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

by Stephen Fry

Scholars and mythographers are interested in what is known as “double determination,” the tendency of poets, playwrights, and other authors to attribute agency and causality to both the inner person and an outer influence, a god or an oracle, for example. If Athena “whispers in your ear,” is it just a poetical way of saying that a clever thought has struck you, or did the goddess really speak? If someone falls in love, is it always the work of Aphrodite or Eros? When we are intoxicated or frenzied, are we driven by Dionysus? Did Heracles suffer from a hallucination and seizure, or did Hera send a delusional fit to him? Did Apollo send plague arrows into Troy, or was it simply that disease broke out in the city? When an oracle tells a king that a son or grandson will kill him, is that perhaps an external expression of the internal fear of patricidal overthrow that many rulers suffer from? Authors will say to this day that the Muse has abandoned them when what they really mean is that they are suffering from writer’s block. The further along the timeline of Greek myth we go from the founding of Olympus to the end of the Trojan War, and humanity begins to take center stage from the immortals, the more difficult it is to be sure. Greeks of the historical age would still write of Ares giving them courage or Apollo inspiring them, when it is clear that they did not mean it literally.