The Last of the Wine

An English teacher recommended that I read Mary Renault's excellent book "The King Must Die," and because "The Bull From The Sea" had been checked out of the library when I finished its predecessor, I took another book by Renault. "The Last of the Wine" cemented my admiration for her work, but there's nothing I can say to praise Renault that hasn't already been said."The Last of the Wine" is set in Athens during the Peloponnesian War and is told by a young aristocrat named Alexias. Alexias, an unwanted child, begins his story with the plague that killed his mother and uncle, among others, as well as Pericles the statesman. The famous names appear as people who move in the same circles Alexias expects to move in as an adult; friends to his father Myron, associates, politicians, and--as this is Athens--wooers of Alexias as he becomes an adolescent.But besides himself, Alexias's story concerns two other men: a stonemason turned philosopher named Sokrates, who helps Alexias out of his shy awkwardness, and Lysis, the man with whom Alexias falls in love. According to Athenian tradition, the older of a homosexual pair was supposed to teach the younger how to fight, to hunt, to behave in society, to be a man; Lysis does all this and also imparts to Alexias a desire to exceed his own limitations.If this story was simply about the downfall of Sokrates, it would be tragic, for Sokrates' story is bound up with the fall of Athens and the rise of democracy after the Spartan victory and the tyranny of the Thirty who terrorized the city afterwards. But it is also about the relationship between Lysis, a man whose integrity survives one disappointment after another, and Alexias, who seems destined to lose every dream he has. The two of them overcome jealousy, loss on the battlefield, plague and starvation, and poverty; the one thing they cannot overcome is Lysis's determination to see things as they are, and Alexias's need to see things as he wants them to be.The characters are richly drawn; Renault could make her people live through simple descriptions and dialogue, and the reader will feel as if they've lost friends when they finish the book. Alexias's point of view is set well ahead of the book's place in time; the narrative has a poignance, an air of regret, that makes the moments of happiness seem that much more precious. But there are wonderful scenes as well. Any scene with Phaidon, the courtesan who became a disciple of Sokrates, crackles with tension and energy. Agathon the playwright is shown as charming and flamboyant, and Sokrates is as homey and comfortable as a beloved uncle. As for villains, who needs the Spartans when we have Kritias, a notorious member of the Thirty, a man who attempts to molest Alexias in his boyhood and then later helps to ruin his family?The title comes from the Athenian dinner custom of tossing the dregs of the wine cup into the serving bowl and reading the patterns of the droplets for an omen. The Peloponnesian W

"When I was a young boy, if I was sick or in trouble, or had been beaten at school, I used to remember that on the day I was born my father had wanted to kill me."This is the opening line of The Last of the Wine. I anticipated finding a weak, sickly protagonist, plagued by misfortune. This was not the case. I found a man who lived his life in dignity, honor, and devotion, even with such a humbling beginning to his life.Alexias, the narrator and protagonist of this story, matures and grows to manhood during the Peloponnesian War, in its final days. Alexias reaches young adulthood without the benefit of a father for many years, believing him to be dead, and takes over as head of the family, caring for his stepmother and sister, defending his honor, and the honor of his father, as others try to corrupt him. He is fair of looks, posessed of good health, and strives to better himself, body and mind, throughout the book.He meets and falls in love with Lysis, another Athenian boy, and the two form a life-long bond of friendship and devotion to one another, which extends to Alexias compromising himself to rescue the virtue and honor of Thalia, the bride of Lysis, when famine comes to Athens. I think one of my favorite aspects of Mary Renault's novels is her treatment of homosexual subject matter is not only extraordinary for the time her books were written, but also reads as though the sexual nature of the friendships, especially the one between Lysis and Alexias, is secondary to the genuine love and caring they feel for one another. Mary Renault's gentle treatment of, at the time, such taboo subject matter, never comes across as censored, or stifled, in any way.This book is about many things; friendship, honor, principle, love, committment, and sense of duty. Of all the Mary Renault books I have now read, I find this to be the most complete telling of the life of a man in ancient Greece. The reader travels with Alexias, from his formative years as a boy, through his training as a soldier, his belief that as head of his family he must provide and care for them, his stepping down from that role when his 'not so dead as he thought' father returns to Athens, his struggle with complying with his father's wishes, while trying to retain the values and beliefs he has instilled in himself during his father's absence, and so much more. We see him risk his life to fight alongside Lysis to see Athens freed, not only because he knew it to be the right thing for himself and the people, but because Lysis believed in it, and his love for Lysis was enough for him to support the cause, even if it meant his own death.I dare to say that I will never find another author so in love with this time period that they can re-create it with such beauty and passion. I hope that other readers will enjoy all of Mary Renault's books as much as I have.

