Marius the Epicurean

Why does no one read Pater these days? He writes with the fervid delicate beauty of a butterfly defying the storms of winter. As literature becomes ever more commercialised, this sensual celebration seems even more important. A pleasure every bit as sensual and refreshing as a Turkish bath.

Pater was one of the most insightful and exacting critics of England, and his fiction exceeded even his own standards for beauty. Marius the Epicurean is the story of a young man's spiritual and aesthetic awakening in ancient Rome. He journeys from Stoicism to Cyrenaicism to Epicureanism, and finally to Christianity. The book is subtle and profound, and is written in Pater's characteristically lovely prose. I do not recommend this book to anyone who wants a traditional linear plot in which the protagonist is motivated by external events; rather, I recommend it to all who wish "to burn with a hard, gemlike flame," to all who make careful aesthetic contemplation their highest goal.