[Mary Renault] has chosen to write a story for children about the Greeks defying the Persian empire ["The Lion in the Gateway"] and there is never any question about the purpose of the story. She tells it freshly, exultantly, as though it had never been told before. She has caught Herodotus's trick of making her heroes a little larger than life. She has a proper respect for Persian opulence and magnificence, and when she describes Darius or Xerxes she paints them in rainbow colors; and she does not underestimate the Persian bravery. But the Greeks run away with the story…. She gives pride of place to Pheidippides, who ran to Sparta to announce the coming of the Persians and saw the great god Pan along the way. It is a measure of her skill that she makes his meeting with the goatgod perfectly credible, and that the young runner himself becomes the personification of the Greek genius. He is an excellent choice for a hero, and it is odd that no one ever thought of it before.

Children deserve the best, and they have it here in full measure. Meanwhile let us hope that Mary Renault will tell them about Periclean Athens, and then of Alexander.

Once Miss Renault gets down to the major events of the Persian Wars, the encounters at Marathon, Thermopylae and Salamis, her account gains in stature and coherence, but the earlier part of [The Lion in the Gateway] gives an impression of looseness which results in a feeling of irrelevance. There is, of course, much ground to be covered, and one wonders whether some of the material would have been better revealed partly in retrospect, with the main thread of narrative confined to the major events. One thing the author does for which historians will be grateful but which more romantic minds may regret, is to puncture the airy bubble of idyllic perfection in the political systems of Ancient Greece. Miss Renault has a firm but not rigid narrative style and those who wish to enlarge their knowledge of this period will find useful references in the appended Historical Note, while any confusion about the sequence of events can be resolved by reference to a Table of Events. A Glossary explains in detail many matters which would have held up the narrative if digressed upon earlier. While one cannot call this a brilliant book one can admire its honesty.