Waterfield Kathryn - The greek myths : stories of the Greek gods and heroes vividly retold

THE GREEK MYTHS

STORIES OF THE GREEK GODS AND HEROES VIVIDLY RETOLD

ROBIN WATERFIELD AND KATHRYN WATERFIELD

The book you hold in your hands contains a retelling of the traditional Greek myths and legends. You will meet all the famous and familiar stories (and hopefully some new ones), but you may also find some unfamiliar details. Retelling the Greek myths is not a simple matter, above all because very few, if any, of the myths exist in a single version. Often, in fact, there are downright contradictions between extant versions of a tale. There is no such thing, then, as the definitive version of any myth; in fact, the more famous a story became, the more versions there were of it.

This variability is essential to the Greek myths. They did not exist in single, monolithic, or authentic versions. Consider the work of the great tragedians of Athens in the fifth century BCEAeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They took the traditional tales and tweaked them for their own reasonsoften to make a political or ethical point relevant to their immediate audience. As long as the heart of the story remained unchanged, or was intact in the background, writers were free to add and subtract as they chose.

This is how the stories retain their vitality. By the same token, Ovids often fanciful retellings in the early years of the first century CE; or Ariostos adaptation of the Perseus myth in Orlando furioso (early sixteenth century); or the 1967 Star Trek episode Who Mourns for Adonis; or Wolfgang Petersens 2004 movie Troy; or Rick Riordans series of Percy Jackson books for children; or the thousands of other examples that could be givenall serve to perpetuate in their own ways and for their own purposes the vitality of the ancient Greek tales of war and adventure, magic and miracles, love, jealousy, murder, rape, and revenge.

The ancient Greeks loved storiesso much that they illustrated their walls, temples, high-end tableware, ceremonial armor, and even their furniture with artwork that was intended to tell tales. But for them the stories served additional purposes, over and above entertainment. When they told the myths to their children, they expected them to be educational as well as exciting: to teach about the nature of the gods and goddesses, and about their awesome powers; to illustrate right behavior for mortal men; to see that, though the gods are relatively omnipotent, and Fate is unavoidable, it is still a mortals willful activity that brings disaster down on his or her head. Other myths served more straightforwardly to give emotional power to the foundation of a community, to make a religious ritual more meaningful, or to speculate about the origin of the universe.

No myths endure unless they give a community an underlying layer of meaningfulness. Nevertheless, the ancient Greek myths and legends have proved to have the astonishing ability to transcend their origins, the particular cultural contexts in which they arose, and be relevant within our societies today, as if they tapped into some deep layer of the human mind. For us, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to enter the stream of classical myth, to allow it to flow through us and, we hope, to excite and engage further generations of readers.

ROBIN AND KATHRYN WATERFIELD

MAP A: The World of Bronze Age Greece

MAP B: The Mediterranean Basin

MAP C: Ancient Greece

At the time when the Greek myths were being formulated, the world, as conceived by the Greeks, was very different from ours. It looked like Map A, not the modern projections of B or C. The main land masses had been identified (apart from the Americas, of course), but were of indeterminate extent, ending in mythical regions and ultimately surrounded by the river Ocean. The Greeks themselves had colonized the coastlines of the known world, like frogs around a pond, as Plato put it. They didnt occupy countriesthere was no nation state called Greece until the nineteenth century CEbut more or less independent cities. Most city-states were founded on the coastline for trade and travel, and controlled a certain amount of the interior farmland, often in rivalry with native tribes or neighboring Greeks.

The gods were bored, becalmed in the ocean of time. Its all very well being immortal, but time does start to weigh heavily after a few dozen millennia. Each of them had his or her own provinces and powers, as Aphrodite was the embodiment of sexual attraction, but long since she had exhausted all the possibilities of fun among her fellow deities.

Boredom isnt stillness; boredom is sameness. The gods lives flowed on with endless monotony; no century was really any different from any other century, and there was no prospect that the next century would be any different from the last. They needed amusement and entertainment, but it wasnt just that: they found themselves longing even for opposition. Opposition would spark interest, create twists and knots in the smooth unwinding yarn of the years.

They decided to populate the earth. It would be the great experiment. Perhaps this would give their lives meaning; if not, they could always scrap that attempt and start again. Zeus, king of the gods, enjoined his extended family to get busy, and they fell to their task with relish. Before long, they had molded all the creatures of the earth out of clay. Once all had their shapes, the gods gave Prometheus the job of equipping each species with its powers.

Now, Prometheus was a Titan, one of the elder gods who had been overthrown by Zeus and his fellow Olympians. The Titans, led by Zeus father Cronus, had not given up without a struggle, but they had lost the war. Prometheus brothers, Menoetius and Atlas, had been severely punishedMenoetius cast down into the dungeons of Tartarus, and Atlas, the largest of the Titans, forced to carry on his shoulders the burden of the heavens for all eternity.

The Titans Atlas and Prometheus; each paid a heavy price for challenging Zeus authority.

But Prometheus had persuaded his mother Themis, the goddess of right and order, to side with Zeus during the war, and so he and his twin brother had escaped punishment and were living in the palaces and high halls of Olympus, along with the other immortals. Prometheus was smart, his mind endlessly shimmering with ideas and schemes. His brother was quite the opposite. In fact, Epimetheus was average. He could carry out assigned tasks well enough, but lacked creativity and moved dully. He was inclined to make mistakes if left to his own devices.