In 430 B. C. the sweet, heady wine of Hellas was running out and little was left but the sour lees. Spartans were pillaging farms outlying Athens and the city was struck by a ghastly plague. Soon Pericles died, the last great leader of the democracy. This is the time at which Mary Renault begins her remarkable novel of a dying way and the agonies of a dying city. By peopling this world for us she has made its terrible, inexorable crumbling vivid, and moving.

The story is told by a young Greek, Alexias…. (p. 5)

In this time of troubles Alexias comes under the influence of Socrates. Miss Renault has performed the immensely difficult feat of evoking a full-bodied, full-minded Socrates who walks through his disordered times with calmness and humane wisdom. (pp. 5, 30)

This canvas is rich in battles by land and sea, in the starvation of siege and...