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

by Stephen Fry

“The Harpies. Two monstrous flying women.178 Women? They have the faces of women I am told, but the wings and talons of birds. Human vultures. Food is put out for me, but whenever I try to eat they fly down shrieking and shitting. They snatch the food from my very mouth and fly off screeching with laughter. It is enough to send a man mad. But I stayed sane because I knew salvation was coming. I knew that the Boreads with their gift of flight would come and deliver me from their curse.”

“Thirdly, you will go to the Grove of Ares where the Fleece hangs on the branches of a sacred oak. A dragon that never sleeps is coiled around its trunk. Overpower the dragon and the Fleece will be yours.”

Medea was sitting and reading a clay tablet on a window seat in the corridor of the palace when Eros arrived in the early morning. She did not see him, for the god of desire was invisible. He stood there, his quiverful of arrows over his shoulder and his silver bow strung and ready. “What a beautiful young woman,” he thought to himself. “No wonder mother is annoyed that she has remained single all her life. Lucky Jason.” He turned his head toward the entrance to the palace’s guest wing and blew. Jason woke suddenly in his bed. He sat up and rubbed his eyes. Strange dream. Eros had whispered in his ear and commanded him to . . . It was all nonsense. He had other things to think of than the sport of love. He must see if there was a way to defeat these oxen. No reason not to explore the palace; he might find something that could help. Eros shot his arrow into Medea’s chest and stepped back. She looked up from her tablet. The young prince Jason was walking along the corridor in her direction.

“I am going to prepare a salve, an ointment,” she said. “In the morning you must rub yourself all over with it. Every part of you, from the crown of your head to the soles of your feet.” “Why?” “It will protect you from the fire of the bulls. You will be invulnerable for the course of one day. As you anoint yourself, pray to Hecate. That is important. I’ll teach you the right words. You must learn them.”

He knelt down and thanked Hecate, Hera, Athena, Aphrodite, and all the gods he could think of for his deliverance. “And thank you, Eros,” he added, “for sending me Medea.”

“That was Talos.” “My tutor Chiron told me about him when I was a child,” said Jason, “but I always thought it was just a stupid story made up to amuse me.” “He’s real enough as you have seen,” said Nestor. “He walks around Crete three times every day to protect the island from pirates and invading fleets.”

believe I am right in saying that he is the last of the great race of Bronze Men,” Nestor said. “They were born from the Meliae—you know, the nymphs of the ash tree who sprang from the earth when Kronos castrated his father Ouranos.”205 “If that is true,” said Medea, “then he is not a machine, but a mortal; and as a mortal he can be killed.” “But darling,” said Jason. “He is made of solid bronze.” “Not quite true,” said Nestor. “Whether he is man or machine, it is certain that he has a single tube or pipe running down from his neck to his ankle like a great vein. This is where his ichor runs, the divine fluid necessary for his life and motion.206 It is all held in by a brass nail in his heel.

The girls ran to Pelias’s chamber where he was taking his afternoon nap. With cries of joy and excitement they slit his throat and cut him up. They carried the bloody chunks of his flesh to the cauldron, dropped them in, sprinkled in the herbs, and made the magical passes with their hands. They waited breathlessly for a rejuvenated Pelias to spring from the pot, but strangely he did not.

Aphrodite sent Eros to make you fall in love with me. On the orders of my protectress Hera. It was all her doing really, she was the one who helped me. You were merely her vessel.”

Men! It’s not that they’re brutish, boorish, shallow, and insensitive—though I dare say many are. It’s just that they’re so damned blind. So incredibly stupid. Men in myth and fiction at least. In real life we are keen, clever, and entirely without fault, of course.

Creusa could not wait to try them on in front of a mirror of polished bronze. Within minutes, the venom burned through her skin and entered her bloodstream. Her howls of pain summoned her father Creon, who held the dying girl in his arms, wailing and sobbing. But when he tried to lay her body down, he found that the poison gown was stuck to him and he too died in agony.

