ILOSOPHY PRESS
ILOSOPHY PRESS
iLosophy Press publishes rigorously researched books on myth, philosophy, and spiritual thought across the ancient world — East and West, with a particular devotion to the Greeks.
The old stories, returned to their sources — Homer, the tragedians, and the oral traditions behind them — read for what they actually say, not the version that survived by simplification.
Close, patient engagement with the questions the ancient world asked about justice, the self, and the good life — and why those questions still resist easy answers.
Devotional and contemplative traditions considered on their own terms — what the ancients believed, how they practiced it, and what it asked of the people who lived inside it.
Watch the official trailer and discover the women whose stories have echoed through thousands of years.
The mortal women of Greek mythology were never just supporting characters. It's time to read their stories properly.
Most people think they know Greek mythology — the thunderbolts of Zeus, the labours of Heracles, the long voyage of Odysseus. But hidden within those familiar tales is another Greece, inhabited by women whose courage, power, and defiance have been overlooked for far too long.
Rebel Women of Greek Mythology returns to the ancient sources to tell their stories in full. These are, for the most part, mortal women: flesh and blood, subject to grief and betrayal and the indifference of the gods. Antigone, who defied a king knowing it would cost her life. Medea, who refused to accept powerlessness on anyone else's terms. Circe, who chose solitude over submission. Ariadne, who was abandoned, and rose to immortality. Cassandra, cursed to be right. Atalanta, faster than any man who dared race her.
Drawing on Homer, the Greek tragedians, Ovid, and the full sweep of classical literature, Sophia Kallisti explores what these extraordinary women actually meant to the ancient world, and why their stories still speak to us now. Questions of justice and resistance, loyalty and betrayal, power and its limits: the ancient Greeks wrestled with them in their myths, and we have never stopped wrestling with them since.
This is not a modern retelling. It is a rigorous, passionate, and beautifully written rediscovery of women who were always central to the greatest stories ever told.
Homer brought Odysseus home. The ancient Greek tradition did not leave him there.
In antiquity, the Odyssey had a sequel: the Telegony, the final poem of the Trojan Epic Cycle. It carried Odysseus beyond his homecoming, through further journeys, another kingdom and another war, towards the death foretold by Tiresias. Yet the poem itself was lost, leaving only an ancient summary and scattered accounts of its story.
This final chapter has rarely been given the full modern reconstruction it deserves. iLosophy Press has produced two books that set out to restore it.
A reconstruction of the ancient story in clear, unrhymed English verse. After the suitors are buried, Odysseus sets out once more. A journey to Elis is followed by another to the kingdom of the Thesprotians, where he marries Queen Callidice, fathers another son and is drawn into war. Years later he returns to Ithaca, unaware that Telegonus, his son by Circe, has crossed the sea in search of the father he has never known.
When father and son finally meet, neither recognises the other until it is too late.
Completing the reconstruction answered one question but raised many more. What could persuade Odysseus to leave Ithaca again? What did Penelope make of his second marriage and second family? How did Circe raise their son? And how could the story’s strange final marriages and transformations ever have come about?
The novel follows the ancient outline while imagining everything the surviving accounts leave unsaid: the conversations, motives, doubts and relationships; the cost of coming home changed by war; how little even those closest to us may truly know; and what remains for the women and sons who must live with the consequences.
One book reconstructs the lost epic. The other enters its silences and asks how this tragic story might actually have unfolded. Together, they restore the forgotten ending of Odysseus’s journey.
Alongside our books, we record short talks on the same questions — myth, philosophy, the spiritual life of the ancient world — shared freely on social media, with a fuller archive kept for our Patreon supporters.
"We publish for readers who want the real sources, not the simplified version — the ancient world taken on its own terms, and trusted to still have something to say."