The Mask of Apollo

by Mary Renault

  I had heard, while he spoke, the benches scrape close by, and thanked him with my eyes. “You’re jealous,” I said, “because he went home with me after the party. A charming lad. I can’t think why you call him mercenary. When he asked me for my ring, it was only as a keepsake.”

  When I returned from the city to our inn at Heloros, the company crowded round me, asking the news from Syracuse. I told them I could not see much change. All their faces fell. I asked myself why I was hiding news which would have made them happy. They were fellow artists, and friends. The third actor, Philanthos, a promising young man who should have been playing second in better times, had stopped at every shrine of Dionysos along the road, and made some little offering.

  I had affronted Dion to his face—with such difference of rank one can scarcely speak of quarreling—yet had been ready almost to fly at Speusippos for his sake. If Menekrates and the others, elated by my news, went drinking to his speedy downfall, no doubt I would also fly at them, which they did not deserve.

  Trying to understand myself, I thought how often I had sat before the mask of some hero king—say, Theseus in Oidipos at Kolonos—to feel my way into his greatness. As Plato said (from what I could make out of it), before there can be imitation, the original must exist. Can one hate the Form whose essence one has tried to enter? But having found the nature of my problem, I was no nearer solving it.

  We played one or two more engagements, and a return visit to Leontini. Having seen us in Alexis’ comedy, they now offered us a chorus, to put on Hippolytos at a public festival. I played, as the protagonist always does, Phaedra and Theseus; Menekrates was a good Hippolytos, moving in the death scene; and we had an excellent house. The party which followed went on till dawn; the hotter it gets in Sicily, the more they turn night into day. We were all offered hospitality, my own host being a retired captain of Dionysios’ mercenaries, one Rupilius, a Roman, but quite civilized in his manners; he had been given some land here, by way of pension.

  It was past noon the day after the party, and I was still in bed, playing with a breakfast of melon chilled in snow and pale cold wine from the slopes of Etna, when my host scratched at the door. Begging my pardon for waking me so early, he held out a letter. It had come from Syracuse by fast courier; the man had changed horses, and was waiting for my answer.

  I put down my cup on the marble side table, and took the letter. It was sealed with a crest which I could not make out, the shutters having been closed against the noonday glare; but I could think of only one. He needs me, I thought; in some trouble he has turned to me. He trusts me still.

  If my host had been Greek, he would have been dawdling by me, in hope of learning all about the letter; but Romans are too proud to show curiosity, which they think undignified, and he had withdrawn. I jumped out of bed in the dim room, opened the shutters, and stood naked in the sun to read. The strong light dazzled me; it had been a real Sicilian party. I blinked and tried again.

  “Dionysios son of Dionysios, to Nikeratos of Athens. Joy to you. When you spoke our late father’s epitaph, we expressed the wish to see you in classic tragedy, when the mourning time had passed. Cares of state, and our course of studies, caused us to defer it. These studies being now complete and ourselves at leisure, the City Theater will present, on the ninth day of Karneios, the Bacchae of Euripides, with yourself as protagonist. You may choose your own supporting actors. A not unworthy chorus is already training. Philistos is choregos. Farewell.”

  I read it twice. Something stirred in the courtyard; it was the courier’s fresh horse, waiting to take my answer back.

  I closed the shutters, and threw myself on the tumbled bed. The room smelled of melon rind and wine and sweat. The flask was still three-parts full; I reached for it, but put it back. It would not help me think.

  Syracusans use the Dorian calendar; I tried to think which month Karneios was. It must be the coming one, our Metageitnion. The ninth was fifteen days ahead, barely time for rehearsals.

  Why, I thought, did I ever come back to Sicily? I had my work my friends, my life at home; I knew where I was, there. Out of a thousand actors minding their own business, why must it fall on me to be grasped by both hands and pulled in half? When did I speak the bad-luck word? What god have I offended?