MEDEA I have determined to do the deed at once, to kill my children and leave this land, and not to falter or give my children over to let a hand more hostile murder them. They must die and since they must I, who brought them into the world, will kill them. But arm yourself, my heart. Why hesitate to do these tragic, yet necessary, evils? Come, unhappy hand of mine, take the sword take it, move to the dismal turning point of life.

Do not be a coward. Do not think of your children— how much you love them, how you gave them birth. For this one short day forget your children, and mourn tomorrow. For even if you kill them still you loved them very much. I am an unhappy woman.

In an astonishing coup de théâtre Medea appears above the stage in a chariot drawn by dragons, sent by her grandfather Helios, god of the sun. She has the bodies of her children with her, fearing that if she leaves them in Corinth they will not be given proper burial. Jason, having been told what has happened to his sons, calls up to her. Their...

A broken Jason lived on in Corinth until his old friend and fellow Argonaut Peleus, brother of Telamon, persuaded him to return to Iolcos and overthrow Acastus. This they managed and Jason was finally installed as king. His reign did not last long, however. He fell asleep one afternoon under the stern of his beloved Argo and a rotten and poorly attached beam fell on him and killed him instantly.

And so the human baby girl grew to be a shy, wild, and swift forest creature. Whether she thought herself a bear or knew her difference at first we cannot know. She might have remained one of those legendary wild children of the woods adopted by animals and unsocialized by her own species—an ancient Greek Kaspar Hauser or Victor of Aveyron, a female Tarzan or Mowgli—were it not that, one day, she was seen and taken by a group of hunters. Luckily for her, they were well-disposed and kindly. They named her Atalanta229 and taught her the secrets of trapping and killing, of shooting with arrows, spears, and slings, coursing, hunting, tracking, and all the arts of venery and the chase.

Her reputation spread and soon everyone in the Mediterranean world had heard stories of the beautiful girl, dedicated to Artemis, who ran faster and shot straighter than any man.

Clotho spun the thread of Meleager’s life and declared the boy would be noble. Lachesis measured it by drawing it out from Clotho’s spindle. She foretold that Meleager would be accounted brave by all who knew him. Atropos snipped the length of the yarn and announced that for all her sisters’ prognostications she knew that the child would only live as long as the central log in the fireplace remained unconsumed by fire.

Meleager’s life will end in a flash When his log of fate is turned to ash

Toxeus raised his bow.236 “Stand aside, nephew. If you do not present the trophy to the family, the family will take the trophy.” With a roar of anger Meleager flicked a knife from his belt. It flew straight into Toxeus’s eye. Before Toxeus was dead on the ground, Meleager had thrust a sword into the side of Plexippus and slit the throat of Eurypylus. Only Evippus was now left alive. At the sight of the blood-maddened fire in Meleager’s eyes, Evippus dropped the sword he had been struggling to draw. “Spare me, dear nephew!” he pleaded. “Think of your mother. My sister. You cannot deprive her of four—” Meleager, crazed by his love for Atalanta and crazed by the killing, had no time for mercy. He brought up his knee into the older man’s groin. Evippus doubled up in pain, as Meleager took his head and twisted it

Demented with sorrow and raging for revenge, Althaea ran back to the palace. Down to the cellars she went until she came at last to the deserted chamber in whose floor she had buried the log on the day her son was born. Meleager would live, Atropos and her fellow Moirai had proclaimed, for as long as that log was not consumed by fire. But Althaea was now inexorable:

She arrived in time to see her son Meleager running, jumping, and screaming in pain, his voice sounding horribly like the squealing of the monstrous boar. “I’m burning! I’m burning!” he screeched. “Help me, mother! Help me!” Everyone pulled back in confusion and apprehension to see this brave young man so suddenly overtaken by madness. No flames leapt from him, yet he howled and writhed back and forth, falling to the ground and rolling over and over as if he were being consumed by living, scorching flame. Finally his screams turned to sobs, his sobs to a great shuddering sigh, and he fell silent, quite dead. His body, as the soul left it, blackened, charred, and disintegrated into grey ashes

This whole sorry train of events came about, you may recall, because King Oeneus had failed properly to worship Artemis. Her punishment was first to send a boar that ravaged the countryside and nearly brought ruin to Oeneus’s kingdom, then to dispatch Atalanta to sow discord among his family and the warriors who gathered to his aid. The hunt itself resulted in the deaths of dozens of fine heroes before the outbreak of enmities that caused the slaughter of Oeneus’s brothers-in-law, the uncanny seizure and death of his son Meleager, and the frightful suicide of his wife Althaea. But Artemis didn’t stop there. She transformed the Meleagrids—Meleager’s grieving sisters Melanippe, Eurymede, Mothone, and Perimede—into guinea fowl, who clucked and mourned their brother for eternity.

