The Iliad, Homer

4 stars

First Sentence: Rage—Goddess, sing the rage of Peleus’ son Achilles,
murderous, doomed, that cost the Achaeans countless losses,
hurling down to the House of Death so many sturdy souls,
great fighters’ souls, but made their bodies carrion,
feasts for the dogs and birds,
and the will of Zeus was moving toward its end.

Thoughts: I have been remiss in my Classical Nerdity. I’ve read The Odyssey (many times) and The Aeneid (a couple of times) but never The Iliad. Oh, I knew about it through cultural osmosis

but I’ve never actually read it to see what else happened.

What else happened is a whole lotta fightin’ and dyin’. It’s not a glorious picture of war. Sure, everyone claims their fighting for honor and all that but a lot of men die extremely brutal deaths described in graphic details. Lots of entrails falling into the dust and brains splattered on the inside of helmets and suchlike. I guess that’s what the ancient Greeks were into before they got into the philosophy business.

Despite all the blood and other things best kept inside a human body, it’s actually quite a thrilling tale. We know the Greeks are going to win in the end, but the advantage switches between them and the Trojans several times which keeps things interesting. This is mainly due to the gods interfering with human affairs.

The gods are a big presence in the war, which is understandable because it started when Paris ticked off two goddesses. They get personally involved with the battles: Aphrodite’s pulling Trojans off the field whenever they’re in danger of getting killed, Apollo’s shooting whoever he can find for the sheer love of archery, Athena’s pulling Achilles’ hair to keep him from fighting his own people. At one point Hera seduces Zeus to distract him from the battlefield until the Greeks can gain an advantage. They don’t stop their antics until Achilles finally finds a ladder long enough to get over himself and rejoin the battle.

And speaking of Achilles, he’s kind of a brat. Yeah, he’s a great warrior and all but as a person he kind of sucks. He goes into a powerful sulk because Agamemnon takes the woman he won in battle because Agamemnon’s war-prize woman had to go back to her father, then he stays there for pretty much the whole book. He only comes out in the last few chapters after his friend Patroclus dressed up in his armor and got killed. Not only that, Hector took the armor off Patroclus so now Achilles has to get his goddess mother to ask Hephaestus to make him some new armor before he can fight. But once he gets a sword in his hand, he’s unstoppable. For now.

As you can see, the only thing Achilles liked more than Patroclus was holding a grudge. I don’t think he ever really forgave Agamemnon, but at least he was willing to put his feelings aside for five minutes to work together for the common cause. And the whole thing with dragging Hector’s body around Patroclus’ grave was nothing more than a temper tantrum. You’d think he’d catch on the gods wanted him to give the body back to the Trojans what with the no damage or decay after two weeks, but no. Achilles is kind of dumb.

But I can put up with him because he’s going to die anyway. It was foretold early in the book that Achilles’ death will follow soon after Hector’s so we know it’s coming even though the book ends before it happens. We’ll have to wait for The Odyssey for that bit of satisfaction.

Lysistrata and Other Plays, Aristophanes

5 stars

First Sentence: The eleven surviving plays of Aristophanes are all that we have, apart from fragments preserved on papyri or quoted by other ancient writers, of one of the most remarkable branches of the literature of antiquity, the Old Comedy of Athens.

Thoughts: This translation is from the 1970s as opposed to An Anthology of Greek Drama from 1949. Why is this important? Because the dirty parts are out in the open for all to see in plain English, not hidden under a thin veneer of Latin. And this being Greek comedy, there are a lot of dirty parts.

The introduction goes over Aristophanes’ life, his works, the people he lampooned in his plays, and how comedies were staged in ancient Greece. A key part of the male costumes was a fake oversize phallus, something Aristophanes made good use of. As did the other comedy writers, I’d assume, but they aren’t important right now.

