I feel like modern ‘retellings’ of Greek mythos (especially the Homeric epics) have a tendency to glaze over the horrors of it all in favour of romanticising the men. Achilles was a butcher, who was indirectly responsible for the deaths of many of his own men including Patroklos by his refusal to fight after Agamemnon stole his ‘prize’ (a woman, and therefore slave, Briseis). In Euripides’ telling, Odysseus convinces the council to allow him to kill Hector and Andromache’s infant son, Astyanax, by throwing him from the city walls when Troy falls (he also kills him in Iliou persis). Hecuba, queen of Troy, is enslaved by Odysseus following the fall, and in one telling she was saved by the gods from this fate by them turning her into a dog so she could flee. Polyxena, daughter of Hecuba, willingly accepts her sacrifice after Troy is overtaken as she deems it better to die than to have to live a slave woman under the Greeks. Menelaus had plans to kill Helen when they got her back (when ‘saving’ her from the Trojans, whether or not she willingly eloped with Paris or was abducted depending on the telling, was the main reason the Trojan war began in the first place).

How it feels to read a book where the women (Briseis and others) are portrayed justly and the men’s actions aren’t romanticised in the slightest