The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  “Borrowed riches,” he said, smiling and catching Plato’s eye. “It is the fate of the teacher to hear his words come limping back from the pupil’s mouth.”

  “The pupil,” said Plato in that low light voice of his, “who lives what he learned, is a teacher too. A city of such pupils could teach the world.” Then, as if he had lapsed from courtesy by speaking of some private thing, he turned to me, saying, “You are clean of this death, having neither willed nor welcomed it. Remember, the man suffered it for sacrilege. It was the god’s honor they avenged.”

  I drank some wine, which I could do with, and held my peace. But I was saying within me, “Is that what you think, wise man? If I had called for help up there, squeaking with fright through Apollo’s mouth so that they all laughed and despised me, they would have beaten the cover round the precinct, from duty, and then gone home. But I pleased them; they took trouble for me; this is my wreath of victory. So wise, and you can’t see it.” They were quoting Pythagoras to each other. I looked at their fine faces full of mind, and thought, “I’m only an actor; the best I do will be gone like smoke when the last graybeard dies who heard it; these are great men whose fame will very likely live forever. But for all they know, they don’t know a crowd.”

  “Your cup is empty,” Dion said, dipping into the mixer. “We cannot have you melancholy. Did Achilles grieve for Hector? And here’s only a Thersites dead. Which brings me back, Nikeratos, to what I had to say. Would you like to play Achilles again, in another tragedy, at the next Lenaia?”

  So it’s come, I thought. For a moment I saw Anaxis with the barber. But in Athens? “I am happy that you thought of me; but I’m not yet on the roll of leading men; and besides, the sponsors draw for them.” I had forgotten he was a foreigner. So near, so far.

  “Apply again,” he said, smiling. “I think friends of mine can manage that. As for the draw, if we miss first turn we may still have the luck to get you, while your name is new on the list.”

  I saw he knew what he was about. Past victors get chosen first; the draw exists, indeed, to give sponsors a fair chance at them. He was telling me that even if his choregos drew first turn, he would still choose me. The door I had knocked on for years was opening at his finger-touch. I thanked him as best I could. Even now, though, I had been too long in the business not to ask, “What is the play?”

  I guessed the answer before I got it. I saw him swallow.

  “The title is Hector’s Ransom, a work by my kinsman Dionysios, the Archon of Syracuse.” He would rather not have looked at me, so he gave me a soldier’s stare. “As you will know, his work has been presented at Athens in the past, and won the lesser prizes; but, like every poet, he sets his heart on the first.” He clapped his hands, and said to his slave, “Mago, bring me the book from my bedside table.”

  We talked while waiting, I forget of what. I was thinking he had done it well; he knew how to ask like a gentleman. The man being his kin and ruler, he could scarcely beg my pardon. And no one could say he offered a mean reward.

  The book came. He said, “Would you like my secretary to come and read it? He is a Tarentine, and reads quite well.”

  “Thank you,” I said, “but it’s best to hear oneself. The torch still burns on the terrace; may I go out there?”

  He hoped civilly that I would not be cold. I went into the cool garden, fresh with dew, and full of the sounds of a mountain night, trees rustling, a bell-like bird call, goat-clappers tinkling across the gorges. Pavers of moonlight washed the Phaidriades as pure as crystal. The dark foam of the olives flowed to the sea. Vine-shadows crossed the veins of the marble pavement. The torch was burning low, but I hardly needed its light.

  I sat down on a couch with the book closed in my hand. In the dappled shadows of the oleander I seemed to see a waiting face. I untied the ribbon from the roll, then paused again. “Loxias,” I said, “if there’s good here it comes from you. Then I’ll play in it, and people can say what they choose. But if it’s pretentious bombast, it’s not yours, and I won’t touch it, not if I have to wait till I’m forty for another chance like this, besides losing the friendship of a man who makes one believe in men. I promise, Loxias. A man hasn’t much to give a god in thanks for saving his life; it’s the best I have.”

  I unrolled the book, and read.

