Heroes: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology, #2)

by Stephen Fry

ZEUS sits on his throne. He rules the sky and the world. His sister-wife HERA rules him. Duties and domains in the mortal sphere are parceled out to his family, the other ten Olympian gods. In the early days of gods and men, the divine trod the earth with mortals, befriended them, ravished them, coupled with them, punished them, tormented them, transformed them into flowers, trees, birds, and bugs, and in all ways interacted, intersected, intertwined, interbred, interpenetrated, and interfered with us. But over time, as age has succeeded age and humankind has grown and prospered, the intensity of these interrelations has slowly diminished.

PROMETHEUS’S gift of fire has given humankind the ability to run its own affairs, build up its distinct city-states, kingdoms, and dynasties. The fire is real and hot in the world and has given mankind the power to smelt, forge, fabricate, and make, but it is an inner fire too; thanks to Prometheus we are now endowed with the divine spark, the creative fire, the consciousness that once belonged only to gods.

Prometheus himself—the Titan who made us, befriended us, and championed us—continues to endure his terrible punishment: shackled to the side of a mountain he is visited each day by a bird of prey that soars down out of the sun to tear open his side, pull out his liver, and eat it before his very eyes. Since he is immortal, the liver regenerates overnight, only for the torment to repeat the next day.

Chrysaor’s twin was a shimmering white, winged horse. It pawed the air and flew up into the sky leaving its brother and the two shrieking sisters behind. The name of the horse was PEGASUS.

Through their son Perses, their bloodline founded the Persian nation and people.

While they were gone, the god Hermes stole silently into the nursery, took Alcides from his cot, flew with him up to Olympus, and gave him to the waiting Athena. The two gods crept round to where Hera was sleeping. Athena gently dropped the baby Alcides on her breast. At once he began to gorge himself. But he guzzled at her teat with such vigor that Hera woke up with a cry of pain. She looked down, plucked Alcides from her nipple, and threw him disgustedly from her. Milk sprayed from her nipple in a great arc across the night sky, imprinting it with stars. Stars which, from that moment, would be known as the Milky Way.26

The whole botched affair had been Zeus’s idea. He wanted his son Alcides to feed on Hera’s milk, which would make him immortal. His favorite son and daughter, Hermes and Athena, had done their best, but Alcides had ingested little more than a mouthful and none of them wanted to try that trick again.

“I have seen that Alcides will do marvelous things,” he was saying. “Slay terrible monsters. Topple tyrants and found great dynasties. He will achieve fame such as no mortal has ever known. The other gods will help him, but Hera will harry and hound him without mercy.” “Is there nothing we can do to placate her?” asked Alcmene. Tiresias thought for a moment. “Well, there is one thing. Perhaps you could change the child’s name.” “Change his name?” said Amphitryon. “How would that help?” “If you were to call him ‘Hera’s glory’ for instance? ‘Hera’s pride.’” And so it was decided. From now on Alcides would be called Heracles.

For what could be said with confidence and admiration was that by the time he grew into his later teens Heracles was the tallest, broadest, strongest, and fastest young man in the world. Those gods who championed him came forward now with signs of their favor, to equip him for a life of warfare, trials, and endurance. Athena presented him with a robe, Poseidon gave him fine horses, Hermes a sword, Apollo a bow and arrows, HEPHAESTUS a most wondrous breastplate of pure gold. The young man’s growing reputation was cemented by the slaying of a fierce lion on Mount Cithaeron when he was still only eighteen years old.

For forty-nine days, he tracked the terrible creature; while each night the King of Thespiae, the grateful Thespis,33 whose realm had suffered most from this dreadful scourge, rewarded Heracles for his heroic efforts by sending him each night one of his fifty daughters. When at last the fiftieth day dawned, the lion was cornered and killed. That night, after enjoying the fiftieth bout of passion with the fiftieth daughter of the king, Heracles went home. Each daughter went on to give birth to a male child, the eldest and youngest girls bearing twins. A son for every week of the year. Heracles was as virile and potent in his lovemaking as in his killing.

One fateful evening Heracles returned to the family villa to be met by two small but fierce and burning-eyed demons in the doorway. He charged them at once, grappled them to the ground, broke their backs, and stamped on their screeching heads until they lay crushed and dead at his feet. Suddenly, a great dragon came screaming out of the house toward him, fire streaming from its mouth and nostrils. He rushed at it, closed his hands around its scaly neck, and squeezed with all his strength. Only as the life went out of the monster and it slipped dead to the floor did Hera lift the mist of delusion she had visited on him. Looking down, he now saw with appalling clarity that the dragon he had killed was his wife Megara and the two demons were his beloved children.

