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

by Stephen Fry

He knew that he was ugly and he knew Aphrodite did not love him. He knew that if he claimed her as his prize she would betray him and slip often into the bed of his brother Ares. But he was simply happy to be home. As for Hera—rather than acknowledge that she had been paid back for her cruel and unnatural betrayal of the maternal instinct, she maintained a dignified and frosty silence. Secretly, the better part of her was rather proud of her elder boy, and in time she grew genuinely fond of him, as did all of Olympus.

Hephaestus would make gifts for Aphrodite and for all the gods and prove himself a worthy member of the twelve. He was given one whole valley of the mountain for his own forge. It was to become the greatest and most productive workshop in the world. For assistants he chose the Cyclopes, themselves craftsmen of the highest order, as we have seen. Anything Hephaestus did not yet know they could teach him, and together, working to his designs, they would fashion remarkable objects that would change the world. Hephaestus—god of fire, and of blacksmiths, artisans, sculptors, and metalworkers—was home. His Roman name is VULCAN, which lives on in volcanoes and vulcanized rubber.

Only let me have a weapon, your majesty. You have equipped the scorpion, who makes no foodstuffs, with a deadly sting, while the snake, who does nothing but bask in the sun all day, him you granted a venomous bite. Give me, great Zeus, such a weapon. A fatal one, that will kill any who dare to steal my precious stock of honey.”

I made no promise that such a request would be granted.” Melissa’s wings drooped in disappointment.54 “However,” Zeus said, raising his hand, “from this moment forward the gathering of your honey will be made easier by my decree that you shall not labor alone. You will be queen of a whole colony, a whole swarm of productive subjects. Furthermore, I shall grant you a fatal and painful sting.” Melissa’s wings pricked up perkily. “But,” Zeus continued, “while it will bring a sharp pain to the one you sting, it is to you and your kind that it will bring death. So let it be.”

Meliss is still the Greek word for the honeybee, and it is true that its sting is a suicide weapon of last resort. If it should try to fly away after the barb has lodged in the pierced skin of its victim, a bee will tug out its own insides in the effort of freeing itself.

The Greek for “immortal” is ambrotos and “immortality” itself is AMBROSIA, which became the name of the specially blessed honey. Its fermented drinkable form, a kind of mead, they called NECTAR in honor of the flowers whose sweet gift it was.

“Go on, then,” Metis taunted. “Catch me now!” With a buzz and whizz she turned into a fly and darted about the cave. In a twinkle Zeus transformed himself into a lizard and with a quick flick of a long sticky tongue, Metis (along with any possible child of Zeus’s that even now might be forming in her womb) had been safely transferred to his interior. His father Kronos’s unkind habit of eating anyone prophesied to conquer him seemed to have been passed down to Zeus.

What was happening inside Zeus’s head was rather interesting. It was no wonder that he was suffering such excruciating pain, for crafty Metis was hard at work inside his skull, smelting, firing, and hammering out armor and weaponry. There was enough iron and other metals, minerals, rare earths, and trace elements in the god’s varied, healthy, and balanced diet to allow her to find in his blood and bones all the ingredients, all the ores and compounds, she needed.

Equipped with plated armor, shield, spear, and plumed helmet, she gazed at her father with eyes of a matchless and wonderful grey. A grey that seemed to radiate one quality above all others—infinite wisdom. From one of the pines that fringed the shoreline an owl flew out and perched on the shining she-warrior’s shoulder. From the dunes an emerald-and-amethyst snake slid forward and coiled itself about her feet. With a slightly unpleasant slurping sound Zeus’s head closed up its wound and healed itself. It was clear at once to all present that this new goddess was endowed with levels of power and personality that raised her above all the immortals. Even Hera, who realized that the newcomer could only be the issue of an adulterous affair that must have taken place very close to her wedding day, was nearly tempted to bend her knee.

