Mythica (2026)

In Mythica, classicist and historian Emily Hauser uncovers the extraordinary true stories of the women behind some of the Western worlds greatest legends and the ancient epics of Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey. Drawing on original texts, recent archaeological discoveries and the latest DNA studies, she explores who these queens, mothers, warriors and slaves were, how they lived, and how history has remembered them. This English-language history book offers a new account of the Bronze Age Aegean and follows Homers epics through the lives of Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra, Aphrodite, Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope, reassessing the reality behind the often-mythologized women of ancient Greece and the ancient world itself.