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

by Stephen Fry

TO ALL THE HEROES WE HAVE NEVER HEARD OF. PERHAPS YOU ARE ONE.

I know how off-putting for some Greek names can be—all those Ys, Ks, and PHs. Where possible I have suggested the easiest way for our English- speaking mouths to form them. Modern Greeks will be astonished by what we do to their wonderful names, and German, French, American, and other readers—who have their own ways with Ancient Greek—will wonder at some of my suggestions. But that is all they are, suggestions . . . whether you like to say Eddipus or Eedipus, Epidaurus or Ebeethavros, Philoctetes or Philocteetees, the characters and stories remain the same.

*Hades is not technically an Olympian, as he spent all of his time in the underworld.

thanks to Prometheus we are now endowed with the divine spark, the creative fire, the consciousness that once belonged only to gods. The Golden Age has become an Age of Heroes—men and women who grasp their destinies, use their human qualities of courage, cunning, ambition, speed, and strength to perform astonishing deeds, vanquish terrible monsters, and establish great cultures and lineages that change the world. The divine fire stolen from heaven by their champion Prometheus burns within them. They fear, respect, and worship their parental gods, but somewhere inside they know they are a match for them. Humanity has entered its teenage years.

Prometheus has also seen that the time will come when he will be released. A mortal human hero will arrive at the mountain, shatter his manacles, and set the Titan free. Together they will save the Olympians. But why should the gods need saving?

To survive in such a world, mortals have felt the need to supplicate and submit themselves to the gods, to sacrifice to them and flatter them with praise and prayer. But some men and women are beginning to rely on their own resources of fortitude and wit. These are the men and women who—either with or without the help of the gods—will dare to make the world safe for humans to flourish. These are the heroes.

says Hera. “Accept my apologies, but I slept badly and feel unsettled. I had a disturbing dream last night. Most disturbing. Would you like to hear it?” “Absolutely,” lies Zeus, who has, in common with us all, a horror of hearing the details of anyone else’s dreams.

Medusa has one special weapon worse even than her serpent hair, her tusks, and her talons.” “What would that be?” “One glance from her will turn you to stone.” “What do you mean?” “I mean that if you were to meet her eyes for just one second you would be petrified.” “Scared?” “No, petrified means turned into stone. You’d be frozen for all eternity. Like a statue.” Perseus scratched his chin. “Oh. So that’s Medusa? I’d rather hoped she might turn out to be some sort of giant chicken, or a pig maybe.”

As if reading his mind, Athena said, “You will get used to Aegis, to the scythe, the sandals, the hood, and the satchel. They are outwards things. If your mind and spirit are directed to your task, everything else will follow. Relax.” “But focus,” said Hermes. “Relaxation without focus leads to failure.” “Focus without relaxation leads to failure just as surely,” said Athena. “So concentrate . . .” said Perseus. “Exactly.” “. . . but calmly?” “Concentrate calmly. You have it.” Perseus stood for a while inhaling and exhaling in a manner that he hoped was relaxed, yet focused, concentrated, yet calm. Hermes nodded. “I think this young man has an excellent chance of success.”

He held the shield out and tilted it down so that he could see the sleeping group reflected quite clearly in the surface of the shining bronze. Anyone who has ever tried to snip a recalcitrant eyebrow in the bathroom mirror will know how difficult it is to perform so delicate a task accurately in the backward world of reflection without stabbing oneself. Left is right and right is left, near is far and far is near. Perseus adjusted the mirror so that he could see himself swinging the scythe backward and forward.

Andromeda, like many mortals now, seems to show a distaste for incest. The gods are never so fussy.

The rest of his schooling revealed that . . . how shall we put it kindly? . . . It revealed that while nature and fate31 may have gifted Heracles with many fine attributes, wit and wisdom, craft and cunning were not foremost among them. He was, as we might say today, far from the brightest pixel on the screen. He was not stupid, not a brainless oaf by any means, but his real strength was . . . his real strength.

As Artemis took aim, her twin Apollo stepped out of the wood and pushed the bow down. “Now sister,” he said. “Don’t you know this is Heracles?” “If it was our father, the Storm Bringer himself, I would shoot him for daring to take my hind.” “I understand,” said Heracles in his meekest voice. “It is a terrible sacrilege, but I am bound to King Eurystheus and it was he who commanded me to take the animal. It is Hera’s will that I obey him.” “Hera’s will?” Apollo and Artemis conferred. The Queen of Heaven had at best a stiff and formal relationship with Zeus’s children by other women43 and had never made the twins’ lives easy. It amused them to assist her enemy. Artemis turned to Heracles. “You may continue on your way,” she said. “But when you have shown my hind to the court in Mycenae you must return her to the wild.” “You are as wise as you are beautiful,” said Heracles. “Dear me,” said Apollo. “That sort of flattery is not the way to my sister’s heart. On your way.”

