Mythos (2019 Re-Issue) Read online

  ΜΕ ΑΓ′ΑΠΗ

  Text copyright © 2017 by Stephen Fry.

  Art copyright © 2017 by the individual licensors.

  Pages 325 and 326 are continuations of the copyright page.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

  First published in the United States of America in 2019 by Chronicle Books.

  Originally published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by Michael Joseph.

  ISBN 978-1-4521-7904-9 (epub, mobi)

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data available.

  ISBN 978-1-4521-7891-2 (hardcover: alk. paper)

  Design by Maggie Edelman.

  Cover illustrations by Karolina Schnoor.

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  CONTENTS

  10 FOREWORD

  17 THE BEGINNING, PART ONE

  18 Out of Chaos

  20 The First Order

  22 The Second Order

  24 Gaia’s Revenge

  29 The Sickle

  30 Night and Day, Light and Dark

  33 Ouranos Gelded

  34 Erinyes, Gigantes, and Meliae

  36 From the Foam

  38 Rhea

  39 The Children of Rhea

  41 The Switch

  43 The Cretan Child

  43 The Oath of Allegiance

  45 The Cretan Boy

  46 The Oceanid and the Potion

  48 Rebirth of the Five

  53 THE BEGINNING, PART TWO

  54 Clash of the Titans

  56 The Proliferation

  57 The Muses

  60 Threesomes

  63 Spirits of Air, Earth, and Water

  64 Disposer Supreme and Judge of the Earth

  66 The Third Order

  66 Hestia

  67 The Lottery

  68 Hades

  69 Poseidon

  70 Demeter

  71 Hera

  72 A New Home

  73 The Runt

  74 It’s War

  75 The Enchanted Throne

  77 The Lame One

  77 The Hand of Aphrodite

  79 The Wedding Feast

  83 Food of the Gods

  84 Bad Zeus

  85 The Mother of All Migraines

  88 Athena

  90 Metis Within

  91 Seeking Sanctuary

  92 Twins!

  93 Artemis

  96 Apollo

  97 The Wrath of Hera

  99 Maia Maia

  99 The Infant Prodigy

  101 Apollo Reads the Signs

  102 Half Brothers

  106 The Twelfth God

  108 The Olympians

  111 THE TOYS OF ZEUS, PART ONE

  112 Prometheus

  115 Kneading and Firing

  116 A Reduced Set

  117 A Name Is Found

  119 The Golden Age

  120 The Fennel Stalk

  121 The Gift of Fire

  124 The Punishments

  124 The Gift

  125 The Brothers

  126 When It’s a Jar

  129 The Chest, the Waters, and the Bones of Gaia

  132 Death

  135 Prometheus Bound

  138 Persephone and the Chariot

  140 The Pomegranate Seeds

  142 Hermaphroditus and Silenus

  144 Cupid and Psyche

  144 Erotes

  145 Love, Love, Love

  146 Psyche

  147 Prophecy and Abandonment

  149 The Enchanted Castle

  150 Voices, Visions, and a Visitor

  153 Sisters

  157 A Drop of Oil

  160 Alone

  162 The Tasks of Aphrodite

  164 The Union of Love and Soul

  167 THE TOYS OF ZEUS, PART TWO

  168 Mortals

  168 Io

  171 The Semen-Soaked Scarf

  172 Phaeton

  174 The Son of the Sun

  174 Father and Sun

  178 Daybreak

  179 The Drive

  180 The Fallout

  182 Cadmus

  182 The White Bull

  183 The Quest for Europa

  185 The Oracle Speaks

  186 The Phocian Games

  188 The Water Dragon

  190 The Dragon’s Teeth

  192 The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmonia

  194 Consigned to the Dust

  196 Twice Born

  196 The Eagle Lands

  197 The Eagle’s Wife

  200 The Manifestation

  201 The Newest God

  204 Thirteen at Table

  206 The Beautiful and the Damned: Angry Goddesses

  206 Actaeon

  207 Erysichton

  210 The Doctor and the Crow

  210 The Birth of Medicine

  214 Crime and Punishment

  214 Ixion

  216 Consequences

  217 Tantalus

  219 Sisyphus

  219 Brotherly Love

  221 Sisyphean Tasks

  222 The Eagle

  224 Cheating Death

  225 Life without Death

  227 Burial Rites

  229 Rolling the Rock

  232 Hubris

  232 All Tears

  234 Apollo and Marsyas: Puffed Cheeks

  235 The Competition

  237 Judgment

  239 Arachne

  239 The Weaver

  241 The Weave-Off

  244 The Reward

  245 More Metamorphoses

  245 Nisus and Scylla

  246 Callisto

  247 Procne and Philomela

  248 Ganymede and the Eagle

  250 Moon Lovers

  253 Lailaps and Alopex Teumesios

  255 Endymion

  256 Eos and Tithonus

  256 Love at First Sight

  257 The Boon

  258 Be Careful What You Wish For

  259 The Grasshopper

  261 The Bloom of Youth

  261 Hyacinthus

  261 Crocus and Smilax

  262 Aphrodite and Adonis

  265 Echo and Narcissus

  265 Tiresias

  266 Narcissus

  267 Echo

  268 Echolalia

  270 Echo and Narcissus

  272 The Boy in the Water

  273 The Gods Take Pity

  275 Lovers

  275 Pyramus and Thisbe

  278 Galateas

  278 Acis and Galatea

  278 Galatea II

  279 Leucippos II, Daphne, and Apollo

  280 Galatea III and Pygmalion Too

  285 Hero and Leander

  288 Arion and the Dolphin

  289 Overboard

  292 The Monument

  295 Philemon and Baucis, or Hospitality Rewarded

  300 Phrygia and the Gordian Knot

  302 Midas

  302 The Ugly Stranger

  304 Goldfinger

  306 King Midas’s Ears

  311 APPENDICES

  312 The Brothers, a Sidebar

  314 Hope

  315 Giant Leaps

  316 Feet and Toes

  318 AFTERWORD

  318 Myth v. Legend v. Religion

  320 The Greeks

&n
