A Review of The King Must Die and The Bull From the Sea,
by Mary Renault
Steven Zoraster
Is it actually possible for anyone to write better historical fiction than Mary Renault's two volumes retelling of the Greek legend of Theseus? No. These two books are the simply the best historical novels ever written, and - as far as I am concerned - among the best novels of any type ever written. In them, the author presents Theseus' life as a story about a real person, and, at the same time, as something so filled with drama and tension that the reader fully understands how his story, retold again and again by poets, could grow into a myth during Theseus' own lifetime. A myth that will be passed down through the ages.
Central to both novels is the tension between two forms of divine kingship assumed to coexist in Mycenaean Greece. The ancient Shore Folk and the Minoans (of Crete) worship the Earth Mother. For these people, the queen usually rules, and her king consort is an inferior, sacrificed after each cycle of the crops so that his youth and potency will be forever renewed. Theseus' forebears on the other hand, the Hellenes, are relatively recent patriarchal invaders from the north, who see their kings as direct intermediaries between the people and the Sky Gods, on whose life-giving rain the crops depend. On their king, therefore, devolves the noble responsibility of offering his own life as the supreme sacrifice when, in times of great crises, the auguries demanded it.
For both peoples, Shore Folk and Hellenes, the king embodies the cycle of life from birth to death. Thus the actions of each king represents, at the highest and most dramatic level, an explicit question for everyone: how should you pick the time of your own death, if the gods allow you to choose? And this in turn implies another question: how should you live that span of years allocated in this world, knowing that at some time, the gods will demand from you the supreme sacrifice?
In The King Must Die, Theseus, raised in Troizen to protect him from his father's enemies, becomes king of Eleusis at the age of 16 by killing the previous year-king in ritual combat. He does this while knowing full well that in Eleusis the queen rules, and that Theseus in turn will be expected to die consenting after one year as consort. Then, true to his own heritage, he overthrows the old order in Eleusis and imposes the full Hellenic kingship. He then reveals himself to his true father, Aigeus, king of Athens. After being acknowledged by Aigeus, he offers himself as part of the human tax paid each year by the Athenians to the Minoan sea kings. In Crete, which has a mixed religion imposed by Hellenic invaders, the king rules, but only through marrying the queen. Here again, Theseus overthrows the old order by leading a revolt of the native Cretens.
The Bull From the Sea takes up after Theseus returns from Crete and assumes the kingship of Athens. An assumption aided by Theseus' own failure to raise a white sail on his ship to mark his return. It tells the story his unification of Attica under the leadership of Athens, intertwined with the story of his two marriages, and of how, by giving in to his own anger, he causes the death of his own son and heir.
My words above may seem dry. But when Mary Renault is writing, her words are anything but dry. Consider this passage from The King Must Die, when Theseus first sees the city of Athens,
"Suddenly, at the turn of the road between the low green hills, I saw standing huge before me a great flat rock, like a platform raised by Titans to assail the gods from. Upon its top, glowering bright in the western sunlight, stood a royal palace, the columns russet red, the pink-washed walls picked out with white and blue squares. So high it stood against the sky, the guards on the ramparts looked as small as goldsmith's work, and their spears as fine as wire. I caught my breath. I had guessed at nothing like this....
The place overawed me. Though I heard tell of it, I had pictured only a hill such as any king or chief will build on. I had not dreamed my father the master of this mighty stronghold. Now I saw why he had held out so long against all his enemies; it might be kept, I thought, against all the world in arms. I understood what I had heard in tales: that since King Zeus made men, there was never a time when a king did not live on the Acropolis of Athens...."
And, from The Bull From the Sea, after Theseus has suffered a stroke:
"Hour after hour I sat, watching a bird pecking a fig or a passing sail, and thinking how I could keep my enemies in fear of me till the time was ripe to die. Yes; while the child waited for his nurse to bring the posset or the sponge; the King still thought. Him the god's stroked did not destroy. The warrior, the lover, the wrestler, the singer, he has outlived them all. He is Theseus, it seems….
"The sun was rising. I thought of Athens, and all that I had built there. And even though the god's sign had left me, yet all that I was said 'Mine!' So I lived, and waited."
At the start of this review, I indicated that these books could be read as simple stories, or as myths. Mary Renault achieves this by allowing Theseus, her narrator, to hint at ungodly explanations for some of his actions. For example, did he really go to Crete because he had a message from Poseidon, or because he was angry with his father? In other words, did he do what the gods wanted him to with his life, or did he just do what he wanted to, using them as an excuse? Towards the end of his life, alone, he ponders this question:
"I thought of my life, the good and evil days; of the gods, and fate; how much of a man's life and of his soul they make for him, how much he makes for himself. What if Pirithoos had not come for me, when I was setting out for Crete? What man would I have become? .... Or what if Phaedra had cried "Rape!" another day, when the earthquake-sickness was not on me? Yet I had made already the man who heard that cry. Fate and will, will and fate, like earth and sky bringing forth the grain together; and which the bread tastes of, no man knows
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