The Bull from the Sea

The Bull from the Sea is the story of Theseus, King of Athens, but it is also Mary Renault’s brilliant historical reconstruction of ancient Greek politics. Throughout his reign, Theseus is torn between his genius for kingship and his truant craving for adventure. As he is setting out toward Crete for a dynastic marriage with Phaedra, Pirithoos, the pirate prince, lures him off to explore the unknown Euxine, where Theseus meets and captures the young warrior priestess Hippolyta. She is the love of his life, and that love is the crux of his fate.

The bull of Marathon, the battle of the Lapiths and Kentaurs, and the moon-goddess cult of Pontos are merely a portion of the legendary material that Renault weaves into the fabric of great historical fiction. Whether or not these myths have their far-distant origin in actual events, the author’s imagination and scholarship have invested them with immediate and magical reality.