Author’s Note
The Princess of Sparta
When I set out to write this series, I wanted to bring to life a period of history most people only know about through legend. Any history student is familiar with the concept of “Punctuated Equilibrium”. It’s a theory that humankind advances, not gradually, but with giant strides forward at pivotal moments. If history was a novel, these periods of advancement are the climatic ending after uncountable pages/years of status-quo. Nothing could be more true than the twilight years of the Bronze Age.
Over the course of one lifetime, the greatest empires of the ancient world fell to a mysterious power. Cultures that dominated the Near East and the Mediterranean for a thousand years disappeared virtually overnight. As Moses led the Exodus across the Red Sea and Rameses ruled as Pharaoh over Egypt, the heroes of Greek legend walked the earth. These historical figures were contemporaries of each other, their worlds interlinked.
This series is my endeavor to understand that pivotal time in our history under that holistic view. The Mycenaeans were not the awesome power that Homer claimed in verse some 400 years later. They were a small part of a larger world: one dominated by bigger, more powerful realms.
History is written by the victors, and events—like those told by Homer—cannot be fully trusted as truth. Myths told fantastical tales of history, but were also propaganda to support Greek supremacy. As an archaeologist, I was trained to question every source and try to remove cultural bias from my conclusions. While I’ve taken small liberties in my reconstruction of the Trojan War for dramatic purposes, to the best of my knowledge, the socio-political context of the Mycenaean/Near Eastern worlds are true.
The Greek heroes were honorable, brave, and fierce—but they were also human. And like their descendants, some three thousand years later—we are all made vulnerable by love. I hope this tale ignites your curiosity about the world of our ancestors, and perhaps, through retelling their stories, we can learn from their mistakes.
