Everything you need to understand or teach The Mask of Apollo by Mary Renault.
All of Renault's historical novels achieve what the ancient poet Horace saw as the double purpose of literature: to simultaneously delight and instruct.
As adventure stories they are filled with action; the characters travel widely and suspense keeps the plot moving. But her works are not simply novels of plot.
Their historical settings evoke an important age in the civilization of the Western world. Renault's fictional characters mingle with historical ones in settings...