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

by Stephen Fry

I don’t believe all myths must be founded in some historical truth, but I do think it interesting that when the collective unconscious of the Greeks imagined and gave life, character, and narrative to a mythical strongman, they included in him a terrible and inexplicable tendency to explode in destructive psychotic rages310—I’m thinking not only of the savage murder of his family, but the massacre of the centaurs in the cave of Pholus, and the killing of Iphitus too. Of course plenty of musclemen are gentle, kind, and sweet-natured (André the Giant springs to mind), but I do not think it is outside the realms of possibility that the Greeks had heard of a real strongman who had a tendency to be overcome by savage fits of violence followed by periods of agonized remorse.