Dinner at the House of Odysseus by Stratos E. Constantinidis offers a new and different treatment of Homer’s familiar epic tale about the Second Trojan War and its aftermath. 

Wars are launched by contending factions that wish to acquire more pieces of prime real estate and to bring under their control even larger segments of the labor force. If the winning faction does not fully annihilate its opponents during the armed conflict, it renders them so helpless that they will grovel for starvation wages at the outcome of the war.  When the war victims are buried, and the war-torn landscapes are rebuilt with the sweat and tears of the scarred survivors, the interdependency of the warring factions becomes more evident. This is one of the lessons Telemachus learns along with the significance of his father’s name. In Greek, Odysseus means “victim of hate.”

According to Robert Graves, in archaic Greece, women were the dominant gender and men their frightened victims. Fatherhood was not honored; inheritance was matrilineal; and sons did not dare to disobey their mothers no matter how old they were (The Greek Myths, 1960: 36, 43).

Dinner at the House of Odysseus is available on Amazon.UK.com and Barnes and Noble.