Summary The poet Virgil in his Aeneid employs Gorgon imagery and its attendant connection to the goddess Minerva as part of his explication of one of the key themes of his Augustan epic, namely the progress from a Trojan past to a Roman future. Close analysis of the references to the Perseus myth and related Gorgon legends in the Aeneid reveals a carefully constructed web of intratextual allusions that serve in part to underscore the end of the Trojan order and the advent of the Roman.