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

by Stephen Fry

Greeks did not grovel before their gods. They were aware of their vain need to be supplicated and venerated, but they believed men were their equal. 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.

Kronos had been the first to discover that brooding silence is often taken to indicate strength, wisdom, and command.

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.

They left on creation a terrible but necessary mark, for the world seems never to offer anything worthwhile without also providing a dreadful opposite.

Ouranos compressed all his fury and divine energy into the very rock itself, hoping that one day some excavating creature somewhere would mine it and try to harness the immortal power that radiated from within. That could never happen, of course. It would be too dangerous. Surely the race has yet to be born that could be so foolish as to attempt to unleash the power of uranium?

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.

Moros, the figuration of Destiny and Doom, smiled—as he always does when the powerful exhibit confidence.

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.

It was too dark for him to see that Rhea had hoisted one eyebrow into an arch of contemptuous incredulity.

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.

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.

Ares—MARS to the Romans—was unintelligent of course, monumentally dense and unimaginative for, as everyone knows, war is stupid.

Love and war, Venus and Mars, have always had a strong affinity. No one quite knows why, but plenty of money has been made trying to find an answer.

cloying,

Empalagoso

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.

If you are the child of a faithless reprobate of a father there is almost nothing you cannot get him to agree to.

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.

“Oh Prometheus, they’re perfect,” she said in the mild voice that commanded more attention than the roars and screams of the other Olympians.

Gods, demigods, and all kinds of immortals still walked amongst us. Intercourse of the personal, social, and sexual kind with the gods was as normal to men and women of the Silver Age as intercourse with machines and AI assistants is to us today. And, I dare say, a great deal more fun.

“Persephone has eaten fruit from my kingdom,” said Hades. “It is ordained that all who have tasted the food of hell must return.

Love, as the Greeks understood, is complicated.

When lust descends, discretion, common sense, and wisdom fly off and what may seem cunning concealment to one in the grip of passion looks like transparently clumsy idiocy to everyone else.

This witchcraft, as it were, of turning the blood of Ampelos into wine became the god’s gift to the world.

The Fates seldom allowed glory and triumph without the accompaniment of suffering and sorrow.

Limos was one of the vile creatures that had flown from Pandora’s jar. She was a demon of famine who might be regarded as Demeter’s inverse, the goddess’s necessary opposite in the mortal world.

Besides giving him a thorough grounding in the anatomy of animals and humans, he taught him that knowledge is gained from observation and careful record keeping rather than from spinning theories.

“we shall see which proves the more powerful, the cheap magic of a trickster god’s bastard or the native wit and intelligence of Sisyphus, founder of Corinth, the cleverest king in the world.”

They have seen an image of the absurdity of human life, the futility of effort, the remorseless cruelty of fate, the unconquerable power of gravity.

Unlike many born with the awful privilege of beauty, Ganymede was not sulky, petulant, or spoiled.

Liriope had seen enough of life to know that extreme beauty was an awful privilege, a dangerous attribute that could lead to dire and even fatal consequences.

Love and beauty, as most of us find out in the course of our lives, are remorseless, relentless, and ruthless.

Treat all blessings as a curse and all promises as a trap.

Without the Bacchic element, life would be uninteresting; with it, it is dangerous. Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly with either party.

Nietzsche looked at it in yet another, slightly different way. For him hope was the most pernicious of all the creatures in the jar because hope prolongs the agony of man’s existence.

With hope, Nietzsche argued, we are foolish enough to believe there is a point to existence, an end and a promise. Without it we can at least try to get on and live free of delusional aspiration.