Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

by Stephen Fry

  The stories of Hermes’ exploits tickled Zeus greatly, then and thenceforward. The guile and duplicity he had shown in stealing Apollo’s cattle made Hermes a natural choice for god of rascals, thieves, liars, conmen, gamblers, hucksters, jokers, story-tellers and sportsmen. The grander side to liars, jokers and story-tellers gave him a share in literature, poetry, oratory and wit too. His skill and insight allowed him to hold sway in the fields of science and medicine.fn34 He became the god of commerce and trade, of herdsmen (of course) and of travel and roads. Despite music being his invention he did, as promised, present the divine responsibility for it as a gift to Apollo. Apollo simplified the lyre’s structure by replacing the tortoiseshell with the elegant bracketed frame of gold with which we associate the classic instrument.

  In the same way that I suggested Artemis and Athena might be considered to represent opposites (wild v. cultivated, impulsive v. considered, etc.) so the mutability, swiftness and energetic impulses of traffic and exchange personified by Hermes might be said to present an exact counter to the serenity, permanence, order and centred domestic sufficiency of Hestia.

  Aside from the staff, hat and winged sandals that Hephaestus fashioned for Hermes, his symbols included the tortoise, the lyre and the cockerel. The Romans called him MERCURY and worshipped him with almost as much fervour as the Greeks. He was smooth of skin like his favourite half-brother Apollo (they were now the firmest of friends) and like him he was a deity of light. His light was not golden like Apollo’s, but silver – quicksilver. Indeed the element named ‘mercury’ after him is still sometimes called ‘quicksilver’, and all things mercurial remind us of this most delightful of gods. Later, Hermes would take on perhaps his most important divine responsibility, but for the moment we will seat him in the twelfth chair and survey the grandeur of Megala Kazaniafn35, the great stage at the summit of Mount Olympus.

  The Olympians

  Two great thrones face ten smaller ones. Each is now occupied by a god or goddess. Zeus reaches out his left hand for Hera to take.

  Megala Kazania, the amphitheatre scooped out of Olympian rock by the Hecatonchires during their great battering of the Titans, is spread out before the gods.fn36 A great cheer goes up from the crowd of immortals gathered there to witness this great occasion, Zeus’s supreme moment.

  The Queen of Heaven takes his hand. She is content. She and her wayward husband have had a Conversation. There are to be no new gods. There will be no more seduction and impregnation of nymphs or Titanesses. The dodecatheon is complete and Zeus will now turn to the serious business of establishing his rule in perpetuity. She, Hera, will always be there to support and guide him, to uphold order and decorum.

  As he surveys the ten smiling gods ranged in front of them Zeus feels Hera squeezing his hand and understands just what that firm pressure means. He salutes the crowd of pardoned Titans and swooning nymphs massed below. Cyclopes, Gigantes, Meliae and Oceanids jostle each other to get a good view. The Charites and Horai shimmer shyly. Hades, the Erinyes and other dark creatures of the underworld bow low. The three hundred hands of the Hecatonchires wave their fierce loyalty.

  Now, to signify the start of the Reign of the Twelve, Hestia steps down from her throne and sets light to the oil in a great gleaming bowl of beaten copper. A huge cheer rings around the mountain. An eagle flies overhead. Thunder rumbles across the sky.

  Hestia returns to her throne. Zeus watches her calmly smoothing the skirt of her gown and transfers his gaze to the others, one by one – Poseidon. Demeter. Aphrodite. Hephaestus. Ares. Athena. Artemis. Apollo. Hermes. These gods and all creation are bowing down before him. All his enemies are scattered, destroyed, imprisoned or tamed. He has created an empire and a rule the like of which the world has never seen. He has won. Yet he feels nothing.

  He looks up and on the far edge of the mountain sees silhouetted against the sky a figure whose dark clothes billow in the wind. His father Kronos has come. The blade of his scythe catches the light of the flames below as he slowly swings it back and forth like a pendulum. Although even Zeus cannot possibly make it out so far away in such poor light he is sure that there is a cruel, taunting grimace on his father’s gaunt and ravaged face.

