Book Review: The Last of the Wine

I have finished Mary Renault’s The Last of the Wine! Or, as I have taken to calling it, “Mary Renault’s ancient Greek philosopher RPF,” because Alexias meets MANY philosophers in this book. Clearly you couldn’t walk through Athens in the time of Socrates (or Sokrates, as the book spells it) without knocking over a philosopher, but also Renault wants to cram in ALL the philosophers. There’s a random cameo near the end of the two Thebans from the Phaedo. Why not!

But the book is also a love story, recounting Alexias’ love affair with Lysis. The characters get together pretty early in the book, because why shouldn’t they? It’s Athens, everyone approves more or less (sometimes people make dirty jokes but that’s just how humans are about sex), and they have exactly the right age gap to make it maximally socially acceptable, so have at!

So rather than a story about how they got together, it’s a story about how their love affair developed over time and how the onrush of current events (the war with Sparta, which is going well until it’s a disaster) shaped their lives.

( Spoilers )