Preview of The Arkadians Summary:

For The Arkadians, Alexander draws on modern archeological and anthropological theories about the development of the Ancient Greek culture, as well as on Ancient Greek mythology.

Originally, so modern theory says, early Greece, long before the Golden Age or the time of Homer (who wrote The Illyiad and The Odyssey), was inhabited by a pastoral matriarchal culture whose chief deities were female and generally were associated with specific territories. For instance, the goddess that would become Athena would have been associated with the territory of Athens, perhaps even specifically with the hills which the Parthenon crowns. The culture that we now think of as the Ancient Greek one migrated into Greece from the north, bringing with it a patriarchal society whose chief gods were male. The mixture of the two cultures resulted in the new one becoming dominant, but nonetheless incorporating in their own mythology the chief deities...