The Last of the Wine: A Virago Modern Classic

by Mary Renault

Charlotte Mendelson (Introduction)

Athens and Sparta, the mighty city states of ancient Greece, locked together in a quarter century of conflict: the Peloponnesian War. Alexias the Athenian was born, passed through childhood and grew to manhood in those troubled years, that desperate and dangerous epoch when the golden age of Pericles was declining into uncertainty and fear for the future. Of good family, he and his friends are brought up and educated in the things of the intellect and in athletic and martial pursuits. They learn to hunt and to love, to wrestle and to question. And all the time his star of destiny is leading him towards the moment when he must stand alongside his greatest friend Lysis in the last great clash of arms between the cities.

• ISBN10: 1844089614
• ISBN13: 9781844089611
• Publish Date: 6 August 2015 (first published 12 August 1975)
• Publish Status: Active
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
• Imprint: Virago Press Ltd
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 416
• Language: English

Reviews

[jamiereadthis]

So very good. Here I was thinking the writing style kept me at a remove from the story and I wasn’t as invested as I could be, and then the last two chapters walloped me in the gut and I realized it had me at the emotional level after all. Enough that I already have more Mary Renault queued up to read.

Also, apropos of almost nothing, every time I picked up this book I heard Billy Collins in my head:

You are the bread and the knife,
the crystal goblet and the wine…