Wisdom and insight were inherited from her mother, Metis. Handicraft, warcraft, and statecraft were hers. Law and justice too. She took a share in what had been uniquely Aphrodite’s domains of love and beauty. Athena’s kind of beauty was expressed in aesthetics, in the apprehension of its ideal in art, representation, thought, and character, rather than in the more physical, obvious, and perhaps superficial kinds that would always be the business of Aphrodite. The love that Athena stood for had a less heated and physical emphasis too; it was the kind that would later become known as “Platonic.”

In Rome she was worshipped as MINERVA, but without really that special personal connection that the Greeks felt for her. Her favored animals were the owl, that dignified symbol of watchful wisdom, and the serpent—in which guise her father had won her mother. The olive tree, whose soft and versatile fruit proved to be such a blessing to Greece, was sacred to her also.

The apparent gentleness of those grey eyes belied a new kind of ideal, one which combined physical power with strength of character and strength of mind. It was not wise to anger her. Besides, if you crossed Athena, you crossed Zeus. He was besotted with his daughter and she could do no wrong in his eyes. Ares, his least favorite child, made an interesting contrast to his new half sister. They were both gods of war, but Athena’s interests lay in planning, tactics, strategy, and the intelligent art of war, while Ares was a god of battles, combat, and all forms of fighting. He understood only violence, force, aggression, conquest, and coercion. It is distressing but essential to recognize that neither was as powerful when not allied with the other.

The original Pallas was a daughter of the sea god Triton and a dear childhood friend of Athena’s. They would play semi-serious war games together. On one occasion, when Pallas was winning against Athena, Zeus (ever watchful and protective of his darling) intervened and, setting one of his thunderbolts to stun, knocked Pallas unconscious. Athena, in the heat of the moment, administered the coup de grâce and killed her friend. Forever after, she bore Pallas’s name as a sorrowful token of her enduring affection and remorse. Athena, like Demeter, remained untouched by man.60 Her childless, single life and her youthful relationship with Pallas have led some to maintain that she should stand as a symbol of feminine same-sex love.

In fact she had not been tricked at all. She had done the tricking. Metis means “craft” and “guile” after all. She had quite deliberately allowed herself to be consumed by Zeus—more than that, she had duped him into doing so. She saw that, if she sacrificed her freedom and remained inside him always, she could assume the role of a wise counselor, a kind of consigliere, forever able to whisper advice to him. Whether he liked it or not. Those who speak truth to power usually end up in chains or an early grave, but inside Zeus’s head Metis could never be silenced. She would be a prudent check on the reckless excesses and headlong passions that often threatened to get the god of thunder into trouble. His storms of temper, lust, and jealousy needed to be balanced by her calm voice, a voice that could urge his instincts into more rational and enlightened channels. Whether Metis sacrificed her freedom out of a sense of duty and responsibility, or out of love for the Zeus whom she had always adored, I cannot conclusively state. I like to think it was a mixture of the two. It was, as a Greek might say, her moira both to serve and to love.

Zeus loved Artemis almost as much as he loved Athena and took great pains to protect her from the wrath of Hera, who could not bear to look upon yet another child of adultery, especially one whom she loftily characterized as a hoydenish tomboy and a disgrace to the dignity of feminine divinity.

“They aren’t difficult wishes, Daddy. Just the smallest things.” “Very well, let’s hear them.” “I never ever want to have a boyfriend or husband or have a man touch me, you know, in that way—” “Yes, yes . . . er . . . I fully understand.” This may have been the first time Zeus ever blushed. “Also, I want lots of different names, like my brother has. ‘Appellations,’ they’re called. Also a bow, which I notice he has a whole collection of but I don’t because I’m a girl which is totally unfair. I’m the older twin after all. Hephaestus can make me a really special one as a birth present just like he did for Apollo, a silver bow with silver arrows please. And I want a knee-length tunic for hunting in, because long dresses are stupid and impractical. I don’t want dominion over towns or cities, but I do want to rule mountainsides and forests. And stags. I like stags. And dogs, hunting dogs anyway, not lap dogs which are useless. And, if you’d be very very kind, I’d like a choir of young girls to sing my praises in temples and a group of nymphs to walk the dogs and look after me and help protect me from men.” “Is that it?” Zeus was almost giddy at this recitation. “I think so. Oh, and I’d like the power to make childbirth easier for women. I’ve seen how painful it is. In fact, it is actually quite sincerely gross and I want to help make it better.” “Goodness me. You don’t ask for the moon, do you?” “Oh, what a good idea! The moon. Yes, I’d love the moon, please. That will be all. I...

