Mythos: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #1)

by Stephen Fry

Their myths understand that whoever created this baffling world, with its cruelties, wonders, caprices, beauties, madness, and injustice, must themselves have been cruel, wonderful, capricious, beautiful, mad, and unjust. The Greeks created gods that were in their image: warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate but vengeful.

As the years passed, her endless capacity for the storage of information and sensory experience would make her wiser than almost anyone. One day she would mother nine daughters, the MUSES, whom we shall meet later.

Theia, who was also paired off in another sibling union, to her brother Hyperion. In due course Theia would give birth to HELIOS the sun, SELENE the moon, and EOS the dawn, quite enough parenting to be getting on with, so they too showed no interest in Gaia’s plans to depose Ouranos.

She called on Themis, who would one day be regarded everywhere as the embodiment of justice and wise counsel,7 and Themis wisely counselled her mother to forget the unjust idea of usurping Ouranos.

But then Nyx, without Erebus’s help, gave birth to MOROS, or Doom, who was to become the most feared entity in creation. Doom comes to every creature, mortal or immortal, but is always hidden. Even the immortals feared Doom’s all-powerful, all-knowing control over the cosmos.

GERAS, Old Age, was born next; not necessarily so fearful a demon as we might think today. While Geras might take away suppleness, youth, and agility, for the Greeks he more than made up for it by conferring dignity, wisdom, and authority. SENECTUS is his Roman name, a word that shares the same root as “senior,” “senate,” and “senile.”

A pair of perfectly ghastly twins were next: OIZYS (MISERIA in Latin), the spirit of Misery, Depression, and Anxiety, and her cruel brother MOMOS, the spiteful personification of Mockery, Scorn, and Blame.

Nyx and Erebus were just getting into their stride. Their next child, ERIS (DISCORDIA), Strife, lay behind all disagreements, divorces, scraps, skirmishes, fights, battles, and wars. It was her malicious wedding present, the legendary Apple of Discord, that brought about the Trojan War,

Nemesis has elements in common with the eastern idea of karma, and we use her today to suggest the fateful retributive opposition the lofty and wicked will one day meet and which will bring them down.

Sleep’s brother THANATOS, Death himself, gives us the word “euthanasia,” “good death.” The Romans called him MORS, of mortals, mortuaries, and mortification.

“Kronos, vilest of my brood and vilest in all creation. Worst of all beings, fouler than the ugly Cyclopes and the loathsome Hecatonchires, with these words I curse you. May your children destroy you as you destroyed me.”

Great pools of blood formed around the scene of Ouranos’s castration. From that blood, the blood which fell from the ruined groin of Ouranos, living beings emerged. The first to push themselves out of the sodden ground were the ERINYES, whom we call the Furies, ALECTO (remorseless), MEGAERA (jealous rage), and TISIPHONE (vengeance). Perhaps it was an unconscious instinct of Ouranos that caused such vengeful beings to rise up. Their eternal duty, from the moment of their chthonic—or out-of-the-ground—birth, would be to punish the worst and most violent of crimes: relentlessly to chase the perpetrators and to rest only when the guilty had paid the full and dreadful price. Armed with cruel metallic scourges, the Furies flayed the very flesh from the bones of the guilty. The Greeks, with characteristic irony, nicknamed these female avengers the EUMENIDES or “kindly ones.”

“I banish you to live out eternity beneath the ground, buried deeper even than Tartarus. May you sulk there in your fury, gelded and powerless.”

“There will be revenge. I curse your life, that it be ground out in slow remorseless perpetuity, its immortal eternity an insufferable burden without end.

A face far more beautiful than creation has yet seen or will ever see again. Not just someone beautiful but Beauty itself rises fully formed from the foam. In Greek “from the foam” can be rendered as something like APHRODITE, and this is the name of the one who now lifts herself from the spume and spray. She stands on a large scallop shell, a demure and gentle smile playing on her lips. Slowly she alights onto a beach on Cyprus. Where she steps flowers bloom and clouds of butterflies arise. Around her head, birds fly in circles, singing in ecstasies of joy. Perfect Love and Beauty has made her landfall and the world will never be the same.

