I'm pretty sure that almost everyone who went to see Alexander was severely disappointed. Apart from the fact that Colin Farrell was under the impression that the King of Macedon was some sort of airhead jock, I knew for a fact that the whole thing would end up being a platform for hawkish American sentiments. So I avoided it studiously, in case I had a frothing seizure and murdered the projectionist with any small weapon of mass destruction I might have about my person. . . (I wonder if Mr Bush has had his Abu Ghraib goons check under the really tiny rocks?)
Anyway . . . I have a nasty habit of pulling the plot to pieces during movies, driving all my friends nuts with whispered comments (clever or otherwise), so I thought I'd save everyone the annoyance and just re-read Mary Renault's masterpiece biopics.
The King Must Die and The Bull from the Sea focus on the "Theseus and the Minotaur" legends, while the others cover the period of Demosthenes (famous Athenian orator, cured his stutter by putting pebbles in his mouth, sure you've heard of him) and Phillip II of Macedon (Alex's father), down to Alexander's exploits and his death. Funeral Games refers to the splintering of the Macedonian Empire after Alexander's death, and the various calamities and minor wars that went on during the chaos.
We've all heard the quote, "The past is foreign country, they do things differently there", and if historical novels are travel guides to the past, Mary Renault has authored the Hitchhiker's Guide to Ancient Greece. It seems she was inspired by a tour of the ancient ruins at some point in the 1930's, including Knossos in Crete, and in the course of time The King Must Die was the result.
The title refers to the ancient custom of sacrificing the king at the close of the year to "fertilise" the earth. Later, the king was kept longer than half a year (the rest of the year was ruled by his "tanist"), and a young boy was "disguised" as the king to die in his place. Still later a ram was sacrificed, and kings were kept for longer and longer periods, until they died only when they felt it was absolutely necessary, in times of great crisis, to sacrifice themselves for the greater good.
One is thrown headlong into the time of the ancient Mycenaean kings, steeped into the customs, beliefs and rituals that probably defined their lives. Renault brings an immediacy to the cultures, whether it is Greek or Cretan, and ancient wall paintings come to life and whisper about forgotten love and loss, victory, defeat and death.
Theseus is a young grandson of the King of Troizen, a child without a father, although his mother, King's Daughter and chief priestess, has the highest rank in the city. The narrative sets out a plausible rendering of how he comes into his inheritance as a leader of men and a king. Instead of a huge man with the strength of ten, Renault posits a short, assertive man who must use his mind to overcome his lack of height and weight. Nevertheless he is intensely driven to excel, and has an intense sense of honour. It is this sense of honour which eventually drives him to volunteer himself as one of the seven youths and seven maidens Athens must send to Crete as tribute.
In the time of the narrative, Greece was transitioning from a matriarchal system, with mother-goddesses and year-king rituals, to a system of patriarchy and male sky-gods. The Cretans, however, consider themselves far more cultured and civilised than the mainland, and play at rites and beliefs which the Greeks espouse wholeheartedly. Their worship of Poseidon (not just a sea-god, but also a god of horses, bulls and storms, apparently) involves the "bull dance": boys and girls vaulting over the horns of huge, slow, lumbering bulls. Renault pictures it as a giant entertainment spectacle - probably more so than it really was - and not the pious rite in honour of the bull god it was originally meant to be. Theseus and his fellows are therefore brought to Crete as bull-dancers, sacrifices to Cretan entertainment and not, in fact, to a bull-headed monster. Interestingly, Renault suggests that "Minotaur" was the title of the heir to the throne of Minos. All of this is extremely plausible, and none of the characters fail to fit into the milieu.
The details of Greek and Cretan life are brilliantly drawn in glowing colours, bringing an immediacy which enthralls. And so the fall of Crete, the massive earthquakes and peasant uprisings, become a tragedy shocking in its impact. We see everything through the eyes of Theseus, coloured by his strongly-held opinions and intense drive, and follow him as he flees Crete for Athens.
I can't help feeling that this is a terribly depressing sequel to The King Must Die ; just as Theseus attains the throne of Athens and marries Hippolyta, the Amazon Queen, things start to go wrong. And get progressively worse, until Theseus' ultimate death. Not enjoyable at all.
Nevertheless Renault tries hard, even though it becomes obvious that the later Theseus myths are telescoped into the lifetime of one increasingly stereotyped culture-hero. For example: it has been doubted that Amazons ever truly existed. Ancient Greeks were famous for their male chauvinism, refusing to accord women even real humanity. Her life was circumscribed by her household; her age was counted from the day of her marriage; she could not hold an inheritance in her own right; she could not contest a divorce, nor keep her children. Is it any wonder that girl-babies were exposed or aborted far more than boys? Isn't it possible that, deep down, Greek men had a horror of women somehow turning the tables on them, and driving them out as being unnecessary? And so the wild Amazon women were conquered, again and again, throughout Greek mythology.
