Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: The Taraxippus
Faith M. Boughan
Raise your hand if you believe in ghosts. Oh, come on. You, over there, reading this on your laptop on the bus—go ahead, raise your hand. No one will know…
mythology
The Chaotic Champion – Part Nine: Order and Chaos
Nyki Blatchley
I’ve spent most of this series discussing how the figure of the Chaotic Champion works in story. My contention is that he’s* a universal concept in human story, whether the…
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: The Telkhines
In this, the eighth instalment of the series on lesser known creatures and monsters of Classical myth, I want to take you far, far away from where we were last…
Foundations of Fantasy: The Odyssey
Ryan Howse
More than any other genre, fantasy tends to examine ancient epics. Whether it’s the study of archetypes and ectypes, a historical understanding of narrative itself, or simply a desire to…
The Aeneid by Virgil
CptNemo
The Aeneid is The Iliad’s lesser-known younger brother. It was written by the Roman poet Virgil between 29 and 19 BC, 800 years after Homer. The story begins directly after…
The Chaotic Champion – Part Eight: Which Kind of Hero Are You?
So far in this series, I’ve been concentrating on describing, in the most straightforward way, the various categories of Chaotic Champion and how each works. As I said in the…
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: The Myrmekes Indikoi (Indian Ant)
For the seventh instalment of this series on lesser known creatures and monsters of Greco-Roman mythology, we’re going to look at something really obscure. So obscure, in fact, that there…
Dragons: Classifications
Leo Elijah Cristea
Last time we considered dragons as a general species, to introduce their role in fantasy fiction, giving introductory examples of their usual staging and appearances in the stories we relish.…
The Chaotic Champion – Part Seven: The King Hero
For nearly a thousand years, great authors and poets have written virtually uncountable quantities of words about King Arthur. Each has tried to sum up what was special about that…
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: Orthrus, the Two-Headed Little Brother
It’s got to be tough, being a younger sibling of famous monsters. Your brother and other siblings get all the attention, the best jobs, and all the limelight in the…
Foundations of Fantasy: The Iliad
More than any other genre, fantasy tends to examine ancient epics. Whether it’s the study of archetypes and ectypes, a historical understanding of narrative itself, or simply a desire to…
Fantastical Creatures of Greco-Roman Mythology: The Vrykolakas
In exploring a number of lesser-known creatures from Greco-Roman mythology, we’ve seen how some of the modern monsters we’ve come to know and love originated in ancient myth and folklore.…