Goddess of the chase and the chaste, of the untutored and the untamed, of hounds and hinds, of midwives and the moon, Artemis duly became. The queen of archers and huntresses grew to value her independence and her celibacy above all things. The kindness with which she expressed her sympathy for women in childbirth was countered by the ferocity with which she pursued game and punished any man who presumed to come too near. Feared, admired, and adored across the ancient world, she was sometimes known, in honor of the mountainside of her birth, as CYNTHIA. The Romans called her DIANA.

Apollo was lord of mathematics, reason, and logic. Poetry and medicine, knowledge, rhetoric, and enlightenment were his realm. In essence he was the god of harmony. The idea that the base material world and its ordinary objects had divine properties and could resonate with the heavens, this was Apollonian, whether expressed in the magical properties of squares, circles, and spheres or in the perfect modulation and rhythms of a voice or a chain of reasoning. Even meaning and destiny themselves can be read in ordinary things, if you have the gift. Apollo had it in abundance, allied to an inability ever to lie. This made him a natural choice for taking charge of oracles and prophecy too. The python was sacred to him, of course, and the laurel. His particular animals were the dolphin and the white raven.

It would be a fool who mistook Apollo’s golden beauty for a sign of weakness. He was a supreme archer and when necessary as fierce and fiery a warrior as any on Olympus: Like all his close relations he was capable of cruelty, meanness, jealousy, and spite. Unusually for a god, he was worshipped by the Romans under his Greek name without any alterations. Apollo was Apollo wherever you went in the ancient world.

Everything about Hermes was quick. His mind, his wit, his impulses, and his reflexes. The gods of Olympus, already flattered by the fine savory smoke that had risen to their nostrils the previous night from Mount Cyllene, were entranced by the newcomer. Even Hera presented a cheek to be kissed and declared the child enchanting.

His fleetness of mind and foot suggested one immediate answer—he should become the messenger of the gods. To make Hermes even faster, Hephaestus fashioned what would become his signature footwear, the talaria—a pair of winged sandals that allowed him to zip from one place to another more swiftly than an eagle. Hermes was so unaffectedly delighted with them, and clasped Hephaestus to him with such warm and grateful affection, that the god of fire and forges immediately limped back to his workshop and, after a day and a night’s furious work, returned with a winged helmet with a low crown and a flexible brim to go with the talaria. This lent Hermes a touch of grandeur and showed the world that this pert and handsome youth represented the dread majesty of the gods. For extra élan and glamour Hephaestus presented him with a silver staff topped with wings and entwined with two snakes.

The guile and duplicity he had shown in stealing Apollo’s cattle made Hermes a natural choice for god of rascals, thieves, liars, conmen, gamblers, hucksters, jokers, storytellers, and sportsmen. The grander side to liars, jokers, and storytellers gave him a share in literature, poetry, oratory, and wit too. His skill and insight allowed him to hold sway in the fields of science and medicine.72 He became the god of commerce and trade, of herdsmen (of course), and of travel and roads.

His light was not golden like Apollo’s, but silver—quicksilver. Indeed the element named “mercury” after him is still sometimes called “quicksilver,” and all things mercurial remind us of this most delightful of gods.

