[In The Last of the Wine] Miss Renault gives us both sides of the coin, the very special and precious relationship that could exist between men who were lovers, and the pathetic lot of Athenian women of good family, who could aspire to nothing higher in life than playing the role of housekeeper and brood mare.

Writers too often have looked at this dazzling age through rose-colored glasses. Miss Renault sees the shadows as well as the highlights…. [She shows us] the people who once prided themselves on their heroic resistance to tyranny dumbly submitting to the viciousness of a committee of tyrants handpicked by victorious Sparta. The tragic story was first told by Greece's great historian, Thucydides, with clinical dispassion; Miss Renault retells it as living human experience. The Last of the Wine is her masterpiece. None of the novels that followed quite comes up to the...