  ‘Wave, Zeus. And for heaven’s sake, smile!’ Hera’s hissed undertone jerks him away. When he looks back the dark silhouette of his father has gone. Perhaps he only imagined it.

  More cheers arise. To the growl of thunder is added a rumble from the earth itself. Gaia and Ouranos are adding their congratulations. Or perhaps their warnings. The cheering will not stop. Everything alive worships and adores him. This should be the happiest day of his life.

  Something is missing. Something … he frowns and thinks. Suddenly a great lightning bolt stabs down from the sky and strikes the ground, sending up a violent puff of smoke and burnt dust.

  ‘Don’t do that, dear,’ says Hera.

  But Zeus isn’t listening. He has had an idea.

  Part One

  * * *

  THE TOYS OF ZEUS

  Prometheus

  I have mentioned Prometheus, son of Iapetus and Clymene, before. This far-sighted young Titan had all the attributes that charm. He was strong, almost distressingly good-looking, faithful, loyal, discreet, modest, humorous, considerate, well mannered and altogether the most engaging and captivating company. Everybody liked him, but Zeus liked him best. When Zeus’s packed schedule allowed, the pair would go rambling over the countryside together, talking of everything and nothing – of fortune, friendship and family, of war and destiny and of many silly and inconsequential things besides, as friends will.

  In the days leading up to the inauguration of the dodecatheon, Prometheus – who was as fond of Zeus as Zeus was of him – had begun to notice a change in his friend. The god seemed moody and irritable, less inclined to go for walks, less silly and playful and more prone to sulks and outbursts of petulance that were unworthy of the kingly, humorous and self-controlled god that Prometheus knew and loved. He put it down to nerves and kept out of his way.

  One morning, a week or so following the great ceremony, Prometheus, who had taken to sleeping in the long grass somewhere in the fragrant meadows of Thrace, felt himself being jerked awake by a persistent tweaking of his toes. He opened his eyes to see a lively and rejuvenated King of the Gods bouncing up and down in front of him like an impatient child on their birthday morning. The gloom had melted away like mist from a mountaintop and all the signature joviality had returned tenfold.

  ‘Up, Prometheus! Up and at ’em!’

  ‘Hwuh?’

  ‘We’re going to do something remarkable today, something that the world will shout about for aeons. It will ring down the ages, it will be the –’

  ‘Hunting for bears, are we?’

  ‘Bears? I have had the most extraordinary idea. Come on.’

  ‘Where are we going?’

  Zeus gave no answer, but putting an arm round Prometheus he led him forcefully across the fields in a silence punctuated only by occasional barks of excited laughter. If Prometheus hadn’t known his friend better he might have thought him drunk on nectar.

  ‘This idea,’ he prompted. ‘Perhaps you could start at the beginning?’

  ‘Good, yes. The beginning. That’s right. The beginning is exactly where we should start. Sit there.’ Zeus indicated a fallen tree and paced up and down while Prometheus inspected the bark for ants before seating himself. ‘Now. Consider how everything began. En arche en Chaos. In the beginning was Chaos. Out of Chaos came the First Order – Erebus, Nyx, Hemera and their generation – followed by the Second Order, our grandparents Gaia and Ouranos, yes?’

  Prometheus gave a cautious nod.

  ‘Gaia and Ouranos, who then unleashed upon creation the catastrophic aberration of you people, the Titans –’

  ‘Hey!’

  ‘– and next came all those nymphs and spirits, endless minor deities and monsters and animals and what have you, and finally the culmination. Us. The god
s. Heaven and earth perfected.’

  ‘After a long and bloody war against my race. Which I helped you win.’

  ‘Yes, yes. But the end result – all is well. Peace and prosperity have broken out everywhere. And yet …’

  Zeus left such a long silence that Prometheus felt obliged to break it.

  ‘You surely can’t mean that you miss the war?’

  ‘No, it’s not that …’ Zeus continued pacing up and down in front of Prometheus, like a teacher lecturing a class of one. ‘You must have noticed I’ve been out of sorts lately. I’ll tell you why. You know how sometimes I like to soar over the world in the form of an eagle?’

