The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

9

AFTER THIS, I WAS BUSY FOR SOME TIME WITH my own affairs. When the choregoi drew for protagonists at the Dionysia, I was picked quite early, and cast as Orpheus in a play of that name by Eucharmos. It was a good acting role, very pathetic; my music was done off stage by a concert kitharist, but I sang myself. The play was well received; I was told later, on good authority, that I was in the running for the crown and did not lose by many votes. It went to Aristodemos, who had done a big bravura part as Ajax, perhaps a little florid, but, I don’t deny, sound on the whole.

If I do not dwell on this time, it’s not from pique at having missed the crown; I was lucky to get so near it. But I started a little love affair, of the sort that is well enough if you don’t let it take hold. If he had been anyone else’s choice, I should have known just what to advise. But getting deep in, I started to deceive myself, finding all that I wished to see, and calling the rest youthful heedlessness. So, when my Alkibiades of the Agora left me for a well-off fool with a racehorse and a house in the Kerameikos, I could not sweeten it with the thought that I had lost my peace for something worth my pains. I had known well enough, but would not know, for the sake of his laughing eyebrows and golden bloom.

Even so, once I could have taken it lightly. I could not now. I was at war with myself. All the while, when I was wasting hours in guessing where he was, planning the next supper, which had always some bitterness in the cup, brooding on a word or look—in a word, fishing for moonshine—the mask of Apollo looked at me with empty eyes. Once he gives you knowledge, you can’t unknow it; if you try, he makes you suffer. I was haunted by those scornful eyeholes, and by a youth whom only my mind’s eye had seen, climbing the slopes of Etna with the snow-light on his upturned face. He had stolen my joy in my old contentments, by showing me what men can be.

With such thoughts, I took a walk one day to the Academy in the warm green of spring. I did not seek Axiothea; she might have heard things, and would not understand. But I happened to notice in the garden the dour-faced Xenokrates, who I knew would neither question nor detain me; so I asked when Plato intended going to Syracuse. He raised his brows. Plato had been gone, he said, above a month.

Had all that time slipped by? Since the Dionysia, I thought, every day wasted. Suddenly I felt the need to shake it all off, as a wet dog shakes off water. Here in Athens, I would be meeting at every turn the youth, or his new lover, or friends who had seen my folly. The very air felt stale.

Next day, therefore, I did a round of the foreign consulates, to learn what cities were planning plays. It was not an Isthmian or Pythian year, and too early for Olympia. I hoped I had finished with small-town theaters, and was therefore passing by the Megarian proxenos’ office, when I met Eupolis coming out. I greeted him and said I was thinking of a tour. But he was already not the man he had been before he lost his teeth and spoiled his voice. He had been drinking though it was not mid-morning; and, without taking the trouble to wrap it in civility, said he wondered I did not try Sicily again, if I had had such a success there as I claimed.

“As for that,” I said, “I don’t claim even to have trodden a stage in Sicily. All I did was speak Dionysios’ epitaph. But since you ask, it’s true I’ve been thinking of going back there. I daresay that’s what I shall do.”

I walked on, amazed at myself, thinking, “Now I shall have to go, or he’ll put it all over Athens. I, who swore never to set foot in a ship again. What fate made him cross my path? And why did I speak to him? He would have passed me by.” Then I went home, to think. The mask hung on the wall, straight-faced in the bright light of noon. But when I turned my hack, I felt it smiling.

At least, by now, it was sailing weather. The Sicilian consul greeted me warmly, offered me wine, and said he had been expecting my inquiry. “Not,” he said, “that I have any special commission. But with youth at the helm, as the saying is, the crew will all be singing. Syracuse today is a gay city, very gay. I don’t think it would be possible for an artist like yourself to lose by going just now. I shall announce you by letter, mentioning your success as Orpheus. Such poetry, such pathos—we were all in tears.” I thanked him, but could have done without it; I knew I had overworked the pathos, feeling sorry for myself just then. At all events, I left committed; he was writing by a ship which left that day. It had all been as if a hand in my back were shoving me.

All the same, remembering young Dionysios’ fitfulness, I did not mean to put all my eggs under one hen, but called on the consuls of Leontini, Akragas, Gela and Tauromenion, telling them of my visit, and anything else it would do me good for them to know.

The question was whether to try and form a company. But Anaxis had joined a tour going to Ionia; Hermippos was back in comedy; and I was short of capital, having spent too many of those beautiful gold staters they mint in Syracuse, on human gold as lovely and as quick to slip away. I thought I would chance Menekrates’ being free, and willing. Though I had never seen his work, he had seemed well thought of; and one can learn much from an artist’s way of talking.

Some nights later, when all was done but my goodbyes, at the time of lamplighting came a knock upon my door. There he stood, sure of his welcome, in all the insolence of his beauty and my past surrenders, waiting to see me reel with joy. He had quarreled, he said, with the new friend; after all there was no one like me. I suppose he had asked too much; rich men get the measure of that sooner than poor ones. For a moment Eupolis, the consuls, the westbound passage, seemed never to have been. It would do next year. Then, when I thought I had eyes only for him, I felt other eyes upon me. In the lamplight which flickered in the draft from the open door, the mask was watching.

