by Stephen Fry
Stephen Fry
* * *
HEROES
Volume II of Mythos
CONTENTS
Picture Credits
Foreword
Map
The Olympians
Introduction
Hera’s Dream
PERSEUS The Shower of Gold
The Wooden Chest
The Two Strangers in the Oak Grove
The Graeae
Gorgon Island
Andromeda and Cassiopeia
The Return to Seriphos
HERACLES The Line of Perseus
Snakes Alive
Youth and Upbringing of a Hero
Crime and Punishment
The Labours of Heracles 1. The Nemean Lion
2. The Lernaean Hydra
3. The Ceryneian Hind
4. The Erymanthian Boar
5. The Augean Stables
6. The Stymphalian Birds
7. The Cretan Bull
8. The Mares of Diomedes (incorporating the Story of Alcestis and Admetus)
9. The Girdle of Hippolyta
10. The Cattle of Geryon
11. The Golden Apples of the Hesperides
12. Cerberus
After the Labours: Crimes and Grudges
The Giants: a Prophecy Fulfilled
The Shirt of Nessus
Apotheosis
BELLEROPHON The Winged One
Bearing False Witness
In Lycia
Chimerical Reaction
Flying Too High
ORPHEUS The Power to Soothe the Savage Beast
Orpheus and Eurydice
Orpheus in the Underworld
The Death of Orpheus
JASON The Ram
Return to Iolcos
The Argo
The Isle of Lemnos
The Dolionians
Hylas Disappears
Harpies
The Clashing Rocks
Deaths, Razor-Sharp Feathers and the Phrixides
The Eagle King
Three Goddesses
Medea
The Khalkotauroi
The Grove of Ares
Escape from Colchis
The Journey Home
The Magical Death of Pelias
Medea Rises Up
ATALANTA Born to Be Wild
The Calydonian Boar
The Calydonian Hunt
The Foot Race
OEDIPUS The Oracle Speaks
Where Three Roads Meet
The Riddle of the Sphinx
Long Live the King
The Aftermyth
THESEUS The Chosen One
Under the Rock
The Labours of Theseus 1. Periphetes
2. Sinis
3. The Crommyonian Sow
4. Sciron
5. Cercyon and the Birth of Wrestling
6. Procrustes, the Stretcher
The Wicked Stepmother
The Marathonian Bull
The Queen of Poisons
The Story of the Tribute
The Bull from the Sea
To Crete
The Dungeons of Knossos
The Bull Man
Abandonment and Flight
Father and Son
Theseus, the King
Envoi
The Offspring of Echidna and Typhon
The Rages of Heracles
Afterword
Illustrations
List of Characters Olympian Gods
Primordial Beings
Monsters
Mortals
Acknowledgements
Follow Penguin
To all the heroes we have never heard of.
Perhaps you are one.
Picture Credits
SECTION ONE
1. Olympus. Iliad Room, Palazzo Pitti (fresco), Luigi Sabatelli. De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman.
2. Prometheus Bound, Peter Paul Rubens, c.1611–18. Philadelphia Museum of Art, Pennsylvania, PA, USA / Purchased with the W. P. Wilstach Fund, 1950 / Alamy.
3. Danaë, 1907–8, Gustav Klimt. Galerie Wurthle, Vienna, Austria / Bridgeman.
4. Danaë and Baby Perseus being Rescued by Corsali in Serifo Island, Jacques Berger, 1806. De Agostini Picture Library / Bridgeman.
5. Perseus, Jacques-Clément Wagrez, 1879. Peter Horree / Alamy.
6. Medusa, painted on a leather jousting shield, Caravaggio, c.1596–98. Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, Tuscany, Italy / Bridgeman.
7. Perseus and Andromeda, Carle van Loo, seventeenth century. State Hermitage, St Petersburg / Alamy.
8. Young boy portrayed as Heracles choking the snakes (marble), Roman, (second century AD). Musei Capitolini, Rome, Italy / Heritage Image Partnership / Alamy.
