One of the historical novels in the ebook bundle published by Phoenix Picks. It seems to be a sequel of sorts to The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate; characters in the latter are mentioned in the former. Like Lest Darkness Fall, the writing is very much of it's time, with female characters being relegated to supporting roles; however, I can accept that given the historical setting of the novel - the Greek cities of Classical Sicily, specifically at the time of Dionysos I of Syracuse at the time of his war with Carthage (397-392 BC). (When I get home, I shall have to dig out Gillian Bradshaw's The Sand Reckoner and compare the two.)

The main character is a Greek engineer who takes a position working in Dionysos' inventors workshop, and builds the first catapult. A well-written, workman-like novel. On the strength of that, I've ordered a copy of Ancient Engineers as Harry Turtledove in the introduction recommends it as a useful reference book.

The Arrows of Hercules is one of five historical novels set in the Hellenic (and Achaemenid, or ancient Persian) world over the course of three centuries that Science Fiction Writers of America Grand Master L. Sprague de Camp wrote; it is preceded, chronologically, by The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate (1961), and followed by An Elephant for Aristotle (1958), The Bronze God of Rhodes (1960), and The Golden Wind (1969; apparently this is the only one of these books that was never published in either trade or mass market paperback form). The main protagonist is Zopyros of Taras (hence his tag "the Tarentine"), a half-Greek / half-Persian Pythagorean engineer who, with some kibbitzing by his friend Archytas, invents the catapult, at this stage essentially a giant-sized version of the gastraphetes, or ancient Greek crossbow (hence the book's title, which also owes something to a dream that Zopyros has early in the book) to aid the tyrannos of Syracuse in Sicily, Dionysios I, in his plans to throw the Carthaginians from the island; that Motya was at the opposite end of Sicily from Syracuse should give the reader an idea of the scope of Dionysios's ambitions, which climax here with the siege of Motya in 397 B.C. While Dionysios is remembered as an exemplar of the worst sort of tyrant -- a precursor to the modern dictator with an extensive secret police and a self-aggrandizing cult of personality -- he is shown here as the first ruler to establish a kind of military-industrial complex, complete with an extensive R&D division.

The Arrows of Hercules is an interesting, painless, occasionally amusing overview of Magna Graecia as it jostled with Carthage and its colonies for preeminence in Sicily and the Mediterranean. While de Camp usually exercises good faith here in explaining words likely to be unfamiliar to the casual reader, unfortunately his publishers didn't see fit to include even the roughest of maps, which obliged me to consult various print and on-line references in an attempt to keep the geography straight in my mind. Given that de Camp dedicated The Arrows of Hercules to his fellow SFWA Grand Masters Isaac Asimov and Robert A. Heinlein, I was happily surprised by the felicity of de Camp's style here: I found him more congenial -- less stilted, cornpone, smug, or overtly sexist -- than either of his chums. (This is also the first novel written by de Camp that I've read; my previous exposure to his writing was confined to his collaborations, posthumous or otherwise, on Conan the Barbarian short stories.)

The teaser excerpt inside the front cover of the mass market paperback edition is apt to mislead the reader into thinking that he's found a historical potboiler in the vein of Gary Jennings, chockablock with non-heteronormative sex and horrific violence. However, while de Camp is evidently no prude -- he reveals that, in matters of pubic depilation, the Etruscans were the Brazilians of their day -- he doesn't dwell upon prurient or gory scenes the way that Jennings and his ilk do. De Camp is far more interested in comparing and contrasting the different cultures and schools of thought interacting here, and he does so in an entertaining, easily comprehensible way: the Carthaginians, long reviled for their propensity to sacrifice the firstborn of their upper strata citizens in times of crisis, apparently had a not unreasonable take on theodicy, at least as expressed by a sailor named Atso, at their core ("'All we know is that the gods are strong, and jealous, and terrible. We are to them as insects under the feet of men.'" [p. 57]; it's striking how similar this view, taken by itself, is to the religious views of the Cimmerians which spawned Robert E. Howard's Conan), which sadly veered sharply in the direction of debasing slavishness and cruelty (something that critics of later Semitic religions might well point to as the snake in the woodpile); yet the Carthaginians also gave their women far more rights and legal protections than the contemporary Greeks did (indeed, the Greeks, particularly the more traditional Greeks, kept their women in a kind of purdah). De Camp doesn't entirely shy from the prevalence of homosexuality in the Hellenic world, but he tends to treat it as being exaggerated by their enemies: Carthaginian characters here tend to revile Greeks as "boy-loving," while the Greeks in turn deem all Carthaginians as "baby-burners." (The reader with a passing acquaintance with Semitic cultures through the ages may well smirk at the assertion of certain Punic characters that homosexuality is wholly unknown in their society.)

De Camp uses acceptable euphemisms for the saltier expletives here (one assumes that he does not, as many Classicists of an earlier era did, hide the really juicy stuff in ancient Greek), and doesn't go too far into the weeds in the scenes of Zopyros and Archytas trying to drag the catapult from dream to reality (de Camp's presentation of the mathematical problems involved with the construction of the catapult are in the "Physics for Poets" vein); however, in his concern to make his narrative as accessible to as broad an audience as possible, de Camp tilts a bit too much towards the comic Irish rogue stock figure in the character of Segovax the Celt. And while I appreciated the (comparitavely) common man point of view of Zopyros, who seems like something of a Mary Sue for de Camp, I found myself longing for just a little bit of a broader scope -- I would've welcomed more thorough descriptions of the contemporary geopolitical situation -- as well as characters who were more involving. Say what you will about their faults, but when Gary Jennings and James Clavell were at their peak, they could make the reader feel emotionally invested in their protagonists, no matter how foreign the historical settings.

The Arrows of Hercules is pleasant and informative (Archytas's buddy Plato -- called here Platon -- comes off as a snobbish prig, which had the effect of absolving me of what little guilt I still felt over never having finished The Republic), but it remains an intellectual diversion; by rights it should've scratched as many itches as Frans Bengtsson's The Long Ships does. The single biggest failing of The Arrows of Hercules is in its ending, which had the effect of stretching this reader's credulity past the breaking point: what should've been a bittersweet, though satisfying, conclusion feels tacked-on by publisher (or sales-conscious author) fiat. Frankly put, de Camp hasn't earned the ending slapped on here; that it is also a tacit rebuke to Plato is the only reason I didn't hurl the book across the room. ( )