Over the past couple of years, I've been filling gaps in my classical education; reading/rereading Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, and Dante's Inferno. Those readings brought to my attention two novels based on characters created by Homer and Virgil.
We can't properly label either of these as "historical" fiction, but the Homeric tales did purport to be at least based on historical events, and Virgil expanded on Homer's "history" to create a quasi-historical founding story for Rome.
Circe, authored by Madeline Miller and published in 2018, is written as an autobiographical soliloquy by the island-dwelling enchantress from The Odyssey. Through Miller's excellent writing, Circe reflects on her encounter with Odysseus, their years together, and her later life.
Lavinia, written by Ursula Le Guin and published in 2008, breathes life into a very minor female character from The Aeneid. Le Guin employed a bit of the post-modern style, as Lavinia acknowledges to the reader that she only exists as a name mentioned briefly by Virgil, as the Latin princess who married the Trojan Aeneas and with him founded a line that had become Imperial Rome by the time Virgil wrote his epic poem.
