Nietzsche looked at it in yet another, slightly different way. For him hope was the most pernicious of all the creatures in the jar because hope prolongs the agony of man’s existence. Zeus had included it in the jar because he wanted it to escape and torment mankind every day with the false promise of something good to come. Pandora’s imprisonment of it was a triumphant act that saved us from Zeus’s worst cruelty. With hope, Nietzsche argued, we are foolish enough to believe there is a point to existence, an end and a promise. Without it we can at least try to get on and live free of delusional aspiration.
Hopefully, or hopelessly, we can decide for ourselves.
Giant Leaps
There are some stories in Greek myth of a GIGANTOMACHY, or ‘war with the giants’. A hundred of this warrior race (who, as I have mentioned, were not especially tall or gigantic in the modern sense) were born of Gaia and the blood of the gelded Ouranos. It may be that the war was Gaia’s last attempt at wresting control of the cosmos. In some sources there seems to be an overlap or fusion with the Titanomachy. What seems certain is that a violent uprising of some sort did take place and that it was led by the King of the Giants, EURYMEDON, against the gods.
We do not have the names of all the participants, but the fates of a few of the mightiest were certainly recorded. The most powerful of all, ENCELADUS (the noisy one) was buried by Athena under Mount Etna, from which prison he continues to grumble volcanically.fn1 POLYBOTES was crushed under Nisyrus, a section of the island of Cos that Poseidon broke off and thrust on top of him.fn2 DAMYSUS (the conqueror) was killed early in the struggle, but came to fame later, when his body was exhumed by the centaur Chiron for spare parts. Hephaestus emptied a vat of molten iron all over the unfortunate MIMAS (the imitator); CLYTIUS (the renowned) was consumed in the flames of Hecate’s torches; SYCEUS, with Zeus in hot pursuit, was saved from extinction when Gaia turned him into a fig tree.fn3 Hippolytus (the stampeder of horses) was slain by Hermes, who cheated by wearing his invisibility cloak; and Dionysus killed TYPHOEUS (the smoulderer), with his sacred thyrsus.
I have read of one giant, called ARISTAEUS (the best),fn4 who was spared from the war by being hidden away in the shape of a dung beetle by his mother, Gaia. But how THOON (the swift), PHOITIOS (the reckless), MOLIOS, EMPHYTOS (the rooted one) and goodness knows how many others of the giant race all met their ends remains, as far as we know, unrecorded.
Oddly one account tells how the ferocious giant PORPHYRION, (the purple one), in the act of trying to rape Hera was killed by Zeus and Hercules, which places his death much later in the timeline than the rest of the Gigantomachy. As if such a consistent and stable a device as a timeline could ever be used to delineate the complex, kaleidoscopic and disorderly unfolding of Greek myth.
Feet and Toes
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’).