The Arrows of Hercules


Dust-jacket illustration for The Arrows of Hercules
Author L. Sprague deCamp
Cover artist Charles McCurry
Country United States
Language English
Genre(s) Historical novel
Publisher Doubleday
Released 1965
Media type Print (Hardback)
Pages 297 pp
ISBN NA

The Arrows of Hercules is an historical novel by L. Sprague de Camp, first published in hardback by Doubleday in 1965 and in paperback by Curtis Books in 1970. It is the fourth of his historical novels in order of writing, and second chronologically, set in the time of Dionysios I of Syracuse at the end of the fourth and beginning of the third centuries BC.

The protagonist is the engineer Zopyros of Tarentum, a follower of the Pythagorean philosophical school. Having invented an improved type of catapult, he is drafted into Syracuse's war effort against Carthage by the tyrant Dionysios, creator of the first military ordinance department known to history. The historical Battle of Motya of 399 BC is a major event in the novel. Also portrayed is the incident upon which the legend of the Sword of Damocles is supposedly based.

References

Laughlin, Charlotte; Daniel J. H. Levack (1983). De Camp: An L. Sprague de Camp Bibliography. San Francisco: Underwood/Miller, 27.

The Arrows of Hercules by L. Sprague de Camp, Curtis Books, 1970

Ancient Greece Historical novels

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