One result of my reading the Guy Gavriel Kay books was that I itched to read a proper historical novel’the Sarantine Tapestry was fine, and very enjoyable, but not a proper historical novel. So I went to The Last of the Wine, a Mary Renault that is growing on me on repetition. It does fall apart a bit at the end, after the siege, or at the end of it. There is a point at which Lysis stops being a character and starts being an idea of a character, which makes me find his death at the end less powerful. But the first third and the middle third are wonderful.
I am impressed, looking back on it, by the character of Plato, given as a youth in this book and as a old man in The Mask of Apollo. I read them in the other order, and in fact didn’t read Last of the Wine until I had practically memorized Mask of Apollo. She wrote this one first, though, and must have thought of them as a kind of paired set. Two love stories, both ending in the destruction and dimunition of a great city, both witnessed and in a way guided by Plato and his philosophy. Of course, in this book, it is Socrates who is the main mover; Plato is one of many of his followers. Nor is Socrates really a mover in the book, properly speaking. Although he personally influences the main characters, one theme of the book is how little his teachings really influence the outcome of the bigger conflicts. And in the latter book, as well, an older, wider, more cynical and less optimistic Plato manages to guide Syracuse only to its destruction.
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.