Mary Renault · 1958 · overland

Mary Renault's 1958 novel, and the one that changed how historical fiction handles myth. Theseus tells his own story - from lifting the stone at Troizen to the bull court at Knossos - and Renault strips out every miracle, so the Minotaur is a man in a mask and the labyrinth is a palace with too many rooms.

1. 1
   Troizen

   A boy raised in his grandfather's house in the Argolid, told his father is Poseidon and suspecting otherwise - and at seventeen he lifts the stone, finds the sword and sandals under it, and goes to Athens the hard way.

2. 2
   The Isthmus road

   The coast road round the Saronic Gulf, which is full of men who kill travellers - Sinis the pine-bender, Sciron, Procrustes and his bed - and Theseus deals with each of them by the method they used, which is the point.

3. 3
   Eleusis

   Renault's invention and the best thing in the book: a matriarchal kingdom where the queen takes a new consort each year and he is killed at the end of it - and Theseus wins, and refuses to die on schedule.

4. 4
   Athens

   He reaches his father Aigeus, who recognises the sword, and is nearly poisoned by Medea first - and then the tribute falls due and he puts himself among the fourteen youths going to Crete.

5. 5
   Knossos

   The bull court: months of training with a team of dancers he welds into something the Cretans have never seen, leaping bulls in front of a decadent court - and a labyrinth that is a palace, and a Minotaur who is a man.

6. 6
   Naxos

   The earthquake brings Knossos down and they get away with Ariadne - and on Naxos he sees what she does in the rites of Dionysus and leaves her there, which Renault presents as horror rather than betrayal.

7. 7
   Athens

   He forgets the sail. Aigeus, watching from the cliff for a white one and seeing black, throws himself into the sea that is named for him - and Theseus comes home a king by the death of the father he crossed a sea to find.