TRYING NEAIRA by Debra Hamel

There are two possible origins for my surname (actually it is my husband's name but since I am on the cusp of officially being a 'Dudman' longer than I was ever a 'Jenkins' it now feels like my name too). One origin of the name is 'Keeper of the Snails' the other is 'the cuckolded one'. I have decided to go with the 'Keeper of the Snails' version for obvious reasons.

Having finished Debra Hamel's book TRYING NEAIRA I can report that being the cuckolded one in ancient Greece could be entertaining. In fact Ms Hamel suggests that some of the cuckolded ones probably went out of their way to encourage cuckolding so they could exact revenge. The most interesting (though least mercenary) involved a radish, and, as Ms Hamel explains this was 'not the dainty red salad component one finds nowadays in the produce aisle, but rather a much larger variety of the vegetable - an instrument of sufficient proportion for a cuckolded husband to effectively register his displeasure.' Probably, by now, you can guess what happened to the unfortunate legume, and I shan't go further than that here - but will just say that the term 'radishing', which is a verb I had never come across before, now has eye-wateringly hilarious connotations in the Hodmandod household.

TRYING NEAIRA is that rare sort of book that informs and entertains in equal measure. For the scholar it is a well-written, well-researched and well-referenced account of an episode in ancient history. For the general reader it is a type of court room drama with a twist - as in a court the evidence is gradually exposed and examined thereby revealing the motivations and lives of prosecutors and defenders - and the twist is that this is all happening over 300 years BC.