40 Fun Facts About The Last of the Wine

Which future fantasy author taught at Oxford while Mary Renault studied there and left a deep mark on her?

J.R.R. Tolkien lectured there during her years at St Hugh's College in the 1920s, and his rejection of literary modernism impressed her. She later burned a medieval novel of her own, feeling it lacked authenticity.

Which American president, asked who his favourite author was, replied with the name Mary Renault?

John F. Kennedy picked a novelist who was no trained classicist: her Oxford degree was in English. The Last of the Wine was the first of her eight novels set in ancient Greece.

Which young-adult saga was partly inspired by Mary Renault's Theseus novel The King Must Die?

The Hunger Games drew partly on her 1958 book, Suzanne Collins has said. Renault had turned the Labyrinth into an arena where captive Athenian youths performed with bulls while wealthy Cretans bet on them.

Mary Renault wrote The Last of the Wine after emigrating in 1948 to which country, her home until death?

South Africa let her live openly with her partner, Julie Mullard, first in Durban and then in Cape Town. She later travelled to Greece but never went back to Britain.

The Last of the Wine ends with hints of the trial of Socrates, who was later executed with which poison?

Hemlock was the sentence an Athenian jury passed on Socrates in 399 BC, after convicting him of impiety and corrupting the young. Aged 70, he carried it out himself.

Which rival city-state finally defeats Athens in The Last of the Wine, ending its golden age?

Sparta won after 27 years of fighting, and Mary Renault's narrator lives through the hungry siege that forced his city to surrender.

The postscript of The Last of the Wine says the manuscript's finder commands cavalry for which conqueror?

Alexander the Great later filled a whole Renault trilogy: Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy and Funeral Games.

Before The Last of the Wine, Mary Renault trained and worked through World War II in which profession?

Nursing paid her way after her father refused to support her writing, and in 1940 she helped treat evacuees from Dunkirk at a Bristol emergency hospital.

The Last of the Wine follows Alexias through the final years of which long war fought by Athens?

The Peloponnesian War ran from 431 to 404 BC, and its great historian, Thucydides, fought in it as an Athenian general before being exiled.

Alexias, narrator of The Last of the Wine, wins fame in Athens as a champion in which sport?

Running is in his blood: his grandfather competed at Olympia in the same sport, and Alexias hopes to follow him there until a priest's warning ends the dream.

Which brilliant but reckless general do Alexias and Lysis serve under in the fleet in The Last of the Wine?

Alcibiades had fled a sacrilege charge and advised the enemy before Athens recalled him. In the novel his carelessness leads the fleet to disaster and sends him into exile once more.

Alexias's father in The Last of the Wine is reported dead after Athens' doomed expedition to which island?

Sicily swallowed the Athenian army in 413 BC, but Alexias's father had only been taken prisoner. He comes home an embittered man and turns on his son.

Lysis dies in The Last of the Wine fighting near the Long Walls, which linked Athens to which port?

Piraeus lay about six kilometres from the city, and the parallel walls made a guarded corridor between the two. Lysis falls there as the returning exiles defeat the oligarchs.

In The Last of the Wine, Alexias's father is murdered under which regime imposed on defeated Athens?

The Thirty Tyrants held power for only eight months yet executed some 1,500 people without trial. Their leader had once been a pupil of Socrates.

Lysis, lover of Alexias in The Last of the Wine, is the title figure of a Plato dialogue on which subject?

Friendship is what Socrates and the boy Lysis try, and fail, to define in Plato's dialogue. Mary Renault imagined that boy grown into a champion athlete in his twenties.

The Last of the Wine brings to life the symposia of classical Athens, which were what kind of gathering?

Drinking parties followed the evening meal, with wine mixed with water, music, games and talk. Plato set his dialogue on love at one, with Socrates among the guests.

A priest of Asclepius tells Alexias in The Last of the Wine to stop Olympic training because of which organ?

His heart, the priest warns, could be harmed by so extreme a regimen, so Alexias lets his Olympic hopes go. The older narrator admits it still troubles him after a hard ride.

Alexias and Lysis are both chosen to represent Athens in The Last of the Wine at which Panhellenic festival?

The Isthmian Games were held every two years at a sanctuary near Corinth, and their victors once wore a wreath of celery. Alexias wins his event there.

The Last of the Wine closes by revealing that the unfinished manuscript of Alexias was found by which relative?

His grandson, who bears the same name, comes across the long-forgotten pages, a device that lets Mary Renault present her novel as a recovered ancient document.

In The Last of the Wine, which disaster kills Alexias's grandfather just before the boy's birth?

