The Gryphon's Skull

HISTORICAL NOTE

The Gryphon's Skull is set in 309 B.C. I found the idea for the novel— that the skull of a Protoceratops, weathered out of its stony matrix, might have given the ancient world the basis from which it invented the gryphon—in John R, Horner's fascinating book, Dinosaur Lives: Unearthing an Evolutionary Saga (co-written with Edwin Dobb; HarperCollins: New York, 1997). It was first advanced by classical folklorist Adrienne Mayor. During early Hellenistic times, Greek cities were founded as far east and north as modern Afghanistan; if ever a dinosaur skull from Mongolia could—almost—have come to Athens, that was the era. Obviously, such a skull never truly reached the Greek scholarly community. I hope I've made this near miss plausible and interesting, which is, I think, the most one can reasonably expect from a historical novelist.

Real characters appearing in the story are Menedemos, Euxenides of Phaselis, Ptolemaios of Egypt, and Antigonos' rebellious nephew Polemaios (whose name is also spelled as Ptolemaios in the surviving histories, but Polemaios in inscriptions—I gladly seized the difference to differentiate him from his more famous contemporary). Others mentioned but not on stage include Alkimos of Epeiros, Antigonos, his sons Demetrios and Philippos, Lysimakhos, Kassandros, Seleukos, Polyperkhon, Eurydike, Berenike, and Ptolemaios' son Ptolemaios, who was indeed born on Kos in this year. Over this entire era hangs the enormous shadow of Alexander the Great, now dead fourteen years.

Exactly how Polemaios came from Euboia to Kos is not known; it might well have been by stealth, as plenty of people between the one island and the other wanted him dead. Equally unknown is Menedemos' connection, if any, to the invention of the trihemiolia. A few years later, however, he is the first man known to have captained such a vessel, so the connection might well have existed.

I have for the most part spelled names of places and people as a Greek would have: thus Knidos, not Cnidus; Lysimakhos, not Lysimachus. I have broken this rule for a few place names that have well-established English spellings: Rhodes, Athens, the Aegean Sea, and the like. I have also broken it for Alexander the Great and his father, Philip of Macedon. This helps distinguish them from the large number of men named Alexandras and Philippos, and they deserve such distinction.

All translations from the Greek are my own. As in Over the Wine-Dark Sea, I claim no particular literary merit for them, only that they convey what the original says. Menedemos' bit of doggerel in Chapter 12 is a poem of Palladas' from the Greek Anthology that actually dates from the fourth or fifth century A.D. I concede the anachronism—but Menedemos might have said it, even if he didn't.