I apologize again for my dearth of recent posts. I am hoping to get at least one real post published before the end of this month and eventually to get back to posting more regularly. There are various reasons why I haven’t been posting as much lately as I used to, but a major part of the reason is because over the past few months, I have been doing an enormous amount of reading and I have been devoting nearly all my writing time toward working intensely on the historical fiction novel I have in progress.
As of the time I am writing this update, I currently have over 36,500 words (110 pages) of the novel written. I previously had even more written, but, as I discuss below, I decided to cut the entire second part of the novel, which made my current draft much shorter than the previous one. My target length for the first complete draft is between 75,000 and 90,000 words, so I am a little less than halfway finished. Although the book has been through a few different titles in the time I’ve been working on it and the title may end up changing before it is finally published, the current working title is Mother of the Gods.
I have decided to cut what I originally planned as part two of the novel, at least for now, and to expand what I originally planned as part one (the story set in Athens in the mid-fourth century BCE) into the full novel. I’m doing this partly because, despite connections between the two stories and common themes, they were growing distantly related enough that it felt like they could stand on their own and I decided that, of the two stories, part one is the story that I had made more progress in writing, the one that I personally like better, and the one that I think most readers will enjoy more.
This novel is very different from most modern stories set in ancient Greece because it is not about mythic heroes or heroines or about famous kings and generals. Although it does contain some violence, there are no epic battle scenes. Instead, the story is primarily focused on the lives of fictional, but historically realistic, women in a real historical context.
Specifically, the plot centers on the spiritual and intellectual journey of the narrator-protagonist Peisithea, a young Athenian aristocratic woman who is intelligent, well-read, and insatiably curious, but also anxious, depressed, secluded, and eccentric, as she deals with various personal struggles and obstacles and eventually becomes involved in the mystery cult of the Mother of the Gods. The reliability of her narration is open to question from the beginning and readers may assess for themselves whether she is delusional or sane.
The novel is extremely queer. In fact, essentially all the major characters may be described in modern terms as queer in some sense or another, including Peisithea, who, from the very first chapter, obsessively desires her (female) best friend since childhood Kallimetis, but, due to her anxiety, is unable to express her desire.
The novel as a whole is not a myth retelling in the conventional sense, but it deals extensively with the role that religion and myth play in shaping people’s lives, perceptions, and sense of meaning and purpose. I suspect that many fans of recent feminist myth retellings will enjoy this book.
One of my foremost goals in writing this novel is to make it as rigorously historically authentic and richly detailed as possible in its portrayal of the culture, society, and physical space of Athens in the mid-fourth century BCE. Every aspect of the historical setting is either directly based on at least one surviving ancient primary source or is a plausible guess based on limited surviving evidence.
The book is also full of references that readers who know about ancient Greek history and literature will be excited to catch, but catching these references isn’t crucial to understanding the story, so less informed readers will still be able to enjoy the story. Although the main characters are all fictional, several real historical figures do appear at various points in the novel, including some notable Greek philosophers (although they are not the philosophers whom most readers will expect).
As a component of trying to make the setting as historically accurate as possible, I try very hard not to shy away from, gloss over, or romanticize the darker aspects of Greek society in this period (such as the extremely high rate of infant and child mortality, the subjugation and lack of agency that free women faced, and the harrowing realities of ancient slavery). As a result, some parts of the novel may make some readers uncomfortable. Nonetheless, the book also contains elements of joy, excitement, and wonder amid the admittedly depressing social conditions and, although the ending is unconventional, it is a happy one for the main characters.
What about the PhD?
You must have missed my previous update. I applied to PhD programs this year for the second time and didn’t get into a single program. I came very close to getting into the classics program at UCLA, since I was the first one on the waitlist, but all of the applicants to whom they made offers of admission in the first round decided to accept. I’m most likely going to apply to PhD programs again for the third time later this year, but, at this point, I’ve already given it my best shot twice, I haven’t had any luck, and I’m questioning whether applying to a PhD in this field is even a sound decision in the first place. Even if I do get into a PhD program on my next try, I won’t enter the program until August 2025. This novel is a passion project I’m working on in the meantime. I am also currently looking for a job to work for at least the next year.
