Mythos: A Retelling of the Myths of Ancient Greece

Like us the Greeks used feet as a measurement. One pous (plural podes) was made up of about fifteen or sixteen toes (daktyla) and was approximately as long as a British or American foot. There were one hundred podes to a plethron (the width of a running track), six of those to a stadion (the length of a running track, from which we get our word ‘stadium’) and eight stadia to the mile, or milion. The foot business – podiatrists, octopuses (or octopodes), tripods and so on – shows the interesting journey of the letter ‘P’ as it strangely contorted to ‘F’ the further west it went: so pous became Fuss in German and foot in English. Pfennig, Pfeife and Pfeffer are still stuck in the middle in modern German but have become penny, pipe and pepper in English (though fife exists too). The early nineteenth-century philologist Friedrich von Schlegel first noticed this ‘Great Fricative Shift’, which subsequently became part of Grimms’ Law – so named in honour of the Brothers Grimm, who were the ones who really put in the work and showed how most of the languages of Europe and the Middle East could be traced all the way back to India and their notional Proto-Indo-European ancestor.

Acknowledgements

Firstly to my beloved husband Elliott for being patient enough to endure my long periods spent away in the mythic landscape of ancient Greece. To my beloved persistent sister and assistant, Jo Crocker, for sculpting my life into a shape that allowed me the hours in which to write.

As ever thanks to my agent, Anthony Goff, and to Louise Moore and everyone at Michael Joseph, the friendly imprint of Penguin Random House that is obliging enough to publish me. Most especially to my diligent, maddening, charming, thoughtful and stubbornly insightful editor, Jillian Taylor.

THE BEGINNING

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MICHAEL JOSEPH

UK | USA | Canada | Ireland | Australia

India | New Zealand | South Africa

Michael Joseph is part of the Penguin Random House group of companies whose addresses can be found at global.penguinrandomhouse.com

First published 2017

Copyright © Stephen Fry, 2017

The moral right of the author has been asserted

Jacket illustration: © Sarah Young

ISBN: 978-1-405-93416-9

THE FIRST ORDER

fn1 This trick of virgin birth, or parthenogenesis, can be found in nature still. In aphids, some lizards and even sharks it is a reasonably common way to have young. There won’t be the variation that two sets of genes allow; this is the same in the genesis of the Greek gods. The interesting ones are all the fruit of two parents, not one.

fn2 Indeed ouranos is the Greek word for ‘sky’ to this very day.

THE SECOND ORDER

fn1 The brontosaurus or ‘thunder lizard’ got his name from Brontes. The novelist sisters from Yorkshire may have too. Their father was born ‘Brunty’ but changed it to Brontë, perhaps to lend a grand peal of classical thunder to his Irish name, perhaps in honour of Admiral Nelson who had been made Duke of Brontë – the dukedom was located on the slopes of Etna and is believed to have derived its name from the Cyclops slumbering beneath.

fn2 Pronounced heck-a-ton key-rays – the hecaton means ‘hundred’ and the chires ‘hands’ (as in ‘chiropractor’).

fn3 ‘Tethys’ is also the name palaeontologists give to the great ancient sea that was an ancestor of the Mediterranean.

fn4 Since there were perhaps three thousand Oceanids it would be fruitless to list them, even if all their names were known. But it is worth introducing CALYPSO, AMPHITRITE and the dark and fearful STYX who – like her brother Nilus – was to become the deity of a very significant river. One more Oceanid merits a mention, but only because of her name – DORIS. Doris the Oceanid. She went on to marry the sea god NEREUS and by him mother many NEREIDS, friendly nymphs of the sea.

fn5 Themis later became a personification of law, justice, custom – mores, the rules that govern how manners and things are or should be.

fn6 Typhon gave us typhus, typhoid and the deadly tropical storm, the typhoon. Later we will meet two of Typhon’s repulsive offspring by a half woman, half water snake, called ECHIDNA.

fn7 Momos (MOMUS to the Romans) would go on to be worshipped in a seriocomic literary way as the guiding spirit of Satire. Aesop incorporated him into some of his fables and he is the hero of a lost play by Sophocles.

fn8 The Romans, perhaps confusingly, called Nemesis INVIDIA, which is also the Latin for ‘envy’.