  ‘Scouting for nymphs.’

  ‘This world,’ Zeus went on, affecting not to hear, ‘is quite extraordinarily beautiful. Everything in its place – rivers, mountains, birds, beasts, oceans, groves, plains and canyons … But you know, when I look down, I find myself sorrowing at how empty it is.’

  ‘Empty?’

  ‘Oh Prometheus, you have absolutely no idea how boring it is to be a god in a complete and finished world.’

  ‘Boring?’

  ‘Yes, boring. For some time I’ve realized that I’m bored and I’m lonely. I mean “lonely” in the larger sense. In the cosmic sense. I am cosmically lonely. Is this how it’s going to be for ever and ever now? Me on a throne on Olympus, thunderbolt on lap, while everyone bows and scrapes, sings praises and begs favours? In perpetuity. Where’s the fun in that?’

  ‘Well …’

  ‘Be honest, you’d hate it too.’

  Prometheus compressed his lips and thought for a while. It was true that he had never envied his friend the imperial throne and all its bothers and burdens.

  ‘Suppose,’ said Zeus, ‘suppose I were to start a new race.’

  ‘In the Pythian Games?’

  ‘No, not a running race. A race as in a species. A new order of beings. Like us in every particular, upright, on two legs –’

  ‘One head?’

  ‘One head. Two hands. Resembling us in every particular, and they would have – you’re the intellectual, Prometheus, what’s the name for that aspect of us that raises us above the animals?’

  ‘Our hands?’

  ‘No, the part that tells us that we exist, that makes us aware of ourselves?’

  ‘Consciousness.’

  ‘That’s the one. These creatures would have consciousness. And language. They wouldn’t be a threat to us, of course. They’d live down here on the land, use their wit to farm and feed and fend for themselves.’

  ‘So …’ Prometheus frowned in concentration as he tried to form a coherent picture in his mind. ‘A race of beings like us?’

  ‘Exactly! But not as big as us. And they’d be my creation. Well, our creation.’

  ‘Our creation?’

  ‘You’re good with your hands. Another Hephaestus. My idea is that you would model these creatures out of … out of clay, for example. They should be shaped in our image, anatomically correct in every detail, but on a smaller scale. Then we could animate them, give them life, replicate them and release them into nature to see what happens.’

  Prometheus pondered this idea.

  ‘Would we engage with them, speak to them, move about with them?’

  ‘That would be exactly the point. To have an intelligent – well, semi-intelligent – species to praise and worship us, to play with us and amuse us. A subservient, adoring race of little miniatures.’

  ‘Male and female?’

  ‘Oh, good heavens no, just male. You can imagine what Hera would say otherwise …’

  Prometheus could indeed imagine what Hera’s reaction might be if the world were suddenly filled with more females for her errant husband to involve himself with. He saw that Zeus was very excited by his grand scheme. Once he was set upon a course, Prometheus knew, even one as novel and strange as this, not even the Hecatonchires and Gigantes combined could sway his friend from it.

  Not that Prometheus was against the idea. It was an exciting experiment, he decided. Playthings for the immortals. When you came to think of it, it was really rather an enchanting notion. Artemis had her hounds, Aphrodite her doves, Athena her owl and serpent, Poseidon and Amphitrite their dolphins and turtles. Even Hades kept a dog – albeit a perfectly disgusting one. It was only fitting that the chief of gods should design his own special kind of pet, more intelligent, loyal and endearing than the others.

  Kneading and Firing

  History does not agree on exactly where Prometheus and Zeus went to find the best clay for realizing the plan. Early sources, like the traveller Pausanias in the second century AD, claimed that Panopeus in Phocis was the place. Later scholars say that the pair journeyed east of Asia Minor, all the way down to the fertile lands that lie between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates.fn1 The most recent scholarship maintains that the search took them right down past Nilus, crossing the Equator and ending up in East Africa.