I first read this at 14 and was bowled over. 40 years later I'm still bowled over. This is certainly the best novel I've ever read, and only rivalled for sheer writing brilliance by her THE MASK OF APOLLO. But MASK is a very different book, and though it has its own delights, lacks the magic of discovery that permeates WINE. On every page, one feels with Alexias that one is discovering and coming to slowly comprehend a world at once new and old, a world glistening with the strangeness of antiquity yet immediately understandable, with characters one feels one could stop and talk to on any steetcorner. And the sheer intelligence in every line exceeds anything else I've ever come across. In his biography David Sweetman tells us that many of Mary Renault's classmates at university were afraid of her intellect, and I can believe it! Her insights are astonishing--psychological, philosophical and political. And she makes it all seem so easy, like "the conversation of a cultivated man", as Dr Johnson once defined the ideal writing style. Who was this woman, who could bring the disparate elements of the hardest genre in writing into such sharp and brilliant focus, and make it all seem like something that just occured to her after dinner? She was one in a million, and this her first historical novel is for me the yardstick for all fiction. I've read it a dozen times--no doubt I'll be going for another dozen. If I ever had to learn a book by heart to preserve it, a la the conclusion of FARENHEIT 451, this would be the book.

When I was in college I read this book for the first time. It has been a part of me ever since. I have only re-read it once, and I couldn't bring myself to finish it because I couldn't face the loss of Lysis again. So deeply did I sink into the character of Alexias that I actually became ill when tragedy struck. I will never be able to read it again but I carry it with me always. I became so interested in Greek history after reading this book and all of Ms. Renault's Greek novels that I studied Ancient Greek in college so that I could read Plato, Plutarch, and the other great writers of the time in the original Greek.This book and all of her other books handles the subject of bisexuality with taste and discretion. There is nothing explictly homosexual in any of her novels. If that's what you are looking for you'll be diappointed. The reader should be advised to remember that bisexual relationships were not unusual at the time and any casual examination of the social sturcture of ancient Greek society will make it clear why such relationships occurred.

This novel is set in Ancient Athens about 429-404 BC. But don't be put off if you don't know anything about ancient history. Mary Renault has the gift of making things clear without stopping to explain. 'Last of the Wine' is in the first person, and the narrator, Alexias, speaks as he would to a person of his time and culture. But he is never obscure to a person from the other side of the world and 2400 years later. Such writing, lucid, even limpid, but effortlessly achieving a very difficult task, is such as to make other writers despair. This book is not fantasy, but every fantasy and SF writer ought to read it, to see how well it can be done.The subject of 'Last of the Wine' is the making of a man, by prosperity and adversity, triumph and disaster, love and hate. Alexias faces, in his Aegean microcosm, the whole breadth of human experience. And that is why 'Last of the Wine' is a novel for anyone who is interested in anything.A previous reviewer claimed that this book is 'laced with descriptions of homosexual acts'. I can only say that this is a wild exaggeration. Alexias is bisexual, and his love for Lycis dominates his youth and the book. But the only sexual act mentioned is a single kiss. If that puts you off, so be it: but I think that you would be making a mistake not to read this wonderful book.