# Heroes  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Stephen Fry]] - Full Title:: Heroes - Category: #books ## Highlights > PROMETHEUS’S gift of fire has given humankind the ability to run its own affairs, build up its distinct city-states, kingdoms, and dynasties. ([Location 268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=268)) > but it is an inner fire too; thanks to Prometheus we are now endowed with the divine spark, the creative fire, the consciousness that once belonged only to gods. ([Location 269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=269)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > They fear, respect, and worship their parental gods, but somewhere inside they know they are a match for them. Humanity has entered its teenage years. ([Location 273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=273)) > When KRONOS the Titan castrated his father, the primordial sky god OURANOS, and hurled his genitals across Greece, a race of giants sprang from where the drops of blood and seed fell. ([Location 286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=286)) > But some men and women are beginning to rely on their own resources of fortitude and wit. These are the men and women who—either with or without the help of the gods—will dare to make the world safe for humans to flourish. These are the heroes. ([Location 296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=296)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > “Don’t trust anyone who offers you anything for free,” he warned. “There’ll be plenty who’ll want to befriend you. They might be trustworthy, they might not. Don’t gaze around you as if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen a busy port or a city. Look bored and confident. As if you know your way around. And don’t be afraid to seek guidance from the oracles.” ([Location 496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=496)) - Note: Polonius in Act-I, Scene-III of William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. > This phenomenon of polyspermy is common enough in littering mammals like cats, dogs, and pigs, but is rare in humans. Rare, but not unknown. It rejoices in the name heteropaternal superfecundation.20 ([Location 997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=997)) > hind was sacred to Artemis, ([Location 1280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1280)) > Like many young Greek girls she worshipped this band of strong, independent, and fiercely unapologetic women and had long dreamed of being an Amazon. ([Location 1563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1563)) > Troy was a fine city; the construction of its walls had recently been completed by the gods Apollo and Poseidon. ([Location 1649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1649)) > Apollo fired plague arrows into the city, while Poseidon flooded the plain of Ilium and sent a sea monster there to harry and devour such Trojans as tried to escape their disease-ridden city. ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1650)) > To this day the Pillars of Hercules greet travelers who pass through the straits. The African pillar is called Ceuta; the Iberian is known as the Rock of Gibraltar. ([Location 1717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1717)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > I know that you, as your cousin Theseus is doing, are ridding the world of its foulest beasts, its dragons, serpents, and many-headed monsters. Through the work of heroes like you the gods are clearing the world of the old order of beings.” ([Location 1826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1826)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.” ([Location 1844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1844)) > “But you see the future; you know what happens next.” “I think ahead. I consider and I imagine. It is not entirely the same thing. Go well, Heracles, and accept my blessing.” ([Location 1853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1853)) > Eleusinian Mysteries, a dramatic and ceremonial playing out of the seizing of Persephone by Hades and her descent into his kingdom, ([Location 1962](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1962)) > It was here, in Elis, that Heracles now established athletic competitions to be held every four years, in honor of his father Zeus. He called them, after the name of his father’s mountaintop abode, the Olympic Games. ([Location 2105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2105)) > Gigantomachy—the War of the Giants. ([Location 2129](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2129)) > To get it back, the defeated Achelous offered in exchange the fabled Horn of Plenty, which the Romans called the cornucopia. ([Location 2179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2179)) > In his uncomplaining life of pain and persistence, in his compassion and desire to do the right thing, he showed, as the American classicist and mythographer Edith Hamilton put it, “greatness of soul.” ([Location 2286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2286)) > Enthusiasm meant, originally, possession by a god. The verb “enthuse” was a later American English back-formation. ([Location 2333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2333)) > In Greek they were variously called the erga or more commonly the athloi of Heracles. The word ergon simply means “work” while athlos means more than labor, it carries a sense of “test.” Our words athlete and athletic derive from it. ([Location 2335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2335)) > Heracles, like most classical Greeks, was as happy to dine at the man-trough as at the lady-buffet. Iolaus, his nephew, and Hylas, his page during the quest for the Golden Fleece, were another two male lovers or eromenoi. ([Location 