After all, the oracle had told Heracles that the completion of the tasks would guarantee Heracles immortality, merely attempting them was not good enough. As Yoda had expressed it a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”

The animals were immortal and had consequently produced, over the years, a far greater than ordinary quantity of dung.

“You are to bring me the girdle of Hippolyta.” “And if she would rather keep it?”

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.115 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 ...

“Even though the sound of it produces consternation,” as Mary Poppins and Bert the chimney-sweep might sing.

What’s the difference between a hind and a doe? Your guess is as good as mine.

Was this Greek satire against the gods? A way of suggesting that the immortals were more full of shit than mortals?

Abdera still stands and was notable in the great age of Greek philosophy for producing Democritus, whom some regard as the founder of the scientific method (I recommend the Italian physicist Carlo Rovelli’s thoughts on him in his excellent book Reality Is Not What It Seems). The sophist Protagoras, famous for his dialogue with Socrates as recorded by Plato, was also born there. Earlier, in the sixth century BC, the lyric poet Anacreon found sanctuary there from the Persians. His life and work inspired the creation in eighteenth-century England of the Anacreontic Society of gentleman amateur musicians. The tune of the club’s song, “To Anacreon in Heaven,” was poached by the Americans in 1814 to fit the words of the poem “The Star Spangled Banner,” now their national anthem. Would that tune be heard at the start of every major sporting occasion in the United States if Abderus hadn’t been eaten by horses? Such speculations might well drive a person mad.

The Greeks, if the truth be told, were far too wise to have a consistent eschatology that presumed infallible knowledge of an afterlife. They had noted that no one ever returned from death and took the sane and sensible view that those who claimed to know what happened to a person after they died were either fools or liars.

“It’s not that I believe there are such things as flying horses. It’s just that I’m interested in how these rumors start. There’s sure to be an explanation.”

“One of your own blood will end the life of Pelias. Beware the man who comes from the country wearing but one sandal.” Was that two people or one? If a man of his own blood would kill him, who could this single-sandaled rustic be? Did they know each other? Were they both blood relations? Were they one and the same? Why couldn’t oracles ever be straight? It really was too tiresome.

He saw too lots of words beginning with “self,” which gave him pause. Self-belief, self-possession, self-righteousness, self-confidence, self-love. Perhaps these characteristics are as necessary to a hero as courage.

“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.

Orpheus had tears in his eyes. “Men will sing of this through the ages,” he said, “but let me be the first.”

Wicked men who send heroes on their quests always believe that they are sending them to certain death. Wicked men never learn, for wicked men have no interest in myths, legends, and stories. If they had they would learn from them and triumph, so we must be glad of their ignorance and dullness of wits.

“There’s many a slip ’twixt cup and lip,” said the seer.

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.

Now Medea prepared to kill her sons.222 It might seem that what Medea was about to do is the most terrible of her catalog of gruesome crimes; but in Medea, Euripides puts in her mouth a great speech in which she prevaricates over whether or not to do the deed. It stands as one of the great soliloquies in drama. From it Medea emerges sympathetically as a tragic and wholly human dramatic hero.223 The infanticide is something she agonizes over. At first she decides she cannot and must not do it. Then she pictures what the children’s fate will be if she does not. Less kindly hands than hers will take their lives. 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.

‘Mend it well,’ I said. ‘Mend it well, or one day you’ll regret it.’ Mortals, there’s no helping them.”

Of course, few questions are more moot, vexed, and thorny than whether or not the Greeks really saw blue, had a word for blue, or even knew what blue was. Famously, Homer often refers to the sea as oinops pontos, “the wine-looking sea,” usually translated as “wine dark.” William Gladstone, finding time while serving as Prime Minister of Great Britain, wrote a book on Homer which included the first serious study of Greeks and color. It has recently reemerged as an interesting element in the renewed Sapir-Whorf debate in academic linguistics. If you are interested, I recommend Guy Deutscher’s Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages

The word he used must have been “thaumaturge.” A lifetime ago, when I was learning ancient Greek as an eight-year-old, the textbook the school used liked to remind one of the English words that derived from Greek: “graph” and “graphic” from grapho; “telephone” from phonos; that sort of thing. I will never forget my puzzlement when, in a vocabulary list, it presented the verb thaumazo, offering this helpful thought: “thaumazo, I wonder, or marvel at. This is easily remembered by thinking of the English word ‘thaumaturge.’” And I suppose that was true, since I’ve never forgotten it.

