Book Review: THE LAST OF THE WINE by Mary Renault

The Last of the Wine by Mary Renault
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

"No tyranny is safe while men can reason."

It sounds absolutely morbid, but if I were to summarize the entire DepEd curriculum for Intro.to Philosophy for Grade 11 students in one sentence, it would be this: "To prepare one to die."

And so, it isn't surprising that one of our Philo 11 class readings is an excerpt from the Phaedo detailing Socrates' death by drinking poison. Here is how a real man dies.

Cursory research reveals a few paragraphs outlining the tale: how the master was accused of fomenting treasonous thoughts in his students, how one of them (Critias) was the most bloodthirsty of the Thirty Tyrants who made a mockery of Athens' legacy as the birth place of democracy, and how a generation's worth of war whipped the city into a mad frenzy of scapegoating.

Teachers make easy scapegoats now and in 399 B.C.E. Never mind how unjust it is to judge a teacher by one bad student.

Mary Renault has yet another triumphant novel in THE LAST OF THE WINE. I have never yet read a book by her that disappointed. Renault's books reflect the arete (excellence) in soul, in form that her Greek subjects pursue. Her true passion was Alexander the Great, and it's wonderful how she connects this book and others to the Supreme Leader of all Hellenes, even tangentially.

This book is about Socrates' pupils, and how their debates on virtue, on love, on the best form of government fit for free men become matters of life and death in a dangerous, bloody era. It tells of one of the darkest periods in Athenian history, when enemy Sparta upholds Athenian oligarchs, and these so-called aristocrats turn into base tyrants. Think Reign of Terror but make it Ancient Greece.

Plato, Phaedo, Xenophon, and Alcibiades come alive as complex individuals, flesh and blood and saliva and all too human weaknesses. I only realized just now how difficult it must have been for Plato, born into privilege, when his uncle Critias became the most cruel tyrant of them all. Imagine being torn between your kinsman and your teacher, the father of your soul?

"What keeps the democracy alive at all but the hatred of excellence; the desire of the base to see no head higher than their own?... What is the People, that we should worship it? Shall we worship the beast in man before the god? ... What is the Demos but as a wave of the sea, that changes substance a thousand times between shore and shore?"

As school children we are taught that democracy is a good thing. But as adults we get to see the dark side of giving the masses so much freedom. This is the crux of the book's tragic tale of how a city full of light went dark, and killed one of its sources of enlightenment.

"Someday, they will make one regiment of us, and then we will conquer the world."

The book was also, surprisingly, a fitting read for Pride Month. When we think that Renault wrote this in 1956, it is all the more amazing to see how generously she wrote of what the Greeks themselves considered "the noblest" kind of love, as it spurred heroes of legend and reality into stunning feats of selflessness in battle (Achilles/Patroclus, the Sacred Band of Thebes, etc.).

It is absolutely breathtaking how she wrote a beautiful love story into the novel, and it just so happened that the two lovers were men.

Love of honor. Love of country. Love of freedom. There is so much to love about this lovely book. It is a true child of Renault's, who sets the standard for all historical fiction.

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