The Last of the Wine was published by Longmans, Green in 1956, Renault’s first novel set in ancient Greece (her earlier books were contemporary) and the work that established her mature style: historically rigorous, psychologically subtle, and unafraid to portray homoerotic relationships with the naturalness that Greek culture itself accorded them.
Alexias narrates his life in Athens from childhood through the last years of the Peloponnesian War (roughly 413–399 BCE). He and Lysis are lovers in the Greek sense — an older/younger pair whose relationship is simultaneously sexual, pedagogical, and military (they train and fight together as a pair). They are students of Socrates, and the novel’s philosophical dimension runs alongside its military and personal narratives: what does it mean to seek truth while your city is being destroyed?
The historical canvas is extraordinary: the Sicilian Expedition’s failure, the siege of Athens, surrender to Sparta, the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, the democratic restoration, and finally Socrates’ trial and death. Renault renders all of this not as pageant but as lived experience — the hunger of siege, the fear of tyranny, the confusion of civil war, and the slow recognition that the golden age is ending.
The title comes from the last wine left in the last amphora — the sense of living at the end of something precious and irreplaceable. Alexias and Lysis move through a world that is being destroyed, and their private happiness exists in constant tension with public catastrophe.
Collecting The Last of the Wine
First edition (Longmans, Green, London, 1956): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $80–$250
- Signed first edition: $200–$500
- US first (Pantheon, 1956): $30–$80
- Without jacket: $15–$30