Alexias, a young Athenian of good family, comes of age during the last phases of the Peloponnesian War. The adult world he enters is one in which the power and influence of his class have been undermined by the forces of war. Alexias finds himself drawn to the controversial teachings of Socrates, following him even though it at times endangers both his own life and his family’s place in society.
Among the great teacher’s followers Alexias meets Lysis, and the two youths become inseparable – together they wrestle in the palaestra, journey to the Olympic Games, and fight in the wars against Sparta. As their relationship develops against the background of famine, siege and civil conflict, Mary Renault expertly conveys the intricacies of classical Greek culture.
Format: ebook (371 pages) Publisher: Virago Publication date: 6 August 2015 [1956] Genre: Historical Fiction, Modern Classics
Purchase links* Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops) *links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme
My Review
The Last of the Wine was my book for the recent 1956 Club hosted by Simon at Stuck In A Book and Kaggsy at Kaggsy’s Bookish Ramblings. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to finish reading the book or write my review during the event.
As soon as I started reading The Last of the Wine, two things struck me. Firstly, I realized I’d read it before, back in 2015. Secondly, that when I read The Flowers of Adonis by Rosemary Sutcliff a few months ago, the reason the story seemed so familiar is that the two books cover pretty much the same ground, namely the Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta in the period 431 to 405 BC. The difference is that, whereas Alkibiades is the main focus of The Flowers of Adonis (albeit his exploits are described by a series of different narrators), in The Last of the Wine he remains largely off-stage with events being seen from the point of view of Alexias, a young Athenian.
In her introduction to my Virago Modern Classics edition of The Last of the Wine, Charlotte Mendelson describes Mary Renault as “an Ancient Greek” because of her knowledge of the period and her ability to bring it to life. I agree entirely because the novel wears its historical research lightly, instead immersing the reader in the details of daily life, social and religious rituals. This means The Last of the Wine is more than just a history of the political and military events of that period, it’s the story of a deep and loving relationship between two young men, Alexias and Lysis. Those who enjoy action scenes won’t be disappointed either and there are parts for famous figures of Greek philosophy such as Socrates and Plato.
I was surprised to learn Renault was nearly fifty when she began writing The Last of the Wine and that, although it was her seventh novel, it was the first to be set in Ancient Greece. I must admit I’d always thought of Renault as a writer of exclusively historical fiction. Mendelson argues the timing was due to the parallels Renault saw between the South Africa in which she was living at the time and her desire to write a love story whose protagonists just happened to be homosexual and would not be “shamed, imprisoned or hounded to death”.
Renault’s insight when writing about love – and grief – is evident. “Then the pain of loss leaped out on me, like a knife in the night when one has been on one’s guard all day. The world grew hollow, a place of shadows…” Women barely figure in the book, except those offering sexual services or as wives needing protection. As Charlotte Mendelson notes, the men “have the best characters, the best bodies and best lines”.
Mary Renault (1905 – 1983) was best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece with their vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great.
Born in London and educated at the University of Oxford, she trained as a nurse at Oxford’s Radcliffe Infirmary where she met her lifelong partner, fellow nurse Julie Mullard. After completing her training she wrote her first novel, Purposes of Love, in 1937. In 1948, after her novel North Face won a MGM prize worth $150,000, she and Mullard emigrated to South Africa.
It was in South Africa that Renault was able to write forthrightly about homosexual relationships for the first time – in her last contemporary novel, The Charioteer, published in 1953, and then in her first historical novel, 1956’s The Last of the Wine, the story of two young Athenians who study under Socrates and fight against Sparta. Both these books had male protagonists, as did all her later works that included homosexual themes. Her sympathetic treatment of love between men would win Renault a wide gay readership.
In 2006 Mary was the subject of a BBC4 documentary and her books, many of which remain in print on both sides of the Atlantic, are often sought after for radio and dramatic interpretation. In 2010, Fire From Heaven was shortlisted for the Lost Booker of 1970. (Bio credit: Curtis Brown)
Welcome to today’s stop on the blog tour for Sons of Rome (Rise of Emperors #1). Co-authored by Simon Turney & Gordon Doherty, it was published as an ebook on 15th October and will be available in hardcover in December. I’m delighted to bring you an extract from the book. You can find out more about how Simon and Gordon approached their collaboration in this guest post hosted by Robin at Parmenion Books.
About the Book
Four Emperors. Two Friends. One Destiny.
As twilight descends on the 3rd Century AD, the Roman Empire is but a shadow of its former self. Decades of usurping emperors, splinter kingdoms and savage wars have left the people beleaguered, the armies weary and the future uncertain. And into this chaos Emperor Diocletian steps, reforming the succession to allow for not one emperor to rule the world, but four.