9. The Origin of the Milky Way, 1575, Jacopo Tintoretto. National Gallery / Alamy.
10. Heracles and the Nemean Lion, Pieter Paul Rubens. Historic Collection / Alamy.
11. Athenian Attic black-figure amphora with Heracles carrying the Erymanthean Boar, c.510 BC. J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, USA / Alamy.
12. Amazonomachy, first century BC, clay with polychrome remains. Campana collection, Italy / Alamy.
13. Heracles, Attic Kylix in the style of Douris, c.480 BC. Vulci, Papal Government – Vincenzo Campanari excavations, 1835–1837 / Vatican Museums.
14. The Garden of the Hesperides, c.1892. Frederic Leighton. Lady Lever Art Gallery / Alamy.
15. Zeus Striking the Rebelling Giants (the Fall of Giants) in The Hall of Jupiter, 1530-33 (fresco). Perino del Vaga. Villa del Principe, Italy / Ghigo Roli / Bridgeman.
16. Winged horse Pegasus, ridden by Greek mythological hero Bellerophon. Official symbol of the Parachute Regiment / Alamy.
17. Orpheus before Pluto (Hades) and Persephone, Francois Perrier, seventeenth century. Louvre, Paris, France / Bridgeman.
18. Orpheus and Eurydice, Enrico Scuri, nineteenth century. De Agostini Picture Library / A. Dagli Orti / Bridgeman.
SECTION TWO
19. Priestess of Delphi, John Collier, 1891. Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide / Alamy.
20. Hylas and the Nymphs, 1896, John William Waterhouse. Manchester Art Gallery, UK / Alamy.
21. Jason and the Argonauts Sail Through the Symplegades (Clashing Rocks). Engraving depicting Jason and the Argonauts from ‘Tableaux du temple des muses’ (1655). Almay.
22. Jason Taming the Bulls of Aeëtes, 1742, Jean Francois de Troy. The Henry Barber Trust, The Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, UK / Bridgeman.
23. Medea, Anthony Frederick Augustus Sandys, nineteenth century. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman.
24. Medea Putting the Dragon guarding the Golden Fleece to Sleep, Spanish School, nineteenth century. Private Collection / © Look and Learn / Bridgeman.
25. And plunged them deep within the locks of gold (pen and ink on paper), Maxwell Ashby Armfield, Illustration for ‘Life & Death of Jason’ by William Morris. Private Collection / Bridgeman.
26. The Calydonian Boar Hunt, 1617, Peter Paul Rubens. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna / Alamy.
27. Atalanta and Hippomenes, c.1612, Guido Reni. Prado, Madrid, Spain / Bridgeman.
28. Oedipus and the Sphinx, 1864, Gustave Moreau. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, USA / Alamy.
29. Red-figured Kylix, depicting the deeds of the hero Theseus, made in Athens. Dated fifth century BC. British Museum / Alamy.
30. Theseus Taming the Bull of Marathon, 1745, Charles-André van Loo. Los Angeles County Museum of Art / Alamy.
31. The Toreador Fresco, Knossos Palace, Crete, c.1500 BC (fresco) / National Archaeological Museum, Athens, Greece / Bridgeman.
32. The Tribute to the Minotaur, woodcut engraving from the original painting by Auguste
Gendron, 1882. Glasshouse Images / Alamy.
33. The Legend of Theseus with a Detail of the Cretan Labyrinth (engraving), sixteenth century. Private Collection / Bridgeman.
34. Attic bilingual eye-cup with black-figure interior depicting running minotaur and inscription reading ‘the boy is beautiful’. Werner Forman Archive / Bridgeman.
35. Landscape with Fall of Icarus, Carlo Saraceni, 1606–7. Museo di Capodimonte, Naples, Campania, Italy / Mondadori Portfolio/Electa/Sergio Anelli / Bridgeman.
36. Ariadne in Naxos, 1925–26 (tempera on handwoven linen), Joseph Southall. Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery, UK / Bridgeman.