While there are eleven Aristophanes plays left today, this book only has three of them, none of which is The Frogs. I’ve heard of that play my whole life but to date I haven’t read it. {adds to quest list}

The first play is The Acharnians, written during one of the many, many wars between Athens and Sparta. It’s set in the town of Acharnae, eight miles north of Athens. Dikaiopolis has had quite enough of all this warring and fighting, but no one else seems inclined to put a stop to it. He manages to negotiate a peace with Sparta for himself and his family alone. He immediately takes advantage of his extremely local cease fire to stage a Dionysia parade around his house. The party is interrupted by the chorus in the form of charcoal burners. Dikaiopolis holds them off by taking a basket of charcoal hostage. They threaten to kill him so he goes over to the playwright Euripides’ house for a quick round of riffing Euripides’ plays. Dikaiopolis borrows a beggar’s costume from him which he wears while he pleads his case by making fun of yet another of Euripides’ plays.

Once Dikaiopolis wins his case against the chorus, he goes back to showing off how he’s at peace. He sets up a private market selling things that are banned in the Athenian markets. A beggar shows up trying to sell his three daughters as pigs in a poke. “Piglet” in ancient Greek was slang for female genitalia so the next twenty minutes or so are nonstop dirty jokes. In the end everyone gets drunk because why not.

The Clouds was a flop when it was originally produced, probably because it isn’t the kind of madcap dirty jokeathon people expected from Aristophanes. It’s more dark humor without the happy drunken ending of the other plays. The play that exists now is Aristophanes’ partial revision. He was trying to get it restaged, but that never happened because of reasons lost to antiquity.

The play is parodying the new philosophers, here represented by Socrates. Strepsiades is tired of his son Pheidippes lounging around and spending all his money on horses. All those horses got Strepsiades into debt and he both can’t and doesn’t want to pay up. He hears that the philosophers have a method of arguing for Wrong that will get him out of his obligations, so he goes down to Socrates’ school to learn how to do it. Strepsiades is a very poor student and only succeeds in driving Socrates to distraction. The chorus appears in the form of clouds to watch the proceedings. They keep egging Strepsiades along, but it turns out they’re not really on his side.

We discussed Lysistrata in An Anthology of Greek Drama so there’s no need to go over the play again. Instead, I’ll show you what I mean about the more “modern” translation. Let’s revisit Robinson’s interpretation of the perfume scene between Myrrhine and Cinesias:

CINESIAS: Damn the man who first concocted perfume!
MYRRHINE: (returning with another flask) Here, try this flask.
C: I’ve got another one all ready for you. Come, you wretch, lie down and stop bringing me things.
M: All right; I’m taking off my shoes. But, my dear, see that you vote for peace.
C: (absently) I’ll consider it. (Myrrhine runs to the Acropolis.) I’m ruined! The wench has skinned me and run away! (chanting in tragic style) Alas, Alas! Deceived, my poor little child, how shall I nurture thee? Where’s Cynalopes? I needs must hire a nurse!

And here’s how Alan Sommerstein translated it:

C: A curse on the man who invented perfume!
M: (returning with another scent bottle, slender and cylindrical in shape) Here, take this bottle.
C: (pointing to his phallus) I’ve got too much bottle already! Now just lie down, damn you, and don’t bring me anything more for any reason.
M: I will, I swear. I’m taking my shoes off now. But, darling, don’t forget to vote for making peace!
C: I’ll think it over. (He stretches out his arm to draw Myrrhine towards him. It clasps empty air, and, turning his head, he sees her vanishing into the Acropolis. He leaps to his feet.) She’s gone! She’s done me and diddled me! Just when I was all ripe and peeled for her, she ran away! (Sings)

O what, tell me what, is there left for me to do?
And, robbed of her beauty, who’s there for me to screw?
Philostratus, I need you, do come and help me quick:
Could I please hire a nurse for my poor young orphan prick?

Circe, Madeline Miller

6 stars

First Sentence: When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.

Thoughts: Circe was the oldest daughter of the Titan Helios and the nymph Perse but everyone thought she was the least. She wasn’t as perfectly beautiful as the rest of the nymphs and her voice was too “thin” for the rest of her family. Her younger siblings Pasiphaë and Perses tormented her every time she crossed their paths, but her youngest brother Aeëtes would sit on the beach and talk to her like a sensible person. Mostly Circe was left alone to explore her father’s domain and listen to the rest of the nymphs and Titans gossip.

