57 pages • 1 hour read
Rick RiordanThe Dark Prophecy
Fiction | Novel | Middle Grade | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Literary Context: The Trials of Apollo Series
An adventure-fantasy pentalogy centered on a reimagined version of the Greek god Apollo, The Trials of Apollo series has been called “the capstone on Percy Jackson’s world” by Riordan. The series is the culmination of the world Riordan introduced with his Percy Jackson books in 2005. In the Percy Jackson world, Greek gods are real, and demigods, their offspring with mortals, live on earth. With The Percy Jackson series, Riordan introduced many contemporary readers to the elements of Greek mythology. In The Trials of Apollo books, the Percy Jackson world features gods, monsters, and demons from the Greek and Roman pantheon and figures from ancient Greco-Roman history.
The action in The Trials of Apollo follows events in The Heroes of Olympus series, the second to feature the Percy Jackson world. Zeus, the chief of gods, blames his son Apollo for playing a part in events that lead the angry earth-mother Gaia to open the doors to the underworld, resurrecting all manners of monsters and dead villains and paralyzing the Olympian gods with pain. At the beginning of The Hidden Oracle, the first book in The Trials of Apollo series, Zeus transforms Apollo into 16-year-old mortal Lester Papadopoulos as a punishment and drops him from the heights of Mount Olympus into a garbage dump in New York. Stripped of his powers and missing chunks of his memory, Apollo runs into the 13-year-old demigod Meg McCaffrey and seeks out the help of Percy Jackson. Percy takes Apollo and Meg to Camp Half-Blood, the sanctuary for young demigods, where Apollo learns that the monster Python, released from the underworld by Gaia, is blocking all sources of prophecy. Worse, Python is being commanded by the Triumvirate, a trio of ancient evil Roman emperors keen to tyrannize the world. Emperor Nero, the chief villain of The Hidden Oracle, is the abusive stepfather of Meg.
Apollo’s quest through the series is to stop the Triumvirate from wreaking havoc on the world and regain his divinity. He must seek out the lesser-known Oracles, which are yet free from the emperors’ control, for clues about his quest. By the end of The Hidden Oracle, Apollo has saved Camp Half-blood from an attack by Nero, located the Oracle of Dodona, and received a prophecy about where he must next go. Meg and Apollo have been separated since Meg agrees to go away with Nero for the time being. Apollo is headed to Indianapolis to find the next Oracle.
Though The Trials of Apollo series is part of Riordan’s Greco-Roman fantasy universe, it is a standalone, distinct narrative. It is the first series that features a fallen god as a protagonist, which enables the narrative to explore important questions about mortality and the quest for perfection. With Zeus being a punishing father to Apollo and Nero abusing Meg, the themes of bad parenting and trauma are also important in the series. Riordan balances the serious themes with tongue-in-cheek humor and heartwarming insights on teamwork and found families. The five books in the series are The Hidden Oracle, The Dark Prophecy, The Burning Maze, The Tyrant’s Tomb, and The Tower of Nero. The three evil emperors are Nero, Commodus, and Caligula, all based on historical figures.
Cultural Context: Greek and Roman Mythology and History
Like the rest of the Percy Jackson world, The Trials of Apollo features characters and elements drawn from Greek and Roman mythology, folklore, and history. It is important to note that though these elements are inspired by preexisting narratives, they are reimagined by Riordan in a contemporary context. The events in The Trials of Apollo are not necessarily true to ancient myth and history. Demigods play a vital role in Riordan’s universe. The offspring of Greek and Roman gods with mortals, demigods usually possess powers derived from their divine parent. For instance, Meg, the demigod daughter of Demeter, the Greek goddess of agriculture, can wield enormous power over plants. Most demigods are from single-parent homes since their divine parent is usually absent from their day-to-day upbringing. Those whose mortal parent is dead or incapacitated, like Meg and Leo Valdez, grow up in dire circumstances. In Greek mythology, gods having offspring with mortals is extremely common. Riordan reimagines the lives of these children.
While Greek demigods train at Camp Half-Blood, located in Long Island, Roman demigods seek sanctuary at Camp Jupiter, near San Francisco. The demigods are trained by creatures like satyrs, centaurs, and other mythical beings. Prophecies act as important sources of guidance for the demigods. The most common way for a prophecy to be told is from an oracle, who in ancient times were women chosen by the gods to be their medium. In ancient Greece, the chief oracle was Apollo’s priestess at the temple of Delphi. Riordan imagines the Oracle has shifted to America in contemporary times, setting up shop in Camp Half-Blood. Camp Jupiter tries to access prophecies through the Sibylline books, records of prophecy believed to be destroyed at the end of the Roman Empire. In ancient lore, the Cumaean Sibyl was the priestess presiding over the Apollonian oracle at Cumae, a Greek colony located near Naples, Italy. The sibyl is the counterpart of the Oracle of Delphi; readers will note Riordan often combines and compares elements from the two mythologies.
Greek and Roman mythologies are distinct but closely linked since the two cultures were in close contact in antiquity. Apollo, the god of prophecy, music, light, archery, and healing, is the only god with the same name in both pantheons. Thus, it is fitting that Apollo unites the Greek and Roman elements in The Trials of Apollo. Another unique feature of The Trials of Apollo is the references to Roman history. Riordan reimagines characters like Nero, Commodus, and Caligula, notorious emperors of antiquity and actual historical figures. He also references the Germani, an ancient pre-Roman people (here presented as soldiers), and Roman traditions like gladiatorial games. The mix of myth and history fits in well with the logic of Riordan’s world since gods and mythical creatures exist in its reality.
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