Narrated by Alexias, an Athenian youth who comes of age during the final years of the Peloponnesian War, the novel follows his education under Sokrates, his love for the older Lysis, and their shared endurance of famine, siege, and the terror of the Thirty Tyrants as Athens collapses toward defeat.
Books mentioned in The Last of the Wine (2)
The Clouds by Aristophanes: “they had puffed him up with vanity, taught him impious free-thinking (here someone usually quoted The Clouds) until he dared to chop logic with Perikles himself”
The Bacchae by Euripides: “Dionysos wears such a pleasant mask in the play where he sends out King Pentheus to be torn by maenads”
Books that mention The Last of the Wine (2)
The Just City by Jo Walton: Epigraph: 'Yes, I know, Plato; but if you always take the steps in threes, one day you will miss a cracked one.' —MARY RENAULT, THE LAST OF THE WINE
Among Others by Jo Walton: “He’s in The Last of the Wine of course, and Socrates too.”