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

by Stephen Fry

“Perseus, have you been drinking?” “Maybe. Just a cup or two.” “A hiccup or two, by the sound of it.”

“Medusa, so they say, was a beautiful young woman who was taken and ravished by the sea god Poseidon.”7 “Ravished?” “Unfortunately for her this took place on the floor of a temple sacred to the goddess Athena. She was so angry at the sacrilege that she punished Medusa.” “She didn’t punish Poseidon?” “The gods don’t punish each other, at least not very often. They punish us.”

“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.”

Could they remember the first time they felt the sweeping rush of love? Love came to peasants, kings, and even gods. Love made all equal. Love deified, yet love leveled.

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.

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.

The heroes cleansed our world of chthonic terrors—earthborn monsters that endangered mankind and threatened to choke the rise of civilization. So long as dragons, giants, centaurs, and mutant beasts infested the air, earth, and seas, we could never spread out with confidence and transform the wild world into a place of safety for humanity.

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.

Myth can be a kind of human algebra which makes it easier to manipulate truths about ourselves.