The Tomb of Agamemnon: Mycenae and the Search for a Hero

In a remote corner of Greece stands Mycenae, the fabled city of Homer's King Agamemnon. These immemorial ruins seem to bear witness to the historical reality behind the legend of the Trojan War and were revered in antiquity as the pagan world's most tangible connection to Homer's age of heroes. Today Mycenae is one of the more haunting and impressive archaeological sites in Europe, visited by hundreds of thousands of tourists every year. From Homer to Himmler, from Thucydides to Freud, Mycenae has occupied a singular place in the western imagination. As the backdrop to one of the more famous military campaigns of all time, Agamemnon's city has served for generation after generation as a symbol of the human appetite for war. As an archaeological site, it has given its name to the splendours of one of Europe's earliest civilisations: the Mycenaean Age. In this fascinating book, Cathy Gere tells the story of this extraordinary place - from the Cult of the Hero that sprung up in the shadow of the great burned walls in the eighth century BC, to Agamemnon's twentieth-century reincarnation as an Aryan military genius, to the distinctly anti-heroic conclusions of modern archaeology.