The deep political disillusion of the time expressed itself intellectually in a search for ideal systems, and historically in the phenomenon of Alexander. To understand it one has only to recall the long miseries of the Peloponnesian War, and to read the speeches of fourth-century politicians. The mean-minded, snobbish and dishonest personalities to which even Demosthenes sank in public controversy have to be read to be believed; and these were not published by enemies, but by the author himself after careful polishing.
For the story of Dion I have relied mainly on Plutarch, who had access to many sources now lost to us, including the accounts of Timonides and the History of Philistos. On Plato’s second and third visits to Syracuse we have Plato himself. Nearly all scholars today now accept as authentic the important Seventh and Third Letters; the personal voice which sounds in both is highly persuasive.
Axiothea and Lasthenia are listed among Plato’s pupils by Diogenes Laertius. He tells us nothing of their lives or personalities except that they continued at the Academy under Speusippos after Plato’s death, and that Axiothea “is said to have worn men’s clothes.”
Ten years after Dion’s death in 354 B.C., the Syracusans appealed for help to Corinth against the renewed tyranny of Dionysios and the impending threat from Carthage. Timoleon was sent with a small force. Gifted with astuteness and luck as well as solid integrity, he was successful within a few years. Under his fatherly guidance the city enjoyed two decades of peace and prosperity before the cycle of demagogy and tyranny began again. The constitution of Timoleon seems to have been a limited democracy with a qualified franchise; in view of the grateful honors paid him during his life and after, it must have satisfied the citizens. In justice to Dion’s failure one must remember that Timoleon was dealing with a different population. So decimated had the Syracusans become through war, privation and flight that one of his first measures was to invite, with their consent, new settlers to strengthen the city. He got about sixty thousand (a figure for men only, not including their families), of whom many thousands came from Corinth and other stable polities. If the Syracusan lands could support so many, there can have been very few native Syracusans left.
No true parallel exists between this passage in Syracusan history and the affairs of any present-day state. Christianity and Islam have changed irrevocably the moral reflexes of the world. The philosopher Herakleitos said with profound truth that you cannot step twice into the same river. The perpetual stream of human nature is formed into ever-changing shallows, eddies, falls and pools by the land over which it passes. Perhaps the only real value of history lies in considering this endlessly varied play between the essence and the accidents.
The short book list below is not a bibliography, but gives the most important sources and works of reference for anyone interested in following up the subjects concerned.
HISTORY
Plutarch: Lives of Dion and Timoleon.
Plato: Letters; Republic; Symposium.
Diodorus Siculus: History, Books XV and XVI.
George Grote: History of Greece
THE THEATER
Margarete Bieber: The History of the Greek and Roman Theater. A.
Pickard-Cambridge: The Dramatic Festivals of Athens.
T. B. L. Webster: Greek Theatre Production.
Demosthenes: Oration against Aeschines; On the Embassy.
Aeschines: Orations; On the Embassy; Reply to Demosthenes. (Aeschines was an ex-actor who took up a career in politics.)
Aeschylus’ The Myrmidons has been lost to us, except for a few passages preserved as quotations in the works of other authors, some of which I have used. Out of a very large output by the three great tragic poets, only a small fraction remains. Other authors, sufficiently valued in their day to have defeated these masters in dramatic contests, are now known only by name, their entire body of work having disappeared. Plays mentioned in the story are therefore often fictional.
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.