  To Zeus on the god-walk, enter Thetis grieving for Achilles her doomed mortal son. It sounded quite well, Thetis especially. Nothing much developed, but it would pass in production well enough. Exeunt gods, enter boys’ chorus (captive women), the men’s chorus (Greeks). Center doors open, Achilles within, discovered mourning, brought out on the reveal. So far, so-so.

  Scene for Achilles, lifted from Homer with a touch of Sophokles. If one is going to borrow, by all means use the best. One could do something with it; there was no bathos, at least. I read on; the plot was not badly contrived and had touches of originality, as far as it is possible with such a theme. After a scene for Phoenix and Automedon, chorus, while the actors change masks; then enter Hermes, forerunning Priam. Not a bad speech for third actor. Now for Priam, a chariot entry through the parodos, which always goes well. The chariot stops center, and Priam speaks.

  I had been skimming, to get the shape of the play. Now suddenly I was held, and started reading aloud. The old man speaks of his dead son whose corpse he has come to ransom from the victor: first as the hero-king he will never be, then as the child he was. The father recalls his scrapes as a daring lad, and how he beat him. It was a marvelous transition; even I, trained to read with my head, was near to tears. There was an entry for Agamemnon: nonrecognition, cross-talk, irony, the usual thing. The play was just respectable, except for Priam. Then it breathed, and you could not fault it. The scene with Achilles would have melted bronze.

  I was surprised, having heard from everywhere that Dionysios thought pretty poorly of his own son and heir. Here it was, at all events—a part one couldn’t miss with.

  I went back to the supper room. They broke off their talk; Plato’s cool eye told me, in case I had not known, that I had paused in the doorway to make an entrance. “I like this play. It should act well. Did I understand you to have offered me the lead?”

  “Certainly,” Dion said. “How not?”

  “The lead is Priam. Achilles only feeds him.”

  “Any part you choose, of course.” He looked amazed. I might have known the Achilles in his own soul would hide the rest from him. But Plato, whom I had forgotten, said, “He is quite right, Dion. The Priam has some freshness; the Achilles is everywhere derived. I did not tell you so; I doubted I could be just.”

  In that moment I was as sure as if I had seen it that the tale was true about the slave market at Aigina. Aristophanes, I thought, could have done something good with that. While we discussed the play, I trifled with this thought; but one thought leads to another. This was a proud man if I ever saw one. How he must have loved Dion, if he could love him still. It quenched my laughter.

  Presently Dion said, “You will want a good supporting actor. I thought of Hermippos, whom I have never seen give a bad performance.”

  I ought to have foreseen this. I thought of Anaxis with his fancy cloak and his barber, fussing and nagging, simply because he trusted me not to be making what I could for myself alone—by no means a thing one can take for granted in the theater. Well, I thought, I may not be much in this company, but I’ll keep honest at my trade. “I know Hermippos. A sound artist. But my partner is Anaxis, whom you saw today.” Our contract was only for the tour; but with laymen one has to simplify.

  He looked rather put out. I suppose most people think theater men live hand to mouth, taking what they can get. “Forgive me,” I said, “but we servants of the god have our honor too.”

  “Say no more,” he replied at once. “Your partner is welcome.” It was Plato who had looked the more surprised.

  But Dion had now started talking about plays, and I saw before long that here was a man who could teach me something. N
othing, as a rule, is more tedious than an amateur ignorant of technique and full of theories; and he was ignorant enough. But what he talked of, he knew. Most of tragedy is concerned with kingship, and the choices it compels men to; and what he said that evening has been of use to me all my life. The theater, after all, can only teach one how; men as they live must show one why.

  He knew war and command, what soldiers trust in a leader, how one must be strong before one dares be merciful. His favorite poet, he said, was Sophokles, who wrote about responsibility and moral choice—Antigone and Neoptolemos weighing their own decency and honor, which they knew first-hand, against causes they were asked to take on trust. “A city,” he said, “is only a crowd of citizens. If each of them has renounced his private virtue, how can they build a public good?”

  “And Euripides?” I asked. “We’ve said nothing yet of him.”

