The Pythia on Ellis Island explores the lasting influence of the Greco-Roman legacy on contemporary cultural attitudes and values and the contradictions between allegiance to Western European traditions and the quintessentially American drive for change. Understanding how the roots of Western culture developed can help us to see beyond the intellectual and moral fragmentation of postmodern times. For example, Greco-Roman views of difference (immortals and mortals, male and female) became a kind of master template for subsequent interpretations of difference and its implicit fear of diversity. Feminist rereadings of literary and philosophical texts (Homer, Sophocles, lyric poetry, Stoic and Epicurean philosophy, New Comedy, Cicero, and Virgil) show how the classics shaped dualisms that inform Western thought.