The Last of the Wine, By Mary Renault

Reviewed

Among the most enchanting works in all philosophy, surely, are the early dialogues of Plato, and it is the world of those dialogues that Mary Renault brings to life in The Last of the Wine (Random House, 1956). The time is the late fifth century B.C.; the place is Athens; and the narrator, Alexias, finds himself increasingly drawn to the circle of youths around Socrates. Yet even as Alexias is pulled into the Socratic circle, he is pulled still more powerfully into a love affair with Lysis, a older youth who also follows Socrates.

From that beginning, Renault's novel spreads outward to encompass all of Athenian life. As athletes, scholars, and warriors-as well as young men of good family-Alexias and Lysis participate in the myriad affairs of their city, during the protracted conflict of the Peloponnesian War.

Renault, taking as her model Thucydides' great history of that war, employs paired opposites to convey both the setting and the unfolding of the friendship between her heroes. Among the most prominent of these opposites are: boyhood versus manhood; family versus friendship; wife versus comrade; sport versus war; slavery versus freedom; oligar- chy versus democracy; Sparta versus Athens; reason versus tradition; and the life of action (embodied in the statesman Alcibiades) versus the life of the mind (embodied in the philosopher Socrates). But through them all runs the book's dominant opposition-mortal life versus transcendent love.

Mary Challans (1905-83). using the pseudonym Mary Renault, wrote eight novels about ancient Greece, including a trilogy about Alexander the Great. And there is something in the substance and style of these novels that reminds this reviewer of the paintings of Maxfield Parrish. For students of philosophy, though, The Last of the Wine has to stand out, echoing as it does with the names of those who were present at the creation: Phaedo, Crito, Critias, Charmides, Lysis, and, above all, Socrates and Plato.