I've read a few blurbs about this that tried to play up the bruising Athene versus Sparta war action, but though the war shapes the course of much of this novel, it is first and foremost a romantic epic with a pair of lovers who find each other while their world is on the brink of falling apart. The two lovers are men, or rather and man and youth, embodiments of Greek ideals in terms of physical prowess, intellectual ability, honour and commitment to the defence of their city. Alexias, the youth entering the first flower of manhood, and Lysis, the older, who held back from approaching young Alexias too soon lest he mold him into something lesser than he would have become on his own, heeding sage advice from on Sokrates, who is their teacher and friend.

Competing in Games, fighting frontier wars, managing family and friends, learning to think, striving for goodness as the fortunes of war ebb and flow and the politics of their beloved city turn deadly, Alexias and Lysis grow and mature and strive to stay true to themselves and each other.

Meanwhile, women are a bit of an afterthought. It's not even really polite to talk about them at all, so they don't come up often and they certainly aren't romantic figures, let alone influential or significant outside of domestic matters. Even as one reads the beautiful prose, falls in love with the young heroes and their hopes and dreams, their piety, their intellectual strivings, their heroism in battle, their ethical rightness, one has a sense that this is only an ideal and egalitarian society for some. Alexias never considers even for a moment that things should be other than they are, but why should he? Sokrates doesn't either.

A brilliant, beautiful, vivid, sweeping epic that will make you fall in love with Anceint Greece all over again, for all its shortcomings.