The Battle of the Labyrinth camp for the school year. On his fifteenth birthday at the summer's end, Percy receives a visit from his father Poseidon, who gives him a sand dollar, admonishing him to “spend it wisely”. Nico later appears to tell Percy his plan to defeat Luke once and for all. "The Battle of the Labyrinth" was initially referred to as "Percy 4" until the title was officially revealed. The novel was teased by Rick Riordan behind the pages of its predecessor, "The Titan's Curse". It was based on the Greek myth of the labyrinth, where the Minotaur was supposedly kept. In his
Labyrinth all the temples of Egypt, the so-called Labyrinth, of which, however, only the foundation stones have been preserved." Herodotus' description of the Egyptian Labyrinth inspired some central scenes in Bolesław Prus' 1895 historical novel, "Pharaoh". Pliny the Elder's "Natural History" (36.90) lists the legendary Smilis, reputed to be a contemporary of Daedalus, together with the historical mid-sixth-century BC architects and sculptors Rhoikos and Theodoros as two of the makers of the Lemnian labyrinth, which Andrew Stewart regards as "evidently a misunderstanding of the Samian temple's location "en limnais" ['in the marsh']." According to Pliny, the tomb of the great Etruscan