He but showed the head of the Gorgon to his adversaries, and they turned to
stone in the very attitudes they were when they first beheld it. The
friends of Cepheus, however, and those who assisted Perseus, were saved
from the same fate by a previous warning of Perseus.
Soon after this memorable adventure, Perseus went to Seriphos, and arrived
there at the very moment that his mother Danae sought the altar of Minerva,
to save herself from the violence of Polydectes; Dictys, who had preserved
her and Perseus from the sea, had attempted to defend her from her enemy,
and Perseus therefore sensible of his merit and of his humanity, placed him
on the throne of Seriphos, after he had employed Medusa's head to turn the
wicked Polydectes {196} into stone, with those of his court who were
accomplices in his guilt.
When these celebrated exploits were finished, Perseus felt a desire to
return to his native country, and arrived with his mother and Andromeda on
the Peloponnesian coast, as some funeral games were being celebrated in
honour of the deceased King of Larissa. Here he sought to signalise himself
in throwing the quoit, but in this he was attended by an evil fate, and had
the misfortune to kill a man with a quoit which he had thrown in the air:
this proved to be Acresius, who thus met the fate the oracle had decreed,
and to avoid which, he had been guilty of the barbarous act of throwing his
daughter and her son into the sea.
This unfortunate murder preyed upon the spirit of Perseus, and though by
the death of Acresius he was entitled to the throne of Argos, he refused to
accept it, fearing it would constantly remind him of the parricide he had
committed; and exchanged his kingdom for the maritime coast of Argolis.
The time of the death of Perseus is unknown, it is universally agreed
however, that he received divine honours like the rest of the ancient
heroes.
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