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Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Book Club podcast.

I'm Sam Leith, the literary editor of The Spectator, and this week I'm very delighted to welcome with my guest Natalie Haynes,

the journalist, author, scholar, broadcaster, stand-up comic and all-round Jack of All Trades, whose new book, and novelist novelist I should add whose new book is called Pandora's Jar women in the Greek myths.

Natalie, welcome.

Hello.

Most of us probably start with the impression that in ancient Greece they didn't have much use for women except for, you know, childbearing or turning people to stone.

Is this an oversimplification?

I mean, marginally, but it's not a particular simplification of the versions of Greek myths that we often grew up with.

And I feel really disloyal when I say this because they're my childhood too, you know, and you kind of think,

well, I read those Greek myths for children

where Theseus is a glorious adventurer and there aren't really any women in his story.

I didn't spend my childhood and I know this will upset you, but I'm sorry I'm pushing through,

reading Plutarch, who instead says that, you know, Theseus had, what is it, many marriages

which began badly and ended worse.

And it's like, well, I wasn't doing that either.

But it's interesting that the versions of these stories that we tended to end up with

have generally simplified things in favour of men being heroes and women being expendable

or marginal or evil.

And that's not that's not either always or even often the case with our ancient sources.

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