The Roman poet Ovid wrote the famous account of Medusa’s hair becoming snakes in Metamorphoses.
Ovid’s Metamorphoses is a Latin narrative poem completed around the beginning of the first century CE. In its account of Medusa, the once-beautiful woman’s hair is transformed into snakes after she is punished by Minerva, the Roman counterpart of Athena. Ovid’s version strongly influenced later European images of Medusa.
Earlier Greek traditions already described Medusa as a monstrous Gorgon, but they do not all give the same origin story for her snake hair. This distinction matters: the idea that Medusa was originally beautiful and then transformed is especially associated with Ovid’s retelling. Ovid was a Roman author, not a Greek mythographer, although his work preserved and reshaped many Greek myths.