Beside those eyes of shadow, the blue ones looked shallow as glass. I found my voice. He should have told me, I said, that he was coming; I had promised to dine out with friends. He stayed awhile, not believing that I meant it, then made to go, certain I would call him back. In the street outside I heard his feet pause, and go away.

I had a perfect passage to Syracuse. Halcyons could have nested on the sea. At Tarentum I called on my kind hosts with some gifts to show my gratitude, then on Archytas, in case he wanted any letters taken to Plato. When I went in he did not know me, properly dressed and with something on my bones under the skin. I had put on my soberest robe; but an actor going to Sicily is bound to look frivolous in the study of a Pythagorean, and he gazed doubtfully at first. Presently, finding me the same man still, he talked more freely. He would be glad, he said, to write to Plato, from whom they had heard quite lately. The letter had been brought by a court courier, to whom he could have entrusted nothing private, but he had seemed cheerful and hopeful. He had asked for some of Pythagoras’ treatises on geometry, and some of Archytas’ own works, for plane and solid figures, and instruments. All these had already been sent. He spoke too of Dionysios’ eagerness to improve his mind, with which he had infected his whole court; this was why Plato’s own equipment was not enough to go round. “If the gods please,” he had ended, “this is the beginning of new things for Syracuse.”

“Plato knows how to be discreet,” Archytas said, “but is incapable of falsehood. You can picture, therefore, our rejoicing. One must be happy to see Zeus’ work done anywhere on earth. But our city lives in the shadow of Ortygia’s sails; the health of Syracuse is ours.”

He added that this good news had followed hard on bad, for not long before, rumors had been pouring across the straits about young Dionysios’ dissipations and debaucheries. Archytas, a veteran of many wars and not one to call three cups of wine an orgy, sounded quite impressed.

The young man had sobered up, however, in time to give Plato a state welcome. A gilded chariot had been sent down to the harbor for him. But this had been as nothing, it was said, to the effect of Plato’s presence. Archytas added that if on my way home I would report to him how matters stood, I could expect his gratitude; and, as he hinted civilly, some solid token of it.

When I asked if he had any word for Dion, he said at once that he was anxious to get a letter to him by someone of discretion. This was state business, a serious matter, and I showed him I understood it. Now I was sure of seeing Dion, I would have put to sea in another Tarentine gale, if nothing else would get me there.

In fact, however, we had a good passage and sailed straight into harbor. As I made for Menekrates’ lodging, I saw Syracuse was itself again. The streets were loud and jostling; the shops had everything a ship can bring from the shores of ocean; in the gutters bony children scuffled like rats for bits of garbage, while the painted mule-carriages threw dust on them, and the carriage folk held flowers to their noses against the smell. When a Gaulish or Iberian or Nubian mercenary came in sight, the stall-holders would hide their choicest things before he passed.

The sun was just declining. Menekrates, still drowsy from his siesta, was shaving when I arrived. He jumped and cut himself; we had to clamber about finding cobweb to stop the blood. I felt I had never been away.

It was a thousand pities, he said, that I had missed these last few months, especially to get shipwrecked instead. I told him that at Tarentum I had heard wild stories; but no doubt they had gained in the passing-on.

“Not possible,” he said. “Lost, more likely. Well, at least there was work for artists.”

“I never thought young Dionysios had it in him.”

“My dear Niko, even he would hardly ask flute-girls and rope-dancers to his father’s funeral. He did observe the month of mourning decently. I suppose it took him as long as that to believe the old man was really dead. Even then, it looked for a while as if Dion would step smoothly in and become another father.” Then he seemed to catch himself up, and changed the subject. When, however, I asked him for news of Dion, he answered that he was well, and, lest the Carthaginians should grow too bold with the news of old Dionysios’ death, he had made the city a gift of thirty triremes.

“Thirty!” I exclaimed. “The richest man in Athens would cry murder if he were tax-assessed at more than one.”

“Well, he gave thirty. Our rich men are very rich, believe me. Didn’t you sail past the patrol?” He pushed it off too briskly; again I felt words unsaid.

“What is it?” I asked. “You have heard something. I wish you would tell me, and not beat about.”

“Didn’t you stop at the barber’s tavern on your way?”

“No; it was calm enough to shave on board. What news would I have heard there?”

“Why,” he answered, making a business of giving me a drink, sweetmeats, and so on, “the story of young Dionysios. To put first things first, it began when Philistos was recalled.” This name meant nothing to me. He said, “He’s still a great name here, though I was a lad when he was banished. Captain of Ortygia, he was before, as rich as King Midas; gave parties that made history. So did his love affairs. Old Dionysios’ mother was one of his mistresses, but the Archon was only just in power, and turned a blind eye because he was too big to quarrel with. Later on, though, he married into Dionysios’ family without his leave, and that was another story. That looked ambitious. He was whisked straight off into a trireme bound for Italy, to honeymoon in exile. There he stayed till this year, when we had the amnesty.”

“So,” I said, “there have been reforms, then?”

“Oh, yes. As I was saying, Dion did wonders in the first couple of months, getting people out of the quarries who had been in for years, or recalling exiles. When Philistos applied, I suppose he advised consent as a matter of principle. It can hardly have been Dionysios’ doing; he was too young to have known the man. At all events, he came. They say he’s spent his leisure writing history, as all these broke generals do, so no doubt he’s kept himself informed. He’s still very game for his age; he’d hardly set his house in order before he gave a party, quite up to the former ones, so people say who remember. Dion left early. But young Dionysios stayed. The party broke up two mornings later.”

