Heroines of Olympus
The Women of Greek Mythology
Ellie Mackin Roberts
Welbeck 2020
Hb, 208pp, £14.99, ISBN 9781787394926
Ancient Greece was not a good place to be a woman. In wartime, women were trophies, as in the tale of Cassandra. It seems that if a man, whether a god or a legendary hero, took a fancy to a woman he had every right to make her pregnant or force her into marriage against her will. Women were the spoils of war, and they were property. There’s a terrifying amount of sexual violence in Greek myth too. I didn’t have to get far into this book to work out that the heroes of Greek legend were anything but. They may have been brave in battle, but they were absolutely obnoxious everywhere else.
Retelling these myths from a feminist perspective demonstrates that in myth, at least, women were depicted outside traditional roles. While many goddesses are occupied with domestic life – hearth, home and childbirth – others, such as Eris, Goddess of Discord, start wars which kill hundreds of mortals just for the Hades of it. And female deities achieve truly legendary levels of fury, rarely tempered with justice; when a goddess is angered, she’s likely to take it out on the victim. Callisto’s rape by Zeus was taken personally by a furious Artemis, punishing Callisto for breaking her vow of celibacy by turning her into a bear and then shooting her. Alternative versions suggest it was Callisto’s son who shot his mother by accident. Either way, upon her death Callisto was taken into the heavens, immortalised as the constellation Ursa Major.
Mackin Roberts tells us that Greek mythology isn’t composed of moral tales. It doesn’t suggest better ways to live; the princess doesn’t escape from the tower into happily ever after. Gods and goddesses have the same foibles as human beings but amplified to the nth degree. The gods eat their young, they (frequently) turn into animals to seduce any girls that take their fancy and they’re not averse to incest. The nymph Daphne was fortunate; better to be turned into a laurel tree than to be ravished by a smitten Apollo.
Heroines of Olympus has four pages on each mythological woman, one of which is a picture in the style of Greek pottery, black silhouetted against an orange background. Switching the focus of Greek myths to bring women, so frequently the supporting cast, to the fore is refreshing and provides a modern take on some very old stories. Heroines of Olympus deserves a place on every school library’s Classics shelf.
Paula Dempsey
★★★★★