“The shattered world was still smoking from the savagery of war. Zeus saw that it needed to heal, and he knew that his own generation, the Third Order of divine beings, must manage better than the first two had done. It was time for a new order, an order purged of the wasteful bloodlust and elemental brutality that had marked earlier times.
To the victors, the spoils. Like a chief executive who has just completed a hostile takeover, Zeus wanted the old management out and his people in. He allotted each of his siblings their own domain, their areas of divine responsibility. The President of the Immortals chose his cabinet.
For himself, he assumed overall command as supreme leader and emperor, lord of the firmament, master of weather and storms: King of the Gods, Sky Father, Cloud Gatherer. Thunder and lightning were his to command. The eagle and the oak were his emblems, symbols then as now of fierce grace and unopposable might. His word was law, his power formidably great. But he was not perfect. He was very, very far from being perfect.” SF
It was during my grade five year that I was introduced to Greek Mythology. I remember it sparked something in me that my own religious stories somehow didn't. I was transported into the stories without needing to embrace them as reality. They held a beauty all their own and I didn't have to prove or disprove them. I could just embrace the story.
My love for myths carried on into my teen years with a love for Hercules, both the animated version and Kevin Sorbo's recreation. Again the stories came alive for me.
Now in my fifties and decades removed from my youthful interest in Greek Mythology, I decided that I would go on a journey again through the lives of Zeus, Athena, Apollo, Hermes, Persephone, Prometheum and a plethora of other deities and their offspring (both divine and human) all thanks to Stephen Fry.
“You would think that Midas had learned his lesson by now. 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.” SF
What I like about Greek Myths is that they don't hide the stories behind religious dogma. Maybe that is what happened thousands of years ago, but today, we can enjoy the myths for their story and leave it at that. That is why they remain beautiful to me. Stephen Fry does an amazing job of bringing all the stories into one novel so one can just ride along on the journey.
I was first introduced to Stephen Fry when he guest starred on the TV show "Bones". He played psychiatrist turned chef Dr. Gordan Wyatt. He has since become an intellectual inspiration for me as I have listened to his Youtube conversations with the likes of Laurence Krauss, Jordan Peterson and Richard Dawkins. His amazing linguistic abilities makes any conversation with him far from dull.
“Myths, however, are imaginative, symbolic constructs. No one believes that Hephaestus ever truly existed. He stands as a representation of the arts of metalwork, manufacture, and craftsmanship. That such a figuration is portrayed as swarthy, ugly, and hobbling tempts us to interpret and explain. Perhaps we noticed that real blacksmiths, while strong, are often dark, scarred, and so muscle-bound as to be bunched and alarming to look upon. Perhaps cultures required that the fit, tall, and whole always be taken into the ranks of fighting men and that, from the first, the halt, lame, and shorter male children might be trained in the forges and workshops rather than drilled for battle. Any god of blacksmiths that the collective culture imagined, therefore, would be likely to reflect the human archetype they already knew. Gods of this kind are created in our image, not the other way round." SF
This book is an amazing read for anyone who loves stories and can enjoy them for what they were always meant to be... stories. Maybe one day, the stories I grew up with in Christianity will one day find their place along side the Greek stories that preceded them and most likely inspired them. Maybe one day people can read the stories of Adam and Eve, Moses and David and even Jesus, not as a recital of history, but as stories or myths that can inspire us, teach us and help us be better humans... maybe even better humans that the ones that were written about thousands of years before us.
“Myths, to put it simply and obviously, deal with gods and monsters that can’t be observed or pointed at. It may be that some members of the ancient Greek population believed in centaurs and water dragons, gods of the sea and goddesses of the hearth, but they would have had a hard time proving their existence and convincing others. Most of those who told and retold the myths would have been aware, I think, at some level of their consciousness, that they were telling fictional tales. They might have thought the world was once peopled with nymphs and monsters, but they could be fairly certain that such beings no longer existed.” SF
