The Bull from the Sea was published by Longmans in 1962, completing the Theseus diptych begun with The King Must Die. Where the first novel followed Theseus’s youth (from Troizen through Crete), the sequel covers his maturity and decline — his establishment as King of Athens, his raid on the Amazons, his love for Hippolyta, his political marriage to Phaedra, and the destruction of his son Hippolytus.
The “bull from the sea” refers to the instrument of Hippolytus’s death (in myth, Poseidon sends a bull from the sea that terrifies Hippolytus’s horses, causing his death in a chariot wreck) — and Renault rationalizes this too: the bull is a real bull, the earthquake is a real earthquake, and Poseidon’s intervention is the language that a pre-scientific culture uses to describe natural disaster.
Renault’s treatment of the Phaedra-Hippolytus tragedy is psychologically acute: Phaedra’s desire for her stepson is not divine curse but human weakness (she is young, neglected by the aging Theseus, and Hippolytus resembles the Theseus she never had); Hippolytus’s purity is not priggishness but genuine devotion to Artemis (reimagined as the old matriarchal religion that his mother Hippolyta practiced); and Theseus’s curse — calling on Poseidon to destroy his own son — is the act of a man who believes a lie because it confirms his worst fears.
The novel explores the tragedy of aging: Theseus was great in youth, when physical courage and quick intelligence were sufficient. In old age, he must govern through wisdom rather than action, and his failure — believing Phaedra over Hippolytus — reveals that wisdom did not come with years.
Collecting The Bull from the Sea
First edition (Longmans, London, 1962): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $40–$100
- US first (Pantheon, 1962): $20–$50
- Without jacket: $8–$15