She considered. She was a superb shot with a bow, but it was conceivable that the man might live who was better. It was the same with her skill with javelin, discus, and on horseback. What was there that no man could ever best her at? Ah! She had it. “I will only a marry a man who can run faster than me.” “Very well. So let it be.” Atalanta was safe. Her speed could never be matched.239 “Oh, and any suitor who takes the challenge and fails must die,” she added. Schoeneus grunted his assent and arranged for the word to be put out. Great was Atalanta’s fame and beauty, great the value of Schoeneus’s kingdom, and great the conviction of many fine, fit, and fast young fellows that no woman could ever best them. Many made the journey to Arcadia: all were defeated and all were killed. The crowds loved it.

She was too honorable to go back on her word and she and Hippomenes were soon married. You can say it was the work of Aphrodite, you can say it was love—it amounts to the same thing—but Atalanta found herself growing fonder and fonder of Hippomenes until it could safely be said that she loved him with an ardor equal to his for her. They had a son, PARTHENOPAEUS, who grew up to be one of the Seven against Thebes.240 Their married life, though, was to end strangely. It seems that Hippomenes neglected to thank Aphrodite properly for her aid in winning Atalanta. As a punishment, she visited great lust upon the couple while they were visiting a temple sacred to the goddess CYBELE.241 Unable to resist the urge, they made furious love on the floor of her temple. The outraged Cybele transformed the pair into lions. This might not seem so terrible a punishment, lions being kings of the jungle and high up the food chain; but to the Greeks it was the worst fate that could befall lovers, for they believed that lions and lionesses were unable to mate with each other. Lion cubs, they thought, came exclusively from the union of lions and leopards. And so Atalanta and Hippomenes were doomed to live out their lives drawing Cybele’s chariot, closely harnessed to each other, but eternally denied the pleasure of sex.

The Greeks believed that the first city-state, or polis, to appear in the world was Thebes in Boeotia.242 The family of its founder, hero Cadmus, could claim among its members the only Olympian god with mortal blood in his veins. It was notorious for internecine dynastic wars, curses, and homicides that for catastrophic generational ruin matched even those of Tantalus and the doomed house of Atreus. If they weren’t casseroling their children, they were sacrificing them; while those who made it to adulthood, if they weren’t committing incest with their parents were murdering them.

The prophecy that had told Acrisius of Argos he would be killed by his grandson was bad enough, but this . . . Acrisius had indeed died at the hand of his grandson, the hero Perseus, even if it was an accident; but Acrisius, Laius thought to himself, had been a fool. He would have found a surer way to beat the oracle than throwing the infant in a wooden chest and casting him into the sea. He would have had the brat’s head chopped off and there would have been an end to it. Nonetheless, perhaps it might be safer to stay away from the marriage bed. But Laius was a man, wine was wine, and Jocasta was beautiful. The morning following a great feast, he barely remembered having spent a night of passion with her; but when, nine months later, she presented him with a baby son, he began to understand Acrisius’s dilemma. To kill his own son would be to invite the certain fury of . . . the Furies. He sat on his throne and pulled on his beard. At last he sent for his most trusted servant, Antimedes. “Take this baby and expose it on the highest point of Mount Cithaeron.” “Yes, my lord.” “And, Antimedes, just to be sure, stake him to the hillside. I don’t want him crawling away, you understand?” Antimedes bowed and did as he was told, piercing the infant’s ankles with iron staples and shackling them to a peg that he drove deep into the ground. It was not long before a shepherd called PHORBAS came on the scene, attracted by the loud wails.

