Euboea captured by Spartans with crippling loss of food-producing land and private estates.
The restored democracy recalls Alkibiades, who elects to remain in Samos in command of the fleet.
Aristophanes’
Lysistrata
and
Thesmophorians
performed.
410
Alkibiades victorious in the Aegean.
Euripides’
Electra
performed.
409
Agathon, and possibly Euripides, leave Athens for Macedon.
408
Alkibiades recovers Byzantium and returns in triumph to Athens.
407
Lysander in command of Spartan fleet.
406
Antiochos defeated by Lysander in battle of Notium (Cape Rain). Alkibiades deposed.
Battle of Arginusae (the White Isles). Desertion of wrecks causes heavy loss of life. Unconstitutional trial of the Generals; protest by Sokrates.
Offer of peace by Spartans. The demagogue Kleophon moves rejection.
405
Lysander, re-appointed to command at Cyrus’ request, blockades Lampsakbs.
Athenian fleet annihilated at Aegospotami (Goat’s Creek).
General revolt of subject allies (except Samos).
Siege of Athens begun.
404
Siege of Athens. Theramenes negotiates in Salamis. Starvation compels surrender (April).
Thirty Tyrants established in Athens by Lysander.
Reign of terror. Alkibiades assassinated in Phrygia. Autolykos murdered.
Theramenes procures nomination of 3,000 citizens entitled to civil rights.
403
Kritias denounces Theramenes.
Thrasybulos and the Seventy seize Phyle. Judicial murder of Eleusinians.
Capture of Piraeus and Battle of Munychia. Kritias killed.
King Pausanias of Sparta intervenes. Proclaims amnesty and withdraws garrison.
402
Lysander deposed.
401
Cyrus killed in war of succession against Artaxerxes. His mercenary army of Ten Thousand Greeks left leaderless, their generals, including Proxenos the friend of Xenophon, being treacherously killed by Tissaphernes. Xenophon rallies the despairing troops and with assistance of other junior officers marches them from Babylon to the Hellespont across wild and hostile country.
400
Death of King Agis. His son barred from the succession on suspicion of Alkibiades’ paternity.
399
Xenophon in exile.
Sokrates indicted, tried, and executed after thirty days in prison, awaiting the return of the sacred galley from Delos. Plato and other friends, after remaining with him to the last, withdraw to Megara.
A Biography of Mary Renault
Mary Renault (1905–1983) was an English writer best known for her historical novels on the life of Alexander the Great: Fire from Heaven (1969), The Persian Boy (1972), and Funeral Games (1981).
Born Eileen Mary Challans into a middle-class family in a London suburb, Renault enjoyed reading from a young age. Initially obsessed with cowboy stories, she became interested in Greek philosophy when she found Plato’s works in her school library. Her fascination with Greek philosophy led her to St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where one of her tutors was J. R. R. Tolkien. Renault went on to earn her BA in English in 1928.
Renault began training as a nurse in 1933. It was at this time that she met the woman that would become her life partner, fellow nurse Julie Mullard. Renault also began writing, and published her first novel, Purposes of Love (titled Promise of Love in its American edition), in 1939. Inspired by her occupation, her first works were hospital romances. Renault continued writing as she treated Dunkirk evacuees at the Winford Emergency Hospital in Bristol and later as she worked in a brain surgery ward at the Radcliffe Infirmary.
In 1947, Renault received her first major award: Her novel Return to Night (1946) won an MGM prize. With the $150,000 of award money, she and Mullard moved to South Africa, never to return to England again. Renault revived her love of ancient Greek history and began to write her novels of Greece, including The Last of the Wine (1956) and The Charioteer (1953), which is still considered the first British novel that includes unconcealed homosexual love.
Renault’s in-depth depictions of Greece led many readers to believe she had spent a great deal of time there, but during her lifetime, she actually only visited the Aegean twice. Following The Last of the Wine and inspired by a replica of a Cretan fresco at a British museum, Renault wrote The King Must Die (1958) and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea (1962).
The democratic ideals of ancient Greece encouraged Renault to join the Black Sash, a women’s movement that fought against apartheid in South Africa. Renault was also heavily involved in the literary community, where she believed all people should be afforded equal standard and opportunity, and was the honorary chair of the Cape Town branch of PEN, the international writers’ organization.
Renault passed away in Cape Town on December 13, 1983.
Renault in 1940.
Renault and Julie Mullard on board the Cairo in 1948, on their way to South Africa, where they settled in Durban.
Renault in a Black Sash protest in 1955. She was among the first to join this women’s movement against apartheid.
Renault and Michael Atkinson installing her cast of the Roman statue of the Apollo Belvedere in the garden of Delos, Camps Bay, in the late 1970s.
Renault working in her “Swiss Bank” study with Mandy and Coco, the dogs.
Renault and Mullard walking the dogs on the beach at Camps Bay in 1982.
Delos, Greece, with a view over the beach at Camps Bay.
Portrait of Renault in 1982.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1956 by Mary Renault
Cover design by Biel Parklee
978-1-4804-3315-1
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