  Not Dionysos; here he was, through his mortal namesake, inviting me to play himself in one of the greatest bravura roles of classic tragedy; no deity of the machine, but the kingpin of the action. I thought of young Philanthos, lingering by all those altars with his pinch of incense or bunch of grapes. Who says the gods don’t regard men’s offerings? After a command performance, he could step into second roles at once. As for Menekrates, he would do a first-rate King Pentheus—his Hippolytos had shown me that—and be made for life. His family would offer him the chair of honor, and Theoros stand up for him.

  Dionysos blesses his faithful servants. So much for Dionysos.

  I lay a long time, while the flies buzzed round the melon rind, my arms behind my head, watching a gekko on a beam. At last I got up, and opened the mask-box on the table. This time I had brought it with me.

  I propped the mask upright on the pillow, and lay before it, naked in the oven-hot Sicilian afternoon, my chin cupped in my hands. It gazed back at me, not empty-eyed as in those months at Athens, but secret, Delphic, dark. It answered nothing, only asked. “Are you not Nikeratos, son of Artemidoros, who said to a man he loved and honored, ‘I will choose the god, rather than you?’ Choose me then, if you can find me. The courier is waiting, and so am I.”

  “Phoibos,” I answered, “they call you Longsight. You can see what this means. This is Philistos’ triumph-song. Dion is out of power. Standing before your image I said I would not fail him. Must I sing for Philistos now?”

  The mask looked formal and holy, as in a temple. “Truly, friendship is sacred. Guest-friendship above all.”

  “You mean Menekrates. My lord, I know. I am bound to both. What shall I do?”

  “Most men count the cost.”

  “To my fortunes? Little either way. If I play, I shall have a fine role with a handsome fee, and my company will love me. If not, I can go back to Athens and say I refused the tyrant. Everyone will admire me, and someone will give me an important lead, to reward my constancy, and because a well-liked protagonist helps a play to win. Someone else will pay: Dion, or Menekrates, as the case may be.”

  “Which loses most?”

  “Each loses something dear.”

  “Are you a god, to measure loss with loss?”

  “Apollo,” I said, “we are starting to talk in stichomythia. This is not a play.”

  “You say truly. Well? Are you asking me to help you choose between your friends? You said you would choose me.”

  He had stared me out. I laid my face on my folded arms, but not to weep. I could do that later. The courier was still waiting. At last I said, “It is my turn to ask you if I am a god.”

  He answered in the voice of Speusippos, “We all come from the light, Niko. The soul can remember, or forget.”

  “Dion remembers, or so he and Plato claim. Justice, and the good life.”

  “They remember their share.” A sun-glint through the shutters struck the pillow near him; the reflected light changed his face; he seemed to smile. “And you? What do you remember?”

  There came before my eyes, seen through those very eyeholes, the theater at Phigeleia. I felt on my head the hot gold wig, smelling of Meidias, the lyre in my hand, my youth beating like wings in me, and words sounding out across the empty battlefield. I said aloud:

  The gods wear many faces,

  And many fates fulfill

  To work their will…

  Far off in the mountains a shepherd’s pipe was sounding. Now Phigeleia was gone; I heard Athenian flutes receding, the singers dying away beyond the parodos, the stillness left in the heart.

  “Well?” said the god impatiently. “So you remember the tag of The Bacchae. I should suppose as much. No
more?”

  He was going to tell me, so I waited. “It seems to me, Nikeratos, that when last you sat in front to see this play, you said something to the youth beside you. He was not attending, since it was not for his knowledge of Euripides that you had sought him out; but I, as it happened, overheard. Don’t you remember? ‘To my mind, Phrynon, one cannot go everywhere with Euripides. He is sometimes impassioned over dead things, the war, the oligarchs and demagogues of his day, or that old scandal when the Spartans bribed the Pythia; then he gets angry himself, instead of leaving justice to the nature of things, which after all is tragedy. The old scores are settled, the scar on the play remains, like the mark of an old rotted goat-tether on a living tree. With The Troiades he rose above it; but with The Bacchae he digs down far below, to some deep rift in the soul where our griefs begin. Take that play anywhere, even to men unborn who worship other gods or none, and it will teach them to know themselves.’”

