In the middle decades of the fourth century B.C., Athenian society was in eclipse. The protracted Peloponnesian War (431-404 B.C.), which the Greek historian Thucydides chronicled, had taken a terrible toll in moral, social, political, and economic terms. Nikeratos, the narrator of The Mask of Apollo, records the decline of the theater; he also records the failure of Plato to train a philosopher-king and the failure of Dion to become one. The novel presents many aspects of Greek life: the internal workings and traditions of the classical theater, the festival of the Olympic games, the life of Plato's Academy, the dissolute courts of the tyrants Dionysius I and his son, and the world of the Pythagoreans in Italy. Much of the action takes place in Syracuse and Sicily.

Critic Moses Hadas's comment about Renault's earlier historical novels also holds true for this one: "Her narrative is...