2382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2382)) > They say that where Cerberus’s drool fell aconite grew, the deadly poison sometimes called wolf’s bane. ([Location 2459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2459)) > An especially apt name, given Heracles’s crime against xenia or guest friendship. Xenoclea is a name that glorifies the stranger or guest. ([Location 2470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2470)) > Thus “giant” and “gigantic” really mean “earthborn” and have nothing to do with size, despite the way the words are now used and how the “giga-” was taken from “gigantic” to mean “huge.” ([Location 2503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2503)) > The Greek word is pharmakon, as in “pharmacy” and “pharmaceutical.” ([Location 2506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2506)) > Athenian exceptionalism at the height of the classical era was as unpopular with the rest of the world as British exceptionalism in the days of the Raj or American and Russian exceptionalism are today. ([Location 2532](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2532)) > theophany, a real manifestation of divinity. ([Location 2634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2634)) > We must not tire of reminding ourselves that to the Greeks, blood crime, the killing of a relative, was the most serious of all transgressions. Purification could only be performed by oracles and the priestly caste, or by an anointed king. To go without such a purification was to invite pursuit by the Furies. ([Location 2666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2666)) > After blood murder, perhaps the second most serious sin in the Greek world was an infraction of xenia, those laws of hospitality or guest-friendship that were especially sacred to the King of the Gods himself, Zeus Xenios, protector of guests. ([Location 2702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2702)) > Pegasus landed on the top of Olympus and Zeus kept him there as his glamorous pack animal, charged with carrying his thunderbolts. ([Location 2910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2910)) > Bellerophon dragged out the rest of his days shunned by society for his sacrilege, until he died a crippled, embittered, and lonely old man. ([Location 2911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2911)) > Hippocrene, which means horse fountain. ([Location 2923](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2923)) > When Homer has Bellerophon’s grandson GLAUCUS tell this story in the Iliad, the letter is actually not written but composed of “symbols” or “murderous signs” enclosed, not in a letter, but a “folding tablet” ([Location 2937](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2937)) > Orpheus was the Mozart of the ancient world. ([Location 2957](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2957)) > During his lifetime his fame spread around the Mediterranean and beyond. It was said that his pure voice and matchless playing could charm the beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea, the birds of the air, and even the insensate rocks and waters. Rivers themselves diverted their courses to hear him. Hermes invented the lyre, Apollo improved upon it, but Orpheus perfected it. ([Location 2959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2959)) > ARISTAEUS, a minor god of beekeeping, agriculture, and other country crafts. ([Location 2988](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2988)) > “String it with these,” said Apollo, plucking from his head twenty-four golden hairs. ([Location 3022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3022)) > Cerberus’s six ears flopped down, his six eyes closed, his three tongues passed across his chops with a great slap, and his three massive heads dropped into a deep and happy sleep. Even the snake of his tail drooped in peaceful slumber. ([Location 3038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3038)) - Note: Harry potter socorer’s stone fluffy three-headed dog. > The golden harmonies of Apollo were always an affront to the dark Dionysian dances and dithyrambs. ([Location 3152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3152)) > sparagmos. ([Location 3179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3179)) > An archetype of the wicked stepmother that was to dominate myth, legend, and fairy tale for ages to come, Ino hatched a formidably malicious and elaborate plan to destroy the twins. ([Location 3209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3209)) > Helle to fall from the ram’s back. Phrixus cried out in vain for it to stop. He looked down in horror and saw his sister plummet to her death in the water of the straits, which the Greeks were to call in her honor “the Hellespont” or Sea of Helle.143 ([Location 3244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3244)) > In fact, as we find today, rebellions from the outside nearly always fail: familial quarrelling, dynastic feuding, party disunity, the palace coup, and the stab in the back . . . these are what dislodge regimes and topple tyrants. ([Location 3301](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3301)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > “It is the fate of the young never to learn,” the centaur sighed. “I suppose it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that propels them to their triumphs, just as surely as it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that unseats them and sends them plummeting to their ends.” ([Location 3332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3332)) > “Remember,” cautioned the centaur, “modesty. Observance of the gods. In a fight, do not do what you want to do, but what you judge your enemy least wants you to. You cannot control others if you cannot control yourself. Those who most understand their own