The Tomb of Agamemnon

Mycenae and the Search for a Hero

Cathy Gere

• Publisher: Profile Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9781861976673
• eBook ISBN:
  9781847653765
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

From Homer to Himmler, from Thucydides to Freud, Mycenae has occupied a singular place in the western imagination. Gere takes us 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 and to the distinctly anti-heroic conclusions of modern archaeology. The Wonders of the World is a series of books that focuses on some of the world's most famous sites or monuments. Their names will be familiar to almost everyone: they have achieved iconic stature and are loaded with a fair amount of mythological baggage. These monuments have been the subject of many books over the centuries, but our aim, through the skill and stature of the writers, is to get something much more enlightening, stimulating, even controversial, than straightforward histories or guides.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• The Tomb of Agamemnon
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Chapter 1 Introduction: Narnia on the Peloponnese
• Chapter 2 The Cult of the Hero and the Agony of War
• Chapter 3 Mycenae Enlightened
• Chapter 4 Agamemnon Awakened
• Chapter 5 Saviour or Antichrist?
• Chapter 6 The Birth of the Bronze Age
• Chapter 7 The Swastika and the Butterfly
• Chapter 8 A City without Heroes
• Making a visit?
• Further reading
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Index
• Wonders of the World