I find it super interesting
If you need a beta reader, I’m right here! (experienced beta reader and proofreader, queer myself, some relevant cultural knowledge)
Thanks for the offer! I will definitely remember it. Currently, though, I’m still working on the novel and don’t have enough written to send it to beta readers. The first round of beta readers at least will most likely be some of my friends from my MA program.
Good to get another update on your writing (and a new regular article would be nice too)! I guess, since you split off the second part of the book, it could be a second novel if you are satisfied with the one you’re working on now? I’m also interested in what your (non-ancient) inspirations are for this work, but maybe that is more appropriate when one can actually read a copy
Yes, if I finish this novel and I am satisfied with it, I will try to expand what I originally planned as part two into its own novel.
The greatest influences on the novel by far are Greek myth (especially the myths of Teiresias and Agdistis/Kybele), ancient Greek literature (especially the Homeric epics, Hesiod’s Works and Days, the Homeric Hymns, Sappho and the other Archaic Greek lyric poets, Sophokles, Euripides, Herodotos, Plato, Xenophon, Aristophanes, Erinna, Menandros, the Greek Anthology, Ovid, Loukianos, the Greek novels, etc.), and modern historical scholarship about ancient Greece.
The novel does, of course, bear some influence from modern works of fiction, but the influence of modern fiction is far less pervasive and is extremely heterogeneous. Some modern fictional works that I think have influenced various parts of the novel in various ways include (off the top of my head, in no particular order) Pierre Louÿs’s The Songs of Bilitis and Aphrodite: Mœurs antiques, Virginia Woolf’s Orlando, the HBO drama series Rome, the novels of Mary Renault, Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, Yann Martel’s Life of Pi, Jeffrey Eugenides’s Middlesex, Madeline Miller’s The Song of Achilles and Circe, Céline Sciamma’s film Portrait of a Lady on Fire, and various other novels, short stories, television shows, and films.
I will honestly admit that the influences from modern fiction don’t solely derive from literary and historical fiction. High fantasy, especially George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire (along with the HBO series Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon), has influenced how I think about constructing and introducing readers to the world of the story. Even though my novel is set in the real world, the process and techniques of introducing a modern reader to a historical context with which they are unfamiliar are very similar to the process and techniques of introducing them to an entirely fictional world; the main difference is that, with historical fiction, the “facts” about the world to which one is introducing one’s readers come from historical sources rather than the author’s imagination. The novel even frankly contains some influence from Gothic and Lovecraftian horror in some passages, particularly those describing Peisithea’s vivid, anxiety-induced, recurring nightmares.
I’m sure that this list of influences will only grow longer and more eclectic as I write more of the book.
Thanks for the detailed answer! Very interesting to see this list of works. As you say it is highly varied, but it seems our tastes do intersect at least a little, which may be a good sign that I might enjoy your book.
Since as you say every aspect of the background is based on ancient sources or scholarly opinion, maybe you should do a footnoted edition! (although that would probably be a lot of work for a novel)
Dear Spencer,
I do not know why I read what you write; our interests diverge so sharply. But your insights and writing about ancient times are so fine that I have a (fortunately, well-restrained) impulse to strangle those who denied you a fellowship for graduate study in history. Do not abandon your passion for history, however much you may acquire new passions. And do not expect too much from your writings, whether history or fiction. The market and its gatekeepers are cruel.
I suspect that the rejections you have received are based on prejudiced reactions to your appearance and perhaps to your idiosyncrasies in personal interactions. Eighty years ago, I met my two beautiful cousins, Molly, then 15, and the still more beautiful Marcia, then 13. For several years after, until puberty started my hormones flowing, no girl looked beautiful to me unless she looked like my fine cousins. The rest of my life I have learned to see beauty that lies hidden within.
