Bloomsbury Academic (2024) p/b 304pp £18 (ISBN 9781350376564)
Myths tend to have a negative reputation among the modern commentariat—they are usually cited in order to be debunked—urban myths as a subset of fake news. Plato distrusted myths because they may be too seductive; Aristotle believed that myths can reach beyond the purely scientific (logos) to the timeless and the profound in a way that historical statements cannot. He concludes that the lover of myth (philomuthos) is also a lover of reason (philosophos).
In this book G., who is (among other posts) Emeritus Professor of Organisational Theory at Bath University, takes a small selection of myths from the Greek classical period and examines how they are still relevant and informative in the current post-truth environment. He is well qualified to do so as much of his academic output has been about how story telling can enhance management organisation.
G. is consequently not so much interested in the details of the myths which he has selected as in their social and emotional hinterland. So Phaethon and Narcissus invoke dreams and identity; Agamemnon and Jason leadership, coalition and hubris; Oedipus miasma (a world wallowing in disaster) and contagion; Odysseus temptation; Iphigenia confronting barbarian otherness. Having established the hinterland, G. ranges widely among the significances that the ancients drew from each myth and the similar or different significances that have been or might be drawn from the same myth by contemporaries.
Take his reflections on King Log which Zeus sends at the request of the frogs for someone to rule them, one of his least complicated stories. These include ‘solidarity’ and the primal pull of the tribal chorus—is it better if we all stand together? Then there is the allure of the strong man, which is why the frogs reject the silent, motionless Log. G. quotes Martin Luther ‘The world is too wicked and does not deserve to have many wise and pious princes. Frogs need [frog-eating] storks.’ He muses on the allure of strongmen leaders like Mussolini and Trump and on their promises of regaining past glories— ‘Make America Great Again’—or their claims to alleviate pervasive uncertainties. Are all strongmen violent like the stork, or are you better off with the devil you know? Citing a more recent myth that frogs leap out of boiling water but stay put and die if the water heats up slowly, he reflects on group reaction to phenomena like climate change and other creeping disaster theories (normally initially dismissive). Finally, why did Zeus lose patience with the frogs and choose to send the stork, rather than a less lethal alternative?
Broadly he argues that we have lost something important in the modern rejection of universal fact in favour of moral relativism where my statement of a fact or a theory is automatically assumed to be as valid as yours; and that myths (from wherever they are sourced—it is the universality not the Greekness that counts) are a useful replacement, having overtones of the numinous without any presumption of supra-human authority. His presentation is seductive and beguiling, occasionally left-field but always challenging. His style flows effortlessly, his argument is readily comprehensible and jargon-free in a genre which can readily ooze jargon. Twenty pages of notes establish the academic credibility of his text. In some ways the most stimulating part of the book is a fifteen-page section on ‘Reading On’ which demonstrates the range and significance of the literature which this topic has already generated.
This is not a book for the classroom nor for the beach, but it will amply repay the attention of the Classics for All reader in this confused and confusing world of ‘going viral’ and influencers. It is also a bargain at under £20.
Roger Barnes