Mary Renault always wanted to be a writer, but became a nurse first, and worked as one throughout World War II. She had published her first novel in 1939, and published one or two more during the war. One was about a lesbian relationship, probably semi-autobiographical. But her most famous works, and arguably her most distinguished, were those set in ancient Greece.
The first published of these, The Last of the Wine, was set in Athens during the Peloponessian war, but chronologically the first was her retelling of the Theseus myth cycle. According to Wikipedia, some criticized her for being overly dependent on the interpretations by Robert Graves of ancient Greek religion (one of the things I particularly liked about it–it felt as if it could actually have happened as she portrayed it). Her analysis of Theseus’s story, as she says in her afterword, shows the conflict between male-oriented and female-oriented religion. The Mother Goddess, by this interpretation, requires human sacrifice (Theseus probably lived in the Mycenean Age, about 12 centuries before Jesus) at the end of a certain term: a year, a half year, or several years. Theseus, however, is brought up to be a king who worships male gods, Poseidon (whom he believes to be his spiritual, if not actual, father) in his case. From the time he’s able to understand anything he’s taught that a king must be ready to sacrifice himself for the good of his subjects if there’s a problem too difficult for him to solve alone. It is stressed that this is a mystery humans can’t understand, but must obey, and that the king’s willingness to sacrifice himself is most important. This ethic is contrasted with the more familiar kind of leader who sacrifices others to accumulate and retain his own power.
Theseus has a meteoric rise and accomplishes a great deal, not only leading the young captives into exile in Crete and bringing them safely home, but having a vision that humans can be more than they usually are, and working to achieve justice and draw the peoples of Attica (the kingdom Athens rules) closer together. But at the end of the novel almost everything he has worked for has failed or is failing. Through misunderstanding he has killed his son. He is no longer king, having suffered a stroke and being physically unable to continue ( his disappearance while recovering leads to the legend of his visiting hell and returning). He is guest of one of the island kingdoms as he tells the end of his story, but suddenly feels that, despite no longer being king, he has a life to give, though he doesn’t know exactly how it will contribute to the good. He envisions himself fighting at the battle of Marathon against the Persians some seven centuries later (he too had fought against invaders from the east), and wills his death to be significant. He climbs to the top of a cliff and throws himself into the sea, recapitulating his father Aegeus’s death, which had made him king. Few contemporary leaders follow that kind of ideal.
The Last of the Wine, chronologically the next in Renault’s series of novels, continues the concern with how men are to be governed, and how they can become better than they are. It is the Athens of Socrates, during the Peloponessian war. Athens had become a democracy (possibly the first in the world) no more than a hundred years before, and had been a leader in repelling the Persian invasion. The fifth century BC had been a brilliant one with great architecture erected (the Parthenon, most famously), great plays written, and great leadership from Pericles.
But Pericles is now dead, and Athenian leadership is both less competent and not as ethical as one might wish. Alkibiades, his successor, is brilliant, but has proposed the invasion of Syracuse in Sicily. The narrator’s father compares this with a previous Athenian decision to massacre the people of a kingdom who had been an ally, then a subject state who had offended the Athenian government. The Athenians then had second thoughts, sent a ship to stop the one sent to carry out the massacre, and were thankful to have avoided committing an atrocity. It almost seems just that the army sent to Syracuse was destroyed.
Much of the story revolves around the narrator’s studying with Socrates and meeting his male lover there. Renault portrays male homosexuality as being widely accepted in Greek culture at that time, something to be considered natural, though not all such lovers behaved well. Alexias, the narrator, recounts the ridiculous behavior of several of his suitors before he finds the friend who remains with him for most of the rest of his life. This man, Lysis, trains him to be a knight, and together they defend the city from Spartan and Theban raiders.
But the war continues to go badly for Athens as Sparta works to overthrow their allied governments in the Aegean sea, installing oligarchies to replace democracies. Then the Athenian fleet is destroyed too, meaning Athens has lost the war, and Sparta besieges them until they surrender, causing much hardship. An oligarchy is installed in Athens too, and it becomes clear that many in the city don’t believe in democracy. Oligarchy turns out to be less than inspiring: the oligarchs repress anyone who disagrees with them, as well as helping themselves to anything they want. This creates a resistance, and democrats retake the city.
But democracy isn’t perfect system either. It is under the restored democracy that Socrates is condemned for misleading the youth. He has long had the custom of engaging people in conversation about interesting questions, and people unable to defend their views often hold a grudge against him.