bsp; 320 Location, Location

  321 Sources Ancient

  322 Sources Modern

  323 Spelling the Names

  323 Saying the Names

  324 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  325 PICTURE CREDITS

  328 INDEX

  352 About the Author

  FOREWORD

  I was lucky enough to pick up a book called Tales from Ancient Greece when I was quite small. It was love at first meeting. Much as I went on to enjoy myths and legends from other cultures and peoples, there was something about these Greek stories that lit me up inside. The energy, humor, passion, particularity, and believable detail of their world held me enthralled from the very first. I hope they will do the same for you. Perhaps you already know some of the myths told here, but I especially welcome those who may never have encountered the characters and stories of Greek myth before. You don’t need to know anything to read this book; it starts with an empty universe. Certainly no “classical education” is called for, no knowledge of the difference between nectar and nymphs, satyrs and centaurs, or the Fates and the Furies is required. There is absolutely nothing academic or intellectual about Greek mythology; it is addictive, entertaining, approachable, and astonishingly human.

  But where did they come from, these myths of ancient Greece? In the tangle of human history we may be able to pull on a single Greek thread and follow it back, but by picking out only one civilization and its stories we might be thought of as taking liberties with the true source of universal myth. Early human beings the world over wondered at the sources of power that fueled volcanoes, thunderstorms, tidal waves, and earthquakes. They celebrated and venerated the rhythm of the seasons, the procession of heavenly bodies in the night sky, and the daily miracle of the sunrise. They questioned how it might all have started. The collective unconscious of many civilizations has told stories of angry gods; dying and renewing gods; fertility goddesses; deities; demons; and spirits of fire, earth, and water.

  Of course the Greeks were not the only people to weave a tapestry of legends and lore out of the puzzling fabric of existence. The gods of Greece, if we are archaeological and palaeoanthropological about it all, can be traced back to the sky fathers, moon goddesses, and demons of the “fertile crescent” of Mesopotamia—today’s Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. The Babylonians, Sumerians, Akkadians, and other civilizations there, which first flourished far earlier than the Greeks, had their creation stories and folk myths which, like the languages that expressed them, could find ancestry in India and thence westward back to prehistory, Africa, and the birth of our species.

  But whenever we tell any story we have to snip the narrative string somewhere in order to make a starting point. It is easy to do this with Greek mythology because it has survived with a detail, richness, life, and color that distinguish it from other mythologies. It was captured and preserved by the very first poets and has come down to us in an unbroken line from almost the beginning of writing to the present day. While Greek myths have much in common with Chinese, Iranian, Indian, Mayan, African, Russian, Native American, Hebrew, and Norse myths, they are uniquely—as the writer and mythographer Edith Hamilton put it—“the creation of great poets.” The Greeks were the first people to make coherent narratives, a literature even, of their gods, monsters, and heroes.

  The arc of the Greek myths follows the rise of mankind, our battle to free ourselves from the interference of the gods—their abuse, their meddling, their tyranny over human life and civilization. Greeks did not grovel before their gods. They were aware of their vain need to be supplicated and venerated, but they believed men were their equal. Their myths understand that whoever created this baffling world, with its cruelties, wonders, caprices, beauties, madness, and injustice, must themselves have been cruel, wonderful, capricious, beautiful, mad, and unjust. The Greeks created gods that were in their image: warlike but creative, wise but ferocious, loving but jealous, tender but brutal, compassionate but vengeful.

  Mythos begins at the beginning, but it does not end at the end. Had I included heroes like Oedipus, Perseus, Theseus, Jason, and Heracles and the details of the Trojan War, this book would have been too heavy even for a Titan to pick up. Moreover, I am only concerned with telling the stories, not with explaining them or investigating the human truths and psychological insights that may lie behind them. The myths are fascinating enough in all their disturbing, surprising, romantic, comic, tragic, violent, and enchanting detail to stand on their own as stories. If, as you read, you cannot help wondering what inspired the Greeks to invent a world so rich and elaborate in character and incident, and you find yourself pondering the deep truths that the myths embody—well, that is certainly part of the pleasure.

