The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

21

WE GOT TO LEONTINI AT EVENFALL, when the men were strolling in the cool and sitting outside the taverns under the trees. At our noisy entrance they all came crowding. When we asked for Dion his own voice answered: he had been taking the air with Kallippos and his other friends.

We all dismounted and ran to him. While the onlookers stood on tables or climbed trees to see, we knelt in the pose of supplication. It is a thing one needs training to do with grace. One man almost fell over.

Hellanikos told the hideous tale without excuses; an old-time, decent small squire, eating dirt for what he had had no part in—a clever choice, for an envoy to Dion. Then each of us said something. His eyes moved from face to face in a kind of wonder; one could not tell what he thought. Not being a Syracusan, I spoke last. “Sir,” I said, “we come before a man more deeply wronged than Achilles, asking far more than Priam did. But the city is Syracuse, and the man is Dion.”

He gazed down, his face held stiff, swallowing and biting his lip. Then a hard sound came from his throat. I saw that he wept.

When he had mastered his voice, he said, “This does not rest with me alone. The men must judge for themselves. Is the crier here?”

The Assembly met in the theater, as it does at Leontini. Last time I was in it, I had played lead. Now I was an extra; but there is no protagonist I have felt so honored to support. Gladly I would have swept the stage for him.

Hellanikos did his speech again, this time to the soldiers, and we ad-libbed as best we could. Then Dion addressed them. “I have called you here so that you can decide what you think best for you. For me, there is no choice. This is my country. I must go; and if I cannot save her, her ruins shall be my grave. But if you can find it in your hearts to help us, foolish and wretched as we are, you may to your eternal honor still save this unhappy city. If that is too much to ask, then farewell, and all my thanks. May the gods bless you for your past courage, and the kindness you have shown to me. If you speak of me after, say I did not stand by to see you wronged, nor forsake my fellow citizens in disaster.”

I don’t think he could have gone on, but the cheering drowned his voice. They yelled his name like a war cry, then shouted, “To Syracuse!” I suppose Hellanikos made a speech of thanks; I think he embraced Dion. I could scarcely see for tears.

They stayed only to eat and get their kit; that same night we saw them off on the thirty-mile march to Syracuse. As for me, having served Dionysos all my life, I never bore arms except upon a stage; and this was work for professionals, not walkers-on. But though the boatmen were still hawking passages to Italy, I did not sail. I had witnessed an act of magnanimity it would not be impious to call godlike; I felt a need to know the outcome. Great evil, or great good, seem the concern of every man; they touch our destiny.

This is what happened, as I heard it later from Rupilius. All day in Syracuse the raiders had been plundering, or storming the few street barricades that held out. Herakleides and his officers dashed hither and thither, trying to order their scattered forces; but they could not overtake the wasted hours of drunkenness and panic. At nightfall, like wolves gorged with prey, the men of Ortygia went back over the causeway, to the women they had taken.

The Syracusans crept forth, and spent the night searching for kindred, or patching some shelter from the ruins. Daylight showed the city still their own. They shored up the crosswall with half-charred timbers, and got it manned again. By noon, a rider brought news that Dion was on the way. Are you supposing they flocked to the temples to give thanks? This was Syracuse.

Herakleides took the news as his own death warrant. As it was, the people were blaming him for the debauch rather than themselves; for his petty triumph he had lost the city. If Dion, whom he had driven out, marched in as savior, what could he expect? Perhaps he thought of Philistos. Such men see in others what they know about themselves.

He and his friends rode among the distracted people, crying out that the danger from Ortygia was over; they would be mad to let in a tyrant they had expelled, with his own army, every man hot for vengeance. Fear was the air they breathed; tyranny they had grown up with; it all made sense to them. They dispatched envoys to tell Dion he was not needed, and could go back.

The small gentry, whose forebears had fought the elder Dionysios and paid dear, witnessed in helpless horror the loss of their only hope, together with the rags of their self-respect. They knew why Dion had marched. Since the tyrant crushed their fathers they had kept themselves to themselves; the great estates went to his friends; but a little piece of land, a few rents coming in, had bought them schooling from mainland teachers; they had learned to wrestle by the rules, to sing the old skolions, even to remember honor.

They sent their own envoys, begging Dion’s pardon for this last disgrace to Syracuse, praising his greatness of heart, and imploring him not to repent of it. It was madness to suppose that Nypsios’ troops were sated yet, or could be contained again. Without Dion all would perish.