His words were Πολλὰ μεταξὺ πέλει κύλικος καὶ χείλεος ἄκρου (Polla metaxu pelei kulikos kai cheileos akrou), according to Jenny March in her excellent Dictionary of Classical Mythology. If you put that into Google Translate, however, it comes out as “A lot of people are screaming and screaming”—go figure.

It seems that almost all the actresses who play the part win Tony or Olivier Awards these days.

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. She quickly equaled and surpassed their skill, combining as she did human subtlety with the ferocity and speed of the bear that brought her up. Her supreme swiftness and unmatched ability as a huntress made Atalanta a natural devotee of the goddess of Chastity and the Chase, Artemis, to whom she committed herself, heart and soul.

“Girls can’t throw,” jeers Toxeus. “Girls can’t run in a straight line without bumping into trees or tripping over,” snorts Evippus. “Girls can’t shoot arrows without the bowstring snapping back and stinging them in the face,” smirks Plexippus. “Girls don’t have the stomach to kill,” sneers Eurypylus. “Let us see,” says Atalanta, and at the sound of her dark, throbbing, yet commanding voice Meleager falls even more deeply in love. She has gone to the window. “Those three trees. Which of us can put an arrow in each trunk first?” The uncles join her at the window and follow her gaze to a distant line of three aspens, shaking in the breeze. “You may give the signal,” Atalanta tells Meleager. Meleager raises an arm and drops it. “Fire at will!” he cries. The Thestiades scramble to pluck arrows from their quivers and draw back their bows but— “Wheep, wheep, wheep!” Three arrows fly in an instant from Atalanta’s bow and now she is standing with her back to the window, her arms folded, and a mocking smile playing on her face. Meleager and the uncles look over her shoulder and toward the trees. In each of the aspen trunks is embedded an arrow, perfectly centered.

in the words of Edith Hamilton, “too boyish to be a maiden, too maidenly to be a boy.” As a devoted follower of Artemis, Atalanta had, as a matter of course, turned her back on men and on love.

The name means, so far as I can tell, “equal in weight”—which is a strange thing to call someone. But perhaps she got the name because the men who found her believed her to be a man’s equal.

“Haven’t you heard tell of the Sphinx?” “No. What is a ‘Sphinx’?” “I’m a poor man.” Oedipus sighed and dropped a coin into the man’s outstretched palm. “Thankee kindly, sir.” The old man wheezed and crinkled his eyes. “Some say the Sphinx was sent by the Queen of Heaven herself as a punishment to King Laius. You’ve heard of him, at least?” Oedipus had always paid attention in the schoolroom. He had been obliged to commit to memory endless lists of dull provincial kings, princes, and tribal chiefs. “Laius, King of Thebes. Son of Labdacus, son of Polydorus, son of Cadmus.” “You’ve got him. Great-grandson of the sower of the dragon’s teeth himself. Husband to Queen Jocasta and a mighty powerful king and lord.” “So why would Hera wish to punish him?” “Ah, well now. He raped Chrysippus of Pisa, so they say. The lad killed himself, at any rate.” “I heard the story. But surely that was ages ago?” “Twenty years or more. But what’s that to the gods?” “And so she sent this sphincter . . .?” “Ha! You’re a funny one. 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...

It’s the archetype of fiction for children, young adults, and—let’s be honest— pretend grown-ups like us too. A mysterious absent father. A doting mother who encourages you to believe that you are special. The Chosen One. “You’re a wizard, Harry!” That kind of thing.

“Maybe he’s from Sparta,” suggested his wife. “You hear strange things of Spartans.”

“You’re a clever little thing,” said Aegeus, chucking her under the chin. “Don’t ever do that again.” “No, Medea, m’dear.” He did not see Medea slip the poison into Theseus’s cup at table, but a sign from her showed that she had managed to do so. She did not go quite so far as to tap the side of her nose and wink, but the slow and meaningful nod she gave Aegeus assured him that all was ready.

One man’s Mede, as Dorothy Parker observed, is another man’s Persian.

Myth is not history.

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. They were no more soluble to the Greeks than they are to us.

Carl Jung described myths as the product of our “collective unconscious.” Joseph Campbell put it another way and called them “public dreams.”

Let’s face it, even today we cannot understand or explain much of what drives us. Take love for example. To say “she fell in love” is to describe a mystery. One might as well say, “Eros pierced her heart with his arrow,” as “gametes fizzed, hormones seethed, psychological affinities and sexual connections were made” . . . the gods in Greek myth represent human motives and drives that are still mysterious to us. Might as well call them a god as an impulse or a complex.