It was not. Their next child, a boy she called HADES, was devoured in just the same manner. And then another baby girl, DEMETER. Next was POSEI DON, a second boy, and finally a third girl, HERA. All of them swallowed whole with as much ease as you and I might gulp down an oyster or a spoonful of jelly. By the time Kronos consumed Hera, Rhea’s fifth pregnancy, her love for Kronos had turned to hate. That same night he seized her and made love to her again. She swore to herself that if she became pregnant he would never take her sixth child. But how could she prevent him? He was all powerful.

Rhea’s accouchement on Crete was easy enough. Tenderly assisted by the she-goat and the Meliae she prepared to give birth in the safety and comfort of a cave on Mount Ida. Soon she was delivered of a quite transcendently beautiful baby boy. She named him ZEUS. Just as Gaia had recruited her youngest child Kronos in order to take revenge on her son and husband Ouranos, so Rhea vowed she would rear this, her youngest child, to destroy her husband and brother Kronos. The dreadful cycle of bloodlust, greed, and killing that marked the birth pangs of the primordial world would continue into the next generation.

Zeus would listen as Rhea described the unhappy condition of the world under Kronos. “He rules by fear. He has no sense of loyalty or trust. This is not the way, my Zeus.” “Doesn’t that make him strong?” “No! It makes him weak. The Titans are his family, his brothers and sisters, nephews and nieces. Already some are beginning to resent his monstrous tyranny. When your time comes you will exploit that resentment.” “Yes, Mother.” “A true leader forges alliances. A true leader is admired and trusted.” “Yes, Mother.” “A true leader is loved.” “Yes, Mother.” “Ah, you laugh at me, but it is true.” “Yes, M—” Rhea slapped her son. “Be serious. You are no fool, I can see that for myself. Adamanthea tells me that you are intelligent, but impetuous. That you spend too much time hunting wolves, teasing the sheep, climbing trees, seducing the ash-tree nymphs. It is time you were properly schooled. You are sixteen now and soon we must make our move.” “Yes, Mother.”

“He is clever, but wayward and rash. Teach him patience, craft, and guile.” Zeus was captivated by Metis from the start. He had never seen such beauty. The Titaness was a little smaller than most of her race, but endowed with a grace and gravity that made her shine. The step of a deer and the guile of a fox, the power of a lion, the softness of a dove, all allied to a presence and force of mind that sent the boy dizzy. “Lie down with me.” “No. We shall go for a walk. I have many things to say to you.” “Here. On the grass.” Metis smiled and took his hand. “We have work to do, Zeus.” “But I love you.” “Then you will do as I say. When we love someone, we always want to please them do we not?” “Don’t you love me?” Metis laughed, though in truth she was astounded by the halo of glamour and charisma that radiated from this bold and handsome youth. But her friend Rhea had asked her to undertake his education and Metis was never one to betray a trust.

For a year she taught him how to look into the hearts and judge the intentions of others. How to imagine and how to reason. How to find the strength to let passions cool before acting. How to make a plan and how to know when a plan needed to be changed or abandoned. How to let the head rule the heart and the heart win the affection of others. Her refusal to allow their relationship to take on a physical dimension only made Zeus love her more. Although she never told him so, Metis returned the love. As a result there existed a kind of crackle in the air whenever the two were close.

The Muses can be found in “music,” “amusements,” “museums,” and general “musings.” W. H. Auden believed that the image of a capricious goddess whispering ideas in the poet’s ear was the best way of accounting for the maddening unreliability of creative inspiration. Sometimes she gives you gold, sometimes you read back what she has dictated and see that it is dross. The Muses’ mother might be Memory, but their father is Zeus, whose faithless inconstancy is the subject of many stories yet to come.

Calliope Rather an undignified linguistic end meets CALLIOPE, the Muse of epic poetry. Somehow she became a steam-powered organ commonly played in fairgrounds, which are just about the only places where you will hear her name spoken today. To the Roman poet Ovid she was the chief of all the Muses. Her name means “beautiful voice,” and she gave birth to ORPHEUS, the most important musician in all Greek history. The finest poets, Homer, Virgil, and Dante included, invoked her aid when embarking on their great epics.