  There was a silence. He waited a little longer, then said in a voice as cool as water, “Do you deny those words?”

  I answered, “No, my lord.”

  “Goodbye, Nikeratos,” said the mask, making its eyeholes blank. “The oracle is over.”

  11

  I CALLED ON PHILISTOS AS SOON AS I GOT BACK. He was genial, brisk and businesslike, had clearly done choregos countless times, and knew what he was about. The secret of my work for Dion must have been well kept, for it was a sponsor’s interview like any other. He was very correct, knowing what was due to his rank and to my standing; he would not nag or fuss, or try to teach me my work. If he had been a stranger in a strange city, I should have gone home well satisfied. As it was, I thought how easy he must have found it to undermine Dion with this one weapon the other lacked—the knack of pleasing useful men for whom he did not care two straws.

  The company was treating me like the eldest son’s wife who at last has borne a boy. While I was thinking the matter over at Heloros, the news of the courier had got to all of them. Menekrates told me the other two had almost gone on their knees to him to intercede with me, but knowing me best he had more sense. When I told them I would play, they looked like men reprieved from the quarries. I had to go drinking with them, or we should never have been at ease again.

  One thing rode my mind, that I must get to Dion—not to excuse myself, for I had broken no pledge to him, indeed had declared I would do this very thing I was doing, but to say I was sorry to cross him even for the god I served, and was still at his service in any other way. But I had never used his name to get through the gates; if he had private work for me, it was the last thing I ought to do. I could have gone on there from Philistos, who also lived in Ortygia, but he gave me the feeling that spies surrounded him, and I feared he might have me followed.

  I was wretched over this matter for two nights and a day; then I was summoned to go and see Dionysios.

  This, as before, might serve my turn. I must own that I was full of curiosity, too. He was a man who could put on three masks in a day, believing each to be his face, and I longed to know the latest one.

  The gatehouse guards all seemed to be in better humor. The Roman officer remembered me and asked if I had come looking for Plato, not angrily, but as a man jokes with a boy. When I showed him Dionysios’ letter, he became very correct. Once more I noticed how his men’s obedience was without servility, how well they kept their panoplies, and the air they had, as if they not only thought themselves the best, but expected the world to know it.

  I was led in through the searching room, where I was well gone over. The eunuch even ran his fat fingers through my crotch. But the robe he gave me was handsomer than before; I had gone up a class, it seemed.

  The room of state had been altered. From the quick look I had time for, I should think nearly everything good of the old man’s had been bundled out, and the places filled (for the room seemed fuller than ever) with modern art. The Zeuxis had gone; the statues were all gesturing like orators, or, if female, wrapping their arms round their privates. One Aphrodite looked as shy as if she had just been through the searching room. Luckily, before I started to laugh I saw Dionysios waiting.

  He was sitting at the marble desk (it would need a crane to shift that) in an ivory chair which, this time, he had quite succeeded in filling. He was dressed up to the height of Syracusan fashion, and a bit beyond. His hair had been camomiled, curled, and dusted with powdered gold; his robe, which seemed all border, was bordered with purple embroidery. I wondered if I could get at his chamber-groom and offer for his castoffs; you could have played Rhadamanthos in this one. Close up it almost knocked you down; so did his scent, which was drenched on like an old hetaira’s. He had painted his face with Athlete’s Tan and carmine, and touched up his eyes with kohl. I was surprised to find he wore all this stuff as if he were used to it, till I remembered Menekrates’ stories. Of course, it had been put away when Plato came. I daresay I was the only man in Syracuse whom it could still surprise.

  He was cordial, but had nothing much to say to me; it seemed he was just giving me an audience by way of favor. Presently, as he talked about past productions in the city, praising this artist or that, I saw why I was there: to spread the news that the theater ban was over.

