Mythos: The Greek Myths Retold

Stephen Fry retells the Greek myths in a chronological narrative that begins with an empty universe and traces the rise of gods, monsters, and mortals through cycles of creation, betrayal, and transformation.

The cosmos begins with Chaos, a formless void from which the first beings emerge: Erebus (darkness) and Nyx (night), who produce Hemera (day) and Aether (light). Simultaneously, Chaos brings forth Gaia (the earth) and Tartarus (the depths beneath the earth). These Primordial Deities are elemental forces without personality. Gaia bears two sons on her own: Pontus (the sea) and Ouranos (the sky). When Ouranos covers Gaia, their union produces the Titans, a second generation of divine beings, six male and six female, as well as two sets of monstrous triplets: the one-eyed Cyclopes and the hundred-handed Hecatonchires. Revolted by his monstrous offspring, Ouranos pushes the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires back into Gaia's womb. In agony, Gaia forges a great sickle from adamantine, a substance of extraordinary hardness, and recruits her youngest son Kronos to overthrow his father. Kronos ambushes Ouranos and castrates him, seizing control of creation. From the blood that soaks the earth spring the Erinyes (the Furies, avengers of terrible crimes), the Gigantes (beings of prodigious strength), and the Meliae (nymphs of the ash tree). From the foam where Ouranos's severed genitals land in the sea rises Aphrodite, the incarnation of perfect love and beauty.

Kronos takes his sister Rhea as consort, but the curse of Ouranos haunts him: His own children will destroy him. To prevent this, Kronos swallows each child at birth, consuming five in succession: Hestia, Hades, Demeter, Poseidon, and Hera. Desperate, Rhea appeals to her parents and devises a plan. She wraps a stone in swaddling cloth and feeds it to Kronos in place of her sixth child, then flees to Crete, where she gives birth to Zeus. The infant is suckled by a she-goat named Amalthea and fed by the Meliae, growing into a confident and powerful youth. Rhea enlists the wise Metis, a daughter of the Titans Oceanus and Tethys, to tutor Zeus in strategy and patience. When Zeus is ready, Metis prepares an emetic potion. Rhea presents the disguised Zeus to Kronos as a cupbearer, and the potion forces Kronos to vomit up the stone and then all five swallowed children. The six siblings swear allegiance to Zeus as their leader and declare themselves gods.

The 10-year war that follows, the Titanomachy, reshapes the world's geography. On Metis's advice, Zeus frees the Cyclopes and Hecatonchires from Tartarus. The Cyclopes forge thunderbolts for Zeus, and the Hecatonchires hurl rocks at the Titans until they surrender. Zeus sentences the Titan Atlas to hold up the sky for eternity and condemns Kronos to wander the world as Old Father Time. He then distributes divine provinces among his siblings: He takes supreme command as King of the Gods, lord of storms and the sky. Hades receives the underworld, Poseidon the sea, Demeter the harvest, Hera becomes Queen of Heaven and goddess of marriage, and Hestia presides over the hearth.

The remaining seats among the 12 ruling Olympian gods are filled through a succession of births. Hera bears the ugly Hephaestus, god of the forge, whom she throws from Mount Olympus, the gods' mountain home. She also bears the violent Ares, god of war. Zeus catches and swallows Metis so that she can serve as his permanent inner counselor, but Metis is already pregnant; Athena, goddess of wisdom and strategy, erupts fully armed from Zeus's skull. Zeus pursues the Titaness Leto, who gives birth to the twin archers Artemis (goddess of the hunt and moon) and Apollo (god of reason, music, and prophecy) on the floating island of Delos. The infant Hermes, born to the nymph Maia, steals Apollo's cattle, invents the lyre, and charms all of Olympus into accepting him as the twelfth god, the swift messenger.

With the divine order established, Zeus grows restless. He proposes to his friend Prometheus, a Titan who sided with the gods during the war, that they create a new race of beings. Prometheus sculpts human figures from clay mixed with Zeus's saliva, and Athena breathes life into them. Zeus forbids one thing: Humans must never possess fire. During the Golden Age, humans live in paradisal innocence alongside the gods. But Prometheus, who loves mankind above all, steals divine fire from Hephaestus's forge, carrying it down in the pith of a fennel stalk. When Zeus sees the flickering lights across the landscape, his fury is overwhelming.

Zeus's vengeance unfolds in two directions. He commands Hephaestus to fashion the first woman, Pandora, endowed with beauty and cunning by the gods, and presents her with a sealed jar she must never open. Hermes delivers Pandora to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus, who marries her. Unable to resist, Pandora opens the jar and releases all the evils of the world, trapping inside only Elpis (Hope). Zeus then floods the earth, but Prometheus's son Deucalion and Pandora's daughter Pyrrha survive aboard a wooden chest and repopulate the world by casting stones, the bones of their mother Gaia, over their shoulders. As for Prometheus, Zeus chains him to a rock in the Caucasus Mountains, where vultures tear out his liver daily; it regenerates each night, ensuring perpetual torment.

The book's middle sections weave together dozens of myths illustrating the gods' entanglements with mortals. Hades abducts Demeter's daughter Persephone, and Demeter's grief causes the earth to grow barren until Zeus forces a compromise: Persephone spends six months underground and six above, creating the cycle of seasons. In the extended tale of Eros and Psyche, the god of love falls for a mortal princess, loses her through betrayal, and wins her back when Zeus makes Psyche immortal. Zeus's relentless affairs produce consequences across the Mediterranean: His lover Io is transformed into a cow and driven across continents by Hera's jealousy before founding a dynasty in Egypt. The reckless youth Phaeton extracts a rash oath from his father Apollo to drive the sun chariot, loses control, scorches Africa into desert, and is struck down by Zeus's thunderbolt. Cadmus, a Phoenician prince searching for his sister Europa, follows a divinely marked cow to found the city of Thebes but incurs the curse of Ares by killing a sacred dragon. Semele, Cadmus's daughter, is tricked by the disguised Hera into demanding that her lover Zeus reveal his true divine form; the revelation kills her, but Zeus rescues their unborn son Dionysus, who becomes the god of wine and revelry.

The later chapters catalogue myths of hubris and metamorphosis. Niobe, daughter of the cursed King Tantalus and wife of Amphion of Thebes, boasts that her 14 children make her superior to the Titaness Leto, so Apollo and Artemis kill every one. The satyr Marsyas, a woodland creature of myth, challenges Apollo to a musical competition and is flayed alive for his presumption. The weaver Arachne defeats Athena in a weaving contest but is transformed into the first spider. The beautiful youth Narcissus falls in love with his own reflection and wastes away into a flower, while the nymph Echo, cursed by Hera to repeat only others' words, fades to nothing but a voice. King Midas of Phrygia wishes that everything he touches turn to gold, then watches in horror as his food, his wife, and his infant daughter become cold metal; Dionysus eventually lifts the curse. Midas later judges the pipes of Pan, the rustic god of the wild, superior to Apollo's lyre and is given donkey's ears; when a barber whispers the secret into the ground, a reed grows and spreads the news on the wind, and the humiliated king drinks poison and dies.