He did not know what he expected in reply to the simple, bald question, “Who are my true parents?” but it was not the simple, bald answer he received. Oedipus will kill his father and mate with his mother. That was all he could get out of the Pythia. As ever with oracles, all supplementary questions were met with silence. Oedipus left Delphi in a daze, striking out on a road that took him in the exact opposite direction from Corinth. He must never see Polybus and Merope again. The risk of harming Polybus through some accident was too great. And as for the second part of the prophecy . . . the idea made him feel physically sick. He was very fond of his mother, but in that way? One thing was certain, the greater the distance he put between himself and Corinth, the better.

One afternoon, in the countryside outside the small town of Daulis, he found himself at a place where three roads met. While he stood debating with himself which one to take, an opulent chariot sped toward him. The old man driving stood up in his seat and tried to force him out of the way. “Move, peasant!” he shouted and struck down with a whip. This was more than the proud Oedipus could bear. He snatched at the whip and pulled, jerking the old man out of the chariot. Four armed men jumped down from the back and ran toward him, shouting. Oedipus wrested a sword from one and in the fight that followed killed three. The fourth ran away. When Oedipus stooped to examine the old man, he discovered that he had fatally broken his neck in the fall. Oedipus covered the four corpses with earth and commended their spirits to the underworld. Uncoupling the horses from the chariot, he slapped their hindquarters and sent them skittering down the road.

Sphinx, I said. Terrible creature, head of a mortal woman, but the body of a lion, and the wings of a bird. You don’t want to mess with her. She stands at the top of the pass there, just where you was headed. She stops every traveler with a riddle. If they can’t answer it right, she throws them down to their deaths on the rocks below. Nobody’s answered the riddle yet. Trade nor traffic from the north can’t get through to Thebes. You want to go there, you’d best go all the way round the mountain to avoid her.”

“Tell me this, traveler. What walks on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three in the evening?” “Hm . . . four feet in the morning, two at noon, three in the evening?” “Just give me the answer to that,” purred the Sphinx, “and you may freely pass.” Oedipus sucked in through his teeth. “Man, oh man,” he said, shaking his head, “that’s a teaser and no mistake.” “Ha! You can’t solve it, then?” “But I did,” said Oedipus, raising his eyebrows in surprise. “Didn’t you hear me?” The Sphinx stared. “What do you mean?” “I just told you. ‘Man, oh man,’ I said. And ‘man’ is the answer. When Man is born, in the morning of his existence, he crawls on all fours; in his prime, the noontime of his day, he goes upright on two legs; but in the evening of his life, he has a third—a stick to help him on his way.” “B-but . . . how . . .?” “It’s called ‘intelligence.’ Now let me try one out on you. Let me see . . . What has the face of a hag, the body of a sow, the wings of a pigeon, and the brains of a pea? No?” The Sphinx reared up with a screech and before she had time to open her wings, fell backward off the cliff’s edge, claws thrashing the air, down onto the rocks below. With screams of delight, the buzzards swooped.

One afternoon Oedipus approached Creon and asked if he might have a private word with him. “It’s your sister Jocasta,” he said. “We’ve fallen in love. I know she is older than me, but—” “My dear fellow!” Creon grasped him warmly by the hand. “Do you think I’m blind? I saw from the first that there was something between you. Eros shot from his bow the moment you met. I couldn’t be happier. And Oedipus . . . if you are to marry the queen, why, you must be crowned king.” “Sir, I wouldn’t for a moment wish to usurp your—” “‘Usurp’ poppycock. And no ‘sirs,’ brother. A young king is just what the city needs. The people love you. You were sent by the gods, who can doubt it?” And so, to widespread rejoicing, Oedipus married Jocasta and was crowned King of Thebes in a grand ceremony on the Cadmeia. The Thebans loved Oedipus. Aside from the great victory over the Sphinx, his arrival seemed to have brought the city luck.

