[The Praise Singer] is an honourable and painstaking account of the first half of the life of Simonides, a 6th-century BC Greek poet from the island of Keos. It is less romance than reconstruction and readers will not be swept along as by the powerful current of Robert Graves's Claudius books or Mary Renault's own Cretan works….

Alas, these alleged Greeks seem too bland and well-mannered. They smell more of English public-school refectories and college halls than of wine and garlic. They are kitted out with personalities of sorts (although it is hard to remember what distinguishes, say, one Pisistratan from another) but never erupt into passion or even blossom into convincing humanity.

A large part of the trouble is the prose. This is literate and flexible enough to produce substantial variety of effect but a sorry instrument to ascribe to one of the greatest singers of the...