THE MASK OF APOLLO

Eileen Mary Challans was born in Forest Gate, Essex, England on this day in 1905.

"In hatred as in love, we grow like the thing we brood upon. What we loathe, we graft into our very soul."

--from  THE MASK OF APOLLO (1966) by Mary Renault

Set in fourth-century B.C. Greece, The Mask of Apollo is narrated by Nikeratos, a tragic actor who takes with him on all his travels a gold mask of Apollo, a relic of the theater's golden age, which is now past. At first his mascot, the mask gradually becomes his conscience, and he refers to it his gravest decisions, when he finds himself at the center of a political crisis in which the philosopher Plato is also involved. Much of the action is set in Syracuse, where Plato's friend Dion is trying to persuade the young tyrant Dionysios the Younger to accept the rule

of law. Through Nikeratos' eyes, the reader watches as the clash between the two looses all the pent-up violence in the city.