Meanwhile, two boys share a chance meeting in the great city of Treverorum as Diocletian’s dream is announced to the imperial court. Throughout the years that follow, they share heartbreak and glory as that dream sours and the empire endures an era of tyranny and dread. Their lives are inextricably linked, their destinies ever-converging as they rise through Rome’s savage stations, to the zenith of empire.
For Constantine and Maxentius, the purple robes beckon…
Format: ebook (433 pages) Publisher: Head of Zeus, Aries Fiction Publication date: 15th October 2020 Genre: Historical Fiction
Purchase links* Amazon UK | Hive (supporting UK bookshops) *links provided for convenience not as part of an affiliate programme
Extract from Sons of Rome (Rise of Emperors #1)
MAXENTIUS
The figure whose shadow stretched across the room and threw my glorious civic centre into an oppressive gloom was a stocky, well-built young man, perhaps half as old again as I was, with bear-shoulders and close-cut fair hair. He was dressed in relative finery – not as rich as mine, I would say, but costly enough to make most families wince and touch their purses for reassurance. And yet something about its cut, colour and make-up spoke more of the battlefield than the throne room. He wore a thick leather belt with a place for a sword and dagger, though neither was currently in evidence. Even before he stepped forward and the light from the leaded window threw his face into sharp relief I had seen enough to form an instant dislike of him.
His face took things so much further.
It brought a fear that chilled me from the roots of my hair to the soles of my feet. The boy’s mouth was twisted into an expression of casual cruelty and his eyes were flinty hard and devoid of compassion or joy.
His shadow was the most pleasant part of him. The warmest. And it showed no sign of moving away.
As if his brooding appearance was not enough, there was a small gaggle of boys loitering behind him at the door that led back to the main hall. Each and every one had that look of a bully. Piggy eyes and leering faces, made no less brutal by the fine court clothes they wore. Even at perhaps eleven or twelve summers they would have looked more at home nailing a peasant to a cross and stripping him of his flesh than attending the court of the most powerful men in the empire.
A cold shudder ran through me at the sight, and at the realisation that I was at their mercy. I glanced at the other two doors in the room but they were both closed, and even as my eyes shot back and forth between them, the wicked-looking thug’s cronies entered the room at his silent cold-eyed instruction, moving around the perimeter and effectively sealing me in.
The main door – through which they had entered – was closed with a quiet, gentle click that might as well have been the resounding leaden boom of a mausoleum door slamming shut.
I tried to find my voice, but it seemed to have become lost somewhere beneath a layer of fear, and all that issued from between my dry lips was a faint croak.
‘What is this?’ asked the leader of this small pack of brutes, the distaste clear in his voice, as though he had come across a mangy dog eating its own waste.
It took me a moment to realise that he was actually referring to my city rather than to my person, and I knew then what would happen. I had met this boy’s sort before in my few short years, and had learned a few hard lessons. Such boys – and men, when they grow into them – exist only for the pleasure of causing distress and pain. There is no arguing with them or reasoning with them. They will not stop unless forced to do so.
My immediate future was bleak, and I was astute enough to recognise that.
Strangely, a calm settled over me at the thought that the thug had fixated upon my glorious wooden invention rather than upon my person. I was not a martial boy by nature. I shunned the sickening sights and sounds of inflicted wounds that the arena produced and had little interest in lessons from the swordsman Father had retained to ‘toughen me up’, my forays into the military largely restricted to reading from ancient masters such as the great Julius Caesar.
No. Not a warrior. Not yet.
I accepted that then, but despite my quiet, pacific demeanour, one thing had come down to me from my father’s personality, other than a tendency to anger easily: a bloody-minded unwillingness to bend. There was a steel in me, as yet untempered but beginning to show even as a child. Despite the fact that I knew this boy was here for violence, I found a disinclination to accept my fate, and my jaw hardened just a little.
The thug must have seen the change in me and recognised it for what it was, for one eyebrow twitched upwards just a little, and he goaded me beyond words by taking a step forward and deliberately knocking aside one of my carefully planned commercial centres with his foot.
‘I said what is this?’
The blocks tumbled away, distorting the immaculate lines of my city, and anger rose in the pit of my stomach. But I was no fighter – the anger had no outlet through fist or blade. My rage instead hardened to a diamond within me, amplifying my resolution to weather the storm.
