Perseus, the Final Chapter January 25

Perseus returns with Andromeda back to the island where King Polydectes was hoping to ravish Perseus’ mother.  (Remember that part?)  Well, Perseus had been gone a pretty long stretch by now, but Danae had managed to put off ravishment, but just barely.  It was a near thing, I can tell you; another week or two, and I couldn’t have answered for the outcome.  So Perseus whips out Medusa’s head, which he fortunately had in his trusty sack, and turns Polydectes into stone.  So finally Perseus returns to the kingdom of Argos where his grandfather, King Acrisis lived.  Now another thing you need to recall – and if there’s one thing you need to read mythology it's a good memory, that and nothing else better to do – is that Acrisis had dumped Perseus and his mother in the Mediterranean in the first place owing to a prophecy that Perseus would grow up and kill him.  So Acrisis lights out, leaving the whole joint to Perseus to do as he likes.  Well.  Everything goes along ducky, until one day Perseus was playing a game of quoits which is pretty much like horseshoes, except instead of a horseshoe you use a quoit, and please don’t ask me what a quoit is, because I don’t know.  Well, anyway, one of Perseus’ throws goes wide, and there just happens to be an old stranger watching from the sidelines, and the quoit beans him on the head, and it kills him, and guess who the stranger turns out to be?  That’s right: Acrisis!  Now I’ve never played quoits, but if it’s anything like horseshoes, which my sources say it is, it would take a pretty hard and wild throw to bean a stranger on the sidelines, and even then, I don’t think an ordinary horseshoe could kill you unless it still had the horse attached, but anyway that’s what happened and I don’t see any reason for us to doubt it if we’ve already swallowed the part about Medusa.  These days, and I’m not saying he would have served time, Perseus would have at least been investigated for negligent quoit playing or homicide by accidental beaning or something, but in those days the Greeks could find you Innocent by Reason of Prophecy, and that would have been the end of it.  And it is the end of it.  The End.