and the economy. The thing that a lot of people say about the Millennial generation is that we were sold a promise of “Work hard, get a good education, go to college, do exactly what we (the adults) tell you to do and then you too will get all these good things like money and a home of your own.” Which sadly ended up not really being the case for a lot of us. As a result, like a lot of youngsters, it made us question authority, become cynical. Theres an idea that the way things currently work is terrible and we need something new, something better, a challenging of the status quo which I think is prevalent in the Percy Jackson series from the very start. It’ll be interesting to see if that’s the case or if I’m completely wrong and overthinking it as we Athena Cabin kids love to do.
(addendum: I have now since read The Last Olympian and lmao I love it when I prove why I should be a welcome member of Athena cabin. SOMETIMES I AM CORRECT ABOUT THINGS!)
Speaking of Athena it’s now time to move on to Medusa…
Medusa
Now the thing about Medusa is that there is literally SO MUCH to discuss about her oh my god I could completely derail this podcast. I have to reign it in, especially in the modern climate and the reclaiming of Medusa via feminist retellings such as Nathalie Haynes “Stone Blind.” That has to be a topic for another podcast but please rest assured that I’m vibrating in my seat one of those milk frother thingies held under coffee for too long. I want to talk about it so bad, but I have to talk about her in the context of Percy and Perseus’ stories, and how they can compare.
I will try to hold in my womanly rage. I will probably fail. Let’s start, shall we?
So for context, who is Medusa? Like most myths, there are different versions of her but generally speaking Medusa is a monster known as a Gorgon. One of three sisters with snakes for hair and hatred for man. Now in older myths she is the daughter of marine gods, whereas in Ovid she was born a beautiful maiden and was transformed into a monster after… err… right I’m going to quote Annabeth on this one.
“Medusa was Poseidon’s girlfriend. They decided to meet in my mothers temple. That’s why Athena turned her into a monster.”
Now again this is very much the childrens interpretation of it. Rick had to sanitise it for children and I’m sort of doing it here too, much like in my history classes I have to say the Romans “were extremely cruel” to Boudicca’s daughters. We have to make this accessible to children in a way they’re ready to understand at the time of their development. Education and storytelling is sort of like peeling an onion in that sense. You start more shallow and get deeper and more complex as they age. Now we as adults know that that there are much more tragic interpretations to this myth, such as the fact that Poseidon didn’t take no for an answer when it came to Medusa in Athena’s temple and that they were definitely NOT boyfriend and girlfriend. Athena can’t punish Poseidon for this, as he’s a fellow Olympian, so she instead punishes his victim, Medusa.
*inhales angrily* I’m cool guys I’m chill. I’m TOTALLY CHILL. This story hasn’t annoyed me since I was like 12 years old what you talking about?
Lets discuss the differences between Perseus and Percy in relation to Medusa however. For Perseus, the main part of his quest is to slay Medusa. He does this by obtaining 3 gifts first, which we’ll get to later. It is part of his role as a hero to kill her, as she is a monster who turns all beings to stone. He does this in a TOTALLY HEROIC WAY by chopping off her head when she’s asleep.
AWESOME. SO COOL. WHAT A GUY. I’m not about to yeet my microphone across the room what are you talking about?
Right before I give myself a tummy ache, I have to say that Perseus in the myths is kind of in between a rock and a hard place here. He’s needing to do this in order to save his mum, this is complex, blahblahblah, but yeah on a personal note the fact that he kills Medusa whilst she’s sleeping? I hate this and this sucks and I don’t like it, 0/10 stars for me.
Now for Percy, meeting and killing Medusa happens on his quest yes, but it is not his main mission. His main mission is to find out who the Lightning Thief is. He, Annabeth and Grover run into Medusa or “Aunty M” at her gnome shop rather than the cave Medusa was residing in in the myths. This is another example of how Rick Riordan takes the myths into the modern age.