When Zeus decided to punish the Titan Prometheus for giving fire to humans, he ordered all the Titans to gather to watch the punishment to remind them who was in charge now. Circe was with them to witness the Furies whip Prometheus for hours. When the rest of the Titans left, Circe stayed behind and talked to the wounded Titan. Prometheus told Circe he didn’t regret what he did; the humans were worth it. She thought about what he said long after he was taken away to have vultures eat his liver on a mountain top.

Centuries later Pasiphaë was married to Minos, the king of Crete. Circe and her siblings went to the wedding. It was the first time Circe had seen real humans. She was fascinated by them, but Aeëtes told her she was being stupid. Then he told her he was leaving to be king of Colchis. Her dismay at losing the only sibling who halfway liked her was only slightly mitigated when she heard Perses was also leaving to see what the demon-raisers were up to in the east.

Then she met Glaucus and fell in love. She didn’t want him to die, the fate of all mortals, so she gave him the sap of an enchanted flower while he slept. He turned into a sea-god. Instead of being grateful to Circe for making him immortal, he fell in love with another nymph, Scylla. Circe used the magical sap on her and she became a monster.

Scylla’s transformation wasn’t the kind of thing that could be hidden, and Circe’s role was discovered. The other Titans and nymphs were horrified because she used forbidden witchcraft. Further investigation revealed that all of Helios and Perse’s children were witches: Pasiphaë was dabbling in poisons, Perses was raising demons himself, and Aeëtes was playing with dragons and humans’ free will. But it was Circe who was punished. She was exiled to live by herself on the island of Aiaia.

Exile was the best thing that ever happened to her. She honed her skills in potions by experimenting with all the plants on the island. She befriended the animals. The god Hermes came to visit her for gossip and occasional sex. The only time she left was to assist Pasiphaë at the birth of the Minotaur. She became friends with Daedalus there and helped him create a cage to keep the Minotaur contained before going back to her island.

People began visiting Circe. The first visitors were Jason and Medea who had just defied Aeëtes by stealing the Golden Fleece. A group of sailors arrived and raped her. She responded by turning them into pigs. She liked the feeling of power, so she began to encourage more sailors to visit her pigsties. And then Odysseus came and everything changed.

This is the best retold myth I’ve read in a very, very long time. Probably the best ever as far as Greek myths are concerned. (Poul Anderson holds the crown for the Norse myths). Circe is a wonderful heroine and I’m glad I met her. It’s always the quiet ones, isn’t it?

Also Odysseus is a jerk, but you knew that already from The Odyssey.

An Anthology of Greek Drama, C.A. Robinson (ed.)

4 stars

First Sentence: In the Persians of Aeschylus the Persian queen asks a question, to which no one has found the answer: “What is this Athens, of which all men speak?”

Thoughts: It’s the capital of Greece, Persian queen, but that’s not important right now.

This is a collection of six of the greatest hits of four of the greatest Greek playwrights: Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, and Aristophanes. Since I can’t read Greek it took me entirely too long to figure out that their names are on the cover. But, again, that’s not important right now.

We begin with Aeschylus’ “Agamemnon.” This is a great play with lots of (offstage) death and revenge. It’s the story of Agamemnon’s return from the Trojan War. He’s excited to be back home with his family after a decade away, but his wife Clytemnestra has other plans. She’s not only found herself a boytoy to pass the time, she’s been plotting revenge on her husband for killing their daughter Iphigeniea back at the beginning of the war. He claims it was a sacrifice to the gods for good weather so they could actually get to Troy, but Clytemnestra’s not buying it. She’s also not happy that her husband’s brought home his own toy, Cassandra, the captured Trojan prophetess princess.

