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

by Stephen Fry

There is absolutely nothing academic or intellectual about Greek mythology; it is addictive, entertaining, approachable, and astonishingly human.

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. The Greeks created gods that were in their image: warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate but vengeful.

Oh, those gods and their quick tongues. Oh, those mortals and their foolish dreams. Will either ever learn?

It is fun trying to interpret such symbols and narrative turns, but the substitutions don’t quite work and the answers yielded are usually no clearer than those of an equivocating oracle.

But they have seen too something of mankind’s courage, resilience, fortitude, endurance, and self-belief. They see something heroic in our refusal to submit.