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

by Stephen Fry

Riding on horseback—the first warriors in the world to do so—the Amazons had defeated all the tribes they had encountered in battle. When they conquered and subdued a people they took home the males that they judged would father the best daughters and bred with them. When the men had done their duty by them they were killed, like the males of many species of spider, mantis, and fish. They put to death any male babies they bore, raising only girls to join their band. If they were accused of cruelty, they pointed out how many girl-children around the “civilized” world were left exposed on mountainsides to die,60 and how many women were used as childbearing livestock and given no other purpose in life than to serve, please, and obey.

“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.”

*hair-ah-clees*

“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.”

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.

Many Greek heroes were the mongrel offspring of humans, minor deities, demigods, and even full Olympians. Some were born to prophetic curses that caused them to be outcast and raised by foster parents or even foster animals. A great many others would find their divine lineage a curse. Their heroism, perhaps, derived from their ability to bring their mix of the human and the divine to bear against the grinding pressures of fate. Well of course it did. That’s where all heroism comes from. I use the word “hero” shorn of gender. Hero was a reasonably common female first name in the ancient world226 and I hope we can agree that a division into heroes and heroines would be clumsy and unnecessary.

“Without fresh facts, the brain just churns round and round, like a wheel stuck in mud.”