  And pleasure is what immersing yourself in the world of Greek myth is all about.

  Stephen Fry

  The Second Order

  The Olympians

  *Hades is not technically an Olympian, as he spent all of his time in the underworld.

  THE BEGINNING

  Part One

  OUT OF CHAOS

  These days the origin of the universe is explained by proposing a Big Bang, a single event that instantly brought into being all the matter from which everything and everyone are made.

  The ancient Greeks had a different idea. They said that it all started not with a bang, but with CHAOS.

  Was Chaos a god—a divine being—or simply a state of nothingness? Or was Chaos, just as we would use the word today, a kind of terrible mess, like a teenager’s bedroom only worse?

  Think of Chaos perhaps as a kind of grand cosmic yawn.

  As in a yawning chasm or a yawning void.

  Whether Chaos brought life and substance out of nothing or whether Chaos yawned life up or dreamed it up, or conjured it up in some other way, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Nor were you. And yet in a way we were, because all the bits that make us were there. It is enough to say that the Greeks thought it was Chaos who, with a massive heave, or a great shrug, or hiccup, vomit, or cough, began the long chain of creation that has ended with pelicans and penicillin and toadstools and toads, sea lions, seals, lions, human beings, and daffodils and murder and art and love and confusion and death and madness and biscuits.

  Whatever the truth, science today agrees that everything is destined to return to Chaos. It calls this inevitable fate entropy: part of the great cycle from Chaos to order and back again to Chaos. Your trousers began as chaotic atoms that somehow coalesced into matter that ordered itself over eons into a living substance that slowly evolved into a cotton plant that was woven into the handsome stuff that sheathes your lovely legs. In time you will abandon your trousers—not now, I hope—and they will rot down in a landfill or be burned. In either case their matter will at length be set free to become part of the atmosphere of the planet. And when the sun explodes and takes every particle of this world with it, including the ingredients of your trousers, all the constituent atoms will return to cold Chaos. And what is true for your trousers is of course true for you.

  So the Chaos that began everything is also the Chaos that will end everything.

  Now, you might be the kind of person who asks, “But who or what was there before Chaos?” or “Who or what was there before the Big Bang? There must have been something.”

  Well, there wasn’t. We have to accept that there was no “before,” because there was no Time yet. No one had pressed the start button on Time. No one had shouted Now! And since Time had yet to be created, time words like “before,” “during,” “when,” “then,” “after lunch,” and “last Wednesday” had no possible meaning. It screws with the head, but there it is.

  The Greek word for “everything that is the case,” what we could call “the universe,” is COSMOS. And at the moment—although “moment” is a time word and makes no sense just now (neither does the phrase “just now”)—at the moment, Cosmos is Chaos and only Chaos because Chaos is the only thing that is the case. A stretching, a tuning up of the orchestra .
. .

  But things are about to change very quickly.

  THE FIRST ORDER

  From formless Chaos sprang two creations: EREBUS and NYX. Erebus, he was darkness, and Nyx, she was night. They coupled at once and the flashing fruits of their union were HEMERA, day, and AETHER, light.

  At the same time—because everything must happen simultaneously until Time is there to separate events—Chaos brought forth two more entities: GAIA, the earth, and TARTARUS, the depths and caves beneath the earth.

  I can guess what you might be thinking. These creations sound charming enough—Day, Night, Light, Depths, and Caves. But these were not gods and goddesses, they were not even personalities. And it may have struck you also that since there was no time there could be no dramatic narrative, no stories; for stories depend on Once Upon a Time and What Happened Next.

  You would be right to think this. What first emerged from Chaos were primal, elemental principles that were devoid of any real color, character, or interest. These were the PRIMORDIAL DEITIES, the First Order of divine beings from whom all the gods, heroes, and monsters of Greek myth spring. They brooded over and lay beneath everything . . . waiting.

  The silent emptiness of this world was filled when Gaia bore two sons all on her own.1 The first was PONTUS, the sea, and the second was OURANOS, the sky—better known to us as Uranus, the sound of whose name has ever been the cause of great delight to children from nine to ninety. Hemera and Aether bred too, and from their union came THALASSA, the female counterpart of Pontus the sea.

  Ouranos, who preferred to pronounce himself Ooranoss, was the sky and the heavens in the way that—at the very beginning—the primordial deities always were the things they represented and ruled over.2 You could say that Gaia was the earth of hills, valleys, caves, and mountains yet capable of gathering herself into a form that could walk and talk. The clouds of Ouranos the sky rolled and seethed above her but they too could coalesce into a shape we might recognize. It was so early on in the life of everything. Very little was settled.

  Gaia, a primordial goddess and the personification of the Earth, brought into being at the dawn of creation.

  1. This trick of virgin birth, or parthenogenesis, can be found in nature still. In aphids, some lizards, and even sharks, it is a reasonably common way to have young. There won’t be the variation that two sets of genes allow; this is the same in the genesis of the Greek gods. The interesting ones are all the fruit of two parents, not one.