Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

by Stephen Fry

  Down to the depths he went to carve out his kingdom. While his name will always be associated with death and the afterlife, and the whole realm of the underworld (which shares his name) with pain, punishment and perpetual suffering, Hades also came to symbolize riches and opulence. The jewels and precious metals that are mined deep underground and the priceless crops of grain, vegetables and flowers that germinate beneath the earth are all reminders that from decay and death spring life, abundance and wealth. The Romans called him PLUTO and words like ‘plutocrat’ and ‘plutonium’ tell of this great opulence and power.fn2

  Under Hades’ personal command came Erebus and Nyx and their son Thanatos (Death himself). A system of river deities, too dark and dreadful to flow in the open air, wound their way through this underworld. The principal was Styx (hate), a daughter of Tethys and Oceanus whose name and ‘stygian’ attributes are invoked to this day whenever we want to describe something dark, menacing and gloomy, something hellishly black and brooding. Into her seeped PHLEGETHON, the flaming river of fire, ACHERON, the river of woe, LETHE, the waters of forgetfulness, and COCYTUS, the stream of lamentation and wailing. Styx’s brother Charon was appointed ferryman, and for the time being he waited, leaning on his pole, by the banks of the Styx. He had dreamed that one day souls by the thousand would come to the shores of the river and pay him the price of transport across. One day soon.

  Space was given by Hades to the Furies, the earth-born Erinyes, to live within the darkest heart of his kingdom. From there the three of them could fly to all corners of the world to exact their revenge on those transgressors whose crimes were foul enough to merit their violent attentions.

  In time Hades acquired a pet, a gigantic snake-tailed, three-headed dog, offspring of those monstrous children of Gaia and Tartarus, Echidna and Typhon. His name was KERBEROS (although he answered to his Roman name, CERBERUS, too). He was the original hound of hell, the fearsome and tireless watchdog and guardian of the underworld.

  At Lerna, a lake that could be used as one of the entrances to the underworld, Hades posted HYDRA, another child of Tartarus and Gaia. I mentioned before the frightening mutations possible when monsters mate, and the difference between Cerberus and his sister Hydra offers a striking example. On the one hand, a dog with a more or less manageable three heads and an elegantly snaky tail to wag; and on the other, his sister, a many-headed water-beast who was almost impossible to kill. Chop off one of her heads and she could grow back ten more in its place.

  Despite these zoological atrocities Hades was for the time being a quiet place, ruled over by a god with little to do. In order for hell to be busy, mortal beings are needed. Creatures that die. So we will leave Pluto for the time being, seated on his cold infernal throne, brooding darkly, as hostile, chilly and remote as the planet that bears his name,fn3 and secretly cursing the good fortune that had given rule of the seas to his hated brother.

  Poseidon

  Poseidon was a very different kind of god to Hades. He could be as truculent, stormy, vain, capricious, inconsistent, restless, cruel and unfathomable as the oceans he commanded. But he could be loyal and grateful too. In common with his brothers and some of his sisters, he was also to exhibit urgent bodily lust, deep spiritual love and every feeling in between. Like all the gods, he was greedy for admiration, sacrifice, obedience and adoration. Once your friend, always your friend. Once your enemy, always your enemy. And he was ambitious for more than burnt offerings, libations and prayers. He always kept an eager, avaricious eye on the youngest of his brothers, the one who now called himself ‘eldest’ and ‘king’. Should the great Zeus make too many mistakes, Poseidon would be there to topple him from his throne.

  The Cyclopes, just as they had forged thunderbolts for Zeus, now created a great weapon for Poseidon too – a trident. This massive three-pronged fishing spear could be used to stir up tidal waves and whirlpools – even to make the earth tremble with earthquakes, which gave Poseidon the soubriquet ‘Earth Shaker’. His desire for his sister Demeter caused him to invent the horse to impress and please her. He lost his passion for Demeter, but the horse remained sacred to him always.

