Fire from Heaven by Mary Renault

First published: 1969

Type of work: Historical novel

Time of work: 351-336 b.c.e.

Locale: Macedon, the Greek peninsula, Athens

Principal Characters:

• Alexander, the prince of Macedon, later known as Alexander the Great
• Phllip, the king of Macedon, his father
• Olymplas, his mother
• Hephaistlon, his closest friend and lover
• Ptolemy, his half brother
• Antlpatros, a statesman and adviser to Alexander in his regency
• Arlstotle, the philosopher and the tutor of Alexander
• Lyslmachos, a friend of Alexander and a pedagogue, known to Alexander as Phoinix

The Novel

Fire from Heaven is a historical Bildungsroman depicting the career of the boy who was to go down in history as Alexander the Great from the ages of five to twenty, when he succeeded his father, Philip, as king of Macedon. As the novel opens, the child Alexander wakes to find a snake in his bed. Thinking that it is Glaucos, his mother Olympias’ sacred snake, he slips out of bed to return it. It is not, however, Glaucos but a larger snake; they recall the legend of the young Hercules, the patron god of Achilles, one of Olympias’ ancestors. Olympias tells Alexander that the snake has come from the god, and Alexander names him Tyche, “fortune.” Alexander’s father, Philip, appears, drunk, and, flinging off his clothes, approaches the bed. Olympias cannot shield Alexander from his father’s wrath. Philip throws him out bodily, and he is comforted by the guard.

Thus, in the opening pages, Mary Renault establishes the major themes and characters: Alexander’s fearlessness and his attraction to both logic and legend; Olympias’ superstition and sorcery; Philip’s drunkenness, lust, and anger; the parents’ hostility toward each other and rivalry for Alexander; Alexander’s need for love and his ability to inspire the love and loyalty of the soldiers. In the Macedonian court, Alexander grows up quickly. When he is eight, he has two meetings significant for his future. Envoys arrive from Persia; Philip is not there, and the boy receives them. He is somewhat naive and boyish, but he goes through the proper forms and asks some very pertinent questions. Philip, talking with him afterward, is impressed, the episode showing a hint of the mature relationship which is to develop between them.

Alexander also meets Hephaistion, who will act as a Patroclus to his Achilles, though their mature and intense friendship does not begin until some years later. Leonidas, devoted to Spartan methods of education, is engaged as his tutor, as are masters to teach Alexander music, mathematics, philosophy, and, above all, the Greek language. Macedonian is regarded as a barbarous language. To provide the constant supervision an active and intensely inquisitive young boy needs, Lysimachos, a wellborn, longtime family friend, becomes his pedagogue. Alexander is very fond of him and sensitive enough to know that Lysimachos’ discipline is necessary; he calls him Phoinix, after the friend who stands in the relation of father to Achilles. The Iliad (ninth century b.c.e.) was to remain a major influence throughout Alexander’s life.

The Spartan training enables Alexander to endure hardship and to reconfirm his very un-Macedonian moderation and sobriety. Gradually, he begins to understand his father better, but first he must establish his own identity and manhood. At twelve, young even by Macedonian standards, he sets out to earn his swordbelt by killing a man in battle. Following one of Philip’s soldiers, who is going on leave to avenge a family feud, he not only kills his first man but he also leads and wins a battle. Then, at a horse fair, he asks for a horse which Philip himself cannot ride. At first angry, Philip laughs and says that the horse is Alexander’s, if he can ride him. This, of course, is the legendary Bucephalus, Oxhead in Renault’s literal rendering of the Greek.

Alexander’s education is entrusted to Aristotle, who is then about forty. Under his guidance, Alexander, with a group of wellborn young men, known as the Prince’s Companions and traditionally attached to the Macedonian heir, are sent to their own residence outside Pella. Philip wants to get Alexander away from Olympias and her palace intrigues; Alexander equally wants to be away from Olympias and with Hephaistion, one of the first companions. His education ends when, at sixteen, Alexander is summoned to fight by his father’s side. Philip soon accepts Alexander as an equal, testing him by making him regent of Macedon, with the guidance of Antipatros, and then assigning him, at eighteen, his own cavalry troop. Father and son quarrel over one of Philip’s many state marriages. Macedonian kings traditionally took wives after conquests, but Alexander is outraged when Philip marries the fifteen-year-old daughter of a leading Macedonian, and, at the wedding, the father-in-law toasts the “true heir” to the throne that will come of the match. After the ensuing brawl, Alexander is sent into exile, some of the Companions joining him. Philip and Alexander are reconciled, but, soon after, Philip is assassinated, and Alexander inherits the throne of Macedon and turns his thoughts to the conquest of Asia, which Philip had been planning at his death.

The Characters

Alexander is the most completely and complexly drawn of Fire from Heaven’s characters. Not only is he the central figure but also he is seen from boyhood on; the others, except for brief glimpses of Hephaistion, are adults whose characters have been formed. With Alexander, Renault carefully builds detail upon detail, foreshadowing in the episodes of childhood the leader to come. Each of the other characters is shown in relation to Alexander; from each, a facet of his character is reflected and developed.

