1. In Greek myth, the son of Zeus and Danae. See DANAE for the story of his birth, of the prophecy that he would kill his grandfather Acrisius, and of the casting away of mother and child and their arrival on the island of Seriphos, where Polydectēs was king. Polydectes fall in love with Danae, but his love was not returned. Perseus was now a young man, and Polydectes, finding him an obstacle to his designs on Danae, persuaded him to undertake the dangerous venture of obtaining the head of Medusa (see GORGONS), thinking that he would be destroyed. But the gods favoured him: although accounts vary as to which gods gave him which gifts, they commonly say that Pluto lent him a helmet which would make him invisible, Hermes wings for his feet, Athena a mirror (so that he need not look directly at Medusa, whose gaze turned people to stone), and the nymphs a wallet to put the head in. Directions for finding Medusa were given him by the Graiae. On his return, having killed Medusa, Perseus rescued Andromeda from where she was chained to a rock, and married her, after turning Phineus, another suitor, to stone when he attempted to carry her off. It is also said that with the Gorgon's head he turned Atlas into a mountain, because Atlas had been inhospitable to him on his travels. Perseus then returned to Seriphos, just in time to save Danae from the violence of Polydectes, whom he turned to stone. Leaving his brother Dictys there as king Perseus now went to his native Argos, but found that his grandfather Acrisius had gone to Larisa in Thessaly. There Perseus, taking part in some games, accidentally killed him when throwing a discus and thus fulfilled the prophecy. He refused to take his grandfather's kingdom himself, to which he was heir, but withdrew to Asia, where his son Persēs became ruler of the Persians, supposedly named after him; or, according to another version, took Tiryns in exchange for Argos and founded Mycenae.
2. King of Macedon 179–166 BC, elder son of Philip V. He devoted his energies to consolidating Macedonian power and prestige in Greece at a time when Greece, while nominally independent, was under the protection (and will) of Rome. He was defeated by Aemilius Paullus in the Third Macedonian War (see MACEDON) and taken to Rome, where he died.
