Algernon's Reviews > Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

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 equals. 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.

Stephen Fry is a great salesman. His short introduction to this volume of re-packaged Greek myths is a great teaser-trailer for the greatest stories ever told (arguably). If you where on the fence, like me for example, about the need to revisit these childhood classic tales, such a passionate, clear exposition from the host of the journey might just be the final decider.

I cannot repeat too often that it has never been my aim to interpret or explain the myths, only to tell them.

As arguments in favour of picking Mr Fry to be the best narrator for these overused and clearly familiar collection of stories, we have his Classical Cambridge education, his long years of experience working in television and films and, most of all, his irreverent and sharp sense of humour, a necessary ingredient when approaching a subject that is liable to still stir up controversy in a world where social and religious intolerance are on the rise.

Without any fear of giving up spoilers ( ‘Zeus can’t keep it in his pants’ would cover about half the origin stories of various gods, heroes and animals) the success of the project for me consists in the rigorous research and in the clear exposition of a wildly scattered source material, as well as the steadfast adherence of the author to the decision to tell a good story instead of writing an academic research paper. Occasional liberties taken with the presentation in the form of comedy sketch dialogues and tongue-in-cheek sideline commentary add salt and pepper to the meat of the story and help the reader put these ancient myths in a modern frame of reference. A sort of re-packaging of the material for a modern audience that manages to be informative, fun and, most of all, true to the spirit of this fascinating culture that has given so much to the world at large.

I like to picture the first stage of creation as an old-fashioned TV screen on which a monochrome game of ‘Pong’ played. You remember ‘Pong’? It had two white rectangles for rackets and a square dot for a ball. Existence was a primitive, pixellated form of bouncing tennis. Some thirty-five to forty years later there had evolved ultra hi-res 3-D graphics with virtual and augmented reality. So it was for the Greek cosmos, a creation that began with clunky and elemental lo-res outlines now exploded into rich, varied life.

Think for a moment of how the modern world would look and act without the liberating, thought provoking, artistic explosion that was the Renaissance period, about the still enduring fascination of men of science, culture and art who cast off the strictures of religious dogma and rediscovered the exuberant, irreverent, subversive world of Greek and Roman mythology. I sure prefer this to a variant of “Handmaids Tale” where religious bigots make the laws. Almost all the numerous illustrations used by Stephen Fry in this volume come from the Renaissance period. Painters, poets, philosophers are still dipping their toes into these waters , still making their appeals to the muses and to the gods on Mount Olympus for inspiration, for illustration of their chosen themes.

Without the Bacchic element, life would be uninteresting; with it, it is dangerous. Prudence versus passion is a conflict that runs through history. It is not a conflict in which we ought to side wholly with either party. [Bertrand Russell – History of Western Philosophy]

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I have no intention in my review to enumerate the myths included by the author in this collection. It’s basically the whole story of creation, up to the age of Heroes. It starts with the first generation of cosmological abstract concepts (Chaos, Space, Light) , followed by the first generation primordial Beings (Mother Earth, Father Time and their elemental progeny) begetting the Olympians and, through them, the literal explosion of divine presence that saw every mountain, every brook, tree or city, every emotion and every art receive its guardian spirit: gods and demigods, nymphs, satyrs, titans, monsters, chimeras, prophets, kings and adventurers.

Some of these origin stories are necessarily brief, given the massive treasure chest of variant myths, commentaries and artistic rendition going on from the times of Homer and Hessiod through Apuleius and Ovid and into Shakespeare and Co. For these myths, the book serves more as a reminder of their place in the chronology and reference bookmark for further study.

The lesson that repeats and repeats throughout the story of man: Don’t mess with the gods. Don’t trust the gods. Don’t anger the gods. Don’t barter with the gods. Don’t compete with the gods. Leave the gods well alone. Treat all blessings as a curse and all promises as a trap. Above all, never insult a god. Ever.