  Under what we would now call the Aegean Sea, Poseidon built a vast palace of coral and pearl in which he installed himself and his chosen consort, AMPHITRITE, a daughter of Nereus and Doris, or (some say) of Oceanus and Tethys. As a wedding gift, Poseidon presented Amphitrite with the very first dolphin. She bore him a son, TRITON, a kind of merman, usually depicted sitting on his tail and blowing with bulging cheeks into a large conch shell. Amphitrite, if truth be told, seems to have been rather colourless and appears in few stories of any great interest. Poseidon spent almost all his time pursuing a perfectly exhausting quantity of beautiful girls and boys and fathering by the girls an even greater number of monsters, demigods and human heroes – Percy Jackson and Theseus to name but two.

  Poseidon’s Roman equivalent was NEPTUNE, whose giant planet is surrounded by moons that include Thalassa, Triton, Naiadfn4 and Proteus.fn5

  Demeter

  The next of Kronos’s children to be apportioned her divine duties was Demeter. Hair the colour of ripe wheat, skin like cream and eyes bluer than cornflowers, she was as richly dreamily beautiful as any of the goddesses, except perhaps … well, the question of who was the most beautiful goddess would turn out to be the most vexed, thorny and ultimately cataclysmic one ever asked.

  So lovely was Demeter that she attracted the unwanted attention of her brothers Zeus and Poseidon. To avoid Poseidon she transformed herself into a mare, and to chase her he turned into a stallion. The issue of that union was a colt, ARION, who grew into an immortal horse magically endowed with the power of speech.fn6 By Zeus she had a daughter, PERSEPHONE, whose story comes along later.

  Zeus gave Demeter responsibility for the harvest and with it sovereignty over growth, fertility and the seasons. Her Roman name was CERES, from which we get our word ‘cereal’.fn7

  Like Hestia, Demeter is one of the divinities less clear in our minds today as a personality than others of her passionate and charismatic family. But, as with Hestia, her domain was of paramount importance to the Greeks; shrines and cults dedicated to her far outlasted those devoted to the more superficially glamorous gods. The one great story devoted to Demeter, her daughter and the god Hades is as beautiful as it is dramatic, far-reaching and true.

  Hera

  Hera came out of Rhea second to last.fn8 Words that are still applied to her, and which would have maddened her greatly, include ‘proud’, ‘imperious’, ‘jealous’, ‘haughty’ and ‘vengeful’. In art and common reference she is often saddled with the extra indignity of three upsetting ‘-esques’: statuesque, Rubenesque and – courtesy of her Roman appellation – Junoesque.

  Fate and posterity have been unkind to the Queen of Heaven. Unlike Aphrodite or Gaia she has no planet named in her honour,fn9 and she must bear the burden of a reputation that portrays her as more reactive than active – reactive always to the errant infidelities of her husband-brother Zeus.

  It is easy to dismiss Hera as a tyrant and a bore – jealous and suspicious, storming and ranting like the very picture of a scorned harridan wife (one imagines her hurling china ornaments at feckless minions), exacting spiteful revenge on nymphs and mortals who have displeased her, failed to burn enough animals on her altars or, most fatally of all, committed the crime of consorting with Zeus (whether they had been willing or unwilling she never forgave them and could hold a grudge for lifetimes). But, ambitious, snobbish, conservatively protective of hierarchy and impatient of originality and flair as she certainly was – the archetype of many a literary aunt and cinematic dowager dragon – Hera was never a bore.fn10 The force and resolution with which she faced up to a god who could disintegrate her with one thunderbolt shows self-belief as well as courage.

  I am very fond of her and, while I am sure I would stammer, blush and swallow awkwardly in her presence, she finds in me a devoted admirer. She gave the gods gravity, hef
t and the immeasurable gift of what the Romans called auctoritis. If that makes her seem a spoilsport, well, sometimes sport needs to be spoiled and the children called in from the playground. Her special province was marriage; the animals associated with her were the peacock and the cow.

  Over the course of the war against the Titans she and Zeus developed into a natural couple, and it became apparent to him that she was the only one with enough presence, dignity and command to stand as his consort and bear him new gods.

  Crackling with tension, impatience and distrust, theirs was nonetheless a great marriage.