Agamemnon goes in to greet his family while Cassandra stays outside. She talks to the Chorus about how she doesn’t want to go in because she sees blood and death inside. The Chorus is very confused. Eventually Cassandra accepts her fate and goes inside. Immediately the backstage doors open to reveal Clytemnestra and her boytoy standing over a big pile ‘o bodies, including Agamemnon and Cassandra. I guess Shakespeare took over the Pile o’ Bodies Warehouse and Emporium from Aeschylus.

The rest of the story is told in two other plays that aren’t included because now it’s Sophocles’ turn. His chosen plays are “Oedipus the King” and “Antigone.” If you don’t know the story of Oedipus you obviously either slept through world literature class or just beamed down from an alien starship so let me give you the short version: Incest is not best.

“Antigone,” however, is my favorite Greek play because it’s about a Woman Who Does Things. Specifically non-murdery things. She just wants to bury her brother Polynices who killed/was killed by her other brother Eteocles. Since Eteocles was on the winning side of the battle he gets a proper burial, but Polynices can just lie out on the battlefield and rot for all the king cares. Antigone defies him and performs the funeral rites over his body, but is quickly captured and delivered to the king. She tells him she doesn’t care what he thinks because she knows she did the right thing, so he imprisons her in a cave. She gets back at him by killing herself so he won’t get the satisfaction of watching her starve to death. Antigone don’t take no crap from no one and I love her.

Then [heavy sigh] it’s time for Euripides who had issues with women. First up is “Medea.” I don’t like her as much as Antigone even though her complaint was just as legitimate. After she helped Jason get the Golden Fleece and had two children with him, he dumps her for a better-connected princess. Not only that, he’s going to disinherit Medea’s children in favor of the new chick’s future offspring. Since Euripides was a misogynist, she reacts like a hysterical shrieking harpy. She kills the new princess, the princess’s father, and her own children before mounting the roof in a chariot pulled by dragons. She screams at Jason, throws the bodies of their children at him and flies away. I will say this for Euripides: he can write a good dramatic ending.

Not in “Hippolytus,” though. I hate this play. Hippolytus is the son of Theseus and the Amazon Hippolyta. After she died, Theseus married Phaedra. Then, since Hippolytus ignored the goddess Aphrodite (here called Kypris) in favor of Artemis, Aphrodite curses Phaedra to fall in love with her stepson. Why I do not know. Phaedra never did anything to Aphrodite. But the gods are nothing if not capricious so everyone dies except Theseus and no one is happy.

We end on a high note with Aristophanes’ “Lysistrata,” the play about withholding sex to end war. The Athenian and Spartan women are tired of their husbands fighting wars all the time, so they lock themselves up on top of the Acropolis until the men are horny enough to declare peace. Cue a metric boatload of dirty jokes, most of which are sanitized in this translation because this book was originally published in 1949. If you have access to a Latin dictionary, though, you can figure out most of them.

Hint to the past: hiding dirty jokes from one ancient language by writing them in a different ancient language doesn’t work.

See Delphi and Die, Lindsey Davis

3 stars

First Sentence: “Marcus, you must help me!”

Thoughts: Falco’s mother-in-law has a problem. Her son Aulus Aelianus is in Greece to study law and she’s worried about him, mainly because she knows him but also because she just got a letter from him with disturbing news. When Aelianus got to Greece, he met up with a group of Roman tourists at Olympia. One of the women in their group had just been murdered. Now he wants Falco to come over to investigate. And so begins Falco’s trip to Greece.

But first: laying the groundwork. This wasn’t the first murder associated with this touring company. Aelianus had mentioned that another woman, Marcella Caesia, had been found dead three years earlier. Falco visits her father and finds him still distraught. Then he visits the family of the recent victim, Valeria Ventidia, and finds them indifferent. Then he meets with the owner of Seven Sights Travel, the ill-fated agency, and finds him annoying. He will not be booking a tour with them.

So Falco and Helena send their daughters Julia and Favonia off to be spoiled by their grandparents and head to Greece. They take Albia, their adopted British daughter, with them along with two of Falco’s nephews and Young Glaucus son of Glaucus, Falco’s trainer at the gym. Nux the dog comes along too.

