The richness and variety of Homer’s storytelling were my inspiration as I set about compiling this collection of tales from antiquity. Homer marks the beginning but is also the thread that runs through so much of the literature of Greece and Rome, from the ‘Epic Cycle’ of poems which developed in his wake to provide continuations of his stories, to the tragedies of fifth-century BC Greece, and the poetry of the Roman Empire. Time and again classical authors challenged themselves to explore what became of Homer’s heroes after the Trojan War. It is partly as a result of this that ancient stories are seldom self-contained. Sharing common roots, such as Homer or the myths of his near contemporary, a poet from central Greece named Hesiod, they frequently weave into and out of each other like trees in a forest. A great number of the stories included in this anthology collide and overlap, even when separated by hundreds of years.

One of the things that makes ancient tales so mesmerizing is the possibility that they were founded in reality – or at least contain a kernel of truth. When stories are as old as the ones in this collection it feels only natural to imagine the scenarios that might have inspired them. Did anything like the Trojan War take place? Was there ever a man who unwittingly fell in love with his own mother, as Oedipus did in Greek tragedy? So many characters seem thrillingly real. We cannot help but feel Oedipus’ pain in Sophocles’ play, Oedipus Rex, as he begins to comprehend who he really is. When a drunk man suggests to him that his father is not really his father, Oedipus questions his parents: ‘They were indignant at the taunt and that comforted me – and yet the man’s words rankled’. The line, elegantly rendered by W. B. Yeats, captures an important moment in Oedipus’ journey of self-discovery. The Oedipus story is dire and extreme but strangely relatable.