Established at the outset are Alexander’s fearlessness, resourcefulness, intellectual acuity, kinship with Achilles, and worship of Hercules. Most important, Alexander, while reverencing the gods and aware of his descent from heroes, possibly even from a god (Achilles was half god), nevertheless always has a practical interpretation of events and portents as well. His inquiring mind and his moderation save him from the excesses of his parents. As he grows older, he becomes more sympathetic to Philip, but the latter’s excesses stand in the way of their ever developing a genuinely close relationship. Olympias is uncontrolled in her religious passions; as a priestess of the cult of Dionysius, her excesses are physical as well. Alexander grows to distrust her, particularly her practice of black magic. Philip, while hostile to her barbarous superstitions, has his own barbarisms: his lust and his ill temper. Alexander’s moderation is in some ways a reaction to his parents’ extremes.

Alexander’s relationship with Hephaistion is another paradox of his nature. Although Renault makes it clear that they are lovers, physical love is the least of Alexander’s concerns, though not of those of Hephaistion. The latter learns moderation from Alexander. In the Iliad and from Leonidas and Lysimachos, Alexander finds values and guides to life other than those of his parents. Identifying strongly with Achilles, he sees Hephaistion as Patroclus. Alexander, though, is not uncritical of Achilles’ conduct as a warrior, and he soon adds Xenophon to his mentors. Xenophon’s writings, ranging from how to evaluate horses to a study of Cyrus of Persia as a philosopher-king, influence the Alexander who is to conquer and administer the then-known world.

Renault creates an impressive gallery of portraits, all in relation to Alexander and his growth. Some are minor, but telling. The guard, Agis, who rescues the five-year-old Alexander from his father’s wrath, is drawn to Alexander in a combination of affection, loyalty, and physical attraction; his example, in turn, shows Alexander that even these must not stand in the way of doing one’s duty. Aristotle, though dominantly a rational, empirical philosopher, always teaching Alexander to ask why and seek out evidence, reveals strong personal loyalty both to his home city, devastated by war, and to a friend who has been tortured and killed by the Persians. His example, as much as his precepts, teaches Alexander friendship. When Aristotle is ready to leave the court, Philip and Alexander keep the promise to rebuild Stagira for the philosopher so that he can spend his declining years there.

Critical Context

Mary Renault is in general acknowledged as a fine novelist and, indisputably, a master of the historical novel. Unfortunately, her general critical reputation has been diminished by the reputation of the historical novel as a genre. Genre fiction historical, detective, Western, science fiction, romance is not usually accorded a high critical standing. The historical novel as a genre presents special difficulties to the critic. With a range of examples to consider which includes Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace (1865-1869), Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter (1850), William Faulkner’s Absalom, Absalom! (1936), Par Lagerkvist’s Barabbas (1950; English translation, 1951), and Willa Cather’s Death Comes for the Archbishop (1927), conventions and forms are not easily defined. Conversely, a genre whose practitioners include several Nobel Prize winners and which numbers established classics cannot be dismissed as mere escapist entertainment. One difficulty is that few critics are qualified in both history and literature; fewer still have these qualifications and a mastery of the language, if the work and its sources are not in a language with which the critic is familiar. Most authors of major historical novels, however, have also written novels dealing with their own time and place. Renault’s contemporary novels are all early works and, with the exception of The Charioteer (1953), are apprentice work.

Renault’s skill not only as a historical novelist but also simply as a novelist is evidenced in her treatments of Alexander. He appears as a character in four novels: The Mask of Apollo (1966), Fire from Heaven, The Persian Boy (1972), and Funeral Games (1981), and in her biographical study, The Nature of Alexander (1975). In each of these works, Alexander is seen from a different perspective, and each has a different style. Nikeratos, an actor, the narrator of The Mask of Apollo, perceives Alexander’s beauty, but also, even at the early age he meets him, his air of command, his awareness of being a man among men, and his inquiring mind. Bagoas, the narrator of The Persian Boy, sees Alexander from a lover’s and intimate’s perspective, holding the man and the legend in balance. Fire from Heaven, Funeral Games, and The Nature of Alexander, though all in the third person, are again different from one another and the other works. In Funeral Games, Alexander is glimpsed briefly at the end of his life and in death; the style is heavy and elegiac, the legend uppermost. In The Nature of Alexander, Renault judiciously weighs evidence and cites sources, giving her reasons when she chooses among conflicting interpretations. Her style is objective but flowing and readable. Fire from Heaven is told in a compellingly dramatic narrative style. In contrast to the variety of styles, each of the novels is linked by the themes clustered around the character of Alexander: his heroic identification with the Iliad (Nikeratos sees him after a performance of Aeschylus’ The Myrmidons), his mastery of himself and of other men, the blending of cultures, and his ability to be simultaneously awed by and questioning of a situation.

Taken as a whole, Renault’s novels present a broad portrait of the Greek world, ranging from the Mycenaean period to the post-Alexandrian. In each, style and theme give the reader a sense of the past, each subtly differing from the others yet linked by the common theme of the development of Greek culture and values. In the treasure of fine novels written in English, Renault’s works are small gems but ones of outstanding quality and brilliance.

Bibliography

Brunsdale, Mitzi M. “Mary Renault,” in Critical Survey of Long Fiction, English Language Series, 1983. Edited by Frank N. Magill.

Dick, Bernard F. The Hellenism of Mary Renault, 1972. The New Yorker. Review. XLV (December 27,1969), p. 57.

Renault, Mary. “History in Fiction,” in The Times Literary Supplement. March 23, 1973, pp. 315-316.

Time. Review. XCIV (December 19,1969), p. 82.

Warner, Rex. Review in The New York Times Book Review. December 14, 1969, p.42.

Wolfe, Peter. Mary Renault, 1969.