limitations have the fewest. A leader is one who . . .” and on and on, precept after precept, warning after warning. ([Location 3342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3342)) > Tiphys also came up with the idea of leather cushions for the rowing seats, not for comfort but to allow the oarsmen to slide backward and forward on their benches; this added to the rowing stroke the strength of their legs as well as the strength of their backs. ([Location 3469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3469)) > In many ways the voyage of the Argo might be regarded as a kind of dress rehearsal for the epic siege of Troy and, even more so, its aftermath, the Odyssey and the fall of the house of Atreus. ([Location 3512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3512)) > Once they were safely out of range, they looked back. The huge automaton was striding round the corner of the island and out of sight. ([Location 4341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4341)) > “No, no. I believe I am right in saying that he is the last of the great race of Bronze Men,” Nestor said. “They were born from the Meliae—you know, the nymphs of the ash tree who sprang from the earth when Kronos castrated his father Ouranos.”205 ([Location 4348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4348)) > Medea befriended Pelias’s daughters, the PELIADES:210 ALCESTIS,211 ALCIMEDE,212 ANTINOË, ASTEROPEIA, EVADNE,213 HIPPOTHOË, PELOPIA, and PISIDICE. ([Location 4388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4388)) > In the Book of Genesis, you may remember, the patriarch Abraham was tested by God and told to sacrifice his son Isaac. Just as Abraham’s knife was descending God showed him a ram caught in a nearby thicket and told him to kill the animal in place of his son. ([Location 4516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4516)) > Atalanta a natural devotee of the goddess of Chastity and the Chase, Artemis, to whom she committed herself, heart and soul. ([Location 4751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4751)) > like Robert Browning’s rats in Hamelin, bit the babies in their cradles and drank the soup from the cooks’ own ladles. ([Location 4762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4762)) > Edith Hamilton, “too boyish to be a maiden, too maidenly to be a boy.” ([Location 4835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4835)) > Oedipus will kill his father and mate with his mother. That was all he could get out of the Pythia. As ever with oracles, all supplementary questions were met with silence. ([Location 5142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5142)) > Oedipus rarely conferred with priests. He was negligent in his attendance at the temples on all but the most important holy days. He was almost blasphemous in his casual approach to prayer and sacrifice. But he was remarkably energetic, efficient, and effective. He drew up mathematical tables and charts connected to everything from taxation to population; he instituted laws on household and palace management, on justice, and on trade. ([Location 5265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5265)) - Note: The first enlightenment figure > The money from taxation and tariffs rolled in like never before, of which a proportion was expended on schools and gymnasia, asclepia,254 and roads. Oedipus’s name for this radically new style of government was logarchy, “rule by reason.” ([Location 5269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5269)) > And so it might have been, were it not for the outbreak of a terrible epidemic. Rumors were heard of a family struck down with a disease that had made them vomit and flame with fever for a day before dying. Soon the sickness was smoldering through the streets of the poorer quarter of the city; then it burned like a wildfire through all of Thebes. Scarcely a household was unaffected. ([Location 5275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5275)) > “But you are always telling me that reason is a greater guide to action than prophecy.” ([Location 5380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5380)) > Oedipus was the man who had killed Laius. Oedipus had proclaimed a curse upon the killer of Laius. A curse upon himself. ([Location 5450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5450)) > Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy, have seen in Oedipus a character who works out on stage the tension in Athenians (and all of us) between the reasoning, mathematically literate citizen and the transgressive blood criminal; between the thinking and the instinctual being; between the superego and the id; between the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses that contend within us. Oedipus is a detective who employs all the fields of inquiry of which the Athenians were so proud—logic, numbers, rhetoric, order, and discovery—only to reveal a truth that is disordered, shameful, transgressive, and bestial. ([Location 5513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5513)) > What’s your name, copper-top?” ([Location 5595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5595)) > The Grecian mainland, Macedonia in particular, was filled with men and women of varying degrees of sandy, ginger, copper, and red hair. ([Location 5959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5959)) > There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, ([Location 6106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6106)) > “The conditions lay down that the fourteen must arrive on Crete unarmed. What hope can you have when you will be under guard from the moment you make landfall? What will it matter how fast, strong, or smart you are? Why throw your life away? The system has worked for the past five years. It is not . . . ideal, and I readily admit that it reflects little credit on us, but