The Missing Thread: A New History of the Ancient World by Daisy Dunn - Non Fiction - Paperback

Condition: BRAND NEW. Format: Paperback. ISBN: 9781474615631. Publisher: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Overview. The Missing Thread is Daisy Dunn's ambitious retelling of 3,000 years of antiquity, told for the first time through the women who lived it. From Minoan Crete to the fall of Rome's Julio-Claudian dynasty, Dunn moves beyond the familiar warlords and emperors to restore queens, priestesses, poets and rebels to the centre of the story, offering readers a genuinely fresh way to understand the ancient world and the people who shaped it.. About the Book. Classical history has traditionally been written as a parade of men: kings, generals and emperors. Where women do appear, they are too often mythologised rather than remembered as real, complex figures. In The Missing Thread, acclaimed classicist Daisy Dunn sets out to correct this imbalance. Spanning three millennia, the book weaves together the stories of remarkable women across the ancient Mediterranean world, including Artemisia, the sole female naval commander in the Graeco-Persian Wars, and Cynisca, the first woman to win at the ancient Olympic Games, alongside more familiar names. Rather than treating these women as footnotes to a male-dominated narrative, Dunn threads their lives through the wider political, cultural and social currents of the age, showing how they influenced events, power and ideas long dismissed as exclusively masculine territory. Drawing on years of classical scholarship, Dunn's prose is elegant, richly detailed and highly readable, making dense historical material accessible to general readers while satisfying those with a deeper interest in the ancient world. The result is a genuinely original history book, one that reframes antiquity without discarding its familiar landmarks, and gives voice to women who shaped events but were written out of the record. It is a book for anyone who thought they already knew the story of the ancient world.. Fresh, women-centred perspective on 3,000 years of