37. Statue of Theseus, Athens. © Sotiris Tsagariolos / Alamy.
Foreword
Heroes can be regarded as a continuation to my book Mythos, which told the story of the beginning of everything, the birth of the Titans and gods and the creation of mankind. You don’t need to have read Mythos to follow – and I hope enjoy – this book, but plenty of footnotes will point you, by paperback page number, to stories, characters and mythical events that were covered in Mythos and which can be encountered there in fuller detail. Some people find footnotes a distraction, but I have been told that plenty of readers enjoyed them last time round, so I hope you will navigate them with pleasure as and when the mood takes you.
I know how off-putting for some Greek names can be – all those Ys, Ks and PHs. Where possible I have suggested the easiest way for our English-speaking mouths to form them. Modern Greeks will be astonished by what we do to their wonderful names, and German, French, American and other readers – who have their own ways with Ancient Greek – will wonder at some of my suggestions. But that is all they are, suggestions … whether you like to say Eddipus or Eedipus, Epidaurus or Ebeethavros, Philoctetes or Philocteetees, the characters and stories remain the same.
Stephen Fry
Introduction
ZEUS sits on his throne. He rules the sky and the world. His sister-wife HERA rules him. Duties and domains in the mortal sphere are parcelled out to his family, the other ten Olympian gods. In the early days of gods and men, the divine trod the earth with mortals, befriended them, ravished them, coupled with them, punished them, tormented them, transformed them into flowers, trees, birds and bugs and in all ways interacted, intersected, intertwined, interbred, interpenetrated and interfered with us. But over time, as age has succeeded age and humankind has grown and prospered, the intensity of these interrelations has slowly diminished.
In the age we have entered now, the gods are still very much around, favouring, disfavouring, directing and disturbing, but PROMETHEUS’s gift of fire has given humankind the ability to run its own affairs, build up its distinct city states, kingdoms and dynasties. The fire is real and hot in the world and has given mankind the power to smelt, forge, fabricate and make, but it is an inner fire too; thanks to Prometheus we are now endowed with the divine spark, the creative fire, the consciousness that once belonged only to gods.
The Golden Age has become an Age of Heroes – men and women who grasp their destinies, use their human qualities of courage, cunning, ambition, speed and strength to perform astonishing deeds, vanquish terrible monsters and establish great cultures and lineages that change the world. The divine fire stolen from heaven by their champion Prometheus burns within them. They fear, respect and worship their parental gods, but somewhere inside they know they are a match for them. Humanity has entered its teenage years.
Prometheus himself – the Titan who made us, befriended us and championed us – continues to endure his terrible punishment: shackled to the side of a mountain he is visited each day by a bird of prey that soars down out of the sun to tear open his side, pull out his liver and eat it before his very eyes. Since he is immortal the liver regenerates overnight, only for the torment to repeat the next day. And the next.
Prometheus, whose name means Forethought, has prophesied that now fire is in the world of man, the days of the gods are numbered. Zeus’s rage at his friend’s disobedience derives as much from a deep-buried but persistent fear that man will outgrow the gods as from his deep sense of hurt and betrayal.
Prometheus has also seen that the time will come when he will be released. A mortal human hero will arrive at the mountain, shatter his manacles and set the Titan free. Together they will save the Olympians.
But why should the gods need saving?
For hundreds of generations a deep resentment has smouldered beneath the earth. When kronos the Titan castrated his father, the primordial sky god ouranos, and hurled his genitals across Greece, a race of giants sprang from where the drops of blood and seed fell. These ‘chthonic’ beings, these creatures sprung from the earth, believe that the time will come when they can wrest power from the arrogant upstart children of Kronos, the Olympian gods. The giants await the day when they can rise up to conquer Olympus and begin their own rule.
Prometheus squints into the sun and awaits his moment too.
Mankind, meanwhile, gets on with the mortal business of striving, toiling, living, loving and dying in a world still populated with more or less benevolent nymphs, fauns, satyrs and other spirits of the seas, rivers, mountains, meadows, forests and fields, but bristling too with its share of serpents and dragons – many of them the descendants of the primordial gaia, the earth goddess and tartarus, god of the depths beneath the earth. Their offspring, the monstrous ECHIDNA and TYPHON, have spawned a multitude of venomous and mutant creatures that ravage the countryside and oceans that humans are trying to tame.
