On their return to Argos, Perseus, Danae, and Andromeda were welcomed home by King Acrisius. The king had not forgotten about the oracle, but he was glad finally to have a male heir. He saw that Perseus was a fine young man and found it impossible to imagine him committing murder. Some time later, however, Perseus went to Larissa, a city in Thessaly in east-central Greece, to participate in a discus contest at some funeral games. One of his throws accidentally struck the head of a spectator and killed him—when Perseus went to try to help his victim, he discovered that it was Acrisius. The Delphic oracle’s prophecy had been fulfilled. In other versions of the legend, on hearing of Perseus’s imminent return, Acrisius fled to Thessaly to escape the fate prophesied by the oracle. Perseus followed him there, but had no hostility toward his grandfather: his death was still an accident. Given the manner of Acrisius’s death, Perseus was uneasy about succeeding his grandfather, so he exchanged thrones with the king of Tiryns and Mycenae, two great Bronze Age cities of the Peloponnese. In later life, Perseus and Andromeda had seven children—six sons and a daughter, Gorgophone, who became infamous for refusing to follow the Greek custom of committing suicide after the death of her first husband. When Perseus died, he was placed by his grieving father Zeus in the night sky, where he became a constellation visible in winter to observers in the northern hemisphere. In it he appears with sword upraised and the head of the slain Gorgon Medusa on his outstretched hand.
Kathleen Jenks
World History
