Mythica: A New History of Homer-s World, Through the Women Written Out of It

Did you love Madeline Miller-s Circe? Pat Barker-s The Silence of the Girls? Jennifer Saint-s Elektra? Natalie Haynes- A Thousand Ships?

Now award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece-s greatest legends - and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer-s Iliad and Odyssey.

Because, contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men - and it-s not only men-s stories that deserve to be told . . .In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world-s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer-s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women - queens, mothers, warriors, slaves - were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not - until now) remembered them.

A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer-s epics charted entirely by women - from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope - Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologized women of Greece-s greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it.