The Queen of Heaven takes his hand. She is content. She and her wayward husband have had a Conversation. There are to be no new gods. There will be no more seduction and impregnation of nymphs or Titanesses. The dodecatheon is complete, and Zeus will now turn to the serious business of establishing his rule in perpetuity. She, Hera, will always be there to support and guide him, to uphold order and decorum.

Zeus watches her calmly smoothing the skirt of her gown and transfers his gaze to the others, one by one—Poseidon. Demeter. Aphrodite. Hephaestus. Ares. Athena. Artemis. Apollo. Hermes. These gods and all creation are bowing down before him. All his enemies are scattered, destroyed, imprisoned, or tamed. He has created an empire and a rule the like of which the world has never seen. He has won. Yet he feels nothing.

“That’s the one. These creatures would have consciousness. And language. They wouldn’t be a threat to us, of course. They’d live down here on the land, use their wit to farm and feed and fend for themselves.” “So . . .” Prometheus frowned in concentration as he tried to form a coherent picture in his mind. “A race of beings like us?” “Exactly! But not as big as us. And they’d be my creation. Well, our creation.” “Our creation?” “You’re good with your hands. Another Hephaestus. My idea is that you would model these creatures out of . . . out of clay, for example. They should be shaped in our image, anatomically correct in every detail, but on a smaller scale. Then we could animate them, give them life, replicate them, and release them into nature to see what happens.”

“Formed by a great Titan from Gaia’s clay, they are held together by my royal saliva and fired by the sun and shall be brought to life by the gentle breath of my daughter.” It was Metis, always inside Zeus, who had sparked the thought in him that it should be Athena who brought these creatures to life. She would breathe into each one, literally inspiring them with some of her great qualities of wisdom, instinct, craft, and sense.

“You can befriend them as much as you like, Prometheus, and I have no doubt that Athena and all the other gods will do so too. But one thing they are not to have. Ever. And that is fire.”

Prometheus stared at his friend in astonishment. “But . . . but why ever not?” “With fire they could rise up to challenge us. With fire they could think themselves our equals. I feel it and know it. They must never be given fire. I have spoken.” A long peal of thunder in the distance affirmed his words. “But—” Zeus smiled now “—everything else in the world is theirs to enjoy. They may travel to every corner. They can sail Poseidon’s oceans, seek Demeter’s help in sowing seeds and growing food, learn from Hestia the arts of keeping a home, discover how to keep animals for their milk, fur, and labor, and they can learn the arts of hunting from Artemis. Hermes can teach them guile, Apollo can instruct them in the arts of music and knowledge. Athena will teach them how to be wise and contented. And Aphrodite will share with them the arts of love. They will be free and happy.” “What shall we call them?” Athena asked. “‘That which is below,’” said Zeus after some thought. “Anthropos.”

And so the early race of man came to be. Gaia, Zeus, Apollo, and Athena might be said to be its progenitors as much as Prometheus, who fashioned humanity from the four elements: Earth (Gaia’s clay), Water (the spittle of Zeus), Fire (the sun of Apollo), and Air (the breath of Athena).

His humans were happy, yes; but to Prometheus such a safe, unchallenged, and unchallenging existence had no zest to it. To approach the godlike status that his creation deserved, mankind needed something more. They needed fire. Real hot, fierce, flickering, flaming fire to enable them to melt, smelt, roast, toast, boil, broil, fashion, and forge; and they needed an inner creative fire too, a divine fire, to enable them to think, imagine, dare, and do. The more he watched over and mingled with his creation, the more Prometheus became convinced that fire was exactly what they needed. And he knew where to find it.

When he showed men the leaping, dancing, darting demon they initially cried out in fear and backed away from its flames. But their curiosity soon overcame their fear, and they began to delight in this magical new toy, substance, phenomenon—call it what you will. They learned from Prometheus that fire was not their enemy but a powerful friend which, once tamed, had ten thousand thousand uses. Prometheus moved from village to village demonstrating techniques for the fashioning of tools and weapons, the firing of earthen pots, the cooking of meat, and the baking of cereal doughs, all of which quickly let loose an avalanche of advantages, raising man above the animal prey that had no answer to metal-tipped spears and arrows.