Clio Now relegated to a model of Renault motorcar and a series of awards in the advertising industry, CLIO or Kleio (famous) was the Muse of history. She was responsible for proclaiming, for noising abroad, and making famous the deeds of the great. America’s oldest debating union, founded in Princeton by James Madison, Aaron Burr, and others, is called the Cliosophical Society in her honor.

Melpomene is usually depicted either holding or wearing these, as well as, of course, the famous tragic mask with its unhappy down-curved lips. Along with her sister Terpsichore, she was a mother to the Sirens, whose time will come.

One day Zeus’s eye fell on the most beautiful of all the Oceanids—EURYNOME, daughter of Oceanus and Tethys. Hidden in a cave while the battle roared outside, Eurynome bore Zeus three ravishing daughters, AGLAEA (which means “splendor”), EUPHROSYNE also known as EUTHYMIA (glee, merriment, mirth) and THALIA28 (cheerfulness). Together they were known as the CHARITES or, to the Romans, the GRATIAE. We call them the Three Graces, favored throughout history by sculptors and painters seeking an excuse to render perfect female nudes. Their sweetness of nature gave the world something to counteract the horrible malice and cruelty of the Erinyes.

The three MOIRAI, or Fates, were named CLOTHO, LACHESIS, and ATROPOS. These daughters of Nyx are to be thought of as sitting round a spinning wheel: Clotho spins the thread that represents a life, Lachesis measures out its length, and Atropos (the relentless, remorseless one, literally the “un-turning”) chooses when to shear the thread and cut the life short.30 I picture them as sunken-cheeked crones, clothed in black rags, sitting in a cave cackling and nodding as they spin, but many sculptors and poets represented them as pink-cheeked maidens, dressed in white robes and smiling

Keres These carrion daughters of Nyx were the vile and rapacious spirits of violent death. Like the Valkyries of Norse and Germanic myth they collected the souls of warriors killed in battle. Unlike those benevolent warrior goddesses however, the Keres did not escort their heroic souls to the reward of a Valhalla. They flew from bleeding body to body, greedily sucking up the blood that flowed from them; then, when each corpse was thoroughly drained, they threw it over their shoulders and moved on to the next.

Gorgons The primordial sea god Pontus had by Gaia a son, PHORCYS, and a daughter, CETO. The progeny of this brother and sister were three island-dwelling sisters, the Gorgons STHENO, EURYALE, and MEDUSA. With hair of writhing venomous snakes, intense staring eyes, hideous fixed smiles, boar’s tusk teeth, clawed hands of brass and taloned feet, and scaly golden bodies, these monstrous sisters appeared frightful enough to freeze the blood. But anyone who caught a Gorgon’s eye—exchanged looks with her for just one fleeting second—would quite literally be turned instantly to stone. The word for that is “petrified,” which has come to mean scared stiff.

His strongest and most violent opponent in the war had not been Kronos but ATLAS, the brutally powerful eldest son of Iapetus and Clymene.33 Atlas had been at the center of every battle, rousing his fellow Titans into combat, shouting for one last supreme effort even as the Hecatonchires were battering them into submission. As punishment for his enmity, Zeus sentenced him to hold up the sky for eternity. This killed two birds with one stone. Zeus’s predecessors, Kronos and Ouranos, had been forced to waste much of their energy in separating heaven from earth. At a stroke Zeus relieved himself of that draining burden and placed it, quite literally, on the shoulders of his most dangerous enemy. At the junction of what we would call Africa and Europe the Titan strained, the whole weight of the sky bearing down upon him.

As for Kronos—the dark unhappy soul who had once been Lord of All, the brooding and unnatural tyrant who ate his own children out of fear of prophecy—his punishment, just as his gelded father Ouranos had foretold, was ceaselessly to travel the world, measuring out eternity in inexorable, perpetual, and lonely exile. Every day and hour and minute was his to be marked out, for Zeus doomed Kronos to count infinity itself. We can see him everywhere even today, the gaunt sinister figure with his sickle. Now given the cheap and humiliating nickname “Old Father Time,” his sallow, drawn features tell us of the inevitable and merciless ticking of Cosmos’s clock, driving all to their end days. The scythe swings and cuts like a remorseless pendulum. All mortal flesh is as grass beneath the cruel sweep of its mowing blade. We find Kronos in all things “chronic” or “synchronized,” in “chronometers,” “chronographs,” and “chronicles.”

