HERCULES, MY SHIPMATE

In investigation — inventive, creative — of classic lore in the story of the voyage of the Argo, and her crew of Argonauts, in quest for the Golden Fleece. Here, in endless inner stories, religious-differentiations, mythological legends, social customs, is abundant re-creation of Greek hero tales and god myth. There is the massive Hercules, sweetsinging Orpheus, Atlanta, Castor and Pollux, Pelias, Meleager, cup-bearing Hylas, etc. There are the incidents accompanying the quest, and the gathering of the crew; the wonder — adventures — with the women of Lemnos, their escape from the Symplegades, the passage between Scylla and Charybdis, the dangers of the Sirens...and all the strange phenomena on the way to their goal. There is the emphazis on the conflict between the old matriarchy and the coming of the patriarchy; the explanation of the miraculous by plausible detail; the human qualities of the ancient figures of literature. A tour de force that is more than worthwhile in its panorama of the ancient world where scholarship and ingenuity combine for a richly tapestried epic...A new venture for the author of the Claudius books; a work of creative scholarship.