First he commanded Hephaestus to do as Prometheus had done, to shape a human being from clay moistened by his spittle. But this was to be the figure of a young female. Taking his wife Aphrodite, his mother Hera, his aunt Demeter, and his sister Athena as models, Hephaestus lovingly sculpted a girl of quite marvelous beauty into whom Aphrodite then breathed life and all the arts of love. The other gods joined together to equip this girl uniquely for the world. Athena trained her in the household crafts, embroidery, and weaving, and dressed her in a glorious silver robe. The Charites were put in charge of accessorizing this with necklaces, brooches, and bracelets of the finest pearl, agate, jasper, and chalcedony. The Horai plaited flowers around her hair until she was so beautiful that all who saw her caught their breath. Hera endowed her with poise and self-possession. Hermes schooled her in speech and the arts of deception, curiosity, and cunning. And he gave her a name. Since each of the gods had conferred upon her a notable talent or accomplishment, she was to be called “All-Gifted,” which in Greek is PANDORA.78 Hephaestus bestowed one more gift upon this paragon, which Zeus presented himself. It was a container filled with . . . secrets.

shapes? They were mutant descendants of the dark and evil children of both Nyx and Erebus. They were born of Apate, Deceit; Geras, Old Age; Oizys, Misery; Momos, Blame; Keres, Violent Death. They were the offshoots of Ate, Ruin; and Eris, Discord. These were their names: PONOS, Hardship; LIMOS, Starvation; ALGOS, Pain; DYSNOMIA, Anarchy; PSEUDEA, Lies; NEIKEA, Quarrels; AMPHILOGIAI, Disputes; MAKHAI, Wars; HYSMINAI, Battles; ANDROKTASIAI and PHONOI, Manslaughters and Murders. Illness, Violence, Deceit, Misery, and Want had arrived. They would never leave the earth.

What Pandora did not know was that, when she shut the lid of the jar so hastily, she forever imprisoned inside one last daughter of Nyx. One last little creature was left behind to beat its wings hopelessly in the jar forever. Its name was ELPIS, Hope.

Death, disease, poverty, crime, famine, and war were now an inevitable and eternal part of humanity’s lot.

But the Silver Age, as this epoch was to be known, wasn’t all despair. It differed from our own in that gods, demigods, and monsters mingled with mankind, interbred with us and fully involved themselves in our lives. With fire on man’s side, and now women to allow propagation as well as a full sense of family and completeness, some of the evils of Pandora’s jar were offset.

Hermes was assigned a new role—that of Arch Psychopomp, or “chief conductor of souls”—a duty he discharged with his customary sprightliness and puckish humor. Though, as the human population grew, only the most important dead were granted the honor of a personal escort by Hermes, the rest were taken by Thanatos, the grim, forbidding figure of Death.

The instant that human spirits departed their bodies, Hermes or Thanatos would lead them to the underground cavern where the River Styx (Hate) met the River Acheron (Woe). There the grim and silent Charon held out his hand to receive his payment for ferrying the souls across the Styx. If the dead had no payment to offer they would have to wait on the bank a hundred years before the disobliging Charon consented to take them. To avoid this limbo it became a custom amongst the living to place some money, usually an obolus, on the tongue of the dying to pay the ferryman and assure safe and swift passage.85 When he had taken his fee, Charon would pull the dead soul aboard and pole his rust-colored punt or skiff over the black, Stygian waters to the disembarkation stage, hell’s muster point.86 Once dead, no mortal could go back to the upper world. Immortals, if they tasted so much as a morsel of food or drink in Hades, were fated to return to the infernal kingdom.