During the war, the Cyclopes had, as mentioned, given Zeus in respectful homage the weapon with which he is always associated: the thunderbolt. Their brothers the Hecatonchires, whose tremendous strength had secured victory, were rewarded by being sent back to Tartarus—not as prisoners this time, but as guardians of the gates to those imponderable depths. The Cyclopes’ reward was to be appointed by Zeus his personal artificers, armorers, and smiths.

To the victors, the spoils. Like a chief executive who has just completed a hostile takeover, Zeus wanted the old management out and his people in. He allotted each of his siblings their own domain, their areas of divine responsibility. The President of the Immortals chose his cabinet. For himself, he assumed overall command as supreme leader and emperor, lord of the firmament, master of weather and storms: King of the Gods, Sky Father, Cloud Gatherer. Thunder and lightning were his to command. The eagle and the oak were his emblems, symbols then as now of fierce grace and unopposable might. His word was law, his power formidably great. But he was not perfect. He was very, very far from being perfect.

Refusing offers of marriage from the other gods, Hestia devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood. Placid, contented, kind, hospitable, and domestic, she tended to stay away from the everyday power struggles and political machinations of the other gods.39 A modest divinity, Hestia is usually depicted in a plain gown offering up flame in a bowl or sitting on a coarse woollen cushion on a simple wooden throne. It was the custom in Greece to say a grace to her before every meal. The Romans, whose name for her was VESTA, considered her so important that they had a school of priestesses devoted to her, the celebrated Vestal Virgins. Their responsibility, aside from lifelong celibacy, was to make sure that the flame representing her was never extinguished. They were the original guardians of the sacred flame.

While his name will always be associated with death and the afterlife, and the whole realm of the underworld (which shares his name) with pain, punishment, and perpetual suffering, Hades also came to symbolize riches and opulence. The jewels and precious metals that are mined deep underground and the priceless crops of grain, vegetables, and flowers that germinate beneath the earth are all reminders that from decay and death spring life, abundance, and wealth. The Romans called him PLUTO and words like “plutocrat” and “plutonium” tell of this great opulence and power.

A system of river deities, too dark and dreadful to flow in the open air, wound their way through this underworld. The principal was Styx (hate), a daughter of Tethys and Oceanus whose name and “stygian” attributes are invoked to this day whenever we want to describe something dark, menacing, and gloomy, something hellishly black and brooding. Into her seeped PHLEGETHON, the flaming river of fire, ACHERON, the river of woe, LETHE, the waters of forgetfulness, and COCYTUS, the stream of lamentation and wailing. Styx’s brother Charon was appointed ferryman, and for the time being he waited, leaning on his pole, by the banks of the Styx. He had dreamed that one day souls by the thousand would come to the shores of the river and pay him the price of transport across.

Space was given by Hades to the Furies, the earth-born Erinyes, to live within the darkest heart of his kingdom. From there the three of them could fly to all corners of the world to exact their revenge on those transgressors whose crimes were foul enough to merit their violent attentions.

In time Hades acquired a pet, a gigantic snake-tailed, three-headed dog, offspring of those monstrous children of Gaia and Tartarus, Echidna and Typhon. His name was KERBEROS (although he answered to his Roman name, CERBERUS, too). He was the original hound of he...

At Lerna, a lake that could be used as one of the entrances to the underworld, Hades posted HYDRA, anoth...

The Cyclopes, just as they had forged thunderbolts for Zeus, now created a great weapon for Poseidon too—a trident. This massive three-pronged fishing spear could be used to stir up tidal waves and whirlpools—even to make the earth tremble with earthquakes, which gave Poseidon the soubriquet “Earth Shaker.” His desire for his sister Demeter caused him to invent the horse to impress and please her. He lost his passion for Demeter, but the horse remained sacred to him always.

