Ferdia Lennon: ‘I was tired of Merchant Ivory accents’

Why did you write it in a Dublin voice? Why not? I’m not going to write in an ancient Greek or fifth-century BC Syracusan dialect. There’s always a decision about which version of English to use. At first I was thinking: this is coming out quite Irish, do I pull back or double down? For me, it made sense to double down. I was tired of ancient Greek or Roman characters sounding as if they’ve stepped out of a Merchant Ivory production. Sicily had been colonised by mainland Greece: it made sense to me that the Greek they speak would be a bit different, the way Hiberno-English is a bit different. And Syracuse is the biggest city in Sicily, so the Dublin voice made sense. The Greek world wasn’t a monoculture: you’ve got different dialects, different classes, immigration, a massive slave trade. The language was a way to try to capture some of that difference.