When news broke of what he had done, no one would speak to, or come near to, him. He was polluted. From hero to zero is a tired phrase today, but nobody before had so swiftly gone from universal love and admiration to loathing and contempt.

“For ten years he must serve without question,” the priestess continued. “Whatever he is told to do, Heracles must do. Whatever tasks he is set to perform, these must Heracles willingly undertake. Only then can he be free.” Hera’s spirit left the priestess and the voices of Apollo and Athena now enthused36 her. “Do all that you are asked without stint, without complaint, and immortality will be yours. Your father has promised it.”

“The filth of your unnatural crimes has revolted all people of feeling,” said the king, savoring every moment. “You will not be worthy to live in the world of men until you have paid the full price. Ten tasks you will perform for me over ten years without assistance or payment. When you have completed the last of them I may be disposed to forgive you, embrace you as my cousin, and allow you your freedom. Until then you are bound to me as my slave. The Queen of Heaven herself has ordained it. Is this understood?” Hera had instructed her instrument well. Heracles bowed his head.

For hours they rolled in the dust until the life was at last throttled from it and the great Nemean Lion breathed no more. Heracles stood by its body and bowed his head. “It was a fair fight,” he said. “And I hope you didn’t suffer. I hope you will forgive me if I now flay the hide from you.” Such respect for an enemy, even a dumb brute, was typical of Heracles. When an adversary was alive he knew no mercy, but the moment they were gone he did his best, where possible, to send them to the next world with honor and ceremony. He could not be sure that animals had souls or the expectation of an afterlife, even those descended from primordial entities like Echidna and Typhon, but he behaved as if they did. The greater the fight they put up, the deeper and more reverent his funeral prayers.

With the necklace of claws around his neck, the indestructible pelt over his shoulders, the open jaws and glaring eyes of the lion on top of his head, and the mighty club swinging by his side, Heracles had found his look.

The goddess Hera had prepared Lake Lerna with malicious relish. Not only were its waters infested by the Hydra, a huge water serpent with nine heads (one of which was immortal), each capable of spraying jets of the deadliest poison known in the world, but she had hidden in the lake’s depths a ferocious giant crab too.

This was going to be difficult. Every time Heracles sliced or clubbed a head, two more sprang up in its place. To make matters worse, the crab was now jumping up out of the water and making a frenzied attack. Its giant pincers came at him again and again, trying to slice him open and gut him. Leaping to one side, Heracles brought his club down with all his might and shattered the shell into thousands of fragments. The squelched creature inside reared its slimy body in the air, quivered, and fell back dead. Hera placed her favorite crustacean in the stars where it shines today as the constellation Cancer, the Crab. But she was content. Her beloved Hydra was wreaking her revenge. Already it had twenty-four heads, each spraying a lethal poison.

The plan was to approach the Hydra systematically: Heracles would advance and lop off a head, then Iolaus would step smartly in with a burning torch and sear the fresh stump, preventing any new heads from erupting in its place. Slice, cauterize, slice, that was the system they came up with—and it worked. After hours of exhausting and disgusting effort, there was only one head left, the immortal head, the head that could not die. At last Heracles hacked this off too and buried it far underground. The Hydra’s poisonous vapors breathe up their sulfurous gas by the waters of Lake Lerna to this day.

Heracles felt no need to pay his respects to the Hydra. After all, the immortal head was still alive and belching hate underground. He knelt beside the twitching body not in reverence, but to coat the tips of his arrows with its congealing blood. The envenomed arrows would prove to be immeasurably useful—and immeasurably tragic. Their use would change the world.

Heracles was only too happy to avail himself of the invitation. One night after dinner, he helped himself to a stone jar of wine. He had no reason to know that it was the common property of the whole centaur tribe. The smell of the wine attracted the other centaurs and they trotted up to demand their share. Heracles’s short temper was piqued by this (perhaps his own inebriation didn’t help) and an ill-mannered argument broke out. The row became a fight and the fight soon degenerated into slaughter as Heracles unloosed a volley of arrows, which were tipped, you will recall, with fatally venomous Hydra blood.46 Even poor Pholus died when he dropped an arrow on his foot, piercing the skin above the hoof and sending enough of the Hydra’s venom into his bloodstream to kill him. A few of the Arcadian centaurs did survive. Among them was one called NESSUS, who would in time—as we shall see—revenge these deaths in the most terrible manner.

