Romancing the Past

Mary Renault ranks as one of the most famous writers of gay and lesbian historical fiction. Her first gay-themed historical fiction novel, The Last of the Wine , appeared in 1956, a decade and a half before the Stonewall riots; it chronicles a romance between two Athenian young men during the fifth-century BCE Peloponnesian War. Two of her later novels, Fire from Heaven (1969) and The Persian Boy (1972), narrate the life of fourth-century BCE Greek military commander and emperor, Alexander the Great; the novels focus on Alexander’s romances with men: the first with Hephaistion, the second with the Persian eunuch, Bagoas. These novels continue to be popular among lesbian and gay readers. They have also influenced subsequent portrayals of Alexander the Great, including Oliver Stone’s 2004 film, Alexander. Like Renault, Stone emphasizes Alexander’s relationship with another man, Hephaistion, as the primary romantic attachment of his life: “it was said later that Alexander was never defeated—except by Hephaistion’s thighs.” Despite Renault’s emphasis on romances between men, however, she objected to the idea that her novels identified ancient Greeks as gay. Are readers wrong to consider these novels gay historical fictions? These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Ancient history · Art · Emperor · Greeks · Heaven · Lesbian · Literature · Persian · Poetry · Psychoanalysis · Romance · Theology · Classical Antiquity Studies · History · Philosophy · Psychology