“And that was the beginning?”

“Well, he always stole a little entertainment behind his father’s back. No, I think it first came home to him then that he was the Archon and could do just what he liked.”

My mind returned to my second audience at Ortygia, and his face when he spoke of the pleasures of Syracuse. As Menekrates said, it was the mourning that had kept me from taking notice.

“It might have been worse,” he went on. “It might have been blood he had a taste for. But while living like a mouse in his father’s wainscot, he hadn’t much chance of making enemies. He called for no heads but maidenheads. All he fancied was a party that would last forever, without his father roaring in to demand quiet for his writing, and pack everyone home. So the next banquet was at the palace. I heard a good deal about it from a girl I know who dances with a snake. Remarkable what she has taught it; you must see her act. But she left on the third day of the party; by then they were looking for something fresh. When the host wants novelty, and can pay, with the place so full too of hetairas and acrobats and so on, one thing leads to another. After a week or so, there was no tale coming out of Ortygia so farfetched that someone couldn’t cap it. There has always been a back-door traffic between the citadel and Carthage; the old man used it when he chose; Philistos knew of it. Now instead of secret treaties, the exchange or death of hostages, and so on, it came in useful for summoning jugglers, fire-swallowers, knife-dancers, or experts in never-mind-what.

“From time to time the party would come out for fresh air, first into the streets of Ortygia, later, sometimes, through all the gates into the town. Pretty soon, when the torches were seen weaving along, wives and sons and daughters were bundled behind locked doors; the revelers seemed to think they conferred a favor on anyone they ravished; no one was expected to pull a long face and spoil the fun. Anyone on business was shown the door at once. Soldiers and ephors ran the city; the bribery rate doubled overnight, when they knew no one was watching them.”

I asked, “What did Dion do?”

“Looked in at the party, so my friend told me, to try and get sense out of someone. Of course Dionysios refused to delegate, and only tried to make him drink. That was while she was there; next time he came, I expect everyone was dead-out on the floor, or busy on the couches. So he bided his time, and waited for his philosopher friend from Athens; and not in vain … Well, at least no artist starved. Between parties, a play nearly every week; we don’t keep them for the high feasts as you do in Athens. I can live half a year on what I’ve made. A good thing, for the grasshoppers’ summer is over.” He gave me a glance under his brows, as if in hope he had said enough.

“All summers end,” I answered. “I’d not heard of this when I set out; I was only hoping for something at the festivals.”

He stood silent, biting his lip, his dark brows pulled together. There was now no mistaking it; he looked bitter. I was getting on edge, and told him sharply to come out with it, whatever it was.

“I wish,” he said, “you’d stopped at the tavern and heard it there.” He walked past me into the high-walled courtyard. It was green now with vine-shade, and the gourd dangled great yellow flowers. It gave his face the tint of bronze that has lain under the sea. He came back in again and I thought, “Now it is coming.”

“Who wants to bring a friend bad news? The truth is, Niko, your Dion and his Sophist want to make an end of the theater. Finish it, root it up. That’s all.”

I said, “What? Impossible,” while feeling the shock that only truth can give. “But the festivals are sacred.”

“So sacred that the theater is unworthy of them. Or so the word goes round.” The hot dark anger of Sicily set his face in a frowning mask; then he overcame it, and put his hand on my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Niko. One would think I was blaming you for it. Maybe one shouldn’t believe all one hears. This I do know, though. Artists were everywhere in Ortygia, giving recitals, asked to supper, paid in gold. Now, overnight as it were, since this Plato came, nobody, no matter how distinguished. And what’s more, for thirty years at least, there’s been a play on the Archon’s name day. One of his own, if he had one ready, but always something. This month, the new Archon’s day came round. Nothing, not even a party. Just sacrifices and hymns.”

The shadows had lengthened in the courtyard. Its green light had become cold-looking, like light before rain. I thought of Delphi, of the painted wine cup with Eros in it, the talk by lamplight. I could remember thinking what a high-class supper I had been asked to, all conversation instead of jugglers and flute-girls, a real gentlemen’s symposion. I had no more expected this to come of it, than at a fencing class one expects to be run through.

“Don’t you think,” I said, “that Dionysios is just lying up with a crapula? Has your cousin Theoros heard anything? After a debauch like that, there must be some palace stomachs needing physic.”

“I saw him yesterday in the street. He waited, so I walked away. If Theoros wants to give me news, I can guess what kind it will be. No, Niko, no crapula lasts so long. It’s this philosophy. Everyone says so.”

We were looking at each other with faces of disaster, when I remembered what this meant. Dion had won the victory he, and the Academy, had been praying for. I ought to have been rejoicing.

Trying to bring all this to terms, I said, “But surely, then, he must have given the city proper laws, and called a free Assembly? Even if the theater stops for a time, and artists have to tour, you are citizens too, so wouldn’t the good outweigh the bad?”

“If that happened, it might. There were rumors at first, when we had the amnesty. But nothing came of them. I tell you, Niko, I don’t mean to sit here eating up my savings. I must get upon the road, as soon as I find a man to tour with. I could make up a company of nobodies tomorrow and play lead, but I’d far rather do second to a good protagonist. More credit, more pleasure, and the money about the same.”

