The evil eye. An account of this ancient and wide spread superstition

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i66 THE EVIL EYE CHAP.
horrible tusks, its features and form caricaturing
humanity, seized on his imagination, which repro-
duced the monster in the series of myths."^'°
The story of the Medusa is but an incident in the
early belief in the evil eye, and should be carefully
Fig. 54. From Peru. I-'ig- 55-
studied by any who are interested in the subject.
After using it effectually in the turning of his enemy
Polydectes into stone, Perseus presented the terrible
head to Pallas, the Athenian goddess, who placed it
on her aegis, and in nearly all her statues, and those
of her Roman counterpart Minerva, she bears this
notable mask as an amulet.-'^
Originally the segis was a goat's hide worn as a
protective garment, but later it became a breastplate,
and afterwards a shield. When Minerva is repre-
sented with a shield as the war goddess, she has
the gorgon's head emblazoned upon it. Thus was
2"0 Dennis, o/>. cit. vol. ii. p. 221.
^'i At Athens new-born infants "were commonly wrapped in a cloth, where-
in was represented the Gorgon's head, because that was described in the shield
of IMinerva, the protectress of that city, whereby, it may be, infants were
committed to the goddess's care" (Potter, Arclucol. Gncc. ii. p. 320).