First stop: Olympia. It’s an off year for the Olympic Games so there’s not much going on there. The Didii visit the famous sites: the gymnasiums, the arenas, the temples. They also take in the Pelops Tour which visits all the sights associated with local mythologic legend Pelops who was one of many people who annoyed the gods and ended up eating his own children. Glaucus is interested in the gyms because he’s planning on competing in the Games one day. Falco’s interested too because that’s where Valeria was killed. Her head had been bashed in with a jumping weight. Falco finds one of the weights in possession of a pankration fighter named Milo of Dodona and ends up getting into a fight with him. Young Glaucus fortunately jumps in and saves Falco, but Milo is injured. A priestess immediately swoops in and carries Milo off to the local temple hospital where he unfortunately dies of his injuries a short time later.

Well, the poison didn’t help him either.

Next up is Corinthus where Falco meets up with the Seven Sights Travel tour group. They’re a motley crew of mismatched people who keep dying off one by one. Valeria’s husband, Statianus, is not with them. Neither is Aelianus. There is a letter from Aelianus, though, telling them that Statianus decided to go to Delphi to consult the oracle about his wife’s death. So it’s off to Delphi for Falco and Helena.

They meet up with Statianus to get his side of the story before he disappears. Inconvenient. They do manage to visit a couple of gymnasiums while they’re there, so it’s not a completely wasted trip.

After a brief stop at another shrine with a claustrophobic oracle, everyone ends up in Athens. They take in the sights of the famous city, sample some of the wine, and then everyone gathers together for a climactic dinner where all the mysteries will be solved in a way no one wanted.

This isn’t one of the better Falco mysteries because there’s too much wandering around. There are good bits (like the claustrophobic oracle) but it takes too long for the pieces to come together. However, this is a good book because it brought back memories of when I visited Delphi on a school trip in 1996. Honestly, we weren’t supposed to be there that day because the entire country was closed for the funeral of a former prime minister. But our tour guide snuck us in anyway because she was nice like that.

We also visited the gymnasiums, although they weren’t in fit condition for sporting events anymore.

Much like Statianus at the party, I’m in this somewhere but I won’t tell you where.

Mythology, Edith Hamilton

5 stars

First Sentence: Greek and Roman mythology is quite generally supposed to show us the way the human race thought and felt untold ages ago.

Thoughts: Edith Hamilton wasn’t my introduction to Greco-Roman mythology. I had a children’s book with big color illustrations and some of the tamer myths retold before I came across this book. Hamilton arrived on the family bookshelf when my Reverend Grandpa moved into a smaller house and had to cut his library down. We also got a copy of Bulfinch’s Mythology, but Hamilton was much smaller and less intimidating than Bulfinch. (I wasn’t able to understand his nineteenth-century prose when I was twelve.) Also, Hamilton’s book had better illustrations.

I love the lines in this picture. I think it’s engraving? I’m not 100% sure. I do know I put some tracing paper on it once and tried to copy it but I got lost in the detail.

As you can tell from the first sentence, there is some attempt to psychoanalyze the ancients in these retellings, but it’s only for a sentence or two and focuses mainly on how the myths changed from religious stories to myths as people’s beliefs in the old gods changed. There’s also a brief paragraph at the beginning of each story that tells what sources Hamilton based her retellings on. From these I learned that she did not have a high opinion of Apollodorus, but she did take a lot of her myths from him.

The first section is the standard introduction to the major and minor gods, their realms, and their importance to the Greeks and Romans. From there we move on to specific stories about the Earth gods, Demeter/Ceres and Dionysus/Bacchus. After that come the creation myths, flower myths, and tales of the earliest heroes, mainly women kidnapped by Zeus who had major landmasses named after them.

From there we go to the main event: love and adventure. The love stories include Cupid & Psyche, Pygmalion, and Daphne. (Love isn’t always successful, after all). The adventures include Bellerophon & Pegasus and Jason & the Argonauts.

After that we start working our way up to the Trojan War with stories of four great heroes before the war, like Hercules and Atalanta. Then comes the war itself (taken mostly from the Iliad), the tale of Odysseus’ wanderings (from the Odyssey) and the founding of Rome (from the Aeneid).