‘That,’ I replied with the same inflection that he had used, ‘was a careful, thoughtful and artful construction of Rome as it should be. As I see it. That is what it was. What it is, is a mess of ruins and fallen buildings, knocked carelessly aside by an uncultured and mindless barbarian.’
CONSTANTINE
I butted the door open with my palms, hoping to find some other forgotten, quiet and empty chamber. Instead, to my astonishment, I beheld a poorly lit, drab room, wholly unremarkable were it not for the pack of baying youths at the far corner. They were huddled around something on the floor – no… someone. The largest boy in the group was raining punches and kicks onto this figure. Toy wooden blocks lay scattered nearby.
I froze, my eyes locked on the cowering victim: a dark-haired boy, wiry and lean, some years younger than his attackers. His narrow, tanned face was spattered in blood and his eyes were swollen almost shut, but his bloated gaze met mine. When his lips moved, I did not hear his words, but I understood.
Help me.
Suddenly, one of the young thugs looked up, his eyes widening upon seeing me in the doorway. ‘Candidianus, stop!’ he yelped in warning to the big one.
At once, the ring of youths broke away from the bloodied lad. The ringleader snarled, dragging his foul glare around to fix upon me, eyes shaded under his heavy brow as he struggled to discern my identity in the gloom. But I recognised him immediately – it was Galerius’ son. His nostrils were flaring like a bull’s. The gemmed necklace was spattered in the beaten boy’s blood… and I noticed a bite-wound on one of his ankles too, the blood trickling from that and staining his boot.
‘One man?’ Candidianus snarled at the six with him while jabbing a finger at me. ‘You crumble in fear at the sight of one man? You will never serve as my bodyguards – never!’
I noticed the six looking around sheepishly. At first, I had assumed they were Candidianus’ friends. Now it was clear they were merely acolytes.
Just then, the bloodied boy groaned and tried to prise himself from the floor.
‘You stay put!’ Candidianus roared, turning painfully back to the boy, lifting his fist and readying to swing it down.
I cared little for either of the two strangers before me, but the scene was sickening: a burly boy readying to strike at the face of a younger lad who was already beaten and near-unconscious.
I lurched across the chamber and caught the bully’s wrist before he could strike. His eyes bulged and he bared his teeth, his clenched fist shaking in my grasp. He tried to wrench free of my grip but I twisted his arm up his back and he winced like a whipped dog as I held him, back turned to me, using him like a shield against his cronies. At this, he cried to the nearest of his acolytes – a stocky, snub-nosed boy: ‘Get him off me!’ This one stepped forward, fists clenched. I turned a gimlet stare upon him that broke his stride, halted him and turned his scowl into a pallid, fearful look. I flashed the same look at the rest, and issued a silent thank you to Batius who had taught me the power of a confident glower. The truth is my gut was churning, but I had those six beaten with no weapon other than my demeanour.
Candidianus struggled in my grasp until it became clear he could not wriggle free. I growled in his ear. ‘Now I’m going to let go, and I want you and your group to leave. Do not make a fool of yourself by trying anything.’ He nodded, yet I could sense he was keen to become a fool. But what else was I to do? I relaxed my grip on him and he stumbled away, panting. He did not head for the door, as I had urged him. Neither did he fly at me. Instead, he turned to face me, standing tall, a few feet away. Despite the few years I had on him, his shoulders matched mine and our eyes were level. ‘You dare to lay a hand on the son of a nobleman?’ he growled.
I snorted at this. ‘Something of a contradiction, is it not?’ I gestured to the young lad on the floor. ‘Going by this one’s fine robes I’m certain he is no slave or peasant. Perhaps you should discuss this with his father—’
‘It’s you! Constantine, the son of Governor Constantius!’ Candidianus cut me off, one finger wagging, his eyes sparkling in recognition, grinning like a cat that had just spotted an injured mouse. ‘I saw you in the main hall.’
‘Aye, son of the Governor of Dalmatia,’ I snapped. ‘So perhaps you should avoid the habit of picking fights with men of noble blood and be gone, as I urged you.’
‘You?’ Candidianus continued with a burgeoning grin. ‘Noble blood?’ Then he threw his head back with a lungful of painfully forced laughter, clearly learned from another – doubtless his father. ‘He doesn’t know,’ he roared in delight, meeting the gaze of each of the six with him. One by one, the six laughed too. Sycophantic yet mocking laughter. ‘Your father brought you all the way here and didn’t think to tell you why?’
About the Authors
Simon Turney is the author of the Marius’ Mules and Praetorian series, as well as The Damned Emperor series for Orion and Tales of the Empire series for Canelo. He is based in Yorkshire.
What Cathy Read Next... 