“I’m ashamed to ask,” I said, “whether I would be good enough.”

He flashed his white teeth and grasped my hand, saying, “I hadn’t the face to ask outright.” I told him I had come here in the hope of it; we laughed, and at once found all our prospects looking brighter.

“I tell you what,” I said. “Tomorrow I’ll present myself to Dionysios. He told me to, next time I came, so I’ll take him at his word. I’ll learn what I can, and while I’m there I’ll try to see Dion too. If I do, I’ll ask him straight out about the theater. Then at least we’ll know where we stand.” In spite of everything, I was wondering whether he might have some business for me.

We then turned to planning out our tour, on the usual terms. I would put up two-thirds of the expenses, including the hire of the third actor and extra (which I could afford, now I had not their fares to pay from Athens) and split the profits the same way. Then we went to drink to it at the barber’s tavern. It was half-empty; the few men there were drinking almost in silence, or getting quarrelsome. We walked home still pretty well sober. He was in better spirits than I; the tour was fixed up, and he was a man for living from day to day. It was I who lay awake. I felt both my heart and mind being torn in two.

Next day I set out early, knowing how long it took to get through all the gates. This time I had no pass; besides, I might find the guards all drunk or dicing. But discipline still seemed fairly good. The assets of a mercenary captain, and his future, are in his men, and he will do his best not to let them spoil.

The guards had been changed at the causeway gatehouse. Instead of the Gauls there were some Italians, who spoke a dialect strange to me: dark, curly-haired men in polished armor, with straight-sided shields and heavy six-foot throwing spears. Their drill was much smarter than the Gauls’ and their Greek less barbarous. They looked as proud as the Spartans but more at home; Spartans hate crossing water. These troops seemed as tough, and more professional. They asked my business (I had hoped for someone who knew my face) and then for tokens of my errand. Since Archytas’ letter to Dion was confidential, I showed the one to Plato, which I thought should serve my turn, seeing he was the Archon’s guest.

The captain read the name; at once his black brows knitted above his haughty nose, and his nostrils curled as if the paper stank. “Plato!” he said for his men to hear. There was a general growl, and a clank as they shook their iron-shod javelins. The captain handed the letter back as a housewife picks up a dead rat. “Well, Greekling, if you get a quiet word with Plato, just tell him this from the Roman cohort.” He drew the edge of his hand across his throat. His men supplied the sound.

They let me through. But the news that I was going to Plato was passed on along with me, and from each lot of guards I got, allowing for race and custom, much the same message. Even a Greek, who conducted me through the royal gardens, said, “If you’ve come from his precious school to fetch him home, you can drink your way through every guardhouse from here to the Euryalos. Only let me know.”

He was a big hairy Boeotian, but I felt more at home with him than with the foreigners; so I asked what Plato had been up to, to be so much hated. At home, I added, he had the name of a quiet man.

“Let him keep quiet at home, then, or someone will quiet him for good. He was brought here to corrupt the Archon and make him fit for nothing; and you can guess who hopes to gain from that. Disband the hired troops—oh, yes, that’s Plato’s counsel—and the city left as a gift for his friend Dion. I wish the old man were back. He’d have nailed his head and his four quarters to the gatehouses long before this.”

I made no answer. The long night had brought no peace to the war within me. We were getting near the palace. The Boeotian stopped, to have his say. “Have you seen these Syracusans on Assembly Day? They’ve not shifted for themselves these forty years. How long do you see them keeping off the Carthaginians, without us trained men?” He spat into the grass, saying, “Tell Plato that from me.”

We went through the outer court, and a columned porch, to a court within. “Wait here,” he said.

I waited just inside the porch, and looked about. It was a green shady place, with flowering creepers trained above, and a big square fountain pool in the center, maybe fifty feet wide. This had been drained, and the tiles scattered with clean sand. On the marble edge, a number of well-dressed men were sitting, and seemed, at first glance, to be fishing in the sand. Then I saw that the rods they held were really pointers; they were drawing geometric figures, with letters and numbers beside them. A slave was going about with a rake, to clean off finished work, and sand, to start again on.

When I had got over the oddness of this spectacle, I noticed something else; one side of the court was much busier than the other. I soon saw the cause. The fountain made a little island, a bronze palm trunk twined with a snake upon a base of serpentine; and on the slab sat Plato and Dionysios. It was the courtiers at my end, behind their backs, who were taking it easy. I saw two of them do a lewd drawing and quickly sweep it over.

Plato was turned a little my way. He was talking, sitting with his massive brow and heavy shoulders leaned rather forward, as if with their own weight; I remembered the pose. His hands were on his knees; sometimes he would lift one in a gesture so spare, but clear, that an actor could not have bettered it. Dionysios came further round, so that I partly saw his face. His lips were parted, and his countenance changed like a field of barley in a breeze, to show he was following every word.

My guard walked about looking for a chamberlain, passing on his way a couple of Gauls at the further door. The sight of them reminded me what a change this was. Nobody had searched me.

Dionysios beckoned my escort, who told his errand and presently came to fetch me. I scrambled across the balustrade, picked my way over the sand, side-stepped a diagram (Plato’s I suppose) they had been discussing, and made my bow.