And what was their final destination? It seems that this rather depended on the kind of life they had led. At first Hades himself was the arbiter, but in later years he delegated the Great Weighing Up to two sons of Zeus and EUROPA—MINOS and RHADAMANTHUS who, after their own deaths, were appointed, along with their half brother AEACUS, Judges of the Underworl...

The heroes and those deemed exceedingly righteous (as well as the dead who had some divine blood in them) found themselves transported to the Elysian Fields, which lay somewhere on the archipelago ...

The blameless majority, whose lives were neither especially virtuous nor especially vicious, might expect to be parked for eternity in the Meadows of Asphodel, whose name derived from the white flowers that carpeted its fields. These souls were guaranteed a pleasant enough afterlife: Before they arrived they drank of the waters of forgetfulness from the River Lethe so that a blithe and bland eternity could be passed, untroubled by upsetting memories of earthly life.

But the sinners—the debauched, blasphemous, wicked, and dissolute—what of them? The least of them flitted in the halls of Hades, eternally without feeling, strength, or any real consciousness of their existence, but the most profane and unpardonable were taken to the Fields of Punishment, which lay between the Meadows of Asphodel and the abysmal depths of Tartarus itself. Here tortures that fitted their crimes with diabolical exactness were inflicted on them for all eternity. We will meet some of the more celebrated of these sinners at a later date. Names like SISYPHUS, IXION, and TANTALUS still ring through the ages.

“You will lie chained to this rock forever. There is no hope of escape or forgiveness, not in all perpetuity. Each day these eagles will come to tear out your liver, just as you tore out my heart. They will eat it in front of your eyes. Since you are immortal it will grow back every night. This torture will never end. Each day the agony will seem greater. You will have nothing but time in which to consider the enormity of your crime and the folly of your actions. You who were named ‘foresight’ showed none when you defied the King of the Gods.”

Prometheus, mankind’s chief creator, advocate, and friend, taught us, stole for us, and sacrificed himself for us. We all possess our share of Promethean fire, without it we would not be human. It is right to pity and admire him but, unlike the jealous and selfish gods, he would never ask to be worshipped, praised, and adored. And it might make you happy to know that, despite the eternal punishment to which he was doomed, one day a hero would arise powerful enough to defy Zeus, unbind humanity’s champion, and set him free.

As for Persephone herself . . . well, it seems that she grew to love her time below as much as her time above. For six months she was no prisoner in Hades but the contented Queen of the Underworld, a loving consort who held imperious sway over the dominion of death with her husband. For the other six months she reverted to the laughing Kore of fertility, flowers, fruit, and frolic. The world had found a new rhythm.

Hermes, who had grown swiftly into handsome but eternally youthful manhood, fathered the goat-footed nature god PAN by the nymph DRYOPE.

Behind the back of Hephaestus and Ares he also coupled with Aphrodite, a union blessed by the birth of a son of quite transcendent loveliness named—in honor of each parent—HERMAPHRODITUS.

Almost immediately Salmacis, who had swum back under the cover of the reeds, leapt on him like a salmon and clung fast to his naked body. Revolted he wiggled and wriggled and jiggled to be set free, while she cried up to the heavens, “O gods above, never let this youth and me part! Let us always be one!” The gods heard her prayer and answered with the callous literalness that seemed ever to delight them. In an instant Salmacis and Hermaphroditus did indeed become one. The pair fused into a single body. One body, two sexes. No longer the naiad Salmacis and the youth Hermaphroditus, but now intersex, male and female coexisting in one form. Although the Romans were to regard this state of being as a disorder that threatened the strict militaristic norms of their society, the more open-minded Greeks prized, celebrated, and even worshipped the hermaphrodite gender. Statuary and representations on pottery and temple friezes show us that what the Romans feared, the Greeks seemed to find admirable.

Hermes95 also fathered the snubnosed, donkey-tailed lecher SILENUS, who grew up to become a bearded, potbellied, pucker-browed old drunk, a popular subject in paintings, sculptures, and carved drinking vessels,