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The Last of the Wine

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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.

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 War came through Athens' dreams of empire, and Sparta's rivalry with her sister city-state. Athens' loss in the war foreshadowed the downfall of its own prestige; never again did the city rise to the power it had held prior to the conflict, nor did it ever produce, in Classical times, men like those who made it great. "The Last of the Wine" is a tragic story, but it is also a farewell to greatness, the glory that was Athens.

"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.

Mary Renault wrote several contemporary novels of varying quality ("The Charioteer" being by far the best) before she decided to delve into ancient Athens and found her genius of making history seem so vibrantly alive that we feel we are right there in the middle of it. Renault's first historical novel, "The Last of the Wine", is set during the Peloponnesian War, in an Athens grown too powerful and too complacent for its own good, riding for a calamitous fall. Renault introduces us to Alexias, sixteen years old when this story opens, the surviving son of an aristocratic family, whose conservative father disapproves of his hanging around the agora picking up all kinds of new ideas, and especially the dangerous notions of a philosopher named Sokrates (Renault scrupulously keeps the Greek spelling of proper names throughout the book). His father being called to serve in the disastrous Sicilian expedition leaves Alexias feeling as if a weight had rolled off him; out from under his father's thumb and free to spread his wings, he gravitates closer to Sokrates and a young Athenian nobleman named Lysis who becomes his closest friend and then his lover. Bisexuality was a given in ancient Greece and Renault writes about such relationships as a matter of fact. His father returning from the war beaten, degraded and escaping from the harsh slavery imposed on captured prisoners of war precipitates a crisis in the household; and Alexias and Lysis leave home to join the Athenian navy and find their own independence. The relationship between these two is not just that of lovers but as mentor and pupil; as the older of the two, it is Lysis' responsibility to train his younger friend in the ways of war, honor and manhood; and it's a responsibility he takes seriously. Lacking a benevolent father figure, Lysis becomes all in all to Alexias -- lover, big brother, best friend and confidant. There are inevitable conflicts between them as Alexias grows to maturity and the two begin to grow away from each other to build their own lives as adults; but their relationship grows deeper as it adapts to changing times and needs. Alexias says of Lysis, "It was he who taught me to be a man."

"The Last of the Wine" is a story of war and friendship, love and honor, set against the turbulent background of classical Greece. Here you'll meet some familiar figures from history textbooks: Alexias' contemporaries, Plato and Xenophon; Phaedo, the captive Melian boy who grew up to become a philosopher himself; and the fascinating character of the charming double-dealer Alkibiades, the renegade Athenian who played both ends against the middle and perhaps more than any other individual helped bring about Athens' defeat in the war and its subsequent decline. Renault's bringing these real figures into her narrative makes it seem that much more alive and immediate; as we read this excellent book we travel deeper and deeper into 5th-century B.C. Athens, and it's with some regret that we turn the last page and are jolted back into the present.

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.

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.

I've loved this book for half my life, and I've assigned it to students in Western Civ. classes in universities. Be very clear, now: this is not a novel about the battles of the great war between Athens and Sparta. It's not intended to be like Stephen Pressfield's account of the career of Alkibiades. It's about the decay of Athens' greatness, about the end of the Athenians' belief in their own glory and greatness. It's a tragic book-- about the end of a vision of democracy, about the ruin of a family, about the end of a love affair. But it's brilliantly written-- Renault crafted the language to feel Attic and distanced, and she tried to take up the attitudes and beliefs of her characters. I always read the opening lines to students-- the narrator Alexias blithely recalling that on the day of his birth, his father had ordered him put to death as too weak and sickly to bother raising. Renault's portrayal of Sokrates is sympathetic, human, and sad-- a fine depiction of tragic greatness. This is a novel that I'll assign to classes again, and certainly one that I'll put on my list of books for a desert island.

Classics is my minor in college, so I have read quite a few historical fiction books, but this has definetely been one of the best. As the story develops, you can see Alexias grow and mature as a man, and his relationships with his father, mother, his friends and his beloved Lysis change and mature through the years. This is a highly knowledgeable, well-researched true history of the times politically, as well as being a tender, warm story of love and friendship and a tale of courage, patriotism and the power of freedom. If you have ever wondered about the nature of love, wisdom, friendship, pride, sincerity, faith, courage and life, you must read this book. Mary Renault does an impeccable job.