To survive in such a world, mortals have felt the need to supplicate and submit themselves to the gods, to sacrifice to them and flatter them with praise and prayer. But some men and women are beginning to rely on their own resources of fortitude and wit. These are the men and women who – either with or without the help of the gods – will dare to make the world safe for humans to flourish. These are the heroes.
Hera’s Dream
Breakfast on Mount Olympus. Zeus sits at one end of a long stone table, sipping his nectar and considering the day ahead. One by one the other Olympian gods and goddesses drift in to take their seats. At last Hera enters and takes her place at the opposite end from her husband. Her face is flushed, her hair discomposed. Zeus glances up in some surprise.
‘In all the years I have known you, you have never once been late for breakfast. Not once.’
‘No, indeed,’ says Hera. ‘Accept my apologies, but I slept badly and feel unsettled. I had a disturbing dream last night. Most disturbing. Would you like to hear it?’
‘Absolutely,’ lies Zeus, who has, in common with us all, a horror of hearing the details of anyone else’s dreams.
‘I dreamt that we were under attack,’ Hera says. ‘Here on Olympus. The giants rose up, climbed the mountain and they assaulted us.’
‘My, my …’
‘But it was serious, Zeus. The whole race of them streamed up and attacked us. And your thunderbolts glanced as harmlessly off them as if they were pine needles. The giants’ leader, the largest and strongest, came for me personally and tried to … to … impose himself.’
‘Dear me, how very upsetting,’ says Zeus. ‘But it was after all only a dream.’
‘Was it though? Was it? It was all so clear. It had more the feeling of a vision. A prophecy, perhaps. I have had them before. You know I have.’
This was true. Hera’s role as goddess of matrimony, family, decorum and good order made it easy to forget that she was also powerfully endowed with insight.
‘How did it all end?’
‘Strangely. We were saved by your friend Prometheus and …’
‘He is not my friend,’ snaps Zeus. Any mention of Prometheus is barred on Olympus. To Zeus the sound of his once dear friend’s name is like lemon juice on a cut.
‘If you say so, my dear, I am merely telling you what I dreamed, what I saw. You know, the strange thing is that Prometheus had with him a mortal man. And it was this human that pulled the giant off
me, threw him down from Olympus and saved us all.’
‘A man, you say?’
‘Yes. A human. A mortal hero. And in my dream it was clear to me, I am not sure how or why, but it was clear, so clear, that this man was descended from the line of Perseus.’
‘Perseus, you say?’
‘Perseus. There could be no doubt about it. The nectar is at your elbow, my dear …’
Zeus passes the jar down the table.
Perseus.
There’s a name he hasn’t heard for a while.
Perseus …
PERSEUS
* * *
THE SHOWER OF GOLD
ACRISIUS, ruler of Argosfn1, having produced no male heir to his kingdom, sought advice from the oracle at Delphi as to how and when he might expect one. The priestess’s reply was disturbing:
King Acrisius will have no sons, but his grandson will kill him.
Acrisius loved his daughter and only child DANAË,fn2 but he loved life more. It was clear from the oracle that he should do everything in his power to prevent any male of breeding age from getting close to her. To this end he ordered the construction of a bronze chamber beneath the palace. Locked up in this gleaming, impregnable prison, Danaë was given as many creature comforts and as much feminine company as she asked for. After all, Acrisius told himself, he was not flint-hearted.fn3
He had sealed the bronze chamber against all invaders, but he had reckoned without the lusts of the all-seeing, all-cunning Zeus, whose eye had fallen on Danaë and who was even now considering how he might penetrate this sealed chamber and take his pleasure. He liked a challenge. In his long, amorous career the King of the Gods had transformed himself into all kinds of exotic entities in his pursuit of desirable females and, from time to time, males. It was clear to him that to conquer Danaë he had to come up with something better than the usual bulls, bears, boars, stallions, eagles, stags and lions. Something a little more outré was required …