"The Mask of Apollo" returns with a difference to the ancient Greece of Miss Renault's "The Last of the Wine."… The difference is of locale and emphasis. The Athens of Socrates and Plato is moved into the background, though it continues to control, or at least color, the political and moral action; and the scene is shifted to Greek Sicily, chiefly Syracuse. (p. 4)

The sources for the historical events are relatively late and unreliable, chiefly the choppy "Library of History" of Diodoros Siculus and Plutarch's idealized account in his "Life of Dion." Miss Renault also draws, perforce, on Plato's own highly subjective record of his experiences at the Sicilian court….

In addition, she has harmonized and made entertainingly credible a great deal of information about the Greek theater … and she has managed to make even her idealist philosophers sound like flesh and blood, which is no minor feat...