Chrysaor

Chrysaor is the son of Medusa and Poseidon and the brother of Pegasus, born from the Gorgon's neck when Perseus cuts off her head. A warrior who comes into the world holding a golden sword, he is the father of the three-bodied giant Geryon.

Hesiod's Theogony tells how Poseidon lay with Medusa, the only mortal among the three Gorgons, and how both her children leap out fully formed at the moment Perseus beheads her: Pegasus, named after the springs (pegai) of Oceanus, and Chrysaor, named after the golden sword (aor) he holds in his hands. His name means 'he of the golden sword', an epithet Homer also gives to Apollo. Apollodorus repeats the story and names Poseidon as the father of both, while Ovid has the two brothers spring from their mother's blood.

Chrysaor then unites with Callirhoe, a daughter of Oceanus, and fathers Geryon, the giant of Erytheia, an island the Greeks placed near Gadeira (Cádiz); Heracles comes to seize his red cattle, guarded by the dog Orthrus, in his tenth labor. Hesiod's next line says that 'she' also bore Echidna, the viper woman; most scholars take this to mean Ceto, but if it means Callirhoe, Echidna is Chrysaor's daughter too. Diodorus Siculus offers a rationalized version: his Chrysaor is a king of all Iberia, named for his wealth in gold, and Heracles fights not one three-bodied giant but his three sons.

No ancient author tells how Chrysaor died; his place in myth is his birth and his line. He appears early in art: on the pediment of the temple of Artemis at Corfu, carved around 580 BC, the young Chrysaor stands beside his mother Medusa, with Pegasus on her other side, although in myth both are born only at her death.