  I wondered how Plato had been chased out of Syracuse this time, and pictured the dejection at the Academy. I must bring home some gift for Axiothea, to cheer her up.

  “Only today,” said Dionysios, digging in the sweet-bowl that stood between us, “Plato was telling me how you were shipwrecked going home last time. I had not known of it.”

  I related the tale, my mind busy elsewhere. So Plato still cast his spell. What? I thought. Will the bird he’s whistled to his hand neither sing for him nor fly away? Else why this naughty costume? But then, all the world knows how Alkibiades used to slip the leash, and come coaxing back to Sokrates, showing his radiant grace for password.

  “And I suppose,” he said, “you lost that painting I gave you, of the Siege of Motya?”

  “Alas, sir, yes.” He looked as downcast as a child, so to please him I said, “A loss to me and Athens. But I grieved even more for the model chariot, not just for the giver’s sake, but because I never saw, in that line of work, craftsmanship to equal it.”

  I hoped to see his face light up as it had before; but he just looked gracious, and sent to summon his steward. The man came with his keys; he said, “Go to that old workroom of mine and fetch a model chariot.” When it came, he turned it over once or twice in his hands (I saw he still bit his nails) and said, “Well, here is one loss I can make good to you. State business gives me no time for toys.” There was dust on it. I am ashamed to confess such folly, but I felt near weeping.

  No one troubled with me when I left, so I made for Dion’s house, thinking, as I went, what Dionysios had said about his state business. He had sounded full of consequence. Having met Philistos, I could see him flattering the young man, as an expert charioteer coaching a rich young blood will let him think he is driving. Dionysios was the very one for it. I don’t suppose Dion had ever stooped to such pretenses. It was not in him.

  His house, when I got there, was well kept as ever, nothing shabby or run-down. Yet I felt a change, a loss of life and movement in the air around. As I reached the door, I saw this was more than idle fancy. Before, it had stood open. Now it was shut.

  I knocked, and sent in my name. While I stood waiting, a young boy of seven or eight, a handsome child, slipped round the corner of the house for a peep at me. One saw the likeness at once. He was curious, I suppose, having heard my name, but dodged back when he was seen. Soon came the servant to say his master was at his studies and could see no one. No word of my coming some other time.

  I walked through Ortygia, sick at heart. I had thought he would forgive me; he himself had done what he thought right, sorry it hurt me, but never turning back. This was the same. I would never have shut my door to him. But to me, man’s life is a tree with twisted roots. To a political philo
sopher, it must be like a diagram of Pythagoras.

  Soon after, I met Speusippos in the street. I hardly dared greet him; but he crossed over, and invited me to drink with him. I took courage, therefore, to ask if Dion was very angry with me.

  “Angry?” he said. “Not that I know of. Why should you think so?”

  When I told him, he said the play had not been announced yet; I could see that it was news to him, and news of no great importance. He spoke kindly, however. “Don’t lose your sleep over it. If Dion knows of it, which I doubt, he can see you must work to eat. Give him credit for being just. You know, I take it, that Dionysios stopped the plays of his own accord? Neither Plato nor Dion urged it; they are here to get law instead of tyranny. But Dionysios found it in The Republic—a thing he could do at once, without trouble. You know him, like a child with new clothes.”

  “Still,” I said, “Plato wrote it.”

  “Yes … You know, Niko, at the Academy we aim to provide the world with statesmen. Already now cities are coming to us to draw up their constitutions. But like shoemakers, we cut to measure. The Republic is, shall I say, a discussion of principles, not a working code. Between you and me, I think the purpose of those passages was to startle our poets into responsibility. Half of them today have the souls of whores: give me my drachma, never mind who gets my pox. Plato is a man who would not add a grain to the weight of the world’s evil for a golden crown. When no more like him are left, men will devour each other and perish from the earth. That’s why Dion defended him to you, just as I do.”

  “Well then,” I said, “if it’s not on account of the play, why does Dion shut his door to me?”