Renault’s next novel, The Mask of Apollo, begins twenty to thirty years later, and is narrated by an actor named Nikeratos who meets Plato, now on the verge of old age, and Plato’s friend Dion, a close relative of the tyrant Dionysios, who rules Syracuse. Nikeratos is immediately impressed by Dion, who is the very image of a hero: brave, handsome, a military man, a connoisseur and patron of the arts, as well as a philosopher. He comes close to falling in love with him, despite the social gulf between them. He’s also impressed with Plato, a man still vigorous and charismatic, as well as the most prominent philosopher in Greece, who has set up something akin to a university in the hopes of not only discovering and recording knowledge, but of making mankind better. Plato’s Republic gives his vision of the good society, but Nikeratos is somewhat put off by that, and feels that, for all their intelligence, both Plato and Dion are naive because they don’t understand crowds. Nikeratos is drawn into collaborating with them, as Dion’s relative, Dionysios, despite his occupation in ruling Syracuse, also writes plays. He has sent one to a festival on mainland Greece, and since Dion has met Nikeratos, and respects him, he wants Nikeratos to play in the drama. This sets off a whole train of events.
The drama wins its competition, and Nikeratos travels to Syracuse to play it before its author. But when he arrives he finds that Dionysios has celebrated too much, caught a fever, and died. He stays in Syracuse for awhile, makes some friends, and, on returning to mainland Greece, discovers that Plato has decided (on the urging of Dion and much of the Academy he founded) to go to Syracuse to try to make Dionysios’s son into a philosopher. This becomes both tragic and farcical. Dionysios the second is more interested in wine, women, and song than in philosophy, and wants to become Plato’s most famous student without making the necessary effort. He’s also jealous of anyone who is friends with Plato, and does foolish things like forbidding dramas and cutting the pay of soldiers because he thinks it will make Plato proud of him. Of course he is more jealous of Dion than anyone else, since Dion and Plato are old friends, and his late father had greatly respected Dion, while having little time or affection for his son.
The beginning is farcical, the end, after much complication and drama, tragic. After Dion is exiled, separated from his wife and son, and his income taken by Dionysios, Dion decides to lead an insurrection against Dionysios, which succeeds easily.
But heroic and virtuous as Dion is, he doesn’t know how to talk to people generally, especially crowds. Crowds are fickle, and especially in Syracuse, where few people have had any opportunity to take part in government for decades. A rival of Dion suggests redistributing the land, which is popular with the crowd, but unrealistic. The rival manages to drive Dion out, but is wholly incompetent militarily, which leads to the city being sacked. Dion returns, recaptures the city, and seems to have finally succeeded in his dream of becoming a philosopher king to the benefit of his city.
But several years later Nikeratos visits him to warn him of an assassination attempt, and is shocked at the change in him. He seems old and utterly exhausted. He has lost his son, who may have committed suicide–the son preferred Dionysios’s wine and women lifestyle to his father’s moderation–and he has also given permission to someone to assassinate his political rival, something he had almost self-destructively refused to do previously. This entirely goes entirely against his previous values. He seems to be going merely on duty, with no joy in his life. He assures Nikeratos that he is in no danger, but turns out to be wrong.
After his death the city goes from bad to worse. Once the wealthiest city in the Greek world, it becomes depopulated, whether through death or immigration. The attempt to turn it into a virtuous city has failed miserably.
Early in the novel Nikeratos wonders about his attraction to Dion, and finally concludes, “We have dreamed a king.” A king is more attractive than any other political system to the Greeks at that time, after they had tried everything they could think of: dictators, oligarchs, democracies. All had turned corrupt. All had favored one group over another. Democracies, which we might consider the best form of government, had been corrupted by demagogues. Tyrants and oligarchs had been corrupted by power.
When, after Athens was defeated in the Peoloponessian war and the oligarchs had wielded arbitrary power, the rebels came to take their city back, their leader deliberately allowed the oligarchs to kill him, believing that would win the battle. Was this the last example of self-sacrifice by a leader? At least in the Greek world? Dion had come closest to this ideal in the period covered by the novel, but was unable to lead his people to a better way of life.
At the end of the novel Nikeratos meets the future Alexander the Great, just approaching his mid teens. He feels Alexander’s energy and charisma, knows he will succeed in whatever he attempts, but believes the world has turned too corrupt to give him what he idealizes: honor.
Alexander was indeed seen as the ideal leader during his lifetime, even when his men were (rarely) unhappy with what he did. They didn’t like having the Persians treated as equals, or having to make obeisance to Alexander in the Persian way. But he did make Greek the lingua franca of the Middle East. And his empire did last–though only in pieces–until the Romans took it over. The fall of the Persian empire did change things, but it didn’t lead to an ideal society, as Alexander seems to have hoped.
The rebels who created the United States of America hoped to make it into an ideal society too, and succeeded to some extent. But Americans also worshiped power, just like the ancients, and enjoyed exercising it too much. The Greeks had a word for overreaching: hubris. In reference to this idea they had a saying: “Whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad.” Renault comments through the mouths of her characters that the god Dionysus in his rites offered his devotees a way to express their madness while dedicating it to him, the god. If they dedicated it to themselves instead, only tragedy could result. Dionysus is no longer worshiped in our culture.
allenstarbuck 