Greek myth and its retellings are currently enjoying quite a moment. Stephen Fry’s Mythos (2017), Heroes (2018), and Troy (2020) are bestsellers, and so are the many retellings that present new, often female, perspectives on the ancient myths: Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles (2011) and Circe (2017), Natalie Haynes’ The Children of Jocasta (2017), A Thousand Ships (2019), Stone Blind (2022), and her Pandora’s Jar (2020) and Divine Might (2023), the latter both non-fiction books focusing on the various ancient traditions about the women and female divinities of Greek myth. Many more successful authors besides have recently found new inspiration in the same quarter, especially giving new voices to the women of Greek mythology (Emily Hauser, Claire Heywood and Jennifer Saint, to name only a few). Add to this the anticipation with which many (youngish) readers of Rick Riordan’s Percy Jackson books were awaiting the airing of the new Disney+ series and a clear picture emerges: ancient Greek myths have as strong a hold as ever on the imagination of modern audiences.
For many, modern retellings in novel form or as popular TV series may be the first introduction to Greek mythology, as internet forums like Goodreads amply testify. That does not need to be a bad thing, but it makes books like Sarah Iles Johnston’s masterful new retelling of a selection of the best known (and some less well known) Greek myths especially welcome. Johnston provides not only beautifully written stories, but also insightful backgrounds on Greek myths and where to find them. In this, she gives readers a much-needed update of myth collections like Edith Hamilton’s but with much more reference to the source materials.[1]
The introduction (Gods, Mortals and the Myths They Inhabit) provides a brief explanation of how traditions of myth functioned in the ancient world and how this differs from modern narrative practices, commenting on the spirit of tradition and innovation that fuels the continuous retelling of mythological material, and on the plentiful sources and diverging versions of Greek myth. Johnston addresses reasons for the popularity of myths, focusing on the ‘important social and cultural work’ they do, ‘explain[ing] and endors[ing] the origins of significant institutions… instill[ing] social codes… reflect[ing] feelings that lie deep within the human heart… and warn[ing] against the dangers of character flaws’. (4) The paradox of the cruelty and fickleness of the gods, who are simultaneously objects of worship, is linked to the book’s choice of title: ‘the myths … often express the crucial differences between the two parties.’
The introduction provides insight into Johnston’s authorial and stylistic choices. She outlines how she has attempted to capture something of the reality against which these stories were presumably told in antiquity, in order to make them resonate more fully for modern readers. This means she incorporates descriptions, in the stories of Oedipus and Neoptolemus, of what inquirers at the Delphic oracle in would have seen and heard, and in the telling of Pandora’s story she includes details about household duties of ancient Greek women. Throughout, she keeps a keen eye on ancient texts, yet is ‘determined not to allow the voices of the ancient authors dominate [her] tellings’ (6). The result strikes a sophisticated and felicitous balance. Readers familiar with classical texts will sometimes smile at easter eggssas the tongue-in-cheek Sapphic description of the symptoms of desire in the account of Aphrodite’s setting eyes on Anchises (‘a fever raced beneath her skin, her heart pounded in her ears and her eyes could no longer focus – although divine, she felt close to death.’, 52). At other moments, a turn of phrase will echo a chorus’ final lines in a tragedy, or an epic scene. This is not merely enjoyable for readers in the know, but also elegantly captures the spirit with which these stories were told and listened to in antiquity. But Johnston also notes that she takes the liberty of creating ‘new narratives that have lives of their own’ (6). This means that the tone of the stories can ‘part company with the ancient authors’, notably when rapes or attempted rapes are narrated. In ancient sources (with some notable exceptions) such stories fail to take into account the feelings of the one assaulted. Johnston in contrast tries to convey the ‘shock or horror that the woman or goddess felt’, (or, as the case may be, mortal boy). Her explanation of the conflation of ‘rape’ and ‘seduction’ as the result of the power of men over women (and slaves) is helpful for readers unfamiliar with ancient Greek gender norms and power structures.
Johnston also permits herself the liberty of filling gaps where the sources are not clear about details (such as how Zeus could swallow his wife Metis told in chapter 4). Helpfully, these instances are flagged and explained in the notes provided for each of the chapters. These notes also explicate how various traditions have sometimes been combined in these new retellings. An example of her approach is the artful way Johnston works with the different versions of the story of Helen. Was Helen abducted or did she come to Troy willingly? Or, should we be asking: did she really go there? Here is the departure for Troy: ‘… relying on Aphrodite for help Paris smuggled Helen out of the palace and down to Gytheum where he carried her aboard his waiting ship.’ (321) The phrasing cleverly avoids putting blame on Helen, while leaving open the possibility that she came willingly. As the note on this chapter states: ‘… ancient sources disagreed on whether Helen had gone willingly or unwillingly to Troy as well as on what happened during the journey there. Scenes of Helen’s departure with Paris are frequent in ancient art and sometimes seem to hint at her reluctance.’