  A New Home

  Zeus’s ambition for a new era, a new dispensation for the cosmos, encompassed more than the simple distribution of powers and provinces amongst his brothers and sisters. Zeus imagined something more enlightened, and rationally constituted than the bloody and brutal tyrannies that had gone before.

  He envisioned an assembly of twelve major gods – a dodecatheon as he Greekly put it to himself.fn11 So far we have met six, the children of Kronos and Rhea. There was already another deity to call upon of course, one who was older than any of them – foam-born Aphrodite. The moment the Titanomachy erupted, Zeus collected Aphrodite from Cyprus, aware that she would constitute a great prize if kidnapped, ransomed or recruited by the Titans. For the last ten years she had contentedly been living amongst them and thus the gods now numbered seven.fn12

  As the Titans had made Othrys their mountain home, so Zeus now chose for his headquarters Mount Olympus, Greece’s highest peak. He and his gods would be known as the OLYMPIANS and they would rule as no divine beings ruled before or since.

  The Runt

  Hera was pregnant when the gods moved to Olympus. She could not have been more satisfied. Her ambition was to bear Zeus children of such majestic power, strength and beauty that her place as Queen of Heaven would be assured for eternity. She knew that Zeus had a roving eye and she was determined not to let any other parts of him rove either. First she would give birth to the greatest of the gods, a boy whom she would call HEPHAESTUS, and then Zeus would marry her properly and submit himself for ever to her will. This was her plan. The plans of the immortals, however, are as subject to the cruel tricks of Moros as are the plans of mortals.

  When her time came, Hera lay down and Hephaestus was born. To her dismay the child turned out to be so swarthy, ugly and diminutive that, after one disgusted glance, she snatched him up and hurled him down the mountainside. The other gods watched the wailing baby bounce once off a cliff and then disappear into the sea. There was a terrible silence.

  We will find out what happened to Hephaestus soon enough, but for the moment let us stay on Olympus, where Hera soon became pregnant by Zeus again. This time she took every care to look after herself, eating healthy foods and exercising gently but regularly, in accordance with all the approved precepts and practices of pregnancy and parturition. She wanted a proper son, not a runt fit only to be thrown away.

  It’s War

  In due time Hera was indeed delivered of the lusty, strong and handsome child she had set her heart on.

  ARES, for so she called him, was from the beginning a pugnacious, violent and aggressive boy. He picked quarrels with everyone and thought of nothing but the clash of arms and horses, chariots, spears and martial arts. It was natural that Zeus, who disliked him from the first, should appoint him god of war.

  Ares – MARS to the Romans – was unintelligent of course, monumentally dense and unimaginative for, as everyone knows, war is stupid. Nevertheless even Zeus acknowledged with grudging consent that he was a necessary addition to Olympus. War may be stupid, but it is also inevitable and sometimes – dare one say it? – necessary.

  As Ares grew swiftly to manhood he found himself irresistibly attracted to Aphrodite – as which gods weren’t? More perplexingly perhaps, she was equally drawn to him. She loved him, in fact; his violence and strength appealed to some deep part of her. He in turn grew to love her, so far as such a violent brute was capable of the emotion. Love and war, Venus and Mars, have always had a strong affinity. No one quite knows why, but plenty of money has been made trying to find an answer.

  The Enchanted Throne

  To cement her position as the universally recognized Queen of Heaven and undisputed consort of Zeus, Hera felt the need to institute a nuptial feast, a grand public ceremony that would for ever bind her in wedlock to Zeus.

  Hera’s twin impulses of propriety and ambition motivated almost everything she did. She had been pleased to see her son falling for Aphrodite, yet she did not trust the goddess. If Aphrodite agreed to make a public commitment to Ares, as Zeus was to do to Hera, then that would make everything binding and official, setting a permanent seal on her triumph. The world’s first wedding would therefore solemnize two marriages.

