Amalia Carosella’s Reviews > Tamer of Horses > Status Update

I just really love Pirithous and Hippodamia, okay? Don't judge me!

Sometimes word is really good at transferring my formatting, and other times it's a super jerk. But I could do a lot worse than to get through the bulk of my proofs and find only stray commas and missing italics! Huzzah! Just the back matter to go and I can put this baby to bed!

I made a very deliberate choice in this book to mount the Lapith warriors as they rode out into one of their battles -- it made sense to me that if anyone would think of proto-Calvary, it would be the Lapiths, who might have already rode horses generally rather than driving chariots. But you can judge my potentially anachronistic decision making for yourself when (I hope!) you read TAMER in October :)

The myths suggest that the Lapiths were exceptional horsemen. That they rode their horses on bull and boar hunts -- and that horsemanship itself may have given rise to the idea/concept of the centaur. But. During the bronze age, as far as we know, there was no such thing as cavalry. Chariot warfare, sure, but mounted men on horseback before saddles or stirrups? Pretty unlikely! (more)

Antiope is at her FINEST in this chapter -- I can't even begin to tell you how much I LOVED being able to include her in this book. I can't wait to come back to Antiope and Theseus in another book someday, either.

The way I see it -- Helen owes Antiope a debt for making Theseus into the man he was when they met in HELEN OF SPARTA. Without Antiope, I do not think Theseus would have been the same kind of man.

“A son of Zeus has little need for rest when there is pleasure to be had,” she said, reaching for him again. “Is that not true?”


He smiled, but shook his head as he captured her hands in his. “You’ve had too much wine, Mia, and I am not so great a fool as to think it is not the drink that speaks now. Even a son of Zeus has more sense than that.”

Funerary rites and practices gave me fits in this book. Because it is kind of a prequel to HELEN OF SPARTA and because everyone is SO FAMILIAR with the pyres of the Trojan War, I worried a lot about balancing reader expectation and historical accuracy. The truth is, funerary pyres only really appeared in Greece AFTER the bronze age.

It's likely that in the bronze age kingship wasn't ONLY about birth or marriage--judging by the events of the Iliad, the Odyssey, and Theseus's own mythology, there needed to be a certain amount of support from the people you were ruling. With the relatively new theory of a thriving middle class in Mycenaean Greece, it seems even more likely to me that the will of the people played a part in determining kingship!

If you read my blog, you know I love the Bromance of Pirithous and Theseus. It miiight be my favorite part of the myths. And in Helen of Sparta, Pirithous generally acts as Theseus's sidekick -- but in TAMER, the tables are turned. While Pirithous might be a less experienced ruler, he is definitely the man calling the shots, and he doesn't hesitate to use Theseus as his errand boy when circumstances require one!

I like to imagine that Nestor was always old and always offering unsolicited advice and telling stories, inviting himself to events and making sure everyone knows it if he wasn't given his due. In the Iliad he's such a character. Obviously way too old to be fighting that war but too well-respected to refuse him a place. In TAMER he's at least 30 years younger, and maybe a little less rambling, but still fascinating.