defeat is defeat and . . ([Location 6193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6193)) - Note: Hunger games > With a cry of despair Aegeus threw himself to his death in the sea below, the sea that ever since has been called in his honor the Aegean. ([Location 6577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6577)) > great male friendships in Greek myth, that between Theseus and Pirithous.286 ([Location 6587](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6587)) > His devotion to Artemis, the goddess of the chase and the chaste, ([Location 6673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6673)) > the Ship of Theseus to become a subject of intriguing philosophical speculation. Over hundreds of years, its rigging, its planks, its hull, deck, keel, prow, stern, and all its timbers had been replaced so that not one atom of the original remained. Could one call it the same ship? Am I the same person I was fifty years ago? Every molecule and cell of my body has been replaced many times over.306 ([Location 6697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6697)) > Pheidippides was said to have run the twenty-five or so miles from Marathon to Athens to break the news of the victory, shouting the word “nenikekamen!”—“we won!”—before falling to the ground, dead from exhaustion ([Location 6742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6742)) > The Grandfather’s Axe, its blade, and handle regularly replaced, presents a similar ontological conundrum in the field of study known as the Metaphysics of Identity. ([Location 6822](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6822)) > The heroes cleansed our world of chthonic terrors—earthborn monsters that endangered mankind and threatened to choke the rise of civilization. ([Location 6827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6827)) > The rise of a spirit of rational inquiry and scientific understanding pushed the immortals further from ([Location 6831](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6831)) > Prometheus’s gift of fire, as Zeus had feared, would one day allow us to do even without the Olympians. ([Location 6835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6835)) > Timelines in myth are often confusing and inconsistent, especially when it comes to the heroes. ([Location 6879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6879)) > Apollodorus’s Bibliotheca (Library) is a major source for all Greek myth, ([Location 6885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6885)) > This is sometimes called Euhemerism or the historical theory of mythology. ([Location 6901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6901)) > Carl Jung described myths as the product of our “collective unconscious.” Joseph Campbell put it another way and called them “public dreams.” ([Location 6906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6906)) # Heroes  ## Metadata - Author:: [[Stephen Fry]] - Full Title:: Heroes - Category: #books ## Highlights > PROMETHEUS’S gift of fire has given humankind the ability to run its own affairs, build up its distinct city-states, kingdoms, and dynasties. ([Location 268](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=268)) > but it is an inner fire too; thanks to Prometheus we are now endowed with the divine spark, the creative fire, the consciousness that once belonged only to gods. ([Location 269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=269)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > They fear, respect, and worship their parental gods, but somewhere inside they know they are a match for them. Humanity has entered its teenage years. ([Location 273](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=273)) > When KRONOS the Titan castrated his father, the primordial sky god OURANOS, and hurled his genitals across Greece, a race of giants sprang from where the drops of blood and seed fell. ([Location 286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=286)) > But some men and women are beginning to rely on their own resources of fortitude and wit. These are the men and women who—either with or without the help of the gods—will dare to make the world safe for humans to flourish. These are the heroes. ([Location 296](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=296)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > “Don’t trust anyone who offers you anything for free,” he warned. “There’ll be plenty who’ll want to befriend you. They might be trustworthy, they might not. Don’t gaze around you as if it’s the first time you’ve ever seen a busy port or a city. Look bored and confident. As if you know your way around. And don’t be afraid to seek guidance from the oracles.” ([Location 496](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=496)) - Note: Polonius in Act-I, Scene-III of William Shakespeare’s play, Hamlet. > This phenomenon of polyspermy is common enough in littering mammals like cats, dogs, and pigs, but is rare in humans. Rare, but not unknown. It rejoices in the name heteropaternal superfecundation.20 ([Location 997](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=997)) > hind was sacred to Artemis, ([Location 1280](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1280)) > Like many young Greek girls she worshipped this band of strong, independent, and fiercely unapologetic women and had long dreamed of being an Amazon. ([Location 1563](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1563)) > Troy was a fine city; the construction of its walls had recently been completed by the gods Apollo and Poseidon. ([Location 1649](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1649)) > Apollo fired plague arrows into the city, while Poseidon flooded the plain of Ilium and sent a sea monster there to harry and devour such Trojans as tried to escape their disease-ridden city. ([Location 