Dionysios had changed greatly. Of course, last time he had been in mourning, unshaven and with cropped hair; but it was more than that. His skin looked clearer, he fidgeted less; he seemed better-favored, like a plain girl pleased with her marriage. Plato was watching him, not as I had once seen him look at Dion, close and proud; still, there was a kind of affection in his face, like a mother’s when her child is learning to walk.

“Well, Nikeratos,” Dionysios began, but then at once turned round. “Here, Plato, is a man you know, though without, I daresay, knowing his face. This is Nikeratos, the tragedian of Athens, who was protagonist in my father’s play.”

Plato greeted me with courtesy, but as a stranger. It did not offend me; I guessed the cause, and replied suitably. He complimented my performance, and congratulated me on my crown. He did, at least, seem to hear and see me; Dionysios, from first to last, talked through me at Plato, not slightingly, but as if nobody else were real to him.

“And what brings you to Syracuse?” he asked me.

Good, I thought; now we shall see. “Just the business of my calling, sir. I have come to work.”

He looked pleased with this answer. “Well, Nikeratos,” he said, going back to his opening line, “so you have lately been in Athens at the Dionysia; and I suppose, after your success at the Lenaia, you were given a leading role?”

I told him yes; he inquired the name of the poet, the theme of the play, how it had been received—things that anyone might ask. But as he went on, I began to recognize that special tone I had observed at the Academy, when they played the game of questions, leading someone on till they scored a point. Being new and half-baked at it, he sounded rather silly. With the side of my eye I glanced at Plato. He was a man who would not have fidgeted if he had sat down on an anthill; but his patience was starting to show.

“So you enacted Orpheus. Did the play treat of his descent into the underworld to ransom his wife, or of his death at the hands of the maenads?”

“The second,” I said. “Though he relates the first in a soliloquy.”

He brightened. I must have given him the right feed-line.

“Orpheus was the son of Apollo, as we are told. Is it possible that being god-begotten he should have failed to calm the maenads with his song, inspired as he was by the divinity?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “But some audiences don’t want the best, and let you know it.”

“Tut,” he said, brushing this off. “How will men think of the gods, if their sons are shown in error, or defeated?”

“Perhaps, sir, that they took after their mothers’ side.”

Plato’s eye flickered, like an old war-horse’s when he hears the trumpet. But he kept quiet, and left it to the colt, who as I saw was looking put out. I should have held my tongue, as Anaxis would have told me.

“In any case,” he said, “you imitated the passions of Orpheus in his desires and fears, hopes and despair; and the audience was pleased with you?”

“I think so. They gave the usual signs.”

“And I expect you are also skilled in imitating women, whether old and in sorrow, or young and in love?”

“Yes, I can do that.” I wondered how long he could keep this up, in any hope of making me look more foolish than himself. I recalled the quick smooth give-and-take at the Academy, and the humor, of the sort you get when people are really serious. So did Plato, I suppose.

“And you can imitate, too, brawling drunkards, scolding wives or thieving slaves?”

“A comedian would do it better.”

“Then you think such parts unworthy of you?”

“No, my skill is different.”

“You mean,” he said, his nose pointing like a game-dog’s, “that you find no kind of person too base to imitate?”

“That depends on how the author uses baseness.”

I could see I had cut his cue, whatever that should have been, and it had annoyed him. He came pretty close to asking me how I dared to argue, but then remembered the principles of debate. He peeped round at Plato, partly for approval, but partly in hope that the champion would ride into the battle, and spear me through.

Plato did not notice this appeal, and I saw why. A man was coming along the colonnade which ran round the empty pool. He seemed about Plato’s age, and held himself like one who has been somebody all his life. His red weathered soldier’s face was getting pouchy with good living, but his light blue eyes were still bright and hard; they had an air of having seen everything worth notice, and knowing what to think. He was well dressed for Sicily, meaning very florid by our standards, but within the bounds of breeding there, covered with clasps of malachite and heavy gold, even to his sandals. He came along by the balustrade, limping a little, from a stiff joint or some old wound, eyeing each man and acknowledging greetings, sometimes warmly, sometimes not; one felt none of it was without meaning.

Plato had noticed him, Dionysios not yet. When he passed two men drawing in the sand, he said something, straight-faced, which made them grin, and followed it with a mock reproof. Plato, clearly, was meant to see. Then he swept along till he was level with Dionysios, to whom he bowed deeply.

The young man said, “Good day, Philistos,” and their eyes met. Philistos paused a moment. His face was that of a man who sees his superior, a nice inexperienced boy, making a fool of himself, but blames rather the man who should know better, yet leads him on. The glance was eloquent of respect, discretion, and quiet irony, with a touch of patronage to make it sting.

Dionysios looked in two minds whether to call him over. He refrained however. There was a moment when Philistos seemed to ask himself whether anything he could say would open his poor friend’s eyes; then, as if deciding the time was not yet ripe, he gravely withdrew. He remained, though, at the far end of the court, watching the geometrists.

Dionysios looked after him, then back to me. He had been put off, and was now stuck. I would have given him his line, if only I had known what it was.

“But,” said Plato, “we were talking, I think, about the nature of the actor’s skill.”