Both messages reached him nearly together, and he heeded both. He now ceased to force-march his men; but he still came on. I suppose by now nothing much could surprise him.

At sunset, to keep him out, Herakleides posted troops at the northern gate. But they were called to other business. With the fall of dark, Nypsios’ men burst out from Ortygia and poured over the crosswall like a river in spate. This time they had come to destroy the city.

By now, I suppose, Dionysios valued nothing but Ortygia. The city had rejected him; let it perish with its rabble, and if he got back he could repeople it more to his mind. Nypsios and his army must have brought dispatches with them; their leader must have had orders. Perhaps Dionysios now saw himself in the role of Herakles translated; except of course that the pyre was not for him.

Everything worth having had been looted; there was nothing left but to kill. They went through the city not like men but like Gorgons or unpitying Furies, cutting up the women, spitting children on spears or hurling them into burning houses; they brought fire wherever they went, and shot flame arrows at the roofs too high to reach. In that night died Glyke, the wife of Menekrates, and his young sons with their golden skins. It seems she had come back to the city just before Herakleides’ victory feast, to prepare for her man’s return. I have heard how they died, but have always denied to him that I knew anything, and as far as I know he has not learned it. May the gods keep him ignorant.

The roar of the fires, the incessant screams, like a single cry of the dying city, the crash of falling houses sounded as if the gods had sent Death himself to end mankind. Into this Tartaros came Dion and his men, and were received like rescuing gods. How not? He was brave, generous and noble—true as gold. No one remembered, that night, that it was he who had begun the war.

All night they fought among the smoke and flame and cinders and charred corpses, keeping discipline, holding their lines of communication open, threatened not only by the enemy but by falling walls and beams. Before morning the raiders were driven back. Those who were trapped under the cross-wall were killed where they were found. After that, there were the fires to be put out.

All this Rupilius told me, when he was carted back with the wounded to Leontini. After fighting all night with a burned arm, he had taken a leg wound which went half through the tendon; the doctor forbade him to walk or stand. I repaid a little of his kindness by doing such business for him as was beyond the servants, or reading Greek to him; he only knew it by ear. Dion, he said, had been wounded too, but had fought on, bandaged with a rag torn from the clothes of a corpse, the usual dressing that night. As for Herakleides and his friends, they had gone like ghosts by cockcrow; seeing the temper of the people, they had been wise.

News came in daily to Leontini. When victory was certain, the City Council came to me, offering me a chorus to put on The Persians, as a thank-offering to Apollo. I accepted, provided I could find some supporting players alive in Syracuse. I went on this business sooner than I had meant, when we got the news that Herakleides had come and given himself up to Dion, throwing himself upon his mercy.

Rupilius frankly disbelieved it; the teller was offended, and said he would demand an apology in three days’ time, when Herakleides and Theodotes were to be tried by the Assembly. I calmed Rupilius by undertaking to be there.

I rode, therefore, from the cool of the hills across the hot dusty plain with its cactuses and aloes, down to Syracuse. Roofs had been patched, corpses and wreckage cleared away; but the place still stank of burning, fear and death. I wondered if they had destroyed the theater in the second raid, but it was unharmed. There was a rumor that it was haunted at night by the vengeful god. At present it was full, since they were using it for Assembly. I was just in time to get a tenth-row seat.

Entering through the orchestra to roars of applause, Dion went up on stage with his brother and Kallippos. Then Herakleides and Theodotes were brought in under guard, with a cordon of soldiers round, to keep the crowd from lynching them. Theodotes had given up and looked like a corpse already; but Herakleides was still giving a performance. He stood upright, brave without defiance, a man whom fate had tricked into folly, who, if he must, would accept his doom without repining. More than ever I could imagine him an actor: talented, but making mischief everywhere and stealing from other artists, till no company would have him.

When the charge had been read, they were given leave to speak in their own defense. Herakleides came forward; I saw his mouth open, but the sound was lost in the howls of anger and shouts of “Death!”

After some while of this, Dion stepped forward; the curses changed to cheers. He held up his hand for silence; they offered it like a garland. Instead of speaking, he led Herakleides forward.

Thus sponsored, he was listened to. He had got the feel of the house; it was his greatest gift. Wisely, he kept it short. Pointing towards Dion, he said this man’s virtue had conquered all his former enmity; nothing was left to him, but to appeal to a generosity he had not deserved. In future, if there should be such a thing for him, he hoped he might learn to do so.