In various further chapters, we continue to catch glimpses of Helen: when she receives Paris in her bed after his aborted duel with Menelaus; in the remarkable scene of the Trojan Horse (focalized by nameless Greeks within its belly in Johnston’s version, a nod to Menelaus’ version in Od. 4) when Helen calls out the names of the Greeks in the voices of their wives (353). We also see her baring her breast to seduce Menelaus into taking her home again (354). But in the end, we learn what Stesichorus and Euripides also knew: it wasn’t really Helen who came to Troy, but an eidolon, made by the gods to deceive humans, because Zeus’ plan was to decimate mankind by a cruel war.
In an essay at the end of the book that is brief but enlightening, The characters of Greek myth, Iles Johnston explains how the ‘plurimediality’ (453) of the characters of Greek myth creates and sustains their credibility as ‘real persons’.[2] The fact that mythical characters would appear in media as diverse as epic, tragedy, wedding songs, sculpture and (vase) paintings helped people to create their own rounded versions of characters out of the bricolage of these various inputs. These might overlap with how others imagined them, they but would never be exactly the same – much like our impressions of real people. Stories about the characters of myth are moreover ‘episodic’: they were usually told in bits and pieces on various occasions over a period of time. This too, Johnston claims, invited people to piece together, compare, and argue about versions, which got them more cognitively and emotionally involved with the characters. The example used as illustration is the (indeed very episodic) series of stories about Theseus. But, as the above demonstrates, Helen is also a case in point, and this is borne out well by Johnston’s subtle referencing of so many sources, both textual and visual, while telling her myth.
Finally, the sense that the characters of Greek myth were somehow ‘real’ is linked to the fact that they are so ‘densely intertwined with one another’ (455). Helen is not only related to her parents Zeus and Leda (and Tyndareus), her siblings (Clytemnestra, the Dioscuri) but also to her partners Menelaus, Paris, Deiphobus, and to her daughter Hermione, who in turn was married to Orestes, who had a son with Andromache, etcetera. This whole network of connections has the effect of making the characters appear more rounded and realistic, Johnston claims, illustrating her point with a weblike graph showing connections between Heracles, Theseus, Athena, Meleager, and a number of others. This is her reason for not including traditional family trees, which, with their linearity, fail to do justice to the complex networks of family and other ties. As she notes, anyone wishing to find out about the familial relations of a specific character will be helped by the information contained in the index of characters (where these are noted), or could take a look at the family trees in Timothy Gantz’s book.[3] Or, and that is her expressed preference, they can just dive straight into the various stories and figure out gradually, like ancient audiences would have done, who was related to whom and how and why.
The book contains 140 chapters with titles capturing the essence of an episode (e.g. Zeus becomes King; The Death of Theseus), and is divided into five sections: The Gods, Gods and Mortals, Heroes, The Trojan War, and The Returns. Of these especially Heroes is much longer than the others, and is in turn subdivided into sections bearing the name of a particular hero (Perseus, Bellerophon, Cadmus, Heracles, Atalanta, Orpheus, Jason, Meleager, Theseus, and Oedipus). The Gods covers much material from Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymns; Gods and Mortals takes the Prometheus myth and proceeds among others with a selection of myths best known from Ovid’s Metamorphoses; The Heroes tells stories that accrued to the eponymous heroes of the subsections, often inspired by Attic tragedy. Finally, the two last sections gather together the stories of the Trojan Cycle (especially of course the Iliad) and the Nostoi (in particular the Odyssey). But a quick look at the notes reveals many other sources besides (chief among them obviously Pseudo-Apollodorus and Hyginus, but also less obvious ones like Eratosthenes, Plato, the lyric poets, the fragmentary Greek Historians, and a wealth of vase paintings, referenced with catalogue numbers.) All the literary sources are laid out in a very complete timetable which also helpfully explains abbreviations like FrGrH and OCD. The book closes with an index of characters, which refers the readers to the chapters where they feature. Throughout, the book is illustrated with black and white images designed by Tristan Johnston (yes, a relation) and the handsome hardback edition also features two maps on the inside of the cover, one of the Mediterranean and one outlining the voyage of Argo (as told by Apollonius of Rhodes).
Teaching a University Minor on Greek myth for third year BA students this semester, I found myself frequently wishing I had encountered this book before the academic year had started, and I can only express the hope that many instructors, students, and readers within and beyond academia will find their way to these crisp and compelling narratives and the enlightening introduction and end materials: this is a truly wonderful book for anyone interested in Greek myth, and it is written in an accessible, engaging and beautiful style that does credit to the timeless inspiration of these stories.
Notes
[1] Edith Hamilton ([1940] 1969), Greek Mythology. Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes. Little, Brown, Boston.
[2] This idea also formed part of the thesis of Johnston’s 2018 book The Story of Myth, Harvard University Press.
[3] Timothy Gantz ([1993], 1996), Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources, Johns Hopkins University Press.