You are beautiful.
Love,
Danny
Thank you for your kind words and encouragement.
That being said, I am quite certain that my lack of admission offers from PhD programs certainly has nothing whatsoever to do with my physical appearance, especially considering that no images of me were included in any of my applications and four of the six programs I applied to did not even interview me, so the members of the graduate admission committees for those programs did not even know what I look like when they decided not to admit me.
Moreover, I’ve talked to multiple of my professors and I think I already have a pretty good idea of the some reasons why I’m having so much difficulty getting into a PhD program and none of them are really appearance-related. Both times I’ve applied to PhD programs, I’ve only applied to top programs, which are among the most selective and difficult programs to get into in the world. Each top program usually only admits two or three applicants out of over a hundred per year. These programs also overwhelmingly favor applicants from highly prestigious institutions, which I have not attended. Additionally, both times I have applied, I have also used as my writing sample research that I’ve conducted on the cult of Kybele in the Greek world, which is a topic that no faculty at any PhD-granting institution in the U.S. currently specializes in and I think most academics perceive as an extremely niche, not very important topic.
The part of your comment about you having had the hots for your cousins was entirely irrelevant and unnecessary in my opinion. That is information I wish I hadn’t received.
Excellent! Looking good!
PS I know Ares isn’t the patron god of Sparta but knowing Sparta’s more…spotty win/lose record, it feels fitting just not in the way one might expect.
Thanks for your kind words!
Regarding Ares and Sparta, Ares’s win/lose record is a lot spottier than you might expect. There are more famous myths about Ares losing in battle than him actually winning. In the Iliad 5, the mortal Achaian hero Diomedes wounds Ares on the battlefield and Ares flees back to Mount Olympos, where Zeus tells him that he hates him more than any of the other Olympians. In the same book, Zeus tells Aphrodite about how the Giants Otos and Ephialtes once captured Ares and trapped him in a bronze jar for thirteen months and Ares only got out because Hermes rescued him. In yet another myth told in several sources including Libanios’s Narrations 7, Ares goes to Hephaistos’s forge to try to capture him and force him to come back to Mount Olympos to unchain Hera, but Hephaistos beats him by spraying him with flaming molten metal, which sends Ares running back to Olympos.
Of course he lost all that.
Even if he’s not Sparta’s patron god, it would be fitting if he was. Two spotty winning records.
I will certainly buy your book as soon as it is available and I would seriously consider beta-reading it as well, though it appears you have volunteers already.
Thank you so much! I will remember your offer.
Hello Spencer
I just discovered you (read your article about the Library of Alexandria and Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. Instant fan! Looking forward to reading more of your blogs and your novel!
Keep it up!
Thank you so much! As I mention, I’ve been focusing more on the novel in recent months, which is the reason why I haven’t had as many recent posts.
I will also note that my older posts were written while I was in undergrad or even (for the very early posts) high school, I haven’t gone back through all of them, and some of them almost certainly contain factual inaccuracies that I haven’t corrected, so take older posts, especially those from over four years ago or so, with a grain or two of salt.
At least the Adam Ruins Everything and dinosaur article are still accurate.
Congratulations on writing a novel!
I know it’s only tangentially related to your field of interest and expertise, but I think you’d love some of the tales of Ivo Andrić, Yugoslavia’s only Nobel-prize-winning writer.
I say this because he deals with pre-industrial Balkan peasant life with a brilliant, beautiful, touching but also often harrowing and dark intensity, not shying away from the vile side of the society he knew so well, including the plight of women. I know it’s not ancient Greece or Rome, but there are commonalities to all preindustrial societies, especially ones so geographically and – to a lesser extent – culturally close to the cradles of classical antiquity.
If you can get your hands on any of his works translated into English, I suspect you might very much enjoy them. I’d especially recommend the novelette Mara the Concubine (assuming it is actually translated into English, which it may not be)
But The Bridge on the Drina is definitely translated and worth a read.
