1. Oedipus: incest, patricide, and the Theban king who sought knowledge at any cost and was utterly undone by the truth of himself, stabbing out his eyes to never see his shame.
2. Icarus: it’s a tale of hubris and overreaching our mortal grasp, yes, but it’s also about the height of human imagining, the desire for the impossible, the searing instant of youth and joy and striving and wonder, the glorious flight that comes before a terrible fall.
3. Medea: fearsome martial-speaking witch-queen who will be soft and meek until she makes every part of herself a sword.
4. Prometheus: the trickster who deceived Zeus and saved humankind, and proof that no good deed goes unpunished (he also warned Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha that Zeus planned a great flood to sweep mankind away, so that they might be spared and repopulate the earth)
5. Ariadne and Dionysus: the girl who helped Theseus to bring down her father’s regime only to be betrayed by him, and was so wild and furious and unbounded that the god of madness and ecstasy fell for her on the shore of Naxos
6. Penthesilea, daughter of the god of war, and queen of the Amazons, who fought for King Priam in the Trojan War and slaughtered so many men that the armies were awed by her. she was finally killed by Achilles—when he lifted her helmet he fell in love with her, and buried her with his own hands.
7. Eros & Psyche: traces of Beauty and the Beast—the girl so beautiful men worshipped her instead of Aphrodite, made love to Eros but was never allowed to see his face (while her two wicked sisters tried to steal him). she endured three near-impossible trials, even descending to the underworld to entreat Persephone, and was finally married to him
8. Agamemnon & Clytaemnestra: Agamemnon is a bastard in every text ever, and his great hubris before the House of Atreus is the last and most damning act of a guilty man who will die ingloriously, stabbed in the bath by his proud vengeful charismatic queen, and never see it coming.
9. Elektra and Orestes: the children of the above, joined in love and ferocious desire to avenge their father. after years apart, they recognise each other at their father’s tomb, and plot their course: he is the sword, and she is the will—in Euripides they slay their mother together by stabbing a sword down her throat.
10. Cassandra and Apollo: I’ve already written about Cassandra of Troy—the prophet who refused her god and was cursed to speak truth and go unheeded. it’s a story about how women’s voices have been demonised and othered, gagged by accusations of madness and hysteria. there’s no one braver in all Greek mythology than the woman who lives through the Trojan War twice, first as distant thunder and then as lightning, her life and city and family torn apart—who warns and warns until she has no more breath.
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