And then we come to my favorite part of the book, the tales of the Great Houses of ancient Greece. We begin with the tales of the House of Atreus* like the sordid death of Agamemnon and the various tragedies that attended his family afterwards and concluding with the miraculous resurrection of the sacrificed Iphigenia.

The House of Thebes is mainly about Oedipus and his incestuous family, including the basis of my favorite Greek play Antigone. The House of Athens isn’t as interesting because there weren’t any (surviving) major Greek dramas based on them, but it does include the story of Philomela.

Following all this familial tragedy we come to the less important myths, some of which are covered in only a paragraph or two. Then we come to Norse mythology which is nowhere near as complete or interesting as the southern myths. The longest chapter (which isn’t saying much) is about Sigurd because of course it is. Hamilton didn’t really care about the Norse myths. She was a Classical scholar and it shows.

Which isn’t a bad thing. I do enjoy me some Greco-Roman tales.

*Quite the dysfunctional house according to my mother’s marginal comment.

Selected Letters and Journals, Lord Byron

3.5 stars

First Sentence: As successive volumes of Byron’s letters have appeared in the Murray-Harvard unexpurgated edition, reviewers and readers in general have been amused, amazed, and impressed with their freshness and vigour, their sparkle and wit and good humour, and their essential honesty and freedom from cant.

Thoughts: Confession time: I love reading other people’s mail. Important caveat: only after they’re dead, though. I wouldn’t think of reading a living person’s letters without their permission because that’s just rude. After death, though, you have no expectation of privacy so I’m going to sift through that box under your bed with all your letters in it. Or I’ll let someone else do that, decipher your handwriting, and publish a book with the good stuff in it.

The history of the twenty-first century will be sorely hurt by the lack of letters. Internet posts just aren’t the same. Or are they?? Time will tell, but if you listen closely in the middle of the night you can hear future historians cursing us through the ages.

Anyway.

This selection of letters begins with his Grand Tour of Europe in 1809. He had to skip most of the central part due to the Napoleonic Wars so instead he visited Portugal, Spain*, Italy, Greece, and Constantinople. From there he returned to England where he attempted the life of a British Lord, got married, and had a child who later made him the grandfather of this machine I’m typing on. Around that time his marriage went extremely sour so he hied off back to the Continent and never returned. He spent most of the rest of his life in Italy before heading off to join the freedom fighters in Greece where he died of early nineteenth century medical practices.

If you’re looking for deep insights into Byron’s life you will not find them here. He does go into detail about his various romantic (mis)adventures, but he doesn’t go too far about what’s going on beneath the surface. For example, he never goes into why his marriage failed. Neither did his wife, at least not in print, so that will forever be one of history’s unsolved mysteries. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. It was personal and none of our business. But we as a species are extremely nosy, especially about people’s love lives, and we want to know the whys, hows, and heretofors. That goes double if it’s a bad relationship.

He also doesn’t go into much detail about his trip to Switzerland with the Shelleys which resulted in Frankenstein and The Vampyre. There is an “Alpine Journal” but it’s more about where he went and what mountains he climbed. That’s more of a hindsight disappointment for me, though. At the time no one had any idea of what would come from that trip. There are a few letters later on where Byron complained about Polidori stealing the idea for The Vampyre from him. To which I say tough. If you wanted it, you should have written it.

There’s an air of tragedy near the end, but that’s mainly because we as future beings know what’s going to happen when Byron gets to Greece. It didn’t seem like a well-advised trip to begin with. The soldiers Byron commanded were more interested in money than liberty and kept trying to bleed him dry. Later the doctors would take care of that oversight. Why did it take people so long to realize that blood works best inside the body?

The book ends with the final entry in his final journal: “On This Day I Complete My Thirty-Sixth Year.” I mention this because tomorrow he would have completed his One Hundred and Thirty-Fourth Year. I plan to celebrate by completing my Forty-Second Year. I expect by this time tomorrow I will have the answer to life, the universe, and everything. I will not share it with you because I’m selfish like that.