Like another of your readers, this affected me deeply the first time I read it almost 25 years ago!

I had been looking for some good literature, perferably with an historical basis, one very warm summer afternoon during my university life. I picked this up in the student union bookshop and have never given it up over the years nor will I ever. This is a richly laden story of a youg man's maturation, personal encounters with the great and the sordid, as well as the scope of historical Athens and Greece, but in paticular, the eternal love of friendship.

This friendship explores all that encompasses the depths of such a soulful journey (yes, it's bisexual, however, the only physical encounter is that of a kiss, as well as several descriptions of masculine strength, athleticism, and physical beauty, so if you are not given to an inquiring mind, scan over these passages and read the rest!)

This book cannot leave you unaffected by Alexis' tale of friendship, family, community, and our eternal search of being apart of someone else's love and a kindred soul.

Keep in mind that this gorgeously written and touching story was first published in 1956 by Renault, an Oxford-educated British woman, dead now 25 years.

"Last of the Wine" is much more than a coming of age tale, as we like to call some of these stories nowadays. Far from it. Yes, it is a gay love story, sans sex, a subtle and timeless and accurately portrayed romance between 2 beautiful young men in 5th Century B.C. Greece - thus, before Alexander. There's a good bit of history and a lot of fun in meeting some of the incomparable ancients - an aging Socrates and a young Plato, and in hearing about others, Alkibiades, for one. If you manage to read Steven Pressfield and Renault, as well as others writing of this era, it all begins to make sense.

Renault seems magically to understand perfectly love in its deepest sense between men and those touchy human aspects of love between anyone: possessiveness, jealousy, soft adoration, absence and longing, and the overwhelming desire to spend all one's time with one's love, to say nothing of comfortable easy silences and shared thoughts.

The 2 primary characters, Alexis (the younger of the two by 6 years) and Lysis, are physical ideals and good to the core. They know how to enjoy the long-lost simple pleasures. I loved them both. She also grasps firmly the intricacies of family, of obligation and of the inevitable inscrutable conflict between father and son.

"Last of the Wine" is as contemporary as your latest e-mail exchange with your partner or offspring. She writes with finesse and profundity. Consider these excerpts.

Page 241. "It was a warm spring evening; one smelt the sea, and supper cooking on pinewood fires, and the scent of flowers upon the hillside; we sat in the doorway of our hut in the late sun, greeting friends as they passed."

Page 242. "The evening sun glowed like bronze upon the reed thatch of the roofs; here and there men were singing about the fires. I (Alexis) said in my heart, `Such things as these are the pleasures of manhood.'"

Page 243. "But we sat a little longer; for as the sun sank, the moon had risen. Her light had mixed with the afterglow, and the hill behind the city was the colour of skins of lions."

Page 244. "'Nothing will change, Alexis' (Lysis speaking). `No that is false; there is change wherever there is life.... But what kind of fool would plant an apple-slip, to cut it down at the season when the fruit is setting? Flowers you can get every year, but only with time the tree that shades your doorway and grows into the house with each year's sun and rain.'" As Adlai Stevenson once said, "Change is inevitable. Change for the better is a full-time job." These young men had a firm grasp on reality.

The story traces not only the rise of fledgling democracy but also its temporary demise. The build-up to Socrates' eventual murder by authorities fearful of his teachings is compelling. The end of the story is both uplifting and sad.

Renault's "Notes" at the end of the book are insightful, the "Chronology Table" is helpful, and the map of "Greece and the Aegean" is a good anchor for orienting yourself to political and physical geography.

Yes, it is fiction. Yes, the over-riding theme is a gay love story. And yes, it's enthralling and gracious. Relax into the story, flow with its pace, learn from it, and read it with unabashed pleasure. Forget the homophobe reviewers who are falsely "offended" by the story (after, of course, they knowingly have read every word!).