1650](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1650)) > To this day the Pillars of Hercules greet travelers who pass through the straits. The African pillar is called Ceuta; the Iberian is known as the Rock of Gibraltar. ([Location 1717](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1717)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > I know that you, as your cousin Theseus is doing, are ridding the world of its foulest beasts, its dragons, serpents, and many-headed monsters. Through the work of heroes like you the gods are clearing the world of the old order of beings.” ([Location 1826](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1826)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > Such is the paradox of living. We willingly accept that we have no will.” ([Location 1844](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1844)) > “But you see the future; you know what happens next.” “I think ahead. I consider and I imagine. It is not entirely the same thing. Go well, Heracles, and accept my blessing.” ([Location 1853](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1853)) > Eleusinian Mysteries, a dramatic and ceremonial playing out of the seizing of Persephone by Hades and her descent into his kingdom, ([Location 1962](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=1962)) > It was here, in Elis, that Heracles now established athletic competitions to be held every four years, in honor of his father Zeus. He called them, after the name of his father’s mountaintop abode, the Olympic Games. ([Location 2105](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2105)) > Gigantomachy—the War of the Giants. ([Location 2129](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2129)) > To get it back, the defeated Achelous offered in exchange the fabled Horn of Plenty, which the Romans called the cornucopia. ([Location 2179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2179)) > In his uncomplaining life of pain and persistence, in his compassion and desire to do the right thing, he showed, as the American classicist and mythographer Edith Hamilton put it, “greatness of soul.” ([Location 2286](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2286)) > Enthusiasm meant, originally, possession by a god. The verb “enthuse” was a later American English back-formation. ([Location 2333](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2333)) > In Greek they were variously called the erga or more commonly the athloi of Heracles. The word ergon simply means “work” while athlos means more than labor, it carries a sense of “test.” Our words athlete and athletic derive from it. ([Location 2335](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2335)) > Heracles, like most classical Greeks, was as happy to dine at the man-trough as at the lady-buffet. Iolaus, his nephew, and Hylas, his page during the quest for the Golden Fleece, were another two male lovers or eromenoi. ([Location 2382](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2382)) > They say that where Cerberus’s drool fell aconite grew, the deadly poison sometimes called wolf’s bane. ([Location 2459](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2459)) > An especially apt name, given Heracles’s crime against xenia or guest friendship. Xenoclea is a name that glorifies the stranger or guest. ([Location 2470](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2470)) > Thus “giant” and “gigantic” really mean “earthborn” and have nothing to do with size, despite the way the words are now used and how the “giga-” was taken from “gigantic” to mean “huge.” ([Location 2503](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2503)) > The Greek word is pharmakon, as in “pharmacy” and “pharmaceutical.” ([Location 2506](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2506)) > Athenian exceptionalism at the height of the classical era was as unpopular with the rest of the world as British exceptionalism in the days of the Raj or American and Russian exceptionalism are today. ([Location 2532](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2532)) > theophany, a real manifestation of divinity. ([Location 2634](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2634)) > We must not tire of reminding ourselves that to the Greeks, blood crime, the killing of a relative, was the most serious of all transgressions. Purification could only be performed by oracles and the priestly caste, or by an anointed king. To go without such a purification was to invite pursuit by the Furies. ([Location 2666](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2666)) > After blood murder, perhaps the second most serious sin in the Greek world was an infraction of xenia, those laws of hospitality or guest-friendship that were especially sacred to the King of the Gods himself, Zeus Xenios, protector of guests. ([Location 2702](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2702)) > Pegasus landed on the top of Olympus and Zeus kept him there as his glamorous pack animal, charged with carrying his thunderbolts. ([Location 2910](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2910)) > Bellerophon dragged out the rest of his days shunned by society for his sacrilege, until he died a crippled, embittered, and lonely old man. ([Location 2911](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2911)) > Hippocrene, which means horse fountain. ([Location 2923](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2923)) > When Homer has Bellerophon’s grandson GLAUCUS tell this story in the Iliad, the letter is actually not written but composed of “symbols” or “murderous signs” enclosed, not in a letter, but a “folding tablet” ([Location 2937](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2937)) > Orpheus was the Mozart of the ancient world. ([Location 2957](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2957)) > During his lifetime