The audience jeered. Unlike Dion, they had heard Herakleides on Dion in the past, and guessed what this was worth. Hellanikos, or some old-style squire just like him, jumped up and begged that the city might be delivered from this double-tongued snake. One or two others followed, pointing out that the man had harmed Syracuse more than Dionysios ever did. The shouts for his death redoubled. It was now clear that Dion was about to speak. At once the theater was as quiet as at a tragedy.

“Fellow citizens,” he began, “I am a soldier.” (Loud applause.) “While I was young here, I trained like other officers in the use of arms, in strategy, and in the care of my troops.” (Cheers from the soldiers.) “Then I was sent away; and rather than waste my life in idleness, I took up other studies. I went to the Academy of Athens, which teaches men to be truly men. Instead of Carthaginians, I learned to conquer anger and the lust for vengeance, not to lay down my arms before them or drop the shield of self-command. If we do good to those who have done us favors, where is the merit? The true contest is to do good for evil. Triumph in war is a passing thing; time changes every fortune; but to excel in mercy and in justice is to gain an unfading crown. This is the only victory I wish for over these men; and I believe that if you grant it me, it will enrich us all; for I think no human heart is so lost to the memory of that good our souls were born from long ago, that it cannot be reminded, and its eyes washed clear. Men sin from ignorance of the good; once shown it, they know their happiness. Let us show it now to these men, and I believe they will return it to us, many times over, in the coming years. If I have deserved any kindness from you, men of Syracuse, do not involve me in wrong, but let me go home free of it. Vengeance is for the gods alone.”

There was a long, murmuring hush. I thought how if this had been a play, the applause would have stopped the show. It was magnificent, spoken with a whole heart by a man whose voice and presence were equal to every word. And yet I sat here, dry-eyed, in the tenth row, bearing my part in the troubled silence. It had not been so when he spoke at Leontini. Was the fault in me? I still did not know, when next day I sat down by Rupilius to tell my story.

He listened at first with exclamations, then in silence, just like the Syracusans. At last he said, “And they gave the pardon?”

“They did it for Dion. The men went off with their friends. Of course there were speeches first. I left before the end.”

He gave a long sigh. “What is it?” I asked. I was asking myself as well, as I suppose he saw. “Do you believe, Nikeratos,” he said, “that Herakleides will keep his word?” I shook my head. “Well? Then what’s your question?”

“Perhaps Dion was right, even so. He was the victor in virtue.”

He leaned over, grunting from a twinge in his wounded leg, and patted my knee. “Don’t take offense,” he said, “at my plain speaking. A friend to a friend. Dion is the best man I know. I’d die for him, and not wait to ask why. But at bottom, when all’s said, he’s a Greek. If he had been a Roman, he’d have known why he couldn’t pardon Herakleides. In Rome, you’d not be asking yourself.”

All Romans are vain of their home customs, even if they can’t make a living there and have to hire out their swords. I had become fond of Rupilius. When he saw I was not angry, he went on, “You Greeks, I know, excel us Romans in all the gifts of Apollo. But in the gifts of Jupiter—Zeus, I mean—you sometimes seem like children. It’s each man for himself before the city, and each city for itself before Greece. You’ve come to harm from it often, and you will again. Dion I thought was different. He’s never looked out for his life or anything he owned, if the people needed it. But now see what he’s done. Because this man was his personal enemy, whom he wants to excel in virtue, he lets him loose on the Syracusans, as if it weren’t through him their streets were like a shambles the other day. If he doesn’t mend his ways, which Dion, being a man and not a god, can’t guarantee, mayn’t it be so again? By Hercules, he could at least have insisted on exile! To a Roman’s way of looking, he’s helped himself to public property, as surely as if he’d put his hand in the treasury. Not that I hold it against him. He’s a Greek, he thinks like a Greek; that’s all. He’s still the best general I ever served under. Perfection is for the gods alone. But the truth’s the truth.”

I suppose it was knowing we both loved him still that made us able to talk. I said, “He has been like a god, Rupilius. It must be hard to come down. Our greatest sculptors leave some little bit unfinished, or rough, so as not to challenge the gods. Once one has been a god, one must be perfect, and seen to be perfect. I don’t know how that seems to you, as a Roman. I’m a Greek. And it frightens me.”