*Where he completely failed to learn how the name Juan is pronounced. I will always be mad about that.

The Marathon Conspiracy, Gary Corby

5 stars

First Sentence: Pericles didn’t usually keep a human skull on his desk, but there was one there now.

Thoughts: Pericles clearly doesn’t run around with the same crowd I do. I know several people who, not only would I not be surprised to find a skull on their desk, I would expect it. Now that I think of it, I kind of want a desk skull for myself. It’s the hot new accessory for 2022! Be ahead of the curve!

The one that Pericles had was the skull of a tyrant. Specifically Hippias, the last tyrant of Athens. The Athenians hated him so much that they had an extra battle with the Persians just to make sure he didn’t come back after the Spartans got him and he ran off to Persia. He supposedly died in Persia after the Battle of Marathon where the race comes from. But here is his skull decorating Pericles’ desk. And the rest of his skeleton isn’t too far away. It’s at the Temple of Artemis Brauronia, a local girl’s school a few miles away. Or rather the girl’s school. There was only one at the time. You will be shocked to learn that Diotima attended that school in her youth.

There’s more to this mystery than just a skeleton. There was also a scroll case discovered with the skeleton. Four of the scrolls contained Hippias’ diary. The fifth one is missing. Not only that, the two girls who found the remains ran into some trouble of their own. One was brutally murdered and the other is missing.

Out of all the potential mysteries, the one Pericles is concerned with is Who Killed Hippias? This is important because it’s an election year and if the person who killed Hippias is discovered he will easily win every vote ever. (I cannot emphasize how much the Athenians haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated Hippias.) Nico and Diotima are more concerned about the girls, especially Diotima. Nico is also worried about the missing fifth scroll. Based on the contents of the other four, it’s likely the lost one has the name of Hippias’ killer.

Besides, the trip to Brauron would be a good excuse to get away from their families for a while. Marriage negotiations are progressing and they’ve gotten to the “argue loudly and at great length about who to invite to the wedding” stage.

Our trip through ancient Greece takes us back to the days of the Battle of Marathon, before Our Heroes were born. We learn exactly why the Athenians absolutely despised Hippias and how he gave the word “tyrant” a bad connotation. We get a glimpse at how proper young ladies were educated back then along with their coming-of-age ceremony and how Diotima cheated at hers. We also get a front-row seat to an authentic ancient Greek wedding when Nico and Diotima finally get officially married. And there’s a bonus mystery of Who Was Flashing What on the Side of the Mountain During the Battle of Marathon and What It Meant.

If that’s not enough to tempt you, there’s also a naked lady running around in the woods. And a bear!

The Ionia Sanction, Gary Corby

4 stars

First Sentence: I ran my finger along one foot of the corpse, then the other, making the body swing with a lazy, uncaring rhythm.

Thoughts: Thorion has been found dead in his home, hanging from a rafter. Nico and Pericles were on the scene shortly after—Pericles because he got a strange letter from Thorion hinting at betrayal and Nico because Pericles called him. Pericles is concerned not only because of the hints of betrayal but also because Thorion was the proxenos* to Ephesus. Ephesus is over in Ionia which is part of the Persian Empire which, as you might remember, liked to have wars with Greece at this time.

The initial investigation revealed that Thorion had gotten a scroll with unusual lion carvings on the handles with his regular mail. Later that afternoon he was visited by a white-haired man named Araxes. After Araxes left the scroll was missing and Thorion was dead. Nico points out that since the city gates have been closed for the night, Araxes is probably still in the city. He goes to the gates the next morning to find Araxes and a chase scene ensues. Araxes gets away and Pericles is furious. He threatens to fire Nico if he doesn’t bring back Araxes and/or the scroll.

Further investigations along the port reveal that Araxes had arrived from Ephesus with a young girl that he sent over to be auctioned as a slave. Nico finds the girl and buys her for an unseemly amount of Pericles’ money. The girl turns out to be Asia, youngest daughter of Themistocles, one of the heroes of the Persian War that got himself exiled from Athens shortly afterwards. He is currently living in Magnesia which isn’t far from Ephesus, so Nico and Asia board a ship and sail on over.

