Dedicated to Mary Renault, whose well-known series on the Greek hero Theseus and other re-creations of the classical past set a benchmark for historical fiction, The Firebrand chronicles the fall of Troy and the return of King Agamemnon to Greece, bearing as his prize the Trojan princess Kassandra.
Familiar from Homer, Aeschylus, and Euripides, these tales are rendered more fabulous by Renault's use of archeological traditions which celebrate the Bronze Age cultures which were giving way before the invasion of iron-using tribes from the north. These tribes also brought with them new gods, the Olympians, and new social forms, the patriarchal rule of state and family and the subjection and enclosure of women. The closing scene of Bradley's novel, far different from that of Aeschylus, adopts a tradition discovered in a tablet in Athens' Archaeological.....
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