he Scrolls of Lysis  (December 1962)

Myrrha was silent except for an occasional obscenity directed at poor Limon as we staggered to their apartment and into the bedroom where we let our sodden burden fall onto the wide couch. She was silent, too, as she turned to face me, then reached up to unfasten the pin that held her chiton and undergarments. They fell in a pool at her feet.

"It took time as all satisfactory revenge does, and it surmounted obstacles thrown in its path that might have defeated a less clever - or you may prefer to call it unscrupulous - man.
Forgive me if I boast a bit. The gods know I've been given little enough to be proud of in my life. So if I can be forgiven one touch of vanity it would be that which concerns the manner in which I went about destroying the Supreme Boeotarch of Thebes, the most superior being, Epaminondas.
Henceforth, I knew, I'd be ten times as suspect as I'd been before. If I bungled a second bit of trickery as I had the first, nothing could save me from swift and final punishment. And yet trickery with the Scrolls of Lysis was my only opportunity to gain my revenge.
It would require patience and I must train myself in this virtue, which had never been one of my strong qualities, if I hoped to succeed - and what else did I have to live for?"

Written by Don Tracy. Supposed to be the first historical novel of ancient Thebes.

Set in ancient Greece circa 394 B.C. where Thamus, a smart teenage scholar with a deformed foot lives on the island of Gyarus. His old teacher Lysis is an exiled wise man who has has been writing some serious prophecies onto scrolls which only Thamus has been taught to read.
When the Spartans invade the island their leader Recto appears to be  Thamus' father. A fact hidden to both. In a rage Recto kills Thamus' mother and teacher Lysis. As Lysis dies he makes one last prophecy and asks Thamus to seek out the supreme leader of Greece, Epaminondas and reveal to him the scrolls which contain more on the future of the Greek World. So, secretly, Thamus, Limon, a big, hairy muscle man and Myrrha, a woman Thamus was once infatuated with, but now dislikes, set out to find the leader of all Greece. ...