Once in Ephesus who do they run into but Diotima, who moved to the Artemesion there after Nico’s father refused to allow them to get married. Fighting ensues, but it’s quickly put aside when Nico discovers that Brion, the proxenos for Athens, is also the same missing person that Diotima is looking for. They find him on the side of the road to Magnesia impaled on a stick with his ears, nose, and tongue cut off. Soon after Nico is arrested by Themistocles’ men for kidnapping Asia.

Once all that is straightened out Our Heroes find themselves with one of the most messed-up families in all of Persia. The oldest son, Cleophantus, is a worthless playboy. The oldest daughter, Mnesiptolema (Nessie) and her husband Archeptolis enjoy spending an evening torturing slaves before indulging in kinky sex. (They’re also brother and sister.) The middle daughter, Nicomanche, is bitter because of her upcoming marriage to Barzanes, the official Emperor Artaxerxes sent over to keep an eye on Themistocles. They’re also up to something that puts the future of Athens at stake.

Messed-up family mysteries are always fun, and this one is no exception. It does drag on a bit in places, but once they get to Magnesia things start to pick up. There’s romance, kink, scheming, lies, and secrets revealed all over the place. There’s also rather graphic descriptions of what happens when someone gets impaled on a sharpened stick. The worst part: it takes a long time to die. Just in time for Halloween, more proof that Vlad the Impaler was a sick, sick man. (And so were the ancient Persians who gave him his inspiration.)

*Roughly equivalent to ambassador.

The Pericles Commission

The Pericles Commission, Gary Corby

5 stars

First Sentence: A dead man fell from the sky, landing at my feet with a thud.

Thoughts: Ladies and gentlemen, let’s give it up for one of the best first sentences of all time!

And so the mystery begins. We’ll start with the easy questions: Who is the dead man and why did he almost land on Our Hero Nicolaos son of Sophroniscus? He is Ephialtes, the father of Athenian democracy and he fell off the Aeropagus after being shot by an arrow. Now the harder questions: Who shot him and why? That’s the rest of the book.

Nico is soon joined by Pericles came down from the Acropolis (or so he claims) where he was killing time before his scheduled meeting with Ephialtes on the Aeropagus the next rock over. Pericles immediately notices the danger: democracy is only a few weeks old and without its leader it will fail. He asks Nico to investigate the murder, promising him a role in the new government if he’s successful. Nico doesn’t want to be a sculptor like his father, so he agrees. Getting his father to agree is more difficult, but eventually Sophroniscus allows Nico to continue his investigations with the promise that if things don’t work out he’ll head back into the workroom and pick up a chisel.

But Nico’s not the only one investigating Ephialtes murder. After a chase through the Agora he captures a woman disguised as a man. The woman is Diotima, Ephialtes daughter from the famous hetaera (courtesan) Euterpe. The reason why she’s concerned about finding her father’s killer leads us into a subplot about the roles of women in ancient Athens which also sets up the relationship between Nico and Diotima, who will end up defying their fathers to get married. I know this because I started this series with the third book.

This book is based on real events. Ephialtes was really the founder of Athenian democracy, although Pericles gets the credit because he kept it going after Ephialtes’ murder which happened as it did in the story. Unlike the story, though, the murder was never completely solved. Oh, they caught the guy who shot Ephialtes, but the people who paid the murderer were never revealed. Or at least they weren’t revealed to the historical record. The reasons why are probably the ones Corby gave: it would have been Politically Inconvenient. The future of democracy was at stake, after all.

If you’re in the mood for a fun, light mystery series steeped in ancient history, I can’t recommend this series enough. Nico can be a bit boneheaded at times, but that’s historically accurate. He’s young yet and he’s also been raised in a very patriarchal society. Diotima is a great foil for him without stretching the accuracy too much. And who can resist the fun of Socrates (of Socrates fame) as the annoying kid brother?