  A date was set and invitations sent out. Presents began to arrive, the most spectacular of which, all agreed, was a marvellous golden chair addressed personally to Hera. Never had so glorious and gorgeous an object been seen. Whoever the anonymous sender might be, it was obvious, Hera declared, that he or she had the most exquisite taste. Smiling with satisfaction, she lowered herself onto the throne. Instantly its arms came to life and sprang inwards, enclosing her in a tight embrace. Struggle as she might she could not escape, the arms had locked themselves around her and she was trapped. The screams were appalling.

  The Lame One

  There is doubt, disagreement and speculation about what happened to Hephaestus after he had been cast down from heaven. Some say the infant god was cared for by the Oceanid Eurynome and either the Titaness Tethys, Eurynome’s mother, or perhaps by THETIS, a Nereid (daughter of Nereus and Doris) who was to give birth to achilles many years later. It seems certain, though, that Hephaestus grew up on the island of Lemnos, where he learned how to forge metal and make exquisite, intricate objects. He quickly showed a remarkable talent for the fashioning of useful, ornamental and even magical artefacts, which – allied to his strength with the bellows and apparent immunity from scorching in the intense heat of the forges – combined to make him the greatest of smiths.

  In bouncing off the Olympian mountainside he had damaged his foot, which left him with a permanent limp. With his awkward gait, slightly contorted features and disordered black curls, he was a fearful sight. His later reputation, however, was for faithfulness, kindness, good humour and equable temper. Greek myth is replete with infants cast into the wilderness or abandoned on mountaintops to die, either because some prophecy foretold they would one day bring disaster on their parents, tribe or city, or because they were considered accursed, ugly or malformed. Such outcasts seemed always to survive and return to fulfil the prophecy or win back their birthright.

  Hephaestus longed to come back to Olympus, which he knew to be his home by right, but he was aware that he could not do so without bitterness or on proper terms unless he allowed himself one measured act of revenge, which would prove his strength of personality, his right to divinity and serve as his calling card to heaven.

  So, as Hephaestus learned his trade and worked his bellows, his quick and clever mind devised the plan that his quick and clever fingers would turn into startling reality.

  The Hand of Aphrodite

  Bound fast on the golden throne, Hera howled with rage and frustration. Neither her power, nor even that of Zeus himself had been able to release her from its curse. How could she invite the immortal world to a feast in which she sat pinioned like a criminal in the stocks? It would be grotesque and undignified. She would be laughed at. What magic was at work here? Who had done this to her? How could she be released from the spell?

  The hapless Zeus, bombarded by a shrieked fusillade of questions and complaints, turned to the other gods for help. Whoever managed to release Hera, he proclaimed, could take Aphrodite’s hand in marriage, the greatest matrimonial prize there was.

  Ares was loudly annoyed by this peremptory decree. Was it not understood that he was to wed Aphrodite?

/>   ‘Calm yourself,’ said Zeus. ‘You are stronger than all the other gods put together. Your union is safe.’

  Aphrodite was confident too and pushed her lover forward with encouraging words. But none of Ares’ pulling and pushing and kicking and swearing had the slightest effect. If anything, it seemed that the more he strained, the tighter the throne’s hold on Hera became. Poseidon (despite already having Amphitrite as his consort) made a spirited attempt that likewise came to nothing. Even Hades rose up from the underworld to try his hand at freeing Hera from her increasingly embarrassing predicament. All to no avail.

  As Zeus himself tugged frantically and uselessly at the arms of the throne, enduring yet more insults from the humiliated and enraged Hera, a polite but insistent cough cut through the commotion. The assembled gods turned.

  In the very hall of heaven, a gentle smile on his lopsided face, stood Hephaestus.

  ‘Hello, mother,’ he said. ‘Having problems?’

  ‘Hephaestus!’

  He limped forward. ‘I understand that there is some sort of reward …?’

  Aphrodite looked at the ground, chewing her lip. Ares growled and started forward, but Zeus held him back. The other gods parted to let the ugly little creature hobble through to where Hera sat imprisoned in her throne of gold. At one touch of his fingers the arms of the golden throne swung open and Hera was free.fn13 She rose to her feet, adjusted her gown and straightened herself in a manner that told the world the whole situation had been under control the whole time. Colour flew to Aphrodite’s cheek. This could not be!