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

by Stephen Fry

Heracles, so different in approach, as we shall see, from his younger cousin Theseus, had no technique other than confidence in his own strength and inexhaustible stamina. He found the bull, shouted at it, maddened it, and planted himself in its way. When it charged, he simply grabbed its horns,49 and wrenched. The bull resisted with all its strength. Gradually Heracles pulled it to the ground, rolling around with it,

don’t expect you to die for me, and you shouldn’t expect me to die for you. So, you love the light of day. What makes you think your father hates it? Know this: we are a long time dead. Life may be short, but it is sweet.”53

Admetus had a radical change of heart. He realized how much he loved Alcestis and how much less of a life he would have without her. In fact, he now saw that a long and endless existence alone would be worse than death. He begged her not to go. But her declaration of intent to take his place had been heard and recorded by the Fates. Die she must—and die she did.

As luck would have it, such a drastic course was not necessary. Before setting off, Heracles went to pay his respects at Alcestis’s brand-new tomb. There he found THANATOS, the god of death, just as he was taking her soul. “Let go!” bellowed Heracles. “You have no business here,” said Thanatos. “I command you to—” With a roar Heracles was on him, wrestling the helpless Thanatos to the ground and pounding him with his fists.

“You see?” said Prometheus. “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.” This was all a touch too profound for Heracles. He saw, but did not see. In this he shared the same bemusement on the subject of free will and destiny that befuddles us all. “Yes, well, never mind all that; I have a job to do.”

So there we have it. A golden fleece far to the east. Iolcos and Aeolia in the grip of the tyrannical and murderous Pelias, who rules the region cruelly but with a resolute grip that no rebel can hope to loosen.

“You are pleased with what you have done, Master Bellerophon,” he said. “Certainly you have been brave and resourceful. But I hope you understand enough of the ways of the Fates and of the gods to know that only darkness and despair awaits those who believe that their achievements are theirs and theirs alone. Pay proper homage to the gods who helped you

“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.”

“Remember,” cautioned the centaur, “modesty. Observance of the gods. 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.

Once again he debated which way he should take. In his head he named the choices “Road One,” “Road Two,” and “Road Three,” plucked a branch from an olive tree, and picked off the leaves one by one, counting as he did so. “One, two, three . . . one, two, three . . . one, two, three . . . one, two! So be it. I take Road Two.” What might have happened had one more leaf—or one fewer—grown on that branch we can never know. Matters of immense import may depend on such issues, but we can never do more than guess the outcomes of the roads we do not take.

Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy, have seen in Oedipus a character who works out on stage the tension in Athenians (and all of us) between the reasoning, mathematically literate citizen and the transgressive blood criminal; between the thinking and the instinctual being; between the superego and the id; between the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses that contend within us. 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.