Many years ago, a great white bull had charged out of the sea onto the shores of Crete. It had been sent by the god Poseidon in answer to the prayers of King MINOS, who wished to awe his subjects with a sign that his rule was divinely sanctioned. The idea had been to sacrifice the bull to Poseidon once his brothers accepted this proof, but both Minos and his wife PASIPHAE were so enchanted by the creature’s beauty that they hadn’t the heart to slaughter it. Indeed, Pasiphae went so far as to mate with it. She bore it a son ASTERION, half-man half-bull, known as the Minotaur, who lived trapped in a cunning labyrinth built to house it by Minos’s architect, inventor, and designer, the great DAEDALUS.

Heracles was deeply attracted by Hippolyta. She had poise, wit, and a natural air of command that was rare in the world. She never raised her voice or seemed to expect attention or adoration, and yet Heracles found himself attending to no one else and felt closer to veneration for her than for any woman, or indeed man, he had known. She seemed to like him equally. If there was a trace of a smile on her face when she saw that her hands together were nowhere near meeting around the muscles of his upper arm, it was a smile not so much of mockery as of amusement at the freakish wonder of such a specimen living in the world.

“It is your fate to be Heracles the hero, burdened with labors, yet it is also your choice. You choose to submit to it. Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.”

It was here, in Elis, that Heracles now established athletic competitions to be held every four years, in honor of his father Zeus. He called them, after the name of his father’s mountaintop abode, the Olympic Games.

The earth all around the Mediterranean shook as Heracles, Prometheus, and the gods fought long and hard to protect Olympus and especially Hera, whom the Giants forced themselves upon one after the other. After Alcyoneus, first EURYMEDON, the King of the Giants, tried to assault her, then PORPHYRION, the “purple one.” The giants seemed to believe that if they got her with child, the offspring would be their great champion. Or perhaps they more brutishly hoped that her rape would so disgrace the gods that they would surrender in shame.

“The fire . . .” he whispered, as they all came forward to make their farewells, “is not as painful as the poison . . . In fact . . . it is a blessed relief . . .” “Oh, my friend . . .” “Oh, my uncle . . .” “Oh, my father . . .” “Oh, my husband . . .” With a shudder and a sigh the soul fled from Heracles. The great hero was finally at peace, freed from his life of almost unendurable torment and toil. Hyllus turned on his mother with a snarl. “You killed him. How could you do it? How?” Deianira ran wailing back into the house and stabbed herself to death.

Zeus remembered his promise and drew the soul of Heracles up to Olympus.113 In a touching ceremony it was clothed in flesh formed from the robes of Hera— once his bitterest enemy, now his loving friend and stepmother—and reborn. Here, among gods and goddesses with whom he shared Zeus as a father, Heracles himself achieved immortality and divine status. As a mark of her deep affection, Hera bestowed the hand of her cupbearer, the goddess Hebe, on him as his final and eternal wife.114 And, at the last, Zeus raised his favorite human son into the firmament as the constellation Hercules, the fifth largest in our night sky.

Back down on earth, the sons of Heracles—the HERACLIDES—eventually raised an army that defeated the tyrannical Eurystheus, who still ruled in Tiryns; Hyllus himself hunted down the fleeing king and beheaded him.

For most Greeks and others across the Mediterranean world, Heracles was the greatest of the heroes, the ne plus ultra, the nonpareil, the paradigm, model, and pattern of what a hero should be. The Athenians would come to prefer his kinsman Theseus, who, as we shall see, exhibited not just the strength and valor expected of a great hero, but intelligence, wit, insight, and wisdom too— qualities that the Athenians (much to the contempt of their neighbors) believed uniquely exemplified their character and culture.

Yet Heracles was the strongest man who ever lived. No human, and almost no immortal creature, ever subdued him physically. With uncomplaining patience he bore the trials and catastrophes that were heaped upon him in his turbulent lifetime. With his strength came, as we have seen, a clumsiness which, allied to his apocalyptic bursts of temper, could cause death or injury to anyone who got in the way. Where others were cunning and clever, he was direct and simple. Where they planned ahead he blundered in, swinging his club and roaring like a bull. Mostly these shortcomings were more endearing than alienating.