  He said at once, “I only like The Troiades, which teaches mercy to the conquered, though no one shows it in the play. For the rest, his men and women are the sport of gods who behave worse than human barbarians. What can one learn from that?”

  His heat surprised me. “I suppose he shows how things are, and that men have to bear them. He lived in hard times, from all one hears. Hecubas ten a drachma.”

  Plato said, “He was dead before the worst.” It gave me a start, as always when one meets a man who lived it through; to me it was childhood tales. “As it happens,” he said, “I know what he wished to teach, though he died when I was still a boy. Sokrates told me. Euripides used to show him his work before he sent it in, because their purpose was the same. Sokrates told him he would never come at it by the means he used, but he said he was an artist, not a philosopher. They had this in common, that it disgusted both to see the gods debased by crude peasant folk-tales which made them out worse than the worst of men. Sokrates called it blasphemy. For this fools killed him; but they could not kill his truth, because he did not destroy without offering something better. Not so Euripides, a maker of phantoms as all poets are. The truth is one, illusion manifold, and diversity makes a play. He believed it was enough to show these gods of the field and agora as the legends make them—capricious, lustful, lying, outrageous in revenge, careless of honor—and leave the audience to its thoughts. His cure for a leaky roof was to knock the house down. Sokrates taught that since it is inconceivable the gods should be evil, they must be good. But Euripides sent home his audience—and still does—saying, ‘If those are the gods, then the gods are not.’”

  I thought this over; I could see what he meant. “It’s true,” I answered, “that if we leave out The Bacchae, which is something by itself, he is not so successful with the gods as with humankind. You, sir, will know best whether he meant it so, or couldn’t help it. But you will allow, I think, his skill in the second. He was the first to show men and women as they really are.”

  “Say, rather, he was the first to say they can be satisfied with what they are, and need try to be no better. ‘I know,’ says his Medea, ‘what wickedness I am about to do, but passion is stronger than good counsel.’ ‘I am helpless,’ says Phaedra, before she deceives a just king into killing his innocent son. Men are seldom helpless against their own evil wishes, and in their souls they know it. But common men love flattery not less than tyrants, if anyone will sell it them. If they are told that the struggle for the good is all illusion, that no one need be ashamed to drop his shield and run, that the coward is the natural man, the hero a fable, many will be grateful. But will the city, or mankind, be better?”

  Not being a sophist, trained to bring out answers pat, I could only say, “But it’s such marvelous theater.”

  Plato raised his brows; then he looked down into his wine cup. An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence. I went hot right up into my hair.

  Dion leaned over, and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Plato, I won’t have even you scold Nikeratos. Haven’t we seen him risk his life only today, rather than that a god should speak unworthily? He was a pattern for us all.”

  Plato replied at once with something graceful, making amends. I think he even meant it. Though he was certainly not drunk, I daresay the strength of his own thoughts had carried him away. So, though it was time to go, I stayed a little longer to show there was no offense.

  When I took my leave, Dion filled my cup to drink to the Good Goddess; then, when I had done so, dried it and put it in my hand. “Please keep this,” he said, “to remember the evening by, and in thanks for a performance I shall not soon forget. I wish there had been time to get one painted with Apollo or Achilles, especially for you.”

  I went out into the sinking moonlight. Fathomless shadows filled the gorges. In the bowl of the wine cup, Eros crowned with white flowers played his lyre. Behind me in the house I heard the voice of Dion, telling his friend whatever could not be said with strangers there. As for me, I knew I had met a man I would gladly die for.

  4

  THE DELPHI PEACE CONFERENCE WAS A PLAY THAT failed to hit, and won no prizes. Dion put this down to the delegates not having prayed or sacrificed beforehand. One would think that being in Delphi they might at least have consulted the oracle; but I suppose each of them was afraid of finding himself at the losing end.

  “Some of our guests,” Dion said when he sent for me to confirm our contract, “who had seats of honor at the theater, should have gone to school there. If men with weightier business had shown half your piety, they might have prospered better.” I saw he meant this well; so I did not ask whether a jobbing treaty, meant to last till everyone goes home and thinks again, is weightier business than Aischylos, who has been with us a hundred years and looks good for another hundred.

