The Last of the Wine
Mary Renault's first novel of ancient Greece follows Alexias, a young Athenian aristocrat coming of age during the long, ruinous final years of the Peloponnesian War. As Athens slips from cultural confidence into plague, factional violence, and military catastrophe, Alexias trains as a soldier, sits at the edges of Socrates' circle, and falls in love with Lysis, an older companion whose courage and integrity shape him more than any battle. Renault traces their relationship with quiet dignity, using it as a lens on Athenian ideals of friendship, citizenship, and self-mastery. The city's slow collapse forms the novel's other great subject: rigged elections, oligarchic coups, the surrender at Aegospotami, and the bitter return to a republic bled white. Drawing on Plato, Xenophon, and Thucydides, Renault recreates fifth-century Athens from the inside, capturing both its luminous philosophy and the moral compromises of a generation that watched its world end.
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The questions readers send us most often, answered without spoilers.
Alexias of Athens is born during the second year of the Peloponnesian War and grows up among Sokrates' circle. The novel follows him from a plague-thinned childhood through cavalry service against Sparta, the disaster at Syracuse, and the days of the Thirty, with a long love for his friend Lysis.
The Last of the Wine was written by Mary Renault and published in 1956. Renault is widely considered one of the great novelists of ancient Greece in English; she also wrote The King Must Die and The Persian Boy.
Yes. The Last of the Wine is widely cited as a foundational queer historical novel, set in classical Athens with a male-male relationship at the heart. Mary Renault helped shape modern queer literary fiction through her ancient Greek novels.
The Last of the Wine is 388 pages in standard print editions, though page counts vary slightly between hardcover, paperback, and large-print formats.
At an average reading pace of about 250 words per minute, The Last of the Wine takes most readers 6 to 8 hours to finish.
The Last of the Wine is a standalone novel by Mary Renault, not part of a series.
The Last of the Wine is available in hardcover, paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats from Amazon, Bookshop.org, ThriftBooks, and most major bookstores.
