Most Soviet children of my generation were probably quite knowledgeable about Greek mythology. And we owe this to the magnificent book by Nikolai Kun, Legends and Myths of Ancient Greece. Moreover, after having spent quite a bit of time recently with real Greeks, it seems to me that we knew their mythology better than they did.
That said, even I don’t remember much now. So, what do we remember about Perseus? That he killed Medusa the Gorgon, who could turn people to stone with a single glance, and that he avoided looking at her directly by using her reflection in his shield. And that’s about the extent of my knowledge after all these years.
The same goes for many other characters. The book contained an enormous number of them, but we mostly focused on the feats of various heroes: Perseus, Theseus, Heracles, the Argonauts… That’s who was interesting. As for the rest, we left them behind. Can you remember the names of Perseus’ grandchildren? Or that he even had grandchildren? And do you know who was Heracles’ mortal father (since Zeus was his official dad)?
Well, Perseus’ grandson and Heracles’ mortal father were actually the same person—Amphitryon. It was he whom H.L. Oldie made the main character of their dilogy The Grandson of Perseus, the third book in their Achaean cycle. The first was A Hero Must Be Alone (dedicated to the story of Heracles), followed by the dilogy Odysseus, Son of Laertes. It was with the first of these that I began my acquaintance with Oldie’s books.
The Grandson of Perseus was written in 2011-2012, but I only got around to reading it now.
The first part, My Grandfather is the Exterminator, tells the story of Amphitryon as a teenager, who idolizes his stern grandfather, Perseus. And although the book is “almost” written from Amphitryon’s perspective, the first part isn’t really about him. It’s about the Perseus we don’t know. This isn’t the young hero but a formidable ruler of Tiryns, locked in an unforgiving war with his half-brother Dionysus, who aspires to become an Olympian god. Meanwhile, Perseus guides his beloved grandson.
The second part, Son of the Lame Alcaeus, begins when Amphitryon, a hero of “about twenty-five,” returns home from his military campaign. He finds his homeland in a difficult time, plagued by raids from pirate Teleboans, with his father and uncles also dealing with their issues involving their relatives, the Pelopids.
And as always with Oldie’s books, you realize that a hero’s fate is far from easy. And that descendants, in their myths, will remember things quite differently. Forget the descendants—sometimes even the heroes themselves struggle to remember what actually happened just yesterday. Only the “wise men, oh, the wise men know!”
These books from the Achaean cycle are often called “alternative Greek mythology,” and this is a hallmark of Oldie’s style. However, I think it’s not so much an alternative history as it is a different perspective on the events. It’s based on known facts but offers a new interpretation. Oldie frequently build stories by filling in the gaps left unsaid in history.
In this interpretation lies both the strength and the weakness of Oldie’s books, in my opinion. The strength is in how they often turn everything upside down. Starting with the story of Heracles, it’s truly interesting to see how an apparently straightforward story can be completely reimagined. But the weakness is that, for full immersion and understanding of all the hints and subtleties, the reader has to know the “original” story almost as well as a specialist. Otherwise, you might miss a lot. Sometimes you catch yourself thinking, “They’re trying to tell me something here, but I don’t get it.” And no one likes feeling a little dumb 😉 Luckily, we’re still somewhat familiar with Greek mythology.
This last trait is why I rarely give Oldie’s books a perfect rating. But nearly all of them are a pleasure to read. I especially enjoyed that I could now perceive the descriptions of nature and surroundings in a different light, having lived in a Greek-speaking country for almost five years. You start to experience the described way of life differently.
I devoured both volumes, reading them in snatches at night and during business trips. I thoroughly enjoyed them and now even feel like rereading some of their other works.
My rating: 4.5/5
[…] Cycle,” but I didn’t get to the third one until many years later. Although “The Grandson of Perseus” is the third book in the cycle, it’s the first one chronologically, as it tells the story […]
[…] after reading The Grandson of Perseus and A Hero Must Be Alone, it was finally time to reread the third book in Henry Lion Oldie‘s […]