Description
Love and loss, slaughter and destruction, Great Goddess rites − this is the story of Herpyllis, whose life is shaped and marked by two famous men who are still household names: Alexander the Great and Aristotle. This is the first historical novel to look at that period of constant turmoil in Ancient Macedonia and Greece through a woman’s eyes.
Herpyllis is a child victim of the politics promoted by Aristotle and executed by Alexander and his father, losing her happy home and all her family at one stroke. She is taken to the Macedonian court, where the Queen becomes her second mother and Alexander her first love. It is a man’s world with new gods, but the women preserve ancient matriarchal rites, held in secrecy and forbidden to men on pain of death. Despite the many attempts to bend her to men’s will and the tragedies Fate metes out to her, Herpyllis pursues her dream of returning to peace and freedom.
About the author
Patricia Marsh is a linguist who worked abroad for several years, lecturing in English at the University of Skopje in the Republic of Macedonia for a long period before returning to the UK with her family during the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s. She has lived and worked in Canterbury ever since, and now devotes her time to writing. Patricia has had a lifelong passion for historical research and archaeology. She is the author of The Enigma of the Margate Shell Grotto – an examination of the theories on its origins.