  Anaxis was in ecstasies, and had scarcely stopped talking since he got the news. Of course I never told him it was Hermippos whom Dion had wanted. Some actors never miss such chances; but they hadn’t lived with my father. One pays for it later, too; and it’s always at the bad time that the bill comes in. He was delighted I had chosen to take Priam; Achilles was just the sort of part in which he saw himself. He was like a cat in a cream bowl.

  “No year could be better,” he said. “There was never less public feeling against Dionysios in Athens than there is today. If you remember, when he lent us troops in the Theban War he was given the freedom of the city. With any luck, the judges will vote upon the play and not against the author. Have you thought, Niko, that if it wins he is sure to want it put on in Syracuse with the original cast?”

  “Spit!” I said. “It’s bad luck to price the unborn calf.” On this he went through every rite of aversion he could think of. I was afraid of his working himself into such a fever he would forget to act. Poor Anaxis, I could read his mind. He dreamed of getting his father’s land back, and setting up as a gentleman.

  I would be glad to make money myself. I had enough saved to eat in a bad time, if it didn’t last too long, but not the money that lets one hold out for good roles. What took my mind much more, however, was the thought of getting launched in Athens—that, and something beyond. I knew what Anaxis guessed, that if the play won it would go on in Syracuse. Dion had told me. It would mean my seeing him again.

  If you ask me what kind of love this was, I asked myself the same. I had known from the first he was unattainable as a god. I was too old for the love of a boy who reveres a man; nor, like a boy, did I wish to emulate. My calling was in my blood. Yet some need in my soul had known him for what it sought.

  I walked out alone, the last night I was in Delphi, trying to reason with myself. It was late; the streets were empty; the votive statues looked at me in the moonlight, the bronzes showing the whites of their agate eyes, the painted marbles with a calm, blue gaze. “What do you want, Niko?” they seemed to ask. “Can you even say?”

  I had found my way to the theater, and was walking uphill beside it. The crane, that engine of the gods, poked up like a finger against a pale glimmering sky. I climbed
higher, and came to a victor’s chariot-trophy done in bronze, a car and horses with a tall lad holding the reins, not in action as a sculptor would do it now, all straining muscles and flying drapes, but just quietly standing there in his long robe, waiting for the start. “Here we are,” he seemed to say, “I and my horses, trained and ready. We have made ourselves all we can be, but we are mortal. Now it is with the gods.”

  I thought, Were you real, young hero, or just a sculptor’s dream? But it works too the other way. The artist conceives the perfect athlete, the youth creates him. You were real; those big-boned hands and feet persuade me. You brought someone’s dream to pass. Homer’s? Pindar’s? Plato called the poets “makers of phantoms.” Yes, but sometimes they take on flesh and come back to say, “Hail, Father.” Well, here’s one the parent need not blush for. It makes one think.

  I thought of Dion. He had caught a dream from Plato, and willed himself to be. A proud creation. Yet I too had dreamed, and many more. How not? When the springs are brack, everyone’s mind is on clear water. Look what Athens, and most of Hellas, has seen in our fathers’ time and ours. First war; then weakness, tyranny, revolution; then the breaking of the tyranny, and at last the good life could begin. But men’s fires burned low; fighting the base with base weapons had shrunk their souls; before one can make the good life, one must remember what it is. There’s always one more war to win, or one more election, before the good life; meantime, they wrangle about the good, those who still believe in it. So we dream. Of what? Some man sent by the gods, first to make us believe in something, if only in him, and then to lead us. That is it. We have dreamed a king.

  I thought of the delight I had felt while he talked of kingship and its choices over the wine, of justice, mercy and command. I had thought it was because I was learning how kings and heroes should be played. Not so. When I had played kings and heroes, I had been making a likeness of what I wished for, like sailors whistling for a wind; it had been a conjuration. And that which I called had come.