He was not joining the debate, just making himself felt, like a protagonist who enters upstage and, though silent, at once commands the scene. That was his quality; it cut down Philistos at once to a rich old gentleman, rather overdressed and overfed, who is getting set in his ways and sniffs at everything beyond him. Dionysios revived. He was ready now to dash on and finish the scene.

“Well, Nikeratos, in spite of all your varied skills, I would rather hear from you always that dignity and seemliness with which you spoke the Eulogy. Shall I tell you why?” I saw Plato stir, but his pupil was off by now, showing his paces. “All things here below are only imitations of the pure forms God knows: good if they approach the likeness, bad if they fail. So, when you enact men and their qualities, you are imitating an imitation, isn’t that so?”

“So it would seem,” I said. I was anxious to keep him going, and get it over.

“Then, if you imitate the worse rather than the good in men, however well you do it, you are giving, really, the worst imitation, the least like the true model. Doesn’t that follow?”

I had not met Axiothea and her friends for nothing; one must keep the rules. “Yes,” I said. “It would follow on the first.”

“But, Dionysios, are we not forgetting how recently Nikeratos joined us?” Plato’s clear voice came in like a silver knife slicing an apple. “You and I have come step by step to the concept of divine originals; but he in his courtesy conceded the premise without demonstration. There is a saying that one should not press a generous man too far. At present we may thank him for the pleasure his art has given us; later, when he has followed all the argument, we may win him to our conclusions.”

Dionysios looked dashed, as well he might. He took it, though, as pupil from master. The lord of the fleet of Syracuse, of the gates and the catapults and the quarried prison, sulked like a chidden boy. He shot me a look. I saw not the anger of a tyrant put down before a traveling actor, but just a pique, because Plato had not taken his side.

I was trying to think of some civility which would get me off, when at the end of the colonnade I saw Dion enter.

I can’t tell how I felt. It was wind against tide. There he stood, the same man as always, without a mean thought in his soul, a man who, if he had pledged protection to a suppliant, would have stood to it till death, though it were for a thrall on a peasant farm. Yet this same man wanted to take away not just the bread out of my mouth, not just the reputation I had worked for all my life, but, as it seemed to me, the soul out of my body.

As he came on, he passed Philistos. I saw it was a greeting of open enemies. They measured one another, like men who do it daily as the fortunes of conflict shift. A child could have picked the better man. Philistos went out sneering; Dion did not look back. I saw a glow on him of victory and hope. He saluted Dionysios. But before that, his eyes had sought Plato’s from far off, and the young man had not missed it.

When he noticed me, Dion did not show surprise. He must have known I was coming. His greeting was formal, but I knew he wanted to see me afterwards. When, therefore, I was dismissed from the presence, I made my way to his house. Waiting in the anteroom, I had a good while to think, but found no answer. It needs a sophist, I thought, for that.

At last he came. Keeping his distance before the servant, he went in, then sent for me; but, once we were alone, he greeted me even more kindly than before. He shone with happiness. I had thought he would be ill at ease before me, but no. Among his great affairs, he had not even remembered.

I gave him his own letter, and the one for Plato. He put down my constraint, I think, to bad news I brought, for he read Archytas’ letter standing; then, reassured, he offered me wine. The cup was Italian, the painting touched up with white, like his gift at Delphi. Memories crowded me: the crane, Meidias’ death cry, the battle at Phigeleia, my father as Cassandra, the great theater at Syracuse where Aischylos put on The Persians, Menekrates saying, “It’s all one under the mask.” The cup shook in my hand. As one learns to do, I steadied it. He had been putting back the jug, and had noticed nothing.

Raising his cup, he said, “To the fortunes of Syracuse. A glorious dawn, Zeus prosper it.”

I held myself in, and answered slowly, “Shall we offer the prayer of Hippolytos, Grant me to end life’s race as I began?”

“Choose,” he said, smiling, “some prayer of better omen, for, as I remember, that one the gods rejected.”

“I see you know your Euripides. Well then, a toast to purified Syracuse. Down with all riffraff—hired troops, spies, gluttons and drunkards, whores, and artists.” I lifted the cup, and threw it down on the marble floor.

I had not known I would do this. The wine made a great red star, and spattered both our robes. A piece of the cup lay at my feet, a crowned goddess, in the Italian style.

He stood stock-still, amazed, then angry. Sicilians of his rank don’t know such things can happen to them. Well, I thought, he is talking to an Athenian now, and must make the best of it.

“Nikeratos,” he said, “I am sorry to see you so forget yourself.”

“Forget?” I answered. “No, by Apollo, I have remembered what I am. I am a citizen of no rank; I don’t understand philosophy; when you were studying, I was playing stand-ins and extras, picking up my trade which you want to take away. But whatever I am, or you choose to call me, one thing I know: I am a servant of the god, and though I honor you and love you, I will obey the god, rather than you.”

He had listened unmoving; but at these words he started, as if he knew them. I waited, but he did not speak.

“You have been godlike to me.” If I had let myself, I could have wept. “But beside the god you are just a man. Farewell. I daresay we shan’t meet again.” I paused at the door, but there was nothing to stay for, so I only said, “I am sorry I broke the wine cup.”

“Nikeratos. Come back … I beg of you.” The words came out stiffly. His tongue was strange to them. It was that made me turn.

