The new book by Theodoros Papakostas (aka Archaeostoryteller) is a journey that, like a roller coaster, jumps from one end of antiquity to the other. The seventy-nine stories spread across the five chapters of the book offer an exciting alternation of emotions and images. Each chapter is a stage towards acceptance, because what we experience to accept our individual past may also be the key to our collective past. Through Archaeostoryteller's narratives about famous and completely unknown people, we realize that, no matter how unknown we are to each other, we are connected by the human experience.

This can even happen in a taxi. Five people, different from each other, discuss and travel together on a journey from one end of the city to the other, and at the same time across the lengths and breadths of the ancient world. Stories of mythology, slavery and superstition, sculpture, painting, theater and entertainment, stories about poetry, philosophy, and most importantly, love.

Did Pericles have a favorite contractor? Was there a "Spartacus" just before Spartacus? Was there a "Homer" long before Homer? When did the Minoan women in Knossos start going topless? How did Hercules experience body shaming? Did ancient Athens have haunted houses? Did it have a Ghostbuster? (Spoiler alert: it did.) An illicit love affair in Sparta, a sommelier donkey in Chalkidiki, and a flaming arrow that was shot into the Aegean, cut through the darkness, and saved lives.

The ancient world unfolds like a kaleidoscope, revealing to us what we always seek when digging in the soil: our very selves.