The great plague struck in 430 BC, the second year of the war, and killed about a quarter of the city's people. Thucydides caught it, survived and described it.

In The Last of the Wine, which former champion athlete is the stern, conservative father of Alexias?

Myron writes his son a letter before sailing to war, setting out the qualities to look for in a lover: honour, loyalty and courage.

At a Panhellenic festival in The Last of the Wine, Lysis is gravely injured competing in which brutal event?

Pankration mixed striking and grappling with only two rules: no biting and no eye-gouging. Mary Renault uses the bout to show sport turning into a hunt for crowns at any cost.

In The Last of the Wine, Alexias and Lysis leave occupied Athens for which city to join the exiles?

Thebes, an old enemy of Athens, sheltered the exiles and helped them prepare their return. It later fielded the Sacred Band, an elite corps made up of 150 pairs of lovers.

Which pupil of Socrates in The Last of the Wine later wrote the Anabasis, about a Greek army's march home?

Xenophon was elected a leader of ten thousand stranded Greek mercenaries at the age of 30 and brought them out of Persia. In the novel he is one of the young men around Socrates.

Which follower of Socrates in The Last of the Wine is a war captive sold into slavery at Athens?

Phaedo, a captive from conquered Melos in the novel, is freed with the help of Socrates and his friends. Plato later named his dialogue on the philosopher's last hours after him.

Which oligarch, once a pupil of Socrates, does Alexias kill in battle near the end of The Last of the Wine?

Critias, a kinsman of Plato, led the regime that had Alexias's father killed. History records that he fell in that same battle against the returning exiles.

During the siege in The Last of the Wine, how does Alexias sacrifice his honour to feed his family?

Posing for a sculptor costs the proud young aristocrat his honour, but it buys food while the blockade is starving the city into surrender.

The title of The Last of the Wine recalls a custom of tossing wine dregs to form the initial of whose name?

His beloved was the person a banqueter honoured with the last drops in his cup. One critic reads the gesture as the novel's lasting image of the depth and brevity of love.

As a premature newborn in The Last of the Wine, Alexias narrowly escapes which fate his father had ordered?

Being left out to die was what his father decided on seeing how small and frail the baby was. A sudden death in the family interrupted the preparations, and Alexias never forgets it.

Which Mary Renault novel about wartime servicemen directly preceded The Last of the Wine?

The Charioteer, her last novel with a modern setting, was held back in America until 1959 because of its positive portrayal of love between men.

Which Athenian general leads the exiles whom Alexias and Lysis join to liberate Athens in The Last of the Wine?

Thrasybulus began with a party of only 70 exiles, seizing a fort on the border of Attica. Within months his growing force had brought down the regime.

Which enemy commander blockades Athens and starves it into surrender near the end of The Last of the Wine?

Lysander had destroyed the Athenian fleet at Aegospotami in 405 BC, so no grain ships could reach the city. He then imposed the oligarchs who rule it in the novel's darkest chapters.

In The Last of the Wine, Alexias and Lysis sail to which Aegean island, the base of the Athenian fleet?

Samos is where the pair side with the democrats against an oligarchic plot, only to sail home and find Alexias's father prominent among the oligarchs of Athens.

A 1940s prize from which Hollywood studio let Mary Renault leave her day job and write full time?

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer gave the award to her novel Return to Night but never filmed it. The money let her give up her job and emigrate in 1948.

After the final battle of The Last of the Wine, whom does Alexias take under his protection and marry?

His comrade's widow had always welcomed the bond between the two men, and by marrying her Alexias carries on his own family line.

Lysis tending Alexias's cut foot in The Last of the Wine echoes a vase painting of Achilles bandaging whom?

Patroclus has his arm bound by Achilles on a cup painted about seventy years before the war, and Mary Renault, like the painter, saw the two heroes as lovers.

In The Last of the Wine, Alexias lives in the Inner Kerameikos, an Athens district known for which craft?

Pottery gave the Kerameikos its name, which shares a root with the English word ceramic. The part of the district outside the walls held an important cemetery.

Which author of the Aubrey–Maturin naval novels exchanged admiring letters with Mary Renault?

Patrick O'Brian set his sea stories in the Napoleonic Wars, and he and Renault, each at home in a very different past, shared a mutual admiration.

Which stepmother in The Last of the Wine, only eight years older than Alexias, eases his cruel home life?

Arete, whose name is the Greek word for excellence, replaces the harsh concubine who had raised Alexias. He grows deeply attached to her while his father is away.

The Panhellenic games where Alexias wins his crown in The Last of the Wine honoured which god?

Poseidon had his sanctuary on the narrow neck of land where the festival was held every second spring. In legend, Theseus opened the contests to all Greeks.