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.

So the Chaos that began everything is also the Chaos that will end everything.

From formless Chaos sprang two creations: EREBUS and NYX. Erebus, he was darkness, and Nyx, she was night. They coupled at once and the flashing fruits of their union were HEMERA, day, and AETHER, light. At the same time—because everything must happen simultaneously until Time is there to separate events—Chaos brought forth two more entities: GAIA, the earth, and TARTARUS, the depths and caves beneath the earth.

What first emerged from Chaos were primal, elemental principles that were devoid of any real color, character, or interest. These were the PRIMORDIAL DEITIES, the First Order of divine beings from whom all the gods, heroes, and monsters of Greek myth spring.

Gaia bore two sons all on her own.1 The first was PONTUS, the sea, and the second was OURANOS, the sky—better known to us as Uranus, the sound of whose name has ever been the cause of great delight to children from nine to ninety. Hemera and Aether bred too, and from their union came THALASSA, the female counterpart of Pontus the sea.

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?

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.

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

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.