The Ancient Greeks Are Back (Again)
Stephen Fry’s Mythos is Remarkably Relatable
Stephen Fry’s Mythos, a retelling of many different Greek myths, has become a popular work of modern-day literature. The English author’s humoristic and lively way of retelling these ancient stories proved widely popular. Yet, it’s not just the way Fry tells these stories that wins over so many readers.
The stories themselves seem–in their own way–very relatable, proving that the ancient Greeks who once told these tales are not as far removed from us as we might think. Which is pretty incredible, when you think about it. But does that alone explain Fry’s success?
Old Is Back in Fashion
Fry is a genuine Greek mythology enthusiast, and uses ancient sources like the Theogony by Hesiod and the Metamorphoses by Ovid for the basis of his work. He seems to “transform” the ancient figures of these stories into not only lively, but also quite relatable characters. However, Fry does this without changing significant substantive facts. This means that these characters, although hidden by “obscure” language, always possessed such familiar qualities.
Fry’s concept of putting a modern touch on ancient stories is certainly not an original one. In fact, there have been numerous authors that have done more or less the same (Think of Robert Graves’s The Greek Myths from 1955 or Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman from 2017, for example). What sets Fry apart is his ability to tell these stories in a way that feels remarkably relatable to readers in the twenty-first century.
The popularity of Fry’s book suggests that we’re capable of laughing at, feeling sorry for and comparing ourselves to characters created by people who lived more than 2000 years ago. People to whom things like the art of printing, the internet and reality TV were still unknown and who explained natural phenomena through the stories of gods. And yet, these “ancient” Greeks make Fry’s storytelling work in the here and now.
Fry’s Formula of Success
We humans are curious. This was true in ancient times and continues to be true today. We like to know about people and cultures from long ago or far away.
But we also like to be entertained.
And that is exactly what Fry seems to be doing. He combines human curiosity with a healthy dose of relatable humour, to create a book that makes us laugh and at the same time feel very intellectual for reading about “ancient Greek culture”. To reach this state of ‘entertaining relatability’, Fry makes some interesting choices. His criteria for selecting stories to put in his work seems not to have been based on popularity, as readers somewhat versed in Greek mythology will notice quite some absences.
No, besides leaning on his comedic talent and picking stories that might make readers laugh, Fry also focuses on stories with elements that would seem remarkably relatable to his readers.
His retelling of the creation story found in Hesiod’s Theogony and the interactions of the first gods might seem frighteningly familiar to people who have large, complicated and slightly melodramatic families. Kronos the Titan might remind someone of a moody cousin, and Poseidon and Hades perhaps spark the memory of those two nephews who can never get along.
For most readers, the lack of cultural-historical context around these stories (both by the cherry-picking of the myths and the absence of a proper background) simply doesn’t matter. They want to be entertained, and that’s exactly what Mythos does best.
However, Fry does not leave his readers unprepared. In the introduction of Mythos, he divulges that his goal is to tell these stories, not explain them. In that he seems to have succeeded.
A Touch of Fry
In the end, the ongoing relevance of mythical tales to our modern-day culture might just come down to the fact that we like stories, and so did the ancient Greeks. It seems only logical that the stories that were the most popular back then would have the most chance to survive until today.
But at the same time, Fry’s light-hearted and sincere writing style do help us in relating to some of Europe’s oldest stories. Mythos became such a large success, because it was able to re-imagine the Greek myths as modern, comedic stories.
All it took to get there, it would seem, was a touch of Stephen Fry.
