Minerva discovers this and is furious with Aglauros. When Mercury comes to seduce mortal virgin Herse, her sister Aglauros is driven by her greed to help him. Metamorphoses by Ovid tell the story of Minerva and Aglauros.He agreed to keep the affair secret, but when Hermes returned in disguise to test him, he broke his word and was punished by being turned into stone. Battus was a figure in Greek mythology who witnessed Hermes stealing Apollo's cattle.Her lover Olenus wished to share in the blame, and so shared her fate. Due to her vanity, she was turned into stone at Ida by the gods. Lethaea is a mythological character briefly mentioned in Ovid's Metamorphoses.Since then, a priestess lit the fire on the altar every day, repeating thrice: "Iodame lives and demands fire". One night, Athena appeared in front of her at the sight of Medusa's head which was worked in the goddess' garment, Iodame turned into stone. She was a priestess at the temple of Athena Itonia built by her father. Iodame was the daughter of Itonus and granddaughter of Amphictyon.It was later identified as the water snake which devoured the sparrows and was turned into stone in the prophecy about the Trojan War. According to some authors, Heracles, when fighting the Nemean lion was helped in this labour by an Earth-born serpent, which followed him to Thebes and settled down in Aulis.In Classical times, the small island of Pontikonisi, off Corcyra ( Corfu) was identified as this petrified ship. In Homer's Odyssey, it is recounted that the god Poseidon turned a ship of the Phaeacians into stone, in punishment for their having helped his foe Odysseus: "With one blow from the flat of his hand, he turned her into stone and rooted her to the sea bottom".Perseus killed Medusa and cut off her head, and afterwards used the severed head as a weapon, using it to turn various enemies to stone.Gazers upon her face would turn to stone. Medusa was a Gorgon, a monster with living venomous snakes in place of hair.The supposedly petrified Cardiff Giant was one of the most famous hoaxes in United States history. In Cornish folklore, petrifaction stories are used to explain the origin of prehistoric megalithic monuments such as stone circles and monoliths, including The Merry Maidens stone circle, The Nine Maidens of Boskednan, the Tregeseal Dancing Stones, and The Hurlers. In fairy tales, characters who fail in a quest may be turned to stone until they are rescued by the successful hero, as in the tales such as The Giant Who Had No Heart in His Body, The Water of Life and The Dancing Water, the Singing Apple, and the Speaking Bird, as well as many troll tales. Petrification is associated with the legends of Medusa and the Svartálfar among others.
Amos Brown noted that " Fossils are to be found all over the world, a clear evidence to human beings from earliest times that living beings can indeed turn into stone (.) Previous to the modern scientific accounts of how fossils are formed, the idea of magicians or gods turning living creatures into stone seemed completely plausible in terms of these cultures". Petrifaction, or petrification, defined as turning people to stone, is a common theme in folklore and mythology, as well as in some works of modern literature. Perseus turning King Polydectes to stone with the head of Medusa.
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