Mythos, Fry

A selection of Greek myths retold by Stephen Fry.

This was really good. It was super interesting to see how a lot of Greek myth has ended up in our everyday language and culture (e.g. “tantalising”) and also how a lot of open-source projects got their name (Prometheus, Cassandra).

I’ve tried to summarise the myths below, so there’s a lot of spoilers:

The Beginning

Part One

• Out of Chaos
• The First Order
• The Second Order

Part Two

• Clash of the Titans
• The Third Order

The Toys of Zeus

Part One

• Prometheus
• The Punishments
• Persephone and the Chariot
• Cupid and Psyche

Part Two

• Mortals
• Phaeton
• Cadmus
• Twice Born
• The Beautiful and the Damned
• The Doctor and the Crow
• Crime and Punishment

Sisyphus

Sisyphus is this mean dude. At one point he annoys Hermes by outsmarting him. Death is sent to shackle and escort him, but Sisyphus tricks him by ensnaring him in his own cuffs and avoids death one time. Then he tricks Persephone by convincing her that his wife disrespected her and Hades by not giving proper burial rites, so he convinces Persephone that he should be able to shock her by returning to the upper world alive, so he esacpes death another time.

Finally when it’s time for his actual death, Hades offers him a choice. He can either go the underworld proper, or have a chance at immortality if he just rolls this bolder up a slope. It doesn’t look so hard, but everytime just before he reaches the top the rock tumbles back down.

Hubris

All Tears

Niobe makes fun of Leto, the mother of Apollo and Artemis, for only having two children. Leto gets sad because of this, so Apollo and Artemis, naturally, murder all of her children. Niobe gets so upset with this she gets turned into the “Weeping Rock”, a famous rock in Turkey that looks like a woman crying.

Apollo and Marsyas: Puffed Cheeks

Marsyas finds this instrument and gets so good at playing it that he challenges Apollo to a musical battle. Apollo wins, and as punishment, Apollo flays him.

Arachne

Arachne is this really good spinstress, and gets so good that she thinks to herself that she should challenge Athena to a weaving competition. Athena weaves a tapastry showing the story of the gods, and then Arachne weaves a tapestry showing how the gods have been mean to mortals. As a punishment (or a reward), Arachne gets turned into the first spider to weave for eternity.

More Metamorphoses

Nisus and Scylla

Nisus is this king with a lock of purple hair that makes him immortal, and Syclla, his daughter, steals it at one point in order to try and win the affection of his adversary. She cried and swam after this dude (she was on a boat) and then got turned into a gull. Then her dad was turned into a sea-eagle.

Callisto

Zeus tricks this follower of Artemis called Callisto by transforming into her. Then Zeus does Zeus things and she ends up pregnant and gets spotted by the real Artemis, who is not impressed as her followers should be chaste. Then she gets kicked out of the Artemis gang, and then to make matters worse, Hera turns her into a bear.

Procne and Philomela

This king called Tereus raped his sister-in-law and then tore out her tongue so she couldn’t tell anyone, because she couldn’t write either. Then she wove a tapestry that depicted the scene, so her and her sisters served this king his own son as a meal. Then they all got turned into different birds.

Ganymede and the Eagle

Ganymede is this super attractive dude, so Zeus, in the form of an eagle, steals him and makes him his immortal cup-bearer on Mount Olympus.

Moon Lovers

Selene, the godess who was responsible for driving the moon-chariot across the night sky, spotted a mortal one day and fell in love, but he prefered his actual wife. In order to seek revenge, she convinces him to dress up and try trick his wife into being unfaithful, which is not an entire sucess but works just well enough to ruin their marriage. Then she runs away and stays with Artemis, before returning back to a happy marriage after a year.

Lailaps and Alopex Teumesios

Artemis gave the couple from above two gifts, a dog that always caught what it persued, and a javelin that always hit its mark.

There was this fox that was annoying everyone in the city of Thebes, so the magic dog was set to catch it. But the fox could never be caught, so there was this paradox of a dog that always catches its prey and a fox that never gets caught. Zeus resolved this by turning them both into stone, so that they were trapped in time.

Then the husband accidentally throws the javelin at his wife.

Endymion

The same moon godess, Selene, also makes love to a sleeping boy every new moon.

Eos and Tithonus

Eos is cursed by Aphrodite to never find true love. Eventually Eos falls in love with a moral, who doesn’t want it to end so she pleads that the moral never dies. He still grows old though, and eventually to put him out of his suffering, she turns him into a grasshopper.

