Miss Renault is able to write about ancient Greece as if she had been there. I don't know whether I admire this gift of hers more in the Theseus novels, where her imagination was free to build as it could on a meager foundation of facts, or in the Athenian novels, which might so easily have suffered from an excess of documentation…. The world Miss Renault shows us is sufficiently in harmony with the one we have read about in history books, and yet it is a world she has created….

As we follow [the] apprenticeship and rise to fame [of Nikeratos, the narrator of The Mask of Apollo,] we get a fresh sense of what the classic Greek theater was like and what it meant to the Greek people in a score of Mediterranean cities…. A mask of Apollo, with which he carries on imaginary conversations, symbolizes his devotion not only to his art but also to the good, the true, and the beautiful. In the long run the symbol is overworked, but it leads to several impressive passages.

Niko is also concerned with the theater as theater, and Miss Renault writes about the conventions of Greek drama in a way that brings the theater to life…. Scenery, costumes, the foibles of actors, the peculiarities of the theaters in various cities, details of particular performances—she writes about them all with an air of authority. But the details are never allowed to submerge the story, which moves forward vigorously through a series of lively actions. This was, among other things, a period of disorder in the Greek world, and an actor's life was not without its perils.

Miss Renault, as always, makes her points deftly….

As in her earlier novels, especially The Last of the Wine, Miss Renault maintains the Greek attitude towards homosexuality, treating it as in no way abnormal or indecent….

If the other part of the novel, the account of the fight for control of Syracuse, is less successful than the story of Nikeratos and the theater, that is because Miss Renault is more closely bound to historical facts of a complicated sort. (p. 47)

If it were told from a different point of view, this story might be impressive enough, but Miss Renault has interested us in Niko as a person, and we are not satisfied when, for long stretches, he becomes a mere reporter. Moreover, the exigencies of history compel her to keep Niko shuttling between Syracuse and Athens, so that he can always be on hand at the right time….

The first part of the novel is intensely interesting, and if some later sections seem dull, it is only by comparison. The book as a whole is always readable and often fascinating…. Serious historical novels … try not only to tell the truth about the past but also to show its relevance to the present. Miss Renault emphasizes the ways in which the past differs from the present and the ways in which they are alike. Niko is a man of the Greek world and therefore unlike us, but his culture has helped to shape ours, and many of the problems he faces, both philosophical and political, are still with us. As Miss Renault presents him to us, he is both stranger and brother and an uncommonly interesting character in both roles. (p. 48)