For the Most Beautiful (42 page)

Aegean (Sea), the
–

The part of the Mediterranean Sea that separates the mainland of Greece from what is now the mainland of Turkey.

Argos
–

A city in Ancient Greece and capital of one of the states of Greece, ruled over by Diomedes.

Aulis
–

A town in northern Greece (modern
Avlida
) where the Greek fleet gathered to set off to Troy.

Black Sea, the
–

A sea in the north-eastern Mediterranean almost entirely surrounded by land and connected to the Mediterranean by the narrow strait of the Hellespont (now called the Dardanelles).

Colonae
–

A town in the Troad just south of Troy, ruled over by Poseidon's son Cycnus.

Cranae
–

A small island off the Laconian coast in Greece, where Paris and Helen were said to have spent their first night together.

Dardanian Plain
–

The plain around Troy, so called after Dardanos, a legendary king of Troy.

Egypt
–

One of the most powerful ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean, builders of the famous pyramids and a key player in Bronze Age politics and trade, the Egyptian pharaohs exported grain, paper, gold and linen around the Mediterranean.

Ethiopia
–

A distant and mythical land in Homer, located at the end of the earth. The gods often go to feast with the Ethiopians, who are noble and godly people.

Gargarus
–

The topmost peak of Mount Ida.

Greece
–

Homeland of the Greeks, comprising the city states of Argos, Ithaca, Mycenae, Phthia, Pylos and Sparta, among others.

Hades
–

Both the god of the Underworld and the name of the Underworld itself, where the ancients believed that the spirits of the dead went to spend eternity. It was reached by crossing the River Styx in a boat ferried by a man called Charon. There were several different parts to the Underworld: Tartarus, where the wicked were punished, the Elysian Fields, where the heroes went, and the Isles of the Blessed, the ultimate destination and eternal paradise.

Ida, Mount
–

The largest mountain on the Trojan plain and the home of the gods.

Ithaca
–

A rocky island to the west of mainland Greece ruled over by Odysseus.

Larisa
–

The hometown of Polydamas and Krisayis, called Chryse in the
Iliad
but changed in this book to avoid confusion with Krisayis' name. Although the exact location of the ancient city of Chryse is unknown, it is most often identified with the site of a Hellenistic temple to Apollo on the south-west coast of the Troad, near the modern village of Gülpinar.

Lemnos
–

An island to the west of Troy.

Lesbos
–

A large island to the south-west of the Troad.

Lycia
–

An ancient Anatolian civilization in what is now south-western Turkey. It is ruled over by Sarpedon, king of the Lycians and a Trojan ally, who brings his troops to Troy to help with the war.

Lyrnessus
–

The town ruled over by Prince Mynes and his parents, King Ardys and Queen Hesione, and the later home of Briseis. Although the location of the city is unknown, Lyrnessus clearly lay between Pedasus and Thebe in Homer's description of the geography of the Troad. It is now thought to have occupied the hill of Antandros in modern Altınoluk, on the southern coast of the Troad a few miles south of the slopes of Mount Ida.

Maeonia
–

A region to the south of the Troad.

Mycenae
–

A city in the Peloponnese, one of the largest in the ancient Greek Bronze Age world. It was ruled over by King Agamemnon and was rediscovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1876. The ruins of the impressive palace can be seen today. Mycenae was famous for its gold: Homer calls it ‘rich in gold'.

Mysia
–

A region to the east of the Troad.

Ocean
–

The ancient Greeks believed that the ocean encircled the whole world like a river around a flat disc of land. The sun and moon were thought to rise and set from the waters of the ocean.

Olympus, Mount
–

A mountain in northern Greece and the home of the Olympian gods.

Pedasus
–

The hometown of Briseis on the southern shore of the Troad. It is usually identified with modern Assos.

Scaean Gates
–

The western gates of the upper city of Troy, and the main gates leading towards the seashore and the battleground.

Scamander, the
–

One of the two rivers that runs across the Trojan plain. It was believed that the river was also a god: Homer describes him fighting on the side of the Trojans against Achilles in the war.

Sparta
–

A city in the south of Greece ruled by Menelaus and Helen and the later home of the famous Spartan warriors.

Styx, the
–

The river that formed the boundary between earth and the Underworld; to enter the Underworld the ferryman Charon had to be paid to take the dead across. It was seen as sacred by the gods: they would often swear oaths by the River Styx. Its waters were thought to confer immortality, and it is into the River Styx that Thetis dips her son Achilles in the hope of making him immortal.

Taygetus, Mount
–

A mountain range in the Peloponnese, the southern peninsula of Greece, near Sparta.

Tenedos
–

A small island just off the coast of Troy.

Thebe
–

City of Andromache, Hector's wife, and ruled over by King Eëtion. The exact location of Thebe is uncertain, but most scholars identify it with the modern town of Edremit, on the coast south of Mount Ida.

Thrace
–

The mountainous region to the north of Thessaly in Greece.

Troad, the
–

The peninsula in the north-western part of Turkey on which the city of Troy was built, today called the Biga Peninsula. It includes the cities of Troy, Larisa, Chryse, Pedasus, Lyrnessus and Thebe among others, as well as Mount Ida.

Troy
–

The ancient city of King Priam, which was besieged by the Greek forces of King Agamemnon around the twelfth century
BC
. It was rediscovered by Heinrich Schliemann in 1871 on the hill of Hisarlık in north-western Turkey. Its ruins can be visited today.

Underworld, the
–

Also called Hades, this was where the ancients believed that the spirits of the dead went to spend eternity. It was reached by crossing the River Styx in a boat ferried by Charon. There were several different parts to the Underworld: Tartarus, where the wicked were punished, the Elysian Fields, where the heroes went, and the Isles of the Blessed, the eternal paradise.

The
Iliad

Translations from the Ancient Greek

Fagles, Robert.
The Iliad
. London: Penguin, 1991.

Fitzgerald, Robert.
The Iliad
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.

Lattimore, Richmond.
The Iliad
. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.

Lombardo, Stanley.
The Iliad
. Indiana: Hackett, 1997.

Secondary Reading

Silk, Michael.
Homer: The Iliad
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Schein, Seth.
The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad
. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Homer

Fowler, Robert (ed.)
The Cambridge Companion to Homer
. Cambridge: Cambridge Press, 2004.

Griffin, Jasper.
Homer
. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1980.

Kirk, Geoffrey.
Homer and the Epic
. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1965.

The Trojan War

Strauss, Barry.
The Trojan War: A New History
. London: Hutchinson, 2007.

Thomas, Carol and Craig Conant.
The Trojan War
. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2005.

Wood, Michael.
In Search of the Trojan War
. (dir. Bill Lyons) BBC, 1985.

The Bronze Age World

Mylonas, George.
Mycenae and the Mycenaean Age
. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966.

Osborne, Robin.
Homer's Society
, in
The Cambridge Companion to Homer
, Robert Fowler (ed.), 206–219. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004.

Emily Hauser
studied Classics at Cambridge, where she was taught by Mary Beard. She then went to Harvard on a Fulbright Scholarship, and now studies and teaches at Yale, where she is completing her PhD.
For the Most Beautiful
– the first book in a trilogy based on the myths of the Golden Apples – is her debut novel.

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