Messengers were dispatched to Tiresias. Oedipus was curious to meet the prophet who had undergone so much at the hands of the gods. As a young man, Tiresias had aroused the wrath of Hera, who turned him into a woman. He served in her temple as a priestess for seven years before she restored him to male form. Then he had the misfortune to attract her ire again and this time she struck him blind. Out of pity Zeus gave him inner sight, the gift of prophecy.255 For generations his wisdom and prophetic powers had been at the service of the Theban royal house, but now he lived in secluded retirement.

Loud screams came from another part of the palace. The moment Straton had told his story of taking the baby Oedipus from Mount Cithaeron to Corinth, Jocasta had understood the terrible truth and taken her own life. When Oedipus followed the screams to her bedchamber, he saw her body hanging from the ceiling and his daughters weeping beneath it. He sent them from the room. It was all clear. He was the killer of Laius who had brought the plague to Thebes. That would have been terrible enough on its own. Now he knew that the whole truth was deeper, darker, and more unbearable still. Laius had been his father. He had taken his mother Jocasta to be his wife, and had four children by her. He had loudly and publicly hunted for the truth and boasted that he would find it but—as blind Tiresias had warned him—he had not been able to see. He was a pollutant. A contaminant. He was the disease.

He wanted to kill himself, but how could he? Suppose he met his mother-wife Jocasta in the underworld? And the father that he had killed? He could not face that. Not yet, at least. Not until he had been punished for his unspeakable crime. He reached up, pulled the long gold brooch pins from Jocasta’s dress, and thrust them into his own eyes.

Sigmund Freud notably saw in the Oedipus myth a playing out of his theory that infant sons long for a close and exclusive relationship with their mothers, including an (unconscious) sexual one, and hate their fathers for coming between this perfect mother–son union. It is an oft-noted irony that, of all men in history, Oedipus was the one with the least claim to an Oedipus Complex. He left Corinth because the idea of sex with his mother Merope (as he thought) was so repugnant. Not only was his attraction to Jocasta adult (and the incestuous element wholly unwitting), but it came after the killing of his father Laius, which itself was accidental and entirely unconnected to any infant sexual jealousy. None of which put Freud off his stride.

Oedipus is a detective who employs all the fields of inquiry of which the Athenians were so proud—logic, numbers, rhetoric, order, and discovery—only to reveal a truth that is disordered, shameful, transgressive, and bestial.

“Shush. Now, Pittheus thought it might be rather wonderful for me, his daughter, to carry a child by a king of such a great city as Athens. It would allow the baby—you, as it turned out—to be king of a united Athens and Troezen. So grandfather pretended he thought the prophecy meant that Aegeus should abstain from drinking wine until he got home to Athens. He then called for me and told me to show Aegeus round the palace and gardens. One thing led to another. We found ourselves in my bedchambers and . . .” “. . . I was conceived,” said a stunned Theseus. “Yes, but there’s more,” sad Aethra, crimson with embarrassment. She had always known this day would come and had rehearsed her telling Theseus the story of his birth many times, but now that the day had come the words seemed to stick in her throat. “More?” “That night, after Aegeus, your father, had . . . had. . .” “ . . . had loosened his bulging wineskin?” “Yes, that. He rolled off and fell asleep. I couldn’t sleep, though. I went to the spring, the one down there dedicated to Poseidon, to cleanse myself and think. My father had sent me to sleep with a stranger so that he could play at politics. I was angry, but I had found to my surprise I liked Aegeus. He was kindly, manly, and . . . exciting.” “Mother, please . . .” “But when I washed myself in the waters of the spring, who do you think arose from the pool?” “Who?” “The god Poseidon.” “What?” “And he . . . he took me too.” “He . . . he . . . he . . .?” “It’s not funn...

Theseus put on his father’s old sandals, buckled the sword to his belt, wrapped his few other possessions, and slipped out. A few moments later he was back. He scribbled a note to his mother and grandfather and left it on the bed. “Didn’t like the idea of a sea voyage. Thought I’d go on foot. Love, Theseus.”

