Acknowledgements
I remain indebted to family and friends for their continued support. I am also extremely grateful to those readers, reviewers, booksellers and bloggers whose enthusiasm for Philocles and his investigations gave me hope when the future of this series was abruptly thrown into doubt.
Max Edwards has proved his worth as an agent and friend once again, not least as he secured a new home for these books with Canelo. My thanks to the team there, most particularly Craig Lye, who has edited this third story after a twist of fate that proves reality can indeed be stranger than fiction.
Rather than get entangled with rights and permissions issues for the sake of two brief quotes from Homer, I went back to the original text myself. Since it has been a very long time since I was reading Greek as an undergraduate, my thanks to Tony Keen for approving my translations.
The backdrop to this story is the Athenian festival of the Great Panathenaia. This panhellenic event was so well known in the ancient world that no one ever felt much need to write the precise details down. Consequently, I am tremendously grateful to the scholars who have studied literary references here and there, deciphered often fragmentary inscriptions, and debated the correct interpretation of depictions of these contests and rituals on pots and in sculpture. This book would not have been possible without their work, and without my access to their papers online in this year of closed libraries.
Needless to say, any errors are mine alone, as is responsibility for the choices I have made in interpreting archaeological and historical evidence in the ways that best serve my story.
First published in the United Kingdom in 2020 by Canelo
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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United Kingdom
Copyright © JM Alvey, 2020
The moral right of JM Alvey to be identified as the creator of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781788639729
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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