his fame spread around the Mediterranean and beyond. It was said that his pure voice and matchless playing could charm the beasts of the field, the fishes of the sea, the birds of the air, and even the insensate rocks and waters. Rivers themselves diverted their courses to hear him. Hermes invented the lyre, Apollo improved upon it, but Orpheus perfected it. ([Location 2959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2959)) > ARISTAEUS, a minor god of beekeeping, agriculture, and other country crafts. ([Location 2988](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=2988)) > “String it with these,” said Apollo, plucking from his head twenty-four golden hairs. ([Location 3022](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3022)) > Cerberus’s six ears flopped down, his six eyes closed, his three tongues passed across his chops with a great slap, and his three massive heads dropped into a deep and happy sleep. Even the snake of his tail drooped in peaceful slumber. ([Location 3038](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3038)) - Note: Harry potter socorer’s stone fluffy three-headed dog. > The golden harmonies of Apollo were always an affront to the dark Dionysian dances and dithyrambs. ([Location 3152](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3152)) > sparagmos. ([Location 3179](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3179)) > An archetype of the wicked stepmother that was to dominate myth, legend, and fairy tale for ages to come, Ino hatched a formidably malicious and elaborate plan to destroy the twins. ([Location 3209](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3209)) > Helle to fall from the ram’s back. Phrixus cried out in vain for it to stop. He looked down in horror and saw his sister plummet to her death in the water of the straits, which the Greeks were to call in her honor “the Hellespont” or Sea of Helle.143 ([Location 3244](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3244)) > In fact, as we find today, rebellions from the outside nearly always fail: familial quarrelling, dynastic feuding, party disunity, the palace coup, and the stab in the back . . . these are what dislodge regimes and topple tyrants. ([Location 3301](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3301)) - Tags: [[favorite]] > “It is the fate of the young never to learn,” the centaur sighed. “I suppose it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that propels them to their triumphs, just as surely as it is arrogance and unwavering self-belief that unseats them and sends them plummeting to their ends.” ([Location 3332](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3332)) > “Remember,” cautioned the centaur, “modesty. Observance of the gods. In a fight, do not do what you want to do, but what you judge your enemy least wants you to. You cannot control others if you cannot control yourself. Those who most understand their own limitations have the fewest. A leader is one who . . .” and on and on, precept after precept, warning after warning. ([Location 3342](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3342)) > Tiphys also came up with the idea of leather cushions for the rowing seats, not for comfort but to allow the oarsmen to slide backward and forward on their benches; this added to the rowing stroke the strength of their legs as well as the strength of their backs. ([Location 3469](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3469)) > In many ways the voyage of the Argo might be regarded as a kind of dress rehearsal for the epic siege of Troy and, even more so, its aftermath, the Odyssey and the fall of the house of Atreus. ([Location 3512](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=3512)) > Once they were safely out of range, they looked back. The huge automaton was striding round the corner of the island and out of sight. ([Location 4341](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4341)) > “No, no. I believe I am right in saying that he is the last of the great race of Bronze Men,” Nestor said. “They were born from the Meliae—you know, the nymphs of the ash tree who sprang from the earth when Kronos castrated his father Ouranos.”205 ([Location 4348](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4348)) > Medea befriended Pelias’s daughters, the PELIADES:210 ALCESTIS,211 ALCIMEDE,212 ANTINOË, ASTEROPEIA, EVADNE,213 HIPPOTHOË, PELOPIA, and PISIDICE. ([Location 4388](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4388)) > In the Book of Genesis, you may remember, the patriarch Abraham was tested by God and told to sacrifice his son Isaac. Just as Abraham’s knife was descending God showed him a ram caught in a nearby thicket and told him to kill the animal in place of his son. ([Location 4516](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4516)) > Atalanta a natural devotee of the goddess of Chastity and the Chase, Artemis, to whom she committed herself, heart and soul. ([Location 4751](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4751)) > like Robert Browning’s rats in Hamelin, bit the babies in their cradles and drank the soup from the cooks’ own ladles. ([Location 4762](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4762)) > Edith Hamilton, “too boyish to be a maiden, too maidenly to be a boy.” ([Location 4835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=4835)) > Oedipus will kill his father and mate with his mother. That was all he could get out of the Pythia. As ever with oracles, all supplementary questions were met with silence. ([Location 5142](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5142)) > Oedipus rarely conferred with priests. He was negligent in his attendance at the temples on all but the most important holy days. He was almost blasphemous in his casual approach to prayer and sacrifice. But he was remarkably energetic, efficient, and effective. He drew