The Bloom of Youth

All these people got turned into flowers!

Hyacinthus

Basically Hyacinthus is this geezer who’s loved by both Zephyrus and Apollo. Zephryrus is jealous when Hyacinthus and Apollo are playing discus and kills Hyacinthus by making Apollo’s discus hit his head. Then he turned into a flower.

Crocus and Smilax

Crocus was a mortal youth who wanted to get in a relationship with a nymph Smilax, who refused. Then the gods turned him into a vine out of pity.

Aphrodite and Adonis

Aphrodite gets mad at this king for not worshipping her, so makes him and her daughter have incestous sex, of course. Then the child, Adonis, that comes as a result is really attractive, so Aphrodite falls in love. Then Ares gets mad at Aphrodite (or potentially just a random boar) so this animal ends up killing Adonis. His blood and Aphrodite’s tears then give bloom to another type of flower.

Echo and Narcissus

Echo is this very gossipy but nice person from a village and ends up telling to Hera to protect her friends from her wrath, since Zeus has been doing Zeus things with them. When Hera discovers this lie, Hera curses her to only be able to speak when spoken to, and to repeat back whatever is said to her.

Then Narcissus is this handsome, and not necessarily the most narcissistic geezer who one day stops to bathe in a pool one day and then sees his reflection and falls in love, but gets upset because you can’t touch a reflection in a pool. Then Echo comes along and thinks he’s beautiful but gets rejected because he’s in love with his reflection and she can’t really articulate her feelings very well with the whole echoing thing. She’s so sad that she pleads to Aphrodite and gets turned into a spirit. That’s why you hear an echo. Narcissus eventually becomes a daffodil (which are actually called narcissus).

Lovers

So basically Pyramus and Thisbe are like Romeo and Juliet with the whole family rivalry shenanigans. They sneak out to try and meet one day but Pyramus gets scared by a animal roaring and ends up dropping her veil which then gets covered in blood. Thisbe eventually rocks up and sees this veil and thinks she’s died, so kills himself and then Pyramus returns and kills herself because he’s dead. Their blood ends up dying the mulberry fruit, which is why they are red.

Galateas

Lots of different stores about someone named Galateas:

• A nereid (minor sea god) that loved this shepard. A cyclops ends up killing the shepard, so she turns the shepard into a river spirit that she can love forever.
• A mother who had to pretend her daughter was a man since the father said they’d kill anyone daughter since he only wanted sons. Eventually she prayed and the daughter was turned into a man.
• A statute sculpted by someone called Pygmalion, who turned into a real woman after he prayed to Aphrodite.

In this section is also the story of “Hero and Leander”, which is a Romeo-and-Juliet-esque story about this couple that met at a festival of Aphrodite. They lived on opposite sides of the “Hellespont”, which is now called the Dardanelles and seperates two parts of Turkey. Every night Hero would light a lamp so that Leander could successfuly swim across the river so that they could meet up. But one night the wind blew out the lamp and got crushed up against the rocks. Hero was so sad that she “dashed herself upon those same rocks”.

Arion and the Dolphin

Basically Arion is this bloke that was really good at music and won this big competition. When he was on his way back on a ship, he was robbed by the crew and then jumped off the side. Then he rode a dolphin to a nearby city while playing some songs.

Philemon and Baucis, or Hospitality Rewarded

This old couple were really nice to some travellers who were a little rude, who were actually Zeus and Hermes in disguise. As a reward, they weren’t killed in a huge storm and got turned into trees.

Phyrgia and the Gordian Knot

Basically Gordias is this lowly farmer and then he sees an eagle in the field and thinks “this is a symbol”. Then he happens to stumble into Phyrgia at the moment the airless king just died, meets a woman on the way, and then becomes the ruler. Then he ties a super complicated knot.

Midas

Basically Midas (who’s one of Gordias’ sons) is this bloke from a poor kingdom with a nice family and everything, and then he’s super nice to this god (or god’s assistant?) and gets granted a wish. He wishes that everything he touches turns to gold, which is cool for a while but then he turns his family into gold which isn’t fun. So he begs and begs until the god that granted him the wish lets him wash everything he wants to turn back in a special river.

There’s also another myth about Midas which is that after all this, he was a bit shaken up and so lived in the countryside for a bit. Then he said Pan’s music was better than Apollo’s in a competition, which meant Apollo cursed him to have donkey ears. He was very self-conscious about it and tried to stop anyone from knowing about it. Then when everyone inevitably found out, he poisoned himself.