A shield features a terrifying Gorgon’s head to project fear and dread onto any assailant.  Elsewhere, that same blank-eyed stare is attributed to the Trojan hero Hector in murderous mode.

See also the bestellar reviews, complete with rich quote-mosaics, of Adam Nicolson’s magnificent Why Homer Matters, and Christopher Logue’s War Music, a muscular rendition of several books of the Iliad. 

‘And circled in the midst of all was the blank-eyed face of the Gorgon

with her stare of horror, and Fear was inscribed upon it, and Terror.’

Source: Homer, The Iliad of Homer, trans. Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: Chicago UP, 1961 (1951)), book 11, p. 235