up mathematical tables and charts connected to everything from taxation to population; he instituted laws on household and palace management, on justice, and on trade. ([Location 5265](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5265)) - Note: The first enlightenment figure > The money from taxation and tariffs rolled in like never before, of which a proportion was expended on schools and gymnasia, asclepia,254 and roads. Oedipus’s name for this radically new style of government was logarchy, “rule by reason.” ([Location 5269](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5269)) > And so it might have been, were it not for the outbreak of a terrible epidemic. Rumors were heard of a family struck down with a disease that had made them vomit and flame with fever for a day before dying. Soon the sickness was smoldering through the streets of the poorer quarter of the city; then it burned like a wildfire through all of Thebes. Scarcely a household was unaffected. ([Location 5275](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5275)) > “But you are always telling me that reason is a greater guide to action than prophecy.” ([Location 5380](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5380)) > Oedipus was the man who had killed Laius. Oedipus had proclaimed a curse upon the killer of Laius. A curse upon himself. ([Location 5450](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5450)) > Friedrich Nietzsche in his book The Birth of Tragedy, have seen in Oedipus a character who works out on stage the tension in Athenians (and all of us) between the reasoning, mathematically literate citizen and the transgressive blood criminal; between the thinking and the instinctual being; between the superego and the id; between the Apollonian and the Dionysian impulses that contend within us. Oedipus is a detective who employs all the fields of inquiry of which the Athenians were so proud—logic, numbers, rhetoric, order, and discovery—only to reveal a truth that is disordered, shameful, transgressive, and bestial. ([Location 5513](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5513)) > What’s your name, copper-top?” ([Location 5595](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5595)) > The Grecian mainland, Macedonia in particular, was filled with men and women of varying degrees of sandy, ginger, copper, and red hair. ([Location 5959](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=5959)) > There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, ([Location 6106](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6106)) > “The conditions lay down that the fourteen must arrive on Crete unarmed. What hope can you have when you will be under guard from the moment you make landfall? What will it matter how fast, strong, or smart you are? Why throw your life away? The system has worked for the past five years. It is not . . . ideal, and I readily admit that it reflects little credit on us, but defeat is defeat and . . ([Location 6193](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6193)) - Note: Hunger games > With a cry of despair Aegeus threw himself to his death in the sea below, the sea that ever since has been called in his honor the Aegean. ([Location 6577](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6577)) > great male friendships in Greek myth, that between Theseus and Pirithous.286 ([Location 6587](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6587)) > His devotion to Artemis, the goddess of the chase and the chaste, ([Location 6673](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6673)) > the Ship of Theseus to become a subject of intriguing philosophical speculation. Over hundreds of years, its rigging, its planks, its hull, deck, keel, prow, stern, and all its timbers had been replaced so that not one atom of the original remained. Could one call it the same ship? Am I the same person I was fifty years ago? Every molecule and cell of my body has been replaced many times over.306 ([Location 6697](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6697)) > Pheidippides was said to have run the twenty-five or so miles from Marathon to Athens to break the news of the victory, shouting the word “nenikekamen!”—“we won!”—before falling to the ground, dead from exhaustion ([Location 6742](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6742)) > The Grandfather’s Axe, its blade, and handle regularly replaced, presents a similar ontological conundrum in the field of study known as the Metaphysics of Identity. ([Location 6822](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6822)) > The heroes cleansed our world of chthonic terrors—earthborn monsters that endangered mankind and threatened to choke the rise of civilization. ([Location 6827](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6827)) > The rise of a spirit of rational inquiry and scientific understanding pushed the immortals further from ([Location 6831](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6831)) > Prometheus’s gift of fire, as Zeus had feared, would one day allow us to do even without the Olympians. ([Location 6835](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6835)) > Timelines in myth are often confusing and inconsistent, especially when it comes to the heroes. ([Location 6879](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6879)) > Apollodorus’s Bibliotheca (Library) is a major source for all Greek myth, ([Location 6885](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6885)) > This is sometimes called Euhemerism or the historical theory of mythology. ([Location 6901](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6901)) > Carl Jung described myths as the product of our “collective unconscious.” Joseph Campbell put it another way and called them “public dreams.” ([Location 6906](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B084H2HSGZ&location=6906))