On a much more narrowly classical-historical note, have you thought about doing a deep dive into anthropometrics as a tool for estimating the standards of living in preindustrial societies, especially Ancient Rome and Greece?
There is some absolutely WILD disagreement between serious experts on the topic, from hyper-optimists like Geoffrey Kron to relative pessimists like Walther Scheidel.
I’ve been on something of an amateur reading binge about anthropometrics and preindustrial living standards lately, with regard to ancient societies but also Tsarist Russia, which has its own optimist and pessimist schools, so I’ve been wondering if you’d like to give us your informed classicist opinion on these matters.
Good luck on your novel, Spencer. How are you going to publish it? Are you going to publish it as an e-book? I have some experience with Amazon Kindle e-book publishing. It is very easy. You just download a software to convert Word document to Kindle document and then upload it to the Amazon publishing website. Based on the price you give it provides you with some royalty as well. A friend of mine had experience with Apple iBooks and he said that the process was very easy.
Do you have any cover art? I know you draw as well. Are you thinking of including any illustrations?
Dear Spencer,
Congratulations on successfully defending your thesis. I look forward to reading it when it’s fully available.
As for your novel, I’d recommend submitting it to Candlemark and Gleam – a small publishing house that specializes in diverse speculative fiction. Moreover, it’s run by Athena Andreadis, a feminist biologist of Greek descent who likes accurate fiction set in Hellas.
An alternate publisher would be Hadley Rille Books, which published Jenny Blackford’s The Priestess and the Slave (2009), which is also historical fiction set in ancient Greece.
Best of luck to you.
Are you available to answer questions about subjects you’ve previously written about, or should I wait until you’re done your novel?
I am more than happy to answer questions if I know the answers!
Okay. If Persephone was indeed imagined in ancient Greece to be with Hades during the summer (and return in the autumn), why does the Homeric Hymn to Demeter (line 401) use the word εἰαρινοῖσι? See https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0138%3Ahymn%3D2%3Acard%3D398
This word refers to spring (https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=ei%29arino%5Bi%3Dsi%5D&la=greek&can=ei%29arino%5Bi%3Dsi%5D0&prior=eu)w/de%5Bsin%5D&d=Perseus:text:1999.01.0137:hymn=2:card=398&i=1) or does it, necessarily? And did not Plutarch say the spring was called Persephone? (https://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Roman/Texts/Plutarch/Moralia/Isis_and_Osiris*/E.html)
These are good points, but they don’t necessarily prove anything.
First, the entire passage of Homeric Hymn 2.387–405, including line 401 itself, is substantially corrupt in the manuscript tradition and the word “εἰαρινο[ῖσι]” itself is partly a modern supplement. You may notice that Perseus (as well as Allen’s OCT edition of the text and other scholarly editions) have the latter part of the word bracketed; that’s because the surviving manuscripts for this section don’t have the full word. Modern scholars have assumed it was supposed to say “εἰαρινο[ῖσι],” but we can’t be sure that that is what any ancient version of the text actually said.
Additionally, in the line, the word “εἰαρινο[ῖσι]” is used as an adjective to describe the flowers, not the season in which the flowers appear. We don’t know how wide the semantic range of the word ἐαρινός was in the Archaic Period and we also have to take into account the fact that Homeric Hymn 2 most likely originates from the oral poetic tradition, in which poets used standard formulaic phrases to fill out lines. It is possible that, in oral formulaic poetry, the word ἐαρινός could be used as a generic epithet to describe flowers in any season. It is perilous to base one’s interpretation of the whole poem on a single corrupt word in a possibly formulaic expression.
Regarding your second point, Plutarch doesn’t say that the spring was called “Persephone” everywhere throughout the Greek world; instead, he cites the fourth-century BCE historian Theopompos as having said that western Greeks (i.e., Greeks in Italy and the western Mediterranean) called the spring “Persephone.” This regional specificity is important because different regions of the Greek world had different prevailing myths and interpretations of myths, which sometimes differed drastically from those prevalent in other regions.
