Women might appear to have played a minor part in Homer’s world but, as award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser assures us, nothing could have been further from the truth. Taking her readers on a genuinely epic tour of the ancient world, she unearths not just the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends, but also the real heroes of those stirring epic tales The Iliad and Odyssey.

The names of these legendary women are familiar but in this story we glimpse for the first time the truth behind the myth. By following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, and studying recent archaeological finds and DNA studies, Hauser reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has until now failed to remember them.

‘intellectually thrilling . . . blending history and science, rigorous scholarship and dazzling feats of imagination.’ 

Tom Holland