  Wherever it was, they found at last what Prometheus pronounced to be the perfect spot: a river whose slimy banks oozed with just the kind of mud and minerals he wanted for consistency, texture, durability and colour.

  ‘This is good clay,’ he told Zeus. ‘No, don’t settle down. I need to work in peace and free of all distraction. But before you go I shall require some of your saliva.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘If these creatures are to live and breathe they will need something of you in the composition.’

  Zeus saw the justice of this and was happy enough to hawk up and fill a dried out waterhole with his divine spittle.

  ‘I’ll need to line up my little clay figures one by one on the riverbank to be baked in the heat of the sun,’ said Prometheus. ‘So be back by evenfall and they should be nicely ready.’

  Zeus would have liked to watch, but he knew enough about the artistic temperament to leave Prometheus to it. Leaping upwards in the form of an eagle he flew away, leaving his friend alone with his art.

  Prometheus began tentatively, first rolling out sausages of clay, each roughly four podes long.fn2 On top of these he stuck a ball of spit-moistened clay for a head. It was then a question of teasing, twisting and tweaking, mushing, moulding and massaging, pulling, prising and pinching, until something like a small version of a god or Titan appeared. The more he worked, the more excited he became. Zeus had not been exaggerating when he compared Prometheus to Hephaestus – he did possess real skill. In fact what he exhibited now as he pressed and shaped was more than skill, it was artistry.

  Mixing the clay with different pigments he built up a diverse and colourful array of life-like masculine creatures. His first effort had been a small being whose skin closely matched the sun-kissed complexions of the gods. Next he made one in shining black, then another who was more a creamy ivory tinged with pink, then came figures of amber, yellow, bronze, red, green, beige, vivid purple and the brightest blue.

  A Reduced Set

  As evening fell Prometheus stood and stretched with a yawn and that special groan of weariness and satisfaction that follows a long session of concentrated labour.

  The afternoon sun had warmed his work into the supple, malleable consistency known in the world of ceramics as ‘cheese-ware’. This was perfect timing on Prometheus’s part, for if the finished creations had been exposed to fiercer midday heat they would have dried into ‘biscuit-ware’, rendering them too friable and frangible for any of the last-minute modifications that his royal and divine patron would be sure to demand. Longer ears, twice the number of genitals, that kind of thing. Gods are nothing if not capricious.

  And here, unless his own ears deceived him, came the King of the Gods now, crashing through the thicket in loud conversation with someone. Prometheus could make out an answering voice, female, low and measured. Zeus had brought along Athena, his favourite child.

  ‘Your father the emperor god, the world knows,’ Prometheus could hear him saying. ‘Zeus the all-powerful, yes. Zeus the all-conquering
, certainly. Zeus the all-knowing, of course. Zeus the –’

  ‘Zeus the all-modest?’

  ‘– Zeus the creator, though. Doesn’t that have a ring?’

  ‘Quite a ring.’

  ‘Now then, the riverbank should be just over there. Let’s call him. Oh, Prometheus!’

  Roosting weaver-birds rocketed into the air, squawking in alarm. ‘Promeeeetheus!’

  ‘Over here,’ Prometheus called. ‘But be careful because –’

  Too late!

  Breaking out through the trees into the clearing Zeus had, in his excitement, stepped onto the row of exquisitely fashioned figures drying on the bank. With a cry of fury and despair Prometheus hurried forward to survey the damage.

  ‘You clumsy oaf!’ he cried. ‘You’ve destroyed them. Look!’

  No one else in creation could get away with talking to Zeus like that. Athena was astonished to see her father bow his head in meek apology.

  On inspection things were not quite as bad as Prometheus had feared. Only three of the figures were beyond repair. He prised these from the mud, the squashed clay still bearing the imprint of Zeus’s enormous toes.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Zeus cheerfully, ‘the rest are fine, that’s plenty. Let’s get on, shall we?’

  ‘But look at these!’ said Prometheus holding up the squashed and ruined statuettes. ‘The little green, violet and blue creatures were just about my favourites.’

  ‘We’ve still got the black, brown, ivory, yellow, reddish and what have you. That’s enough, surely?’