THE WORDS OF 120 VIDEOS ABOUT THE GREEK GODS AND RELATED STORIES

Mythological Stories from the Classical World

Rupert Stanbury, the author of the Gods Galore fantasy / comedy books about the Greek Gods in the 21st Century, also produces TikTok videos on Greek Mythology.

Greek Gods on TikTok records the words from these videos, appropriately edited, in a written book.

It covers the major Olympian Gods – Zeus, Poseidon and Hades – as well as the Goddesses Athene, Aphrodite and Artemis and many others.

The famous Greek heroes are also introduced – Perseus taking on the Gorgon Medusa, Theseus fighting the Minotaur, and Jason claiming the Golden Fleece. We also meet many of the participants in the Trojan Wars – Helen, Achilles and Odysseus – and finally Hercules, perhaps the most famous hero of all!

My Review

When I studied Greek Mythology at school it was never this funny. It was all very serious. The way the author has told the stories is at times hilarious – my favourite being the tale of poor Io. When Hera suspects that husband Zeus had been chasing the beautiful nymph, even turning day into night so Io would get lost and he could catch up with her, she turned Io into a cow. Zeus then gave Hera the cow. A distressed Io roamed around. She could no longer speak, and all she could say was ‘moo’. This tickled me because of something I read years ago about the silliest things people say in insurance claims, but I digress.

Something else they never told us at school (it was a convent by the way) was the amount of incest that went on. Brother and sister, mother and son, nothing was sacred. Even mating with mythical non-humans. Cronus for instance married his sister Rhea and they had six children who became known as the Olympian Gods. Too much inbreeding causes ‘untoward genetic consequences’ – no wonder they often turned out so weird.

At one point we also learnt that Gaia – married to Uranus – got her son Cronus (yes him again) to cut off his father’s genitals and throw them into the sea. The blood left behind turned into various scary creatures (ie the Furies amongst others) while the genitals turned into Aphrodite, the Goddess of Love. Just another example of their weirdness.

Our top God Zeus was a horrible character in reality. He was jealous, sexually permissive, nasty and vicious, and punished people who crossed him in some dreadful ways. His wife Hera wasn’t much better, especially when she discovered the randy old bugger was playing around.

But my favourite is probably Hecate, the Goddess of witchcraft. Whenever someone was turned into an animal, she looked after it as a pet. A woman after my own heart. And who knew there was a Goddess called Doris!

I am also a bit obsessed with Medea after studying her as part of my OU degree, probably because she was a sorceress, though she did some dreadful things. We are told she killed her brother Apsyrtus to help Jason escape with the Golden Fleece, but I read a version in which she chopped him up and threw his body parts into the sea as a distraction, as her father had to gather the pieces one by one so he could have a proper burial.

It’s a great book and you don’t have to read it all at once – you can dip in and out when you feel like it.

Many thanks to Hygge Book Tours for inviting me to be part of the #blogtour

About the Author

Rupert is a Cambridge graduate. He was born in Manchester but has lived most of his adult life in Central London. He has always been an avid reader and in recent years decided to take up writing himself. His books have one overriding objective which is TO MAKE PEOPLE LAUGH! His first book, Gods Galore, was published in November 2021 and this was followed by The Four Horsemen, in April 2023. His latest novel, Pimlico People, was published in October 2024. All three books are a mixture of fantasy and comedy about the Olympian Gods in the 21st Century.

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