He was not, as the duping of Atlas and the manipulation of Hades showed, entirely without that quality of sense, gumption, and practical imagination that the Greeks called nous. He possessed saving graces that more than made up for his exasperating faults. His sympathy for others and willingness to help those in distress was bottomless, as were the sorrow and shame that overcame him when he made mistakes and people got hurt. He proved himself prepared to sacrifice his own happiness for years at a stretch in order to make amends for the (usually unintentional) harm he caused. His childishness, therefore, was offset by a childlike lack of guile or pretense, as well as a quality that is often overlooked when we catalog the virtues: fortitude—the capacity to endure without complaint.

For all his life he was persecuted, plagued, and tormented by a cruel, malicious, and remorseless deity pursuing a vendetta which punished him for a crime for which he could be in no way held responsible—his birth. No labor was more Heraclean than the labor of being Heracles. In his uncomplaining life of pain and persistence, in his compassion and desire to do the right thing, he showed, as the American classicist and mythographer Edith Hamilton put it, “greatness of soul.” Heracles may not have possessed the pert agility and charm of Perseus and Bellerophon, the intellect of Oedipus...

The hero Bellerophon116 was either the son of GLAUCUS, King of Corinth, or of Poseidon, god of the sea.117 It is certain that Bellerophon’s mother was EURYNOME, a special favorite of Athena who taught her wisdom, wit, and all the arts over which the goddess had dominion.

“She is a beast. A two-headed monster. Progeny, it is said, of Typhon and Echidna. She ravages the countryside around Methian, near the border with Caria and Pamphylia. Few who see her live to tell the tale, but word has it that she has the body and head of a lion. A second head, that of a goat, rises from her back. Her tail, some have claimed, is a venomous lashing serpent . . .”

One day he mounted Pegasus and rode the winged horse up to Mount Olympus. “The gods will welcome me,” he told himself. “I am of their blood. I have always been marked out for greatness.” Such hubris was a blasphemy that could not go unpunished. When Zeus saw Bellerophon flying toward the summit, he sent a gadfly to torment Pegasus. The insect’s vicious sting maddened the horse, who bucked and reared, throwing Bellerophon. The hero plummeted down through the thin air, smashing his hip on the rocks far below. Pegasus landed on the top of Olympus and Zeus kept him there as his glamorous pack animal, charged with carrying his thunderbolts. Bellerophon dragged out the rest of his days shunned by society for his sacrilege, until he died a crippled, embittered, and lonely old man. Few heroes die peacefully in their beds after long lives filled with happiness. But few have had sadder ends than the once glorious Bellerophon.

The moment his hands touched the strings everyone present knew that they were going to hear something entirely new. Nimbly, Orpheus’s fingertips flew up and down the strings, causing a cascade of trilling notes so quick and pure that everyone caught their breath. And now, out of the golden ripple emerged the voice. It asked everyone to think of love. Surely, even here, in the dark caverns of death, love still sat in their souls? Could they remember the first time they felt the sweeping rush of love? Love came to peasants, kings, and even gods. Love made all equal. Love deified, yet love leveled.

“She will follow. As you make your way to the upper world, she will remain ten paces behind. But if you turn round to look at her, if you cast so much as the briefest backward glance in her direction, you will lose her. Trust, Orpheus the musician. You must show that you honor us and have faith in our word. Now go.” Orpheus took Eurydice’s face in his hands, kissed her cheek, and turned to leave. “Remember!” Persephone called after him. “Look back for just one instant and she will be ours. No matter how many times you return, and how many songs you sing, you will have lost her forever.”

The Thracian women, the Ciconians, followers of Dionysus, were so enraged at being overlooked that they threw sticks and stones at Orpheus. However, the sticks and stones were so charmed by his music they just hung in mid-air, refusing to hurt him. At last the Ciconian women could bear the degradation and insult of being ignored no longer and, in a Bacchic frenzy, they tore Orpheus to pieces, pulling off his limbs, and wrenching the head from his shoulders.135 The golden harmonies of Apollo were always an affront to the dark Dionysian dances and dithyrambs. Orpheus’s head, still singing, was cast into the River Hebrus where it floated out into the Aegean. Eventually it found its way onto the beach at Lesbos; it was taken up by the inhabitants of the island and placed in a cave. For many years people came from all over to the cave to ask the head of Orpheus questions, and it always sang the most melodious prophecies in reply.