So lovely was Demeter that she attracted the unwanted attention of her brothers Zeus and Poseidon. To avoid Poseidon she transformed herself into a mare, and to chase her he turned into a stallion. The issue of that union was a colt, ARION, who grew into an immortal horse magically endowed with the power of speech.44 By Zeus she had a daughter, PERSEPHONE, whose story comes along later. Zeus gave Demeter responsibility for the harvest and with it sovereignty over growth, fertility, and the seasons. Her Roman name was CERES, from which we get our word “cereal.”

Fate and posterity have been unkind to the Queen of Heaven. Unlike Aphrodite or Gaia she has no planet named in her honor,47 and she must bear the burden of a reputation that portrays her as more reactive than active—reactive always to the errant infidelities of her husband-brother Zeus.

She gave the gods gravity, heft, and the immeasurable gift of what the Romans called auctoritas. If that makes her seem a spoilsport, well, sometimes sport needs to be spoiled and the children called in from the playground. Her special province was marriage; the animals associated with her were the peacock and the cow. Over the course of the war against the Titans, she and Zeus developed into a natural couple, and it became apparent to him that she was the only one with enough presence, dignity, and command to stand as his consort and bear him new gods. Crackling with tension, impatience, and distrust, theirs was nonetheless a great marriage.

He envisioned an assembly of twelve major gods—a dodecatheon as he Greekly put it to himself.49 So far we have met six, the children of Kronos and Rhea. There was already another deity to call upon of course, one who was older than any of them—foam-born Aphrodite. The moment the Titanomachy erupted, Zeus collected Aphrodite from Cyprus, aware that she would constitute a great prize if kidnapped, ransomed, or recruited by the Titans. For the last ten years she had contentedly been living amongst them and thus the gods now numbered seven.

She knew that Zeus had a roving eye, and she was determined not to let any other parts of him rove either. First she would give birth to the greatest of the gods, a boy whom she would call HEPHAESTUS, and then Zeus would marry her properly and submit himself forever to her will. This was her plan. The plans of the immortals, however, are as subject to the cruel tricks of Moros as are the plans of mortals.

When her time came, Hera lay down and Hephaestus was born. To her dismay the child turned out to be so swarthy, ugly, and diminutive that, after one disgusted glance, she snatched him up and hurled him down the mountainside. The other gods watched the wailing baby bounce once off a cliff and then disappear into the sea. There was a terrible silence. We will find out what happened to Hephaestus soon enough, but for the moment let us stay on Olympus, where Hera soon became pregnant by Zeus again. This time she took every care to look after herself, eating healthy foods and exercising gently but regularly, in accordance with all the approved precepts and practices of pregnancy and parturition. She wanted a proper son, not a runt fit only to be thrown away.

ARES, for so she called him, was from the beginning a pugnacious, violent, and aggressive boy. He picked quarrels with everyone and thought of nothing but the clash of arms and horses, chariots, spears, and martial arts. It was natural that Zeus, who disliked him from the first, should appoint him god of war.

Ares—MARS to the Romans—was unintelligent of course, monumentally dense and unimaginative for, as everyone knows, war is stupid. Nevertheless even Zeus acknowledged with grudging consent that he was a necessary addition to Olympus. War may be stupid, but it is also inevitable and sometimes—dare one say it?—necessary.

He quickly showed a remarkable talent for the fashioning of useful, ornamental, and even magical artifacts, which—allied to his strength with the bellows and apparent immunity from scorching in the intense heat of the forges—combined to make him the greatest of smiths.

In bouncing off the Olympian mountainside he had damaged his foot, which left him with a permanent limp. With his awkward gait, slightly contorted features, and disordered black curls, he was a fearful sight. His later reputation, however, was for faithfulness, kindness, good humor, and equable temper.

Hephaestus longed to come back to Olympus, which he knew to be his home by right, but he was aware that he could not do so without bitterness or on proper terms unless he allowed himself one measured act of revenge, which would prove his strength of personality, his right to divinity, and serve as his calling card to heaven. So, as Hephaestus learned his trade and worked his bellows, his quick and clever mind devised the plan that his quick and clever fingers would turn into startling reality.