Since I’ve begun working on the next in my Bronze Age Crete Mystery series (beginning with In the Shadow of the Bull)

I’ve been doing research. The first book is Arcadian Days, a retelling of several of the Greek myths.

I’ve read in the Edith Hamilton collection of myths – in eighth grade. The retelling by Spurling lays out those myths he chooses in a much clearer way. My goodness, the Greeks were a bloodthirsty lot. I don’t know how they slept at night. The story of Medea is the stuff of nightmares.

Jason, of Jason and the Argonauts, meets Medea when he goes for the Golden Fleece. She agrees to help him if he will marry her and he agrees. Big mistake! As they are fleeing with the fleece, she arrives on board with a bundle, which turns out to be her step-brother. As her father pursues them, she slits the toddler’s throat and dismembers him, throwing limbs in the water so her father will stop and pick them up.

It doesn’t get any more cheerful from here. Medea, it is apparent, is a psychopath.

Other myths are no so violent but all of the families, no matter how favored by the Gods they seem, have terrible lives.Greek Myths