Glorious Exploits
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summaries & Analyses
Reading Tools
Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, disordered eating, child death, and cursing.
Historical Context: The Sicilian Expedition and the Quarry Prisons
Ferdia Lennon’s novel is anchored in the catastrophic conclusion of the Athenian Sicilian Expedition (415-413 BC), a key and disastrous event in the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. In an ambitious attempt to conquer Sicily, Athens sent a massive naval force to attack Syracuse. The campaign ended in a complete rout; the Athenian army and navy were annihilated. The historian Thucydides chronicled the defeat, describing how thousands of survivors were imprisoned in the latomiai, or stone quarries, of Syracuse. He wrote that the prisoners suffered from exposure, starvation, and disease in the cramped, unsanitary pits (Thucydides. The History of the Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner, Penguin Classics, 1972.) The novel directly fictionalizes this historical reality, depicting the Athenians as “hairy skeletons with a hint of skin” (9) lasting horrific conditions.
The central premise of Glorious Exploits is drawn from a later account by the Greek biographer Plutarch. In his Life of Nicias, Plutarch recounts the anecdote that Syracusans, who were great admirers of the tragic playwright Euripides, would offer food, water, or even freedom to any Athenian captive who could recite his verses (Plutarch. Lives, Volume III: Pericles and Fabius Maximus. Nicias and Crassus. Translated by Bernadotte Perrin, Harvard University Press, 1916.) Lennon uses this historical footnote as the narrative’s catalyst, transforming a moment of deep suffering into an exploration of art’s capacity to preserve humanity in the face of brutality. The contrast between the historical horror of the quarries and the transcendent power of poetry is the novel’s central tension.
Literary Context: The Tragedies of Euripides
The narrative of Glorious Exploits revolves around the staging of two actual plays by the ancient Athenian tragedian Euripides (c. 480-406 BC): Medea (431 BC) and The Trojan Women (415 BC). Euripides was known in his own time for his psychological realism and his focus on the suffering of those marginalized by war and society, particularly women. His plays often challenged traditional Athenian values and depicted the grim, unheroic consequences of violence.
Medea tells the story of a barbarian princess who, after being betrayed by her husband Jason, takes a horrific revenge by murdering their two children. It is a brutal examination of passion, betrayal, and the destructive logic of vengeance. The Trojan Women is set in the immediate aftermath of the Trojan War and has very little plot; instead, it presents a series of scenes depicting the grief and enslavement of the women of Troy, including their queen, Hecuba. The play is considered one of history’s most powerful anti-war statements.
In Lennon’s novel, the raw suffering depicted in these plays directly mirrors the Athenian prisoners’ own experience of defeat and degradation. By having the starving prisoners perform these specific tragedies, Lennon creates a powerful parallel: The fictional victims of mythic wars give voice to the real victims of a historical one, exploring how art can provide a language for processing unimaginable trauma.
Cultural and Literary Context: Irish Vernacular and the Tragicomedy Tradition
Ferdia Lennon deliberately renders the dialogue of his ancient Syracusan characters, like Lampo and Gelon, in a contemporary, working-class Dublin dialect. When Lampo quips, “I say Pericles is a dead prick!” (4), the language immediately strips the classical setting of its expected formality and perceived elitism. This stylistic choice connects the novel to a rich tradition in post-colonial Irish literature of using local vernacular to assert a distinct cultural identity against the dominance of standard English.
This linguistic technique serves several purposes. First, it subtly draws a parallel between the power dynamics of the Athenian empire and Britain’s historical colonization of Ireland, reframing the classical world through a modern, post-colonial lens. Second, it makes the ancient world feel immediate, accessible, and grounded in a recognizable reality, subverting the often stuffy and academic presentation of classical stories. The approach is famously exemplified in the work of Irish author Roddy Doyle, whose novels like The Commitments (1987) and the Booker Prize-winning Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha (1993) use the vivid, slang-filled dialect of working-class Dubliners to explore their lives with authenticity and humor. By adopting a similar strategy, Lennon makes his characters’ banter hilariously anachronistic and performs a democratic act, reclaiming the Classics from their traditional association with elite education and culture. In an essay for Lit Hub, Lennon himself stated that the use of vernacular would help the novel to connect to the contemporary reader’s concerns and worldview: “Reading Aristophanes, it struck me that […] just as important as the historical detail would be getting across the feeling that the characters […] are inhabiting their own present moment. For me, this meant using contemporary accents […] as an analogy that would give the reader a sense of who these characters were and their social relationships to one another” (Lennon, Ferdia. “‘But the Ancient Greeks Didn’t *Sound* Irish…’ On Capturing Voice in Historical Fiction.” Literary Hub, 26 Mar. 2024).
Glorious Exploits also belongs to a distinctly Irish literary tradition of tragicomedy, which blends moments of bleak suffering and violence with high-energy, often absurd humor. This is immediately evident as the novel’s narrators, Lampo and Gelon, engage in witty banter on their way to witness the horrors of the quarry, where prisoners are dying of exposure and starvation. The novel consistently balances its dark historical subject matter with the comedy of its characters’ voices and their unlikely ambition to stage a play. This fusion of tones is a hallmark of much modern and contemporary Irish fiction. Authors like Flann O’Brien, in novels such as At Swim-Two-Birds (1939), famously blended myth, realism, and metafictional comedy to create a chaotic and layered narrative. More contemporary writers like Kevin Barry continue this tradition. In his novel Night Boat to Tangier (2019), for instance, two aging Irish gangsters wait in a Spanish ferry terminal, their rapid-fire, profane dialogue veering between hilarious absurdity and moving reflections on a life of violence, loss, and regret. This constant oscillation between the tragic and the comic reflects a particular cultural sensibility, often interpreted as a coping mechanism for dealing with a history marked by hardship. Within this context, Lennon’s novel uses humor to highlight the resilience and absurdity of the human spirit in the face of suffering.
Get in-depth, chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis from our literary experts.
- Grasp challenging concepts with clear, comprehensive explanations
- Revisit key plot points and ideas without rereading the book
- Share impressive insights in classes and book clubs