In any case, this poses no problem for my interpretation; Plutarch does not say why the western Greeks according to Theopompos called the spring “Persephone” and it is entirely plausible (even likely, in my opinion) that they did so because this was the season in which they believed that Hades abducted Persephone and took her to the underworld. Homeric Hymn 2 itself strongly suggests that the abduction takes place in spring; it states that Persephone was gathering flowers in a meadow and that Hades used a magnificent flower as a snare to lure her into his clutches.
Thanks for the response, in any case. Persephone being abducted in the spring might make sense if she stayed with Hades during the summer and came back in the fall. Fascinating. I think these discussions are certainly worth having.
Yes! Thank you for raising these points. I appreciate the fact that you clearly did some research to come up with them.
One of the things I love about the point I’ve reached with writing this blog is that I have garnered such intelligent readers. For my first few years of writing on here, I received almost no comments because there was almost no one reading anything I wrote. After I started to attract readers (mostly as a result of writing on Quora), for several years, I got so many comments (both here and on Quora) full of false or exaggerated claims, deranged conspiracy theories, bigotry, and so forth that I honestly found it really exasperating and I often dreaded receiving new comments.
Over roughly the past four years, though, I’ve noticed a shift in the kinds of comments I receive. I think it’s partly because I changed my comment policy from one of approving absolutely any comment that anyone left to one of somewhat greater selectivity, partly because as I’ve learned more and matured as a person my content has grown more sophisticated and as a result it tends to appeal to more thoughtful and educated readers, and partly because thoughtful, genuinely curious readers tend to stick around while the Nazis and conspiracy theorists tend to come and go. Whatever the case may be, over the past three or four years, I’ve noticed an increase in the number of thoughtful, intelligent comments with people asking sincere questions, sharing real knowledge related to the topic, presenting real evidence when contesting my claims, and so forth. Seeing someone cite the Greek text of Homeric Hymn to Demeter along with Plutarch’s On Isis and Osiris honestly made me feel a bit better about the world today.
I still get some crazy/hateful comments, but I mostly don’t approve those.
Now, I’m pretty sure you haven’t written about this particular topic, but it’s still related to your area of expertise, i.e. classical to late antiquity.
What do you know about the debate about biological standards of living and anthropometrics in the ancient world? Especially with regard to the hyper-optimistic school of Geoffrey Kron?
https://www.academia.edu/36943875/Ancient_social_equality_biological_standards_of_living_and_demographic_development_in_comparative_perspective
This is just a presentation, but the full paper is available for free online. I can mail it to you or something if you have trouble finding it.
On a related note, I’ve also spent some time on r/AskHistorians, and some of the more reputable admins there said that the common narrative about the bulk of the Roman peasantry being driven out of their homes and farmsteads by latifundia-owning slave-masters and swelling the ranks of the urban poor is largely a modern conceit with little backing in classical sources, even the populist ones, a sentiment Kron also echoes.
Also, good luck with your book! And if you’re interested in the lives of ordinary working people/peasants in preindustrial society more generally, including the position of women, I can recommend anything written by Ivo Andrić. Sadly, most of it probably isn’t translated, but “The Bridge on the Drina” definitely is.
It’s incredibly bleak at times, but also vital and strangely comforting and inexplicably beautiful all the same.
There’s a particularly brilliant and particularly gut-wrenching story called “The Slave Woman” which is short enough that I could actually translate it for you at some point, if you think it might help inspire you to better understand the harrowing thoughts that go through a person’s mind as they recon with the catastrophic loss of their community and the inevitability of a life of servitude.
Did my comment about Persephone get lost, or is it still awaiting approval?
She is very kind, she approves almost all comments.
Hello Spencer my name is sha for short and I have so many questions I want to discuss with you do you have a discord or a site so we can chat?