The Mask of Apollo Author:Mary Renault "This is history and Miss Renault makes us live in it. But she knows well that the life of Greece was not all power politics and wars and tyrannies. It was poetry. It was sculpture and architecture. It was philosophic thought. Therefore she chooses for her hero not a politician but an actor, Nikeratos. — Nikeratos tells his own story. By it... more »self it is rich with character and incident and with that peculiar grace and charm and sweetness which is so essentially Greek. But is is interwoven with a larger story, the tale of Dion, kinsman and minister of the tyrant of Syracuse. Intelligent, proud, strong-willed, Dion was a friend of Plato, and for a time looked as though he might become the philosopher-king of whom Plato dreamed. He did not. Yet his failure was more moving and dramatic than his success would have been."
-Gilbert Highet, Book-of-the-Month Club News« less