The real attraction are those myths that the author feels close to his heart or fundamental in relation to our modern search for meaning and purpose in a chaotic universe. It’s easy to identify which stories make the grade, because Mr Fry lets his enthusiasm guide him to a more detailed, more passionate presentation and better sideline commentary. Such is the story of the creation of man, of Prometheus and Pandorra , the story that explains free will and the core concept that Gods are created in the image of man and not the other way around.

Athena’s breath brought the clay statues to life, literally inspiring them with some of her great qualities of wisdom, instinct, craft, and sense.

Also fascinating, and mostly left to the reader to comment upon, are the similarities between a lot of these myths and stories from the Bible, from Hindu, Egyptian and other Middle Eastern sources, all pointing out to a much older common root and to cross pollination of ideas. The Deluge and Philemon and Baucis are just two examples of such common ground.

Hospitality, or ‘xenia’, was so extraordinarily esteemed in the Greek world that Hestia shared the care of it with Zeus himself, who was on occasion given the name Zeus Xenios. Sometimes the gods tested human “guest friendship”, as we shall see in the story of Philemon and Baucis. This was known as ‘theoxenia’. Xenophobes, of course, do not extend the hand of friendship to strangers...

Sidenote on sidenotes : a lot of these annotations are used in a lexical manner to show how many of these myths have become core concepts and common language in our modern vocabulary, thanks again to Renaissance and Enlightenment heritage.

Being from Tyre, Cadmus probably used the word for “let it be so” most commonly used throughout the Middle East : Amen .

Second sidenote on sidenotes: Extra kudos to Mr. Fry for not trying to turn his book into a polemic on sexuality, an obvious and tempting path given the celebrated promiscuity of the ancient gods. His solution is the much more elegant and discreet solution of simply telling the stories without either bowdlerizing or lionizing the issue.

I could have my pick of a highlight from a tale of one of Zeus infidelities, one origin story for a town or concept (Cadmus comes to mind) or a story of true love. I guess my favorite is Eros and Psyche, one of the longest and most tenderly rendered stories in the whole book, and illustrative of the deliberate approach of the author in his storytelling:



Perhaps the best-known myth involving Eros and Psyche – Physical Love and Soul – is almost absurdly ripe for interpretation and explanation. I think, however, that it is best told like all myths, not as an allegory, symbolic fable, or metaphor, but as a story. Just a story.

That statue of Antonio Cadova still is my most memorable moment from several lengthy visits to the Louvre, so I was really looking forward to the moment and was not disappointed. Gods and human alike are fallible, ruled by their emotions and capable of either pettiness or greatness in unpredictable ways. Which is in the end, why life is so damn interesting.

... in this story, as in so many others, what we really discern is the deceptive, ambiguous, and giddy riddle of violence, passion, poetry, and symbolism that lies at the heart of Greek myth and refuses to be solved. An algebra too unstable properly to be computed, it is human-shaped and god-shaped, not pure and mathematical.

Similar emotions (and fond memories of the Medici fountain in Jardin du Luxembourg) are to be found in the renderings of the myths of Acis and Galateea, or Pygmalion and another Galateea:

Just once or twice in Greek myth mortal lovers are granted a felicitous ending. It is that hope, perhaps, that spurs us on to believe that our quest for happiness will not be futile.



I think this will be a good place to stop for now. I’m glad of my decision to buy this book and I will keep it in my library for future reference on Greek Mythology. I plan to follow up with Stephen Fry’s book on Heroes, with Neil Gaiman’s ‘Norse Mythology’ and, hopefully, with something more accessible about Hindu mythology (or a re-read of Zelazny’s ‘Lord of Light’). The author also recommends the site theoi.com as a good reference source.
I’ll leave you with a final funny piece of trivia about the first musical critic ever, Midas. Spoiler alert: he was cursed with more than the gold touch.

“You honestly think Pan played better than me?”
“I do.”
“Well, in that case,” said Apollo, with a laugh, “you must have the ears of an ass.”