Publisher's Synopsis
Over a thousand years before the flowering of Classical Greece, the Aegean was home to the first Western civilization. Kalliste is the dramatic telling of a story about that civilization's high point, which could be argued was the one and only utopia the world has ever known. Women and men reigned as equals and the peace was maintained for hundreds of years at a time. Told from the vantage point of an eyewitness, Idomeneus, the story begins with our narrator experiencing all the great moments of his time, including empire-wide festivals, pre-Olympic athletic games, the flowering of the arts, daring expeditions, and encounters with some of the legendary heroes of the day both in the sumptuous capital on Crete, Knossos, and on his Aegean home island of Kalliste. Then ominous events beyond human control begin to rattle the serenity of Idomeneus's world. He and everyone he knows are thrown into a life-or-death battle to survive the onslaught of unimaginable horrors: drought, famine, plague, and the very earth itself turning from sustainer of life to destroyer. How the men and women reacted--some honorably, others villianously--to the mounting catastrophes are graphically shown on page after page. At the time of Europe's birth and its miraculous ascent to power, Kalliste was about to unleash doomsday. The West, and indeed the world itself, would never be the same.
