Troy: The Greek Myths Reimagined (Stephen Fry's Great Mythology #3)

by Stephen Fry

There we have the founding line, from Dardanus to his sons Ilus the First and Erichthonius, whose son Tros fathered Ilus the Second, after whom Troy is also called Ilium or Ilion.

Far below us, the blue Aegean crawls. We break the coastline not far from Mount Pelion, home of Chiron the centaur. We pass over the peak of Mount Othrys, home of the first gods. In its shadow we see the kingdom of Phthia, where Peleus rules over the Myrmidons. His new wife, the sea nymph Thetis, is pregnant with a male child. We will return to them soon enough. Bearing southwest, we overfly the Saronic Gulf; looking down we can make out the island of Salamis, home of Telamon, where his sons Ajax and Teucer live. Ahead of us lies the great peninsula of the Peloponnese, home to some of the great kingdoms of the Greek world. Corinth and Achaea to the north, Theseus’s birthplace of Troezen to the south. Further west lie Pylos and Laconia, but directly below we can make out Argos and its neighbor Mycenae, the mightiest of all the kingdoms.

It is not necessary to know the location of every city-state in the Peloponnese, mainland Greece, and the Troad, nor every cousin and aunt in the great families that ruled there and which were to play prominent parts in the drama to come, but some are very much worth our time and trouble. The royal house of Troy, Priam and Hecuba and their children, for example. Telamon and Peleus, and their offspring, are important too. And so is the house of Tantalus, which, down through Pelops to his sons and their sons, casts a shadow over the whole history of the Trojan War and its aftermath. The curse on Tantalus was doubled with each succeeding generation, a cascade of curses whose force propels us to the end of everything.

Every great champion ever since, in war and in sport, has been a miniature of Achilles, a simulacrum, a tiny speck of a reminder of what real glory can be. He could have chosen for himself a long life of tranquil ease in obscurity, but he knowingly threw himself into a brief, dazzling blaze of glory.