Charlotte Higgins

A brilliantly original, landmark retelling of Greek myths, recounted as if they were actual scenes being woven into textiles by women who feature prominently in them. Athena, Alcithoë, Philomela, Arachne, Andromache, Helen, Circe, Penelope. Full of powerful witches, unpredictable gods, and sword-wielding slayers, their stories were also extreme: about families who turn murderously on one another; impossible tasks set by cruel kings; love that goes wrong; wars and journeys and terrible loss. There was magic, there was shapeshifting, there were monsters, there were descents to the land of the dead. Humans and immortals inhabited the same world, which was sometimes perilous, sometimes exciting. The stories were obviously fantastical. All the same, brothers really do war with each other. People tell the truth but aren't believed. Wars destroy the innocent. Lovers are parted. Parents endure the grief of losing children. Women suffer violence at the hands of men. The cleverest of people can be blind to what is really going on. The law of the land can contradict what you know to be just. Mysterious diseases devastate cities. Floods and fire tear lives apart. For the Greeks, the word "mûthos" simply meant a traditional tale. In the twenty-first century, we have long left behind the political and religious framework in which these stories first circulated. But their power endures. Greek myths remain true for us because they excavate the very extremes of human experience: sudden, inexplicable catastrophe; radical reversals of fortune; seemingly arbitrary events that transform lives. They deal, in short, in the hard basic facts of the human condition.

A New Retelling

Greek Myths

Riley

"You are the poet's impetus, the astronomer's flash of certainty, the dancer when her body becomes the faithful servant of her mind. You are the moment a historian assembles the shards of the past and suddenly perceives a pattern. You come only to those who toil for you painfully; and even then, your visits are erratic."

"Pandora did not unleash all the horror and grief into the world, as one poet - a man - has falsely claimed. With the arrival of women, the men ceased to be like children, innocent, and ignorant. They began to know love and joy, and the pain of loss, the ache of desire (often for each other): they became, in fact, fully human, with all the good and bad that entails." 

I love this observation by Prometheus about humans because I think it is still true today

"They can't seem to find the pattern in anything."

I love the claim that the Fates are more powerful than Zeus (because they are)

"They raise up the humble and dash down the mighty. They bring power and joy; they bring calamity, disease and terror. They know what has been, what is now, and what will be. They know when our world will end, when sea and land and sky will be be consumed by sulphureous fire from pole to pole. Compared to these sisters even the gods, even Zeus himself, are as powerless as babies. Nothing happens that is not spun by them." 

Greek Myths quotes

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