The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
My rating: 5 of 5 stars “What had become of us?” OR Growing Up in a Declining Athens OR Love During Wartime The Peloponnesian War makes the Trojan War look like a brief walk in the park. In Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine (1956), fifty-year-old Alexias recounts his youth, first love, and early manhood in Athens during its devastating, nearly thirty-year war with Sparta. Alexias begins by relating how when his mother was pregnant, his father decided to name the baby—should it be male—after his beloved younger brother, and that because the baby was prematurely born small and ugly—not fit to bear the name Alexias—his father wanted to have him exposed on the mountain, for on that birth day the twenty-four-year-old brother had taken hemlock to die with his plague-killed lover, tipping over his cup to write the youth’s name, Philon, in the dregs, “as one does after supper in the last of the wine.” Baby Alexias was spared being exposed when a Spartan attack on Athens called his father away. That opening initiates the themes of the novel relating to the effects of war on everyday life, the depth of male-male love, the fraught relationship between Alexias and his father, and the melancholy awareness of the passing of time. After telling of his natal brush with death—ironically saved by the war—Alexias narrates the story of his youthful education in philosophy, politics, war, and love against the backdrop of Athens’ decline through its long conflict with Sparta. Building a loving relationship with his young step-mother; meeting Socrates for the first time at school, being caught by his ugliness, wisdom, and charisma, and becoming his lifelong student/friend; seeing off his father on the ill-fated Sicilian Expedition (a debacle that speeded up the decline of Athens); meeting the love of his life, Lycus, son of Democritus (with Socrates playing Cupid!); fighting alongside Lycus against Spartan raids; winning the foot race at the Games in Corinth; working through his resentment of Lycus’ jealousy; joining the Athenian navy; surviving Sparta’s siege of Athens by any means necessary, including posing as a sculptor’s model/lover; and much, much more. To reiterate: as Alexias grows, Athens decays, and he and Lycus lose their youthful innocence, grace, and beauty. Sadness, then, underlies the story. As Alexias learns what is important (to balance freedom with responsibility and democracy with individual excellence and to know oneself before attempting to know anything else), his wonderful city forgets what is important, changing from a proud beacon of culture, democracy, and liberty to a cruel empire, to an oligarchy, and finally to a vassal of Sparta. Alexias is writing the book as a still grief-stricken middle-aged man; recalling one’s youth is ever a nostalgic activity. The novel, however, is much more than sad, for as Alexias says, “There is a beauty of the soul that works out through bitterness like a vein of marble through earth.” And his love for Lycus is luminous: “Here’s to life. You gave it me.” And the novel has so much interesting and exotic ancient Greek culture and LIFE! Sports, festivals, plays, music, philosophy (Socrates and the sophists!), politics (democracy vs. oligarchy!), education (pedagogue-chaperons!), trade, war, gods, superstitions, statues, gender roles, class divisions, and love. Alexias’ class prized love between men (especially young ones) more than that between men and women, looking on the former as the noble stuff of poetry and romance and the latter as the mundane stuff of marriage and reproduction. His father gives Alexias advice on how to handle the importunate suitors he’ll attract as he comes into his youthful beauty (one shows up at his house with serenading hired musicians), and Alexias notes that his friend Xenophon was a little strange for not being interested in men. It was no homophobic culture. Although Alexias and his family and lover are fictional, Renault writes convincing supporting historical characters like the wonderfully charismatic and enigmatic Alcibiades, Xenophon, and Plato. Socrates is the philosophical and moral compass here, making everyone who interacts with him question preconceived assumptions and think for themselves, such that whoever happens to be in power in Athens hates him, whether democrats early or oligarchs late. He teaches his students (from whom he accepts no money and insists on calling “friends”) things like “Who can do good without knowing what it is?” And “Know thyself first.” Renault writes lots of such wisdom, like “The soul is the surfeit dream of a man with enough to eat.” And intense psychological moments, like “I had made his memory live for him, and he had made it live for me, so we stared both of us with an inward eye, seeking blindness again.” And powerful love, like “Always from my first remembrance, whether he rode or walked or ran or stood talking in the street, I knew him apart from all other men.” And vivid descriptions, like “Spring was here. On the terraced hills below us, new barley bloomed the earth with green, and the black vine stocks were budding. We were sunning ourselves with the lizards on the great warm stones…” And potent, culturally appropriate similes, like “I saw him on the wall leaning upon his spear with firelight on him like a warrior done in red on a black vase.” Renault is an excellent historical fiction writer, telling an absorbing and moving story while immersing us in Greece such that it’s alien and alive and resonates with us. Barnaby Edwards gives a fine reading of the audiobook. Lovers of historical fiction and or of ancient Greece should read this novel. View all my reviews
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