“Come, sit down,” he said. We sat by his desk. It was covered with letters and petitions such as are sent to men in power. There were sheets too of geometric figures and a diagram of the stars.

“My friend,” he said, “Archytas tells me that you almost lost your life upon my business. I have grieved you, which I cannot help; but I did it thoughtlessly, and for that I ask your pardon.”

“If the thing is true,” I answered, “does it matter how you say it? Is it true, or not?”

“This is hard,” he said, and leaned his brow on his open hand. “Plato could say this better than I; but it rightly falls on me, the man who you feel betrays you … What did you mean, Nikeratos, when you said you served the god? Not just that you perform the sacrifices to Dionysos and Apollo, and respect their precinct, but something more?”

“Surely,” I said, “you don’t need to be an artist yourself to understand me. It means not setting oneself above one’s poet, nor being false to the truth one knows of men. When one can see that the audience wants the easy thing, or the thing just in fashion, and even the judges can’t be trusted not to want it too, for whom does one stay honest? Only for the god.”

“You hear him speak, and obey him. But could you have heard so clearly, if you had not learned your art from boyhood?”

“No, I think not. Or not so soon.”

“Suppose you had been badly trained, and always heard bad work praised above good.”

“A great misfortune. But if an artist is anything, sooner or later he thinks for himself.”

“But others, not? Bad teaching spoils them past remedy?”

“Yes, but they are men the theater can do without.”

“You mean they can take up some other calling. So they can. But, Nikeratos, all men have to live, either well or badly, as they are taught. If enough are taught badly, the bad will get rid of the good. And you, whether you choose or not, are a teacher. Young boys, and simple men, don’t go to the theater to judge of verse; they go to see gods and kings and heroes, to enter the world you make, to steep their minds and souls in it. Can you deny this?”

“But,” I said, “one plays for men of sense.”

“You keep faith with your art, Nikeratos. You will not offend the god with anything unworthy, even though men would reward you for it. But your power stops there. You cannot rewrite your play, though the poet may be doing the very thing you would scorn to do.”

“That is his business. I am an actor.”

“But you both serve the god. Can his god say one thing, and yours another?”

“I am an actor. He and I must each judge for ourselves.”

“Truly? Yet you have to enter his mind. Have you never once felt you were entering a false world, or an evil one?”

I could not lie to him, and replied, “Yes, once or twice. Even with Euripides, in his Orestes. Orestes has been wronged, but nothing can excuse his wickedness. Yet one is supposed to play him for sympathy.”

“Did you do so?”

“I was third actor then. I should have to try, I suppose, if I were drawn for it.”

“Because that is the law of the theater?”

“Yes.”

“But, my dear Nikeratos, that is why we want to change it.”

“I understood,” I said, “that you wanted to destroy it.”

“No, not so.” He looked at me with kindness, as if I were a decent soldier he had beaten in war. “Plato believes, as I do, that an artist such as you, who can portray nobility, has his place in the good city. In some such way as this: that the parts of base, or passionate, or unstable men should be related in narration, while only the good man, who is a fit example, or the gods speaking true doctrine, should be honored by the actor’s imitation. In such a way, nothing evil would strike deep into the hearers’ minds.”

I gazed at him, solemn as an owl. If, having begun to laugh, I could not stop, which seemed likely, he would despise me for instability. I told myself this, to sober up. Not that I feared his displeasure now; as I had said, he was just a man. But the man was dear to me.

“You mean,” I said, “that in the Hippolytos, for instance, where Phaedra reveals her guilty love, and where Theseus curses his son in ignorance, all that would be narrated? Only Hippolytos would speak?”

“Yes, just so. And we could not admit of evil being caused by Aphrodite, who is a god, to a just man.”

“No, I suppose not. And Achilles must not weep for Patroklos nor tear his clothes, because that is a failure in self-command?”

“No, indeed.”

“But do you think,” I asked at length, “that any of it would strike deep into the hearers’ minds? You don’t think it might be dull?”

He looked at me, patient, not angry. “As wholesome food is, after those Sicilian banquets that have made us the scorn of Hellas. Believe me, our Syracusan cooks are artists too, in their way. Yet you would not lose your figure, health and looks to please one of them, would you, even if he were a friend? And is not the soul worth more?”

“Of course it is. But …” It was no use, I thought, against a trained wrestler of the Academy. I had learned my art by asking how, rather than why.

“Only look, Nikeratos,” he said, his fine face lit with eagerness, “at the world around us. Look what men as they are have brought it to. War, tyranny, revenge, anarchy, injustice everywhere. Somewhere, somewhere one must begin.”

At these words, my feet seemed to feel firm ground. I said, “That is true. Then why, seeing Dionysios is eating out of Plato’s hand, doesn’t he seize his chance, and get the Syracusans a proper constitution? Soon it will be too late; even I can see that. Why is the city as full of mercenaries as ever? The tyranny goes on, while you all scratch circles in the sand—” His face reminded me, if my own sense had not, that I was speaking to the first minister. I said, “I go too far. But we were talking about justice.”

“We were,” he said after a pause, “so I will tell you why. You have been very sick this year. When the fever had left you, could you get up at once, and go about your business? Or did you need an arm to lean on? Well, Syracuse has been sick for almost forty years. A whole generation, reared in sickness … even to the highest.”