“Do you accept the challenge?” “Oh yes, I accept.” “Then remove your sword and your clothes.” “Excuse me?” “This is a fight without weapons. Only arms and fists, and legs and feet. Pure fighting.” Theseus looked at the giant, who had cast off his cloak and other articles of clothing and now stood naked before him. Maybe this was all some elaborate courting ritual. Being embraced by such a huge muscle-bound man in an act of love was as horrible a prospect as being embraced by him in an act of combat. The tall thin guards with their knives at his throat were not going to go away, and with no other options open to him, Theseus laid down his sword and club with a sigh and stepped out of his tunic. “I can crush bones in one hug,” said Cercyon.

“Is this the man we’ve heard tell of?” “The one who tore Sinis apart with his own pine trees?” “The lone traveler who outfought Cercyon . . .” “. . . and slew the Crommyonian Sow . . .” “. . . and lopped off the legs of Procrustes the Stretcher . . .” “. . . and fed Sciron the cliff-killer to the tortoise . . .” Theseus found himself being lifted bodily and carried to the palace by a cheering crowd.

“This young man bodes nothing but ill for us, my husband.” “I am aware of it.” “See here . . .” Medea showed him a small crystal phial. “In there is a quantity of wolf’s bane . . .” “The queen of poisons they call it, do they not?” “It has many names,” said Medea coldly. “Blue rocket, devil’s helmet, leopard’s fire, aconite.276 It is enough to know that it kills. I drop the contents into the popinjay prince’s cup and lo! we are rid of the problem.

He opened his cloak slightly and put a hand to the hilt of his sword. A murmur of sympathetic and admiring laughter ran round the hall. “But I drink to—” “No!” To the astonishment of all present, King Aegeus suddenly leaned forward and violently struck the cup from Theseus’s hands.

Father and son fell into each other’s arms. It was a moment before Aegeus called Medea to mind. “And as for you, sorceress, witch, and—” But she had gone. She left Athens never to return. Some swore that they saw her flying across the sky in a chariot drawn by dragons, her son Medus by her side.

Fifty strong and angry men contested Theseus’s right to rule, however—the Pallantidae, the fifty sons of Aegeus’s dead brother Pallas. They declared outright war on their unwanted cousin. It is axiomatic in the world of Greek mythology that a hero never knows rest and it was with a good grace and healthy vigor that Theseus prosecuted his war against the fifty.

He threatened to burn the whole city to the ground unless . . .” “Unless?” “Well, this is where we come to it. Every year we must send seven maidens and seven youths in a ship to Crete to feed their . . . their . . .” Aegeus dried up at this point and gestured helplessly.

For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory, and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvelous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy,

Minos has a wife, Pasiphae—she and Daedalus are very close. Some even suggest that they . . . Well, let us say Minos is a difficult husband and no one would blame Pasiphae for looking elsewhere. She is a proud woman, daughter of the sun god Helios, no less, and imbued with great powers. She is the sister of Circe and Aeëtes and an aunt therefore of Medea. There’s a story that she became so annoyed by Minos’s unfaithfulness to her that she secretly added a potion to his wine which caused him, in the act of love-making, to ejaculate only snakes and scorpions, which was most painful for all concerned. But what she did next took everyone by surprise.

MINOS II, the current Minos, took over. But Minos had brothers who objected to his claim. Minos, though, insisted that the gods always intended him to be king, and to prove it he offered up a prayer to Poseidon. “Send a bull from the sea, my lord Poseidon,” he cried, “so that my brothers may know Crete is mine. I will sacrifice the bull in your name and venerate you always.”

Sure enough, the most beautiful white bull emerged from the waves. So beautiful, in fact, that there were two disastrous outcomes. Firstly, Minos decided it was far too handsome an animal to kill, so he sacrificed a lesser beast from his own herd, which very much enraged Poseidon. And secondly, the bull’s astonishing beauty attracted Pasiphae. She couldn’t take her eyes off it. She wanted it. She wanted it on her, around her, and in her—I’m sorry, Theseus, it’s true. I’m telling the story as it is known. There are those who say it was the angry Poseidon who crazed her with this lust—part of his punishment of Minos for failing to sacrifice the bull, but however it came about, Pasiphae became frenzied in her desire for the animal.