Spring 2025 · Torch: U.S. · MODERNIZING MYTH
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Modernizing
Myth
Cecily Reed,
If you’ve browsed around Water Street or Amazon Books recently, you’ve most likely seen a modern re-interpretation of a Greek myth, or maybe even several. Papered with bright colors and stylized monsters, they seem to have departed entirely from previous generations’ dry compilations. A supporter of the myth-retelling fad might say that these new editions bring out hidden characters in the story, often women or servants. A traditionalist might argue that they have betrayed antiquity and the nobility of Ancient Rome. But myths have been retold since they were created. Every time a myth is retold by a new narrator, it is changed. Since antiquity, poets and writers have been evolving and modernizing stories as familiar as the Bible or the E-book. Every modern interpretation, no matter how wacky its font or how startling its colorway, continues in this classical tradition.
Before the Iliad and the Odyssey were written down, before the first compilation of love stories of the gods was printed, these stories were propagated in other ways. They were passed down orally from grandmother to grandson, herald to dinner guest. Myths were shaped by real events—Mycenaean soldiers went off to fight in Asia Minor, creating tales of the great Achilles and cunning Odysseus at Troy. The stories of a woman becoming inexplicably pregnant or one disappearing became warnings of the lust of the gods. Every time these stories were retold, they changed. Parallel tales evolved where circumstances might seem different, but the circumstances were largely the same. Alternate names appeared, with some characters accruing up to four names. Different endings were created based on a king’s preference or a toddler’s whim. Every myth has gone through this distortion. Creating myths is a never-ending process.
Eventually, these myths were solidified into written form. The many storytellers who contributed to the Iliad and the Odyssey were solidified into Homer. His works became a cornerstone of classical culture—great statesmen, generals and philosophers slept with rolls of his books under their pillows. He was quoted and re-quoted ad infinitum. Aeschylus, a famous Athenian tragedian, created the Oresteia from the Odyssey’s story of Agamemnon’s return to Mycenae. In the first play, he stuck close to Homer’s version of Agamemnon’s death. The next two plays of the trilogy created a new narrative based on Agamemnon’s son Orestes, finally turning the Fates from primitive, vengeful creatures into benevolent upholders of justice. Aeschylus created a new myth from this by-the-way story, using it to teach his audience about revenge, fate, guilt, family and divine justice. After Aeschylus came Euripides, who created the play “Iphigenia among the Taurians” from the same background in the Iliad of the House of Atreus, constructing a completely new narrative.
Publius Vergilius Maro, an Augustan author seeking to justify the new Roman empire, wrote an entire epic about the founding of Rome based on one of Homer’s minor characters, Aeneas. Virgil, as he is better known, embroidered a rich story from Aeneas’s few mentions in the Iliad that became the anthem of the Roman empire. Virgil has Zeus prophesize, “On [the Romans], I set no limits, space or time: I have granted them power, empire without end. Even furious Juno… will hold dear with me these Romans, lords of the earth.” Using this tale, he gave Rome divine approval and presented it as the uncontested master of the world. His Aeneid is now held equal to Homer, accepted with the Iliad and Odyssey as a founding mythological text.
On the other side of the spectrum—and of history—is Pat Barker’s 2018 Silence of the Girls. Also taken from the Iliad, this interpretation focuses on the lives and fates of the women at Troy. From the same lines of the Iliad, Barker has brought women, a group at best ignored and most often oppressed, to the forefront of her narrative. Madeline Miller does the same for the gay community in her Song of Achilles, highlighting the common same-sex relationships in ancient Greece. Margaret Atwood’s Penelopiad retells the story of Odysseus’s faithful wife, Penelope, from her own perspective, revealing her frustrations and pain and giving her character dimension beyond her relationship with her husband. Each of these retellings draws from the same source as the Aeneid, the Oresteia, and Iphigenia among the Taurians. They have distinct parallels- bringing peripheral characters or narratives to the forefront, using familiar stories to make a different point, and creating plotlines to illustrate their point. Whether that point is the divinely ordained might of Rome, the idea of eye-for-an-eye revenge, trying to capture the lives of women or the prevalence of homosexuality in Ancient Greece, the medium is the same. Each of these authors develops and adds nuance to a preexisting myth, making it more relevant and more far-reaching.
Ovid, another Roman author, rewrote disparate myths for an upper-class Roman audience, who had by this time conquered Greece and absorbed Greek culture. He did not believe in the power of these stories– on the contrary, he viewed them as the relics of an obsolete culture– but he used them to comment on Rome’s society at the time. He infused these threadbare tales with his own interpretations and embellishments, adding description and dialogue and emphasizing emotions and psychology. His work, Metamorphoses, had a recurring theme of change. When writing, Ovid was trying to reveal what he determined were fundamental truths of human nature at the time, dwelling on themes of moral complexity, power dynamics, hubris, or pride and desire and its consequences. He thought of these stories as representations of human experiences and emotions and accepted them not at their face value but for their deeper psychological understanding. Ovid tried to educate and provoke his largely complacent Roman audience, using these stories as a mirror held up to themselves.
Thousands of years later, Nina McLaughlin has offered up her own retelling of Ovid’s stories in her own voice. Much as Ovid reimagined dated Greek stories for “modern” Roman sensibilities, McLaughlin chose a side character, different time frame, or novel point of view to bring modern insight into her new compilation, Sirens. She focused on women, rewriting the stories to give female characters who had often been raped, harassed, or taken advantage of more emotional depth and a background. She rendered these characters, and these stories, in a variety of ways- set either in ancient Arcadia or at a 7-11 down the street, narrated by an abusive god or a victimized nymph or the granddaughter of Pygmalion and Galatea. Each of these rewritings accomplishes a similar function as Ovid– forcing a complacent society, accustomed to millenia of sexism, to think about its shortcomings.
Even ancient authors such as Hesiod, who had no conscious agenda in his mythical retelling, shaped these fluid stories in his own way. Hesiod’s primary mythological work, the Theogony, created a coherent narrative of how the world was created, how it exists, and how it works. He attempted to justify the gods’ power and moral authority when they were so clearly morally flawed themselves, to establish an account of how humanity turned into what it was, and warn against hubris and disrespecting the gods. His myths, although less obviously changed, are just as much a product of his own philosophy and worldview as Ovid or McLaughlin’s.
Ancient myths exist as a skeleton of facts and outdated names upon which an author can impose any interpretation he or she chooses. Since Ancient times, authors have used these stories to convey their own messages. Myth re-interpretations have seen a boom in popularity these past few years, but what seems like a contemporary fad is really a continuation of a tradition that has been around for centuries. Each of these stories has something different to teach us, so we might as well gather by the fire and listen.
If you would like to challenge your perspective and understanding of ancient Greek myths, I recommend the following modern myth interpretations. And if you feel inspired to rewrite one, go right ahead. You’ll be in good company.
Ariadne by Jennifer Saint
Circe by Madeline Miller
Mythos or Heroes by Stephen Fry
Odyssey translated by Emily Wilson
The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood
The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker
The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller
Sirens by Nina McLaughlin
Phillips Exeter Academy,
New Hampshire
Modernizing
Myth