In Greek mythology, satyrs are deities of the woods and mountains. They are half-human and half-beast; they usually have a goat’s tail, flanks and hooves.  Satyrs can come in other hybrid human/animal forms, as well. According to William Hansen, “Satyrs are two-legged beings having the lower body of a horse and the upper body of a man.” Satyrs emit of hoarse sound, a mix of the neighing of a horse and the bleating of a goat.

In Greek art the satyrs were represented as a man with horse’s ears and tail. However in Roman representations they are portrayed as having the upper body of a man with a goat’s ears, tail, legs and horns.  Reference: Wikipedia

According to Myths and Legends of Greece and Rome, by E M Berens, satyrs were grotesque and repulsive with flat broad noses, pointed ears, and little horns sprouting from their foreheads, a rough shaggy skin and small goats tails.

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Nymphs were graceful beings who presided over the woods, grottoes, streams and streams etc. They were depicted as beautiful maidens of fairy-like form and robed in more or less shadowy garments.

There were three main classes of nymphs. These were water, mountain and tree or wood nymphs. Reference: Myths and Legends of Greece and Rome by E M Berens 1892 edition.

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Information on mermaids in cameos and other art. Mermaids are usually depicted as half human and half fish. They have been popular in many forms of art, including cameos, for many years.

Depictions of entities with the tails of fish, but upper bodies of human beings appear in Mesopotamian artwork from the Old Babylonian Period onwards. These figures are usually mermen, but mermaids do occasionally appear. The name for the mermaid figure may have been kuliltu, meaning “fish-woman”. Such figures were used in Neo-Assyrian art as protective figures and were shown in both monumental sculpture and in small, protective figurines.

The first known mermaid stories appeared in Assyria c. 1000 BC. The goddess Atargatis, mother of Assyrian queen Semiramis, loved a mortal (a shepherd) and unintentionally killed him. Ashamed, she jumped into a lake and took the form of a fish, but the waters would not conceal her divine beauty. Thereafter, she took the form of a mermaid — human above the waist, fish below — although the earliest representations of Atargatis showed her as a fish with a human head and arm, similar to the Babylonian god Ea. The Greeks recognized Atargatis under the name Derketo. Sometime before 546 BC, Milesian philosopher Anaximander postulated that mankind had sprung from an aquatic animal species. He thought that humans, who begin life with prolonged infancy, could not have survived otherwise.

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Medusa was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Gazers upon her face would turn to stone. Most sources describe her as the daughter of Phorcys and Ceto, although the author Hyginus makes her the daughter of Gorgon and Ceto.  According to Hesiod and Aeschylus, she lived and died on an island named Sarpedon, somewhere near Cisthene. The 2nd-century BCE novelist Dionysios Skytobrachion puts her somewhere in Libya, where Herodotus had said the Berbers originated her myth, as part of their religion.

Medusa was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who thereafter used her head, which retained its ability to turn onlookers to stone, as a weapon until he gave it to the goddess Athena to place on her shield. In classical antiquity the image of the head of Medusa appeared in the evil-averting device known as the Gorgoneion. Wikipedia

The mask of Medusa, or Gorgoneion, was believed to ward off evil, as well as to provide properties for renewed life; in Greek mythology the blood of Medusa was believed to bring the dead back to life.

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