Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #242917 in Books
• Published on: 2004-05-06
• Binding: Paperback
• 346 pages

Synopsis
In a vivid depiction of Ancient Greece and its legendary heroes, The Mask of Apollo tells the story of Nikeratos, the gifted tragic actor at the centre of political and cultural activity in Athens, 400 B. C. Wherever he goes, Nikeratos carries a golden mask of Apollo, a relic and reminder of an age when the theatre was at the height of its greatness and talent. Only a mascot at first, the mask gradually turns into Nikeratos' conscience as he encounters famous thinkers, actors, and philosophers, including the famous Plato himself.

From the Publisher
With the adventures of Nikeratos, a tragic actor at the hub of political and cultural activity in Athens, 400 B. C., Mary Renault once again brings to life the world of Ancient Greece in stunning historical detail.

About the Author
Mary Renault was educated at Clifton High School, Bristol and St Hugh's College, Oxford. Having completed nursing training in 1937, she then wrote her first novel Promise of Love. Her next three novels were written during off-time duty whilst serving in the war. In 1948 she went to live in South Africa but travelled widely. It was her trip to Greece and her visits to Corinth, Samos, Crete, Delos, Aegina and other islands, as well as to Athens, Sounion and Marathon, that resulted in her brilliant historical reconstructions of Ancient Greece. Mary Renault died in 1983.

Customer Reviews

least accessible of Renault's Ancient Greek novels
This fits in between the mythic novels (The Bull from the Sea, The King must Die) and the Alexander trilogy, and is set a little after The Last of the Wine which was mid-C5th bce. It's now late C5th-early C4th bce and Nikerator is a tragic actor travelling Greece with his golden actor's mask of Apollo. He meets Dionysios of Sicily and witnesses his relationship with Plato and political experiments and failures to create not just an ideal republic, but the ideal philosopher-ruler.

Drenched in sunshine and full of an actor's anecdotes (this is really quite luvvie in parts!) together with backstage gossip about the Greek theatre, this is still steeped in the atmosphere of ancient Greece (or at least the hygienic one that we tend to want to culturally buy into).

Fans of Alexander will be rewarded by the glimpse of the boy who appears towards the end, and the failed hope of Plato that here at last was the right raw material for the development of the philosopher-king.

As elegiac as her other books I would guess this is less accessible since it's much quieter, more domestic, despite the political eruptions on Sicily. So read the 'big' books first (the Alexander series, Theseus duo) and then come back to this.