“And so,” I said, “you must begin with the child at nurse, with the schoolboy at the theater. And Dionysios—he must begin with mathematics.”

He clenched his hand on the desk, as if begging the gods for patience. “Nikeratos, don’t make me angry. Don’t treat me like a child, and Plato like a fool. He was learning politics at first hand before I was born; and so was I, before you were. If you think you know your own business best, give us some credit for knowing ours.”

I was ashamed, and begged his pardon. He only put up with me out of gratitude, and because I had shown him my heart.

“Try to see you are not in Athens now. This is Sicily. Beyond the River Halys are the lands of Carthage. The enemy stands with his foot in the door, pushing as soon as our shoulder slackens. What use is it to pay off the mercenaries, and pull down the walls of Ortygia, and set the people by the ears with a new regime, before we have made a man to lead them? They are better off as they are than as slaves in Africa, or nailed on crosses, or spitted over fires, and they have always known it. Dionysios has no root of greatness”—he had forgotten in his deep earnestness even to drop his voice—“he cannot lead men nor make them love him. But he can still save Syracuse, if he can only be taught to think.”

“Yes,” I said. “All this is true, if you had time. How long do you think you have?”

He began to answer, then asked sharply what I meant.

“Only what you have surely seen yourself—that Dionysios is working at his geometry not because he likes it, but because he is in love.”

“In love?” He frowned to himself, looking for a joke. Like many good men, he had not much sense of humor. Plato had far more.

“You are not serious,” he said. “Plato could be his father.”

“True indeed. He should know himself better. He is in love all the same. Youth worships the mask of love; that is his Eros, a powerful god. Didn’t you once know him?”

“No. Our play was real.”

“How the gods loved you. Do you think all men have such fortune? That poor little man in the palace has had to be his own poet. His father wrote plays, he lives them. He has got right into his part, too; don’t you see what it is? A young aristocrat, brilliant, dissolute, charming, reckless, called to the good life by a philosophic lover?”

For once he laughed aloud. “Alkibiades! Come, this is a serious matter.”

“It is to him. He is rather short of beauty and charm, but, as he sees it, he can still improve upon his model, that bright falling star. He will be true to Sokrates’ teaching, and deserve his love.”

“You cannot mean this. Plato’s conduct has been in every way correct.”

“How not? Yet the young man’s devotion touches him, and he is kind. After all, Sokrates mastered his desires; do you think Dionysios wants to know the difference? All he wants is to be the beloved disciple, to know that he comes first. If something seems to stand in his way, will he prefer to blame Plato’s coldness, or an old rival who won’t stand out of the light?”

“My dear Nikeratos! This is not one of your tragedies.” He was brisk, yet not quite at ease.

“Maybe not,” I said, “but it’s theater all the same. I don’t know much of politics, as people are always telling me; but at least an actor knows jealousy when he sees it. You should watch his eyes.”

He paused, biting his lip. “That is nothing new. I was proving myself among men, fighting battles, leading embassies, while his father kept him shut up like a woman.” He did not add, though he must have known it, that it was he who had Alkibiades’ lifelong beauty. “Envy is natural.”

“Well, this is one thing more. You can load so much on a donkey, then he won’t go. How long do you count on? A generation? From what I saw today, I’d not lay two obols on it to last a year.”

He gazed at me, only half his mind on the matter. He was wondering, as I could tell, how it had come to pass that I could take such liberties. A just man, he blamed himself and would not punish me. Maybe he still liked me a little; it was time to go, while this held good. But there was something I had forgotten to mention.

“I think,” I said, “that it would be as well if Plato’s friends warned him not to walk alone about Ortygia. The soldiers want to cut his throat.”

“What? Who told you this?”

“They did. I heard it at every gatehouse. They all say he’s working to get them turned off.”

Aroused at last, he struck the desk with his hand and cursed as if he were in the field. “The young fool! He will talk—like a barber, a bawd, a midwife. He leaks like a cracked water jar. He cannot be kept from talking.”

No need to ask whom he meant. “Then Plato didn’t advise it?”

“Plato has fought in war! Of course he counsels it, but as the goal, not the means. When the new laws are established; when the citizens are trained in public business, content, and loyal; when the ruined cities, which the Carthaginians wasted, are resettled and could fight beside us. Who but a madman would strip the city now?”

“Now I understand. Dionysios proclaimed his good intentions? He’s always wanting to be crowned before the race.”

“You may as well know, Nikeratos, what it seems has become known all over Ortygia. Not long ago was his name day, and the usual sacrifices were offered. The priest made the accustomed prayer, composed in his father’s lifetime, to the appropriate gods that they might preserve the Archon in his power. In the middle of the prayer, he flung up his hand and cried, “No! Don’t invoke a curse on us!’ Then he looked at Plato, expecting praise.”

I forget what I said. Anything would do, except what I was thinking: Why, in the name of every god, do you keep this mountebank playing lead, instead of taking the role yourself?

I might not, as he had told me, know much about affairs. But I was not such a fool as to suppose that if I said this aloud, I could enter his door again. If I could think of it, so could he; there must have been times when he could think of nothing else but that, and his honor; and as fiercely as he had thrust aside temptation, so he would thrust me. So I covered my thought; but it burned within like a banked-down fire. From these unspoken words till I took my leave, there is no more of our talk that I remember.