"What we’re seeing is that the times we are living in have forced us to acknowledge that there is a darkness in humanity. The Greek tragedies, those stories of darkness and obsession and revenge, resonate because we’re living in dark times and these are dark stories. As an editor, if someone came to me with a book inspired by Greek mythology, I’d be very excited."

"David Farr [the show’s writer] and I went to the site of Troy and it really brought home how these great mythical events illuminate what’s going on at the moment. We were standing where eight or nine other cities have stood, near to Gallipoli, the epicentre of other conflicts, and close to where refugees were leaving on boats for Lesbos. It showed us that little has changed since Homer wrote of the devastation of war."

"I was drawn to Jocasta because she has so few lines in Sophocles’ play, which seems amazing when you consider that her actions drive the story. It’s fascinating that the play constantly highlights how clever and quick-witted Oedipus is and how that’s his fatal flaw, but no one ever mentions how smart Jocasta is as well – she is the one who figures out why they’re cursed. She gets there before he does and I thought she would be an interesting way into the tale."

"[I chose her] because she’s this lovely, overlooked sort of person who is left just as grief-stricken as Antigone, and who suffers the same losses she does – more – by the end of the play. She’s collateral damage. Giving her a voice gave her the chance to shine."

"Their role is so central to everything that happens and yet they’re also incredibly marginalised characters. I thought it would be really interesting to look at The Iliad from that perspective, because once you start seeing it through the eyes of women, and women who have been captured as slaves at that, it gives the whole story a different tenor and makes us consider what the true cost of war might be."

"I’ve always found Atalanta’s story interesting because it seems so obviously told from a male perspective of a woman being easily distracted. I started thinking about why she would allow that to happen, and the book is an attempt to explain what her motivation might have been in that final race."

"We were very clear that we didn’t want this series to be a sword-and-sandals epic. This is a story about complex family dynamics, about identity, betrayal and belonging. There are huge emotional depths to these stories – many of which are later explored by the writers of the Greek tragedies who reinterpret them as their own – and we felt, why not do the same ourselves? It’s a completely different time, yet one that feels strangely similar. These myths may be 3,000 years old but the story they tell still grips."

"I made a documentary for Radio 4 about the links between Greek tragedy and modern day soap operas. All those stories about generation against generation and brothers at war come directly from Greek tragedy and we’re still drawing on them today. I also recently gave a talk at a secondary school about Oedipus and when we got to the climax of the tale there were gasps. That’s not my gift as storyteller – that’s the calibre of the story being told. They resonate because they are so good."

Yesterday I posted about Sophia Pavlaki initiative to build an educational program around ancient Hellenic toys. This is but one example how Greeks and non-Greeks alike are trying to bridge between now and then. We're at the cusp of (or perhaps even in the middle of) a resurgence of ancient Hellenic stories themed entertainment content. And there is a good reason why This summer will see writers from Colm Tóibin to Natalie Haynes put a fresh spin on ancient tragedies, while Hellenic myths continue to inspire every thing from young adult fiction and children’s literature--the Waterstones children’s book of the month for February is Maz Evans’ riotous Who Let The Gods Out?--to urban fantasies such as Jordanna Max Brodsky’s Olympus Bound series. Even television is set to get in on the act: Troy: Fall of a City, the BBC’s much-anticipated Trojan war drama, starts filming next month and will air in 2018.Melissa Cox is editorial director at Hodder & Stoughton, whose Sceptre imprint recently published a short story collection, How Much the Heart Can Hold, in which seven writers including Donal Ryan, Bernadine Evaristo and Nikesh Shukla look at seven Hellenic definitions of love. She says:Derek Wax, executive producer of Troy: Fall of a City, agrees.Just as there are many versions of Hellenic tragedies and myths, so there are many different ways for an author to recast the tale, in particular by allowing the story’s women to take centre stage. Thus Tóibin’s elegant House of Names takes the fall of the House of Agamemnon, which forms the basis of a number of Greek plays and stories, including Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Euripides’ Orestes and Sophocles’ Electra, and tells it from the point of view of Clytemnestra, grieving mother, adulterous wife, and murderer. Meanwhile Haynes’ The Children of Jocasta retells the story of Oedipus through the eyes of his wife (and mother) Jocasta and their youngest daughter, Ismene. She explains:She picked the lesser-known Ismene over her flashier sister Antigone (herself the subject of a Sophocles play) for a specific reason:A similar motivation propels Emily Hauser’s 2016 debut novel For The Most Beautiful, which looks at the Trojan war through the two female slaves, Briseis and Chryseis, whose role as spoils of war kickstarts the action of The Iliad, causing Agamemnon and Achilles to fall out.Her next novel For The Winner, due out in June, looks at the story of Jason and the Argonauts through Atalanta, the only woman on the journey, who would later famously lose a race after being distracted by golden apples as she ran.But is there an audience for these modern takes on ancient tales? Wax says there definitely is.Haynes agrees.The Children of Jocasta by Natalie Haynes is published by Mantle on 4 May; The House of Names by Colm Tóibin is published by Viking on 18 May; For The Winner by Emily Hauser is published by Doubleday on 15 June.