It is also rather doubtful that one man could reform the whole of Athenian society in his lifetime (although Solon did rather well), but to also bring down Minoan Crete, invent modern scientific wrestling and conquer Eleusis as well? Let alone "spend time in the Underworld" (Renault suggests a coma). Even so, once again we seem to hear the living voice of Theseus, grown old and warped at the end. The atmosphere is so perfectly captured it might have happened only years ago instead of centuries. Renault is a master, but even so, this book is my least favourite.
Unlike movie directors, authors of historical novels do their best to get it right; in fact, some are renowned for their scholarship. Colleen McCullough spent ten years researching and writing The First Man in Rome . Mary Renault here did everything in her power to bring the world of Greek theatre to life.
Seen through the eyes of one particular Greek actor, Nico, is the fall of the tyranny of Syracuse (capital of Sicily) and the eventual ruin of the whole island. In the time of Plato, Syracuse was ruled by a tyrant, or Archon, whose despotic rule was endured because he was able to defend the Greek populace from the terror of the Carthaginians, a savage people kin to the Phoenicians of Tyre and Sidon (in modern Lebanon), who ruled large sections of the Mediterranean before the rise of Rome.
The world of Greek theatre, tragedy and comedy, comes vibrantly to life: the actors wore masks, surprisingly lifelike, and had a startling repertoire of voices. Most actors specialised in either female or male characters (women were forbidden the stage), and were expected to project their voices to fill the auditorium through the slightly-parted lips of their wooden mask. The mask covered the entire head, with a wig of the character's hair at the back. The faces were not the over-stylised ones we imagine today - they had to be believable. Men, women, goddesses and gods (hence the title) - all were portrayed in what was seen as a religious rite, festivals of plays dedicated either to Apollo or Dionysios, and actors were accorded sacrosanctity as they were seen as servants of the gods in this way.
With this measure of inviolability, Nico is able to travel as a covert messenger between Athens and Syracuse, and later, in fact, actors became official envoys between cities. Nico is a little early, but Renault posits a historical basis for his role. As he carries letters between Plato and Dion, two philosophers bent on reforming Syracuse to a constitutional monarchy, Nico is in a position to narrate the complex political manoeuvres which are known to have happened behind the scenes. The old Archon is known to have hated Plato; he sold him as a slave, in fact, and some prominent noble bought and manumitted him - only to dine out on the story that he "owned" Plato for a time for the rest of his life.
When the old Archon dies, his ineffectual son shows an interest in becoming the kind of Philosopher-King which Plato dreamed about in his writings. The story (through the caustic commentary of Nico) then follows the deterioration of both Syracuse and Dion, through endless twists of fortune for both, and ends up being a fine Greek tragedy. Definitely Renault's best, it isn't as laden with a sense of doom as some of the others. (Don't you hate that? People in the Roman Empire wouldn't have gone around knowing that the whole thing would fall; similarly, people everywhere have a sense of optimism: no one goes around in the terrified hindsight-like knowledge that Huns or Phoenicians will be coming over the horizon in fifty years. Rosemary Sutcliffe is another guilty author: all her British narrators are full of an intense sense of grief, of a knowledge of the Saxon invasion to come, and the fall of Rome. I find it rather artificial.)
Fire from Heaven heralds the introduction of one of my favourite themes, concerning the life of Alexander III of Macedon, who came to be called the Great (and not a title he gave to himself, unlike Caesar's enemy Pompey). This is the narrative concerning Phillip II's conquering of Greece subsequent to the wars of Athens and Sparta. The major characters include Demosthenes, Phillip and Olympias, Alexander and Hephaistion, and Aristotle.
I could easily say that this is Renault's finest novel; I hesitate to denigrate all her others, however. She spotlights the savage relationship between Phillip II and his wife, and how her insistence that Alexander's father is a god leads to a schism
The title character is the son of a Persian noble; the family is betrayed by a vicious enemy and then executed. Only the young Bagoas is spared: a young boy of high birth is potentially a valuable slave. The harrowing tale of how he is made a eunuch and sold to the imperial household as the bed-toy of King Darius follows.
Just when he begins to adjust to his new life, however, a new one is thrust upon him: Alexander of Macedon arrives at the head of an army and conquers Medio-Persia. The clash of cultures is a shocking one - the genteel Persians are beaten savagely on the battlefield by the vigorous Macedonians, who procede to set the order of the Empire on its head, belittling Persian customs and disdaining the people as barbarians in spite of the evidence. Only Alexander is conciliatory, but his attempts to assimilate his Greeks into the Persian milieu are met with resentment, as are his foreign marriages. When he begins to live as a Persian monarch he almost loses the loyalty of his army completely, in spite of his organising a Persian bride for each of his soldiers.
Bagoas is the narrator throughout the book, seeing Macedonian excesses through astounded Persian eyes. He becomes the "boy" of Alexander not quite by default - he falls deeply in love with Alexander the force of nature. Renault manages to bring the time and place alive, so much so that you feel her narrative must be the way it really happened; it doesn't matter that you know how it will end. The magnificence of the setting and the glittering beauty of Alexander hold you enthralled. The rise of an empire is secondary to the character of one of the greatest soldier-monarchs who ever lived. Top