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

by Stephen Fry

if they parted with hot words his absence would be all the harder to bear.

“Condunder it sid—consider it done.”

“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.”

If Cadmus was the founder hero of Thebes and Theseus the founder hero of Athens, Heracles has a claim to be considered the founder hero of Greece.

The Milky Way is a galaxy and the word galaxy is derived from the ancient Greek word gala, meaning “milk.” Hence galactic and, perhaps, Galaxy milk chocolate.

Thus “giant” and “gigantic” really mean “earthborn” and have nothing to do with size, despite the way the words are now used and how the “giga-” was taken from “gigantic” to mean “huge.”

only darkness and despair awaits those who believe that their achievements are theirs and theirs alone.

Those who curse are most accursed.

Those who look out are those who most need to look in.”

‘You will not find the truth but the truth will find you,’

‘Seek not to know, but know to seek,’

‘You don’t make mistakes, mistak...

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 rages

Myths are not crossword puzzles or allegories with single meanings and answers. Fate, necessity, cause, and blame are endlessly mixed in these stories as they are in our lives.