“It is the fate of the young never to learn,” the centaur sighed. “I suppose it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that propels them to their triumphs, just as surely as it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that unseats them and sends them plummeting to their ends.”

In a fight, do not do what you want to do, but what you judge your enemy least wants you to. You cannot control others if you cannot control yourself. Those who most understand their own limitations have the fewest.

The same Hera that strove every step of the way to hamper and torment Heracles would strive every step of the way to guide and favor Jason. The motive, so typically of Hera, was not love of Jason but hatred of Pelias. When the people of Iolcos saw the mesmerizing figure of Jason with his leopard skin, rippling hair, and bulging muscles stride into the marketplace, they knew at once that here was somebody who should be paid attention to.

Heroes such as NESTOR of Pylos, for example. He would survive to become an invaluable advisor to the Greek leadership in the Trojan War, where his name would be forever associated with wise counsel.

Peleus of Aegina (not to be confused with Pelias of Iolcos, Jason’s wicked uncle) volunteered for the quest along with his brother TELAMON. They would each go on to father heroes. Telamon’s sons were Teucer, the legendary bowman, and Ajax (the Great), both of whom would play key roles in the siege of Troy. The only surviving offspring of Peleus by his marriage to the sea nymph Thetis was to be Achilles, perhaps the most glorious and perfect of all the heroes.

In the prime of their young manhood, and unaware of the destinies of their children, Peleus and Telamon came for adventure. They brought with them the strongest man of the age, HERACLES, who was between Labors and had with him his beloved young page HYLAS. The adoring pair were joined by Heracles’s brother-in-law, POLYPHEMUS.

It is said that the far-famed hunter Atalanta—whose story would later be so tightly intertwined with that of Meleager—applied to join the quest but was turned down by Jason, who thought the presence of a woman on board ship would bring ill-luck.161 If such blatant discrimination sounds harsh to our ears, it is at least more pleasingly typical of a true Greek hero that Jason should reserve a place for music in his crew list. Orpheus, greatest of all singers, poets, and composers, was welcomed into the ship’s company. The enchanting power of his lyre would prove invaluable.

Pirithous, King of the Lapiths, was there too.162 He had a special reason to join the crew perhaps, for he was descended from Ixion, whose inappropriately libidinous handsiness with Hera, you will recall, was the primary cause of the creation of Nephele, the summoning of the golden ram, and its flight to Colchis with Phrixus and Helle in the first place. Two other Argonauts are worth mentioning here: Philoctetes, who was to play crucial parts in the story of Heracles and in the Trojan War; and Euphemus, a son of Poseidon who could walk on water. All in all the ship’s complement amounted to around fifty souls . . . the conventional crew for a “penteconter.”

In many ways the voyage of the Argo might be regarded as a kind of dress rehearsal for the epic siege of Troy and, even more so, its aftermath, the Odyssey and the fall of the house of Atreus.163 The interference, protection, and enmity of the Olympians; the treachery of some heroes and the selfless sacrifice of others; the wit and cunning, the horrible cruelty, the endurance, patience, faith, and determination of the warriors in the teeth of what wind, weather, malice, chance, and betrayal threw at them—all these were as much a feature of the voyage of the Argo as the legendary expedition to and from Troy.

“But since then Lemnos has had a heavy history. There are no men on the island, only women.” Cheers, laughter, and crude expressions of delight from the crew. “Yes, yes. But listen. Generations ago, the women of the island began to neglect Aphrodite. We all know how the goddess treats those who insult her, but what she did to the Lemnian women was extreme, even for the Lady of Cyprus. She made the women smell so rancid, disgusting, so foul that the island’s male population couldn’t bear to go near them. So the men took to sailing off to the mainland and bringing back Thracian women and girls instead. The Lemnian wives wouldn’t stand for that so they murdered the men in their beds one after the other, leaving an island of women only. Their queen is HYPSIPYLE,

But what had happened to Hylas? Well, a little while after he parted from Heracles and went into the wood, he came upon a pool of water and knelt down to drink from it. Unlike NARCISSUS, he did not fall in love with his own reflection.174 Instead, it was the water nymphs of the pool who were smitten at the sight of the beautiful youth. They rose to the surface, sang to him, seduced him, and eventually lured him in.175 As the Argo sailed steadily on, the figurehead remarked smugly to Jason: “Told you to watch out for the aitches. Harpies next.”