In modern stories, especially in Hollywood, there’s a rule that the heroes never strike the first blow. That’s why, in films like Megamind, we can tell that the films real antagonist “Hal” is going to turn evil before he truly becomes a villain, because he strikes the first blow and attacks the main character Megamind first. The same is true in Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief. The villains attack or try to attack first. Medusa, rather than being asleep, lures Annabeth and Percy (and a terrified, suspicious Grover) in to her shop and feeds them, she tricks them with hospitality which is a BIG NO NO in ancient Greece (who called it Xenia). Showing proper Xenia was the mark of righteousness and is all over ancient stories like the Odyssey, and those who didn’t follow the rules (whether host or guest) were treated with disdain. Homer often used these rules to quickly establish who the heroes and who the villains of the story were.
The same is true here. Now I’m not sure if Rick Riordan was using his knowledge of Xennia in Ancient Greece for this, or if it was just a classic storytelling cliché of a villain luring sweet, innocent children into a trap with food and warmth (think the witch in Hansel and Gretel) but it’s an interesting parallel.
So Medusa both broke the rules of Xenia and struck the first blow by trying to kill them. In Percy’s version, at least to a modern audience, this sets her up to be a much more villainous figure than the one of antiquity (there’s that word again, I love that word). It turns Percy’s act of chopping off Medusa’s head into one of desperate heroism. If he doesn’t do it, they’ll be killed and Medusa’s rampage won’t stop. It’s also personal for the heroes because Grover’s uncle is shown to be one of Medusa’s victims.
But how do both Percy and Perseus manage to kill such a monster? The answer lies in the gifts they receive.
Gifts
Perseus goes into the fight with three gifts from the gods. From Hermes, he was gifted winged shoes, Hades gifted him his helm of darkness to help him turn invisible, and Athena gave him a shield. With these tools, he was able to defeat the Gorgon.
What I think is interesting is that Percy has similar gifts to hand, but he doesn’t defeat the gorgon alone. Luke, a demigod son of Hermes, is the one who gifts Percy the shoes and Grover is the one to use them and help distract the gorgon. Annabeth, demigod daughter of Athena, gave him a glass ball rather than a shield so he could spot Medusa’s reflection (although it’s funny that she actually says in the text “a shield would be better” as a cheeky lil reference). But Annabeth keeps her Yankees cap, which I would guess is the stand-in for Hades helm of darkness here as it also helps her stay invisible, she does this because as a child of Athena, Medusa is especially angry towards her. Percy, as Annabeth states, has more of a chance of getting close.
Finally we’re coming to the end point in our podcast, where we discuss one of the biggest reasons why I’m able to make this episode in the first place. Their names.
Percy’s full name is Perseus Jackson and when I tell you how much I lost it when I found that out. Remember I’ve been reading these books on tiktok for the first time and this was probably the first of my reactions to go semi sorta-viral. It literally just never occurred to me that Percy would be short for Perseus, probably because again, they have different god-dads. It took me out.
But when I found out the reasons why, it’s actually incredibly sweet. Percy is named after Perseus because he’s one of the few demigods who got a happy ending. And, well, it’s true. After his mission to kill Medusa, he rescued princess Andromeda (note how both Percy and Perseus also how love interests whos name starts with an A ay…AYYYY noice), they fell in love and got married, then he sailed home, rescued his mum, and took back the kingdom of his birthright. He was a beloved king and- yeah that’s pretty much it. A perfectly happy ending.
Now like I’ve said I literally have no idea if Percy’s ending is a happy one. And judging by the fact that there’s a new book on the way as of the time I’m writing this script, it hasn’t been released yet, we can’t actually say if it’ll be happy or not. However the fact that Sally deliberately chose that name because Perseus gets a happy ending is the hope I’m clinging too because, quite frankly, I don’t want to live in a world where Sally Jackson is wrong.
Next week we’ll be looking at a beloved and very current book and it’s TV show adaptation as I attempt to answer the question how can the apocalypse give us such a warm cozy feeling?
Thank you for listening to the second episode of Greeks and Geeks. I hope you had a good time. I’ve been you’re host Sabrina and I’m Geeking Out! See ya next time!