Review of Mythica by Emily Hauser
Title: Mythica
Author: Emily Hauser
Genre: History, Non-Fiction, Mythology, Feminism
Year Published: 2025
My Rating: 5/5
Blurb:
Did you love Madeline Miller’s Circe? Pat Barker’s The Silence of the Girls? Jennifer Saint's Elektra? Natalie Haynes’ A Thousand Ships?
But did you ever wonder who the real women behind the myths of the Trojan War were?
Now award-winning classicist and historian Emily Hauser takes readers on an epic journey to uncover the astonishing true story of the real women behind ancient Greece’s greatest legends – and the real heroes of those ancient epics, Homer's Iliad and Odyssey.
Because, contrary to perceptions built up over three millennia, ancient history is not all about men – and it's not only men's stories that deserve to be told . . .
In Mythica Emily Hauser tells, for the first time, the extraordinary stories of the real women behind some of the western world’s greatest legends. Following in their footsteps, digging into the history behind Homer’s epic poems, piecing together evidence from the original texts, recent astonishing archaeological finds and the latest DNA studies, she reveals who these women – queens, mothers, warriors, slaves – were, how they lived, and how history has (or has not – until now) remembered them.
A riveting new history of the Bronze Age Aegean and a journey through Homer’s epics charted entirely by women – from Helen of Troy, Briseis, Cassandra and Aphrodite to Circe, Athena, Hera, Calypso and Penelope – Mythica is a ground-breaking reassessment of the reality behind the often-mythologized women of Greece’s greatest epics, and of the ancient world itself as we learn ever more about it.
Review
"So, Muse: tell me about a woman."
This book was perfect for me. I studied Ancient History at university and fell in love with it. However, as I learnt more, I realised there was something missing. Before learning about Classics and history in depth, I had never realised that there was so much history about men and their conquests, myths, beliefs and lives but so little regarding women. We are aware of myths and poetry (mainly written by men, but perhaps repeated orally by women) about queens, witches and goddesses; but there is so little history on the everyday lives of women.
Emily Hauser recognises this fault in history and tries to rectify it in this book. She looks at Homer's portrayal of women and compares the prose to tangible archaeological evidence through a feminist lens.
I found that her writing was deeply informative and managed to convey her views without the book becoming too dense or tedious. She also relayed findings from technical studies (such as radiocarbon dating and finding out what people ate from their teeth) and explained the science of it succinctly so that the layman could easily understand.
However, a lot of the time I thought Hauser was going off on an (interesting) tangent, but it always looped back to the first point she made. I found that she relayed information very well and argued her points so expertly I couldn't help but read every chapter slowly and methodically.
I feel, along with Hauser herself, that every subject she talked about regarding these silenced women mattered immensely and that it is important to give them their voice once again. Furthermore, she named other female authors and their novels that have also explored and argued for the same thing: these silenced women must be heard. I also feel that her championing other women is uplifting and inspiring, in a world that is so selfish and competitive. I believe that it's important to be inspired for and advocate for other women, because the world would have us do the opposite in order to have the patriarchal annotations of history perpetuated.
In this vein, I feel that Hauser has challenged the historical narrative paradigm that is created and upheld by men who have left out important things that they believed did not matter.
Overall, I believe this was a well-written and informative book that has a place in my heart, forever. I read an ARC but I will buy my own copy!