Troy: Our Greatest Story Retold (Stephen Fry’s Great Mythology, #3)

by Stephen Fry

Peleus clapped his hands in delight. ‘That is all? A fear that their son could rise to be greater than them? Why should I worry about such a thing? I would be proud to father a boy who might outshine me in fame and glory, why should I not?’ Chiron smiled. ‘Not all gods, nor indeed all men, are like you, Peleus.’

The moment when flowers and fruits are at their fullest and ripest is the moment that precedes their fall, their decay, their rot, their death.

Palamedes had always disliked Odysseus. The craft and guile that others admired he distrusted. In his opinion the man was as twisted as a pig’s tail. And as shitty.

In reality the Trojan alliance is made up of almost as many disparate elements as the Achaean. Hector and Priam have cemented a coalition of forces from the neighbouring states of the Troad and beyond, from as far north as Macedonian Paeonia and Thrace (today’s Bulgaria) to as far south as continental Africa. A ‘Catalogue of Trojans’ appears in Book 2 of the Iliad alongside the more exhaustive ‘Catalogue of Ships’. Over the course of the war, Prince Aeneas will lead the Dardanian allies;fn5 MEMNON of Ethiopia, Zeus’s son SARPEDON of Lycia, and PENTHESILEA, Queen of the Amazons, will fight for the Trojans too. Other significant warriors from the coalition will make themselves known as the war unfolds.

How strange is our mortal zest for fame. Perhaps it is the only way humans can be gods. We achieve immortality not through ambrosia and ichor but through history and reputation. Through statues and epic song.

Zeus sighed heavily. ‘I wish, all those years ago, Prometheus hadn’t persuaded me to make mankind,’ he said. ‘I knew it was a mistake.’

catasterized

Scion of a much-cursed house.