The Mask of Apollo was published by Longmans in 1966, and many scholars consider it Renault’s most intellectually sophisticated novel. It is narrated by Nikeratos, a professional actor in fourth-century BCE Greece, who carries with him a mask of Apollo that he treats as a talisman — and whose career as a performer of tragedies intersects with the real-life drama of Plato’s attempts to transform the tyranny of Syracuse into a philosophical state.
The historical events are documented: Plato made three visits to Syracuse, attempting to educate first Dionysius I and then his son Dionysius II in philosophy, hoping to create the philosopher-king of the Republic in reality. Each attempt failed — philosophy proved unequal to the corruption of absolute power — and Plato’s student Dion eventually overthrew the tyrant by force, only to be assassinated by another philosopher.
Renault uses Nikeratos’s perspective — an artist, not a philosopher — to examine these events with sympathy but without illusion. As an actor, Nikeratos understands the relationship between mask and truth differently from Plato: the mask does not conceal truth but reveals it, making visible what ordinary life keeps hidden. Theater, not philosophy, may be the truer path to understanding human nature.
The novel’s portrait of Plato is remarkable: neither hagiographic nor reductive, it shows a great mind genuinely attempting to apply its insights to the messiness of political reality, and genuinely failing — not because the philosophy is wrong but because power operates by rules that philosophy cannot encompass.
Collecting The Mask of Apollo
First edition (Longmans, London, 1966): Cloth binding, dust jacket.
Market values:
- First UK edition in dust jacket: $30–$80
- Signed first edition: $80–$200
- US first (Pantheon, 1966): $15–$40
- Without jacket: $8–$15