The Gorgon, too, has her snakes. To the primitive Greek mind every bogey was earth-born. In the design in fig. 55[605] we have the slaying of the Gorgon Medusa. The inscriptions are not clearly legible, but the scene is evident. Perseus attended by Athene and one of the nymphs, who gave him the kibisis and helmet and winged sandals, is about to slay Medusa. Medusa is of the usual Gorgon type, but she holds in her hand a huge snake, the double of herself. But the crowning evidence as to the snake-form of the Erinys is literary, Clytaemnestra’s dream in the _Choephori_. Clytaemnestra dreams that she gives birth to and suckles a snake[606]. Dr Verrall (ad loc.) has pointed out that the snake is here the regular symbol of things subterranean and especially of the grave, and he conjectures that the snake may have been presented to the eyes of the audience by ‘the visible tomb of Agamemnon which would presumably be marked as a tomb in the usual way.’ I would go a step further. The snake is more than the symbol of the dead; it is, I believe, the actual vehicle of the Erinys. The Erinys is in this case not the ghost of the dead Agamemnon, but the dead Agamemnon’s son Orestes. The symbol proper to the ghost-Erinys is transferred to the living avenger. Orestes states this clearly[607]: ‘Myself in serpent’s shape Will slay her.’ And this, not merely because he is deadly as a snake, but because he _is_ the snake, i.e. the Erinys. Again, when Clytaemnestra cries for mercy, Orestes answers[608]: ‘Nay, for my father’s fate _hisses_ thy doom.’ The snake-Erinys in the _Eumenides_, and here again in the _Choephori_, remains of course merely an incidental survival, important mainly as marking the road Aeschylus has left far behind. It is an almost unconscious survival of a tradition that conceived of the Erinyes as actually ghosts, not merely as the ministers of ghostly vengeance. Before we leave the snake-Erinys, one more vase-painting must be cited, which brings this conception very vividly before us. The design in fig. 56 is from an early black-figured amphora of the class known as ‘Tyrrhenian,’ formerly in the Bourguignon collection at Naples[609]. The figure of a woman just murdered lies prostrate over an omphalos-shaped tomb. The warrior who has slain her escapes with drawn sword to the right. But too late. Straight out of the tomb, almost indeed out of the body of the woman, rises a huge snake, mouthing at the murderer. The intent is clear; it is the snake-Erinys rising in visible vengeance. The murderer is probably Alcmaeon, who has just slain his mother Eriphyle. His story, already discussed (p. 220), is as it were the double of that of Orestes. The interpretation as Alcmaeon is not quite certain. It does not however affect the general sense of the scene, i.e. a murderer pursued by the instant vengeance of a snake-Erinys. [Illustration: FIG. 56.] * * * * *