by Mary Renault
When I had packed my things, I brought Anaxis the mask-box of Apollo. “Keep this for me, my dear. Set it up somewhere, and give it a pinch of incense now and then—the god is used to it—and ask him to keep me in mind till I come home.”
He promised, shaking his head over me as if it had been the boat of Charon I was boarding to cross the Styx. He and Hermippos both embraced me. They watched me all the way to shore. Further along the rail stood the man from the chorus, staring after me as if at a man bereft of his senses running into a house on fire. It stuck in my mind, as I set foot on the wharf of Syracuse.
7
I DECIDED TO DO THE NATURAL THING AND MAKE for the theater. It would be a starting point; something would come to me there. I found my own way, seeing nobody I felt like asking.
Syracuse is a splendid city, taking after Corinth, which founded it. But it was warmer, greener, dustier, stank more, and already smelled of spring. There seemed more of everything—more gilding, more marble, more shops, more people. They had traits of every nation under heaven: fair Hellenes and dark Hellenes, brown hawk-faced Numidians, black thick-faced Libyans; reddish little black-haired Sikels, and every kind of cross-breed these could produce. All they had in common was their Greek dress, and fear. The place was like a kicked anthill, before they start putting it to rights. Only they did not look to me like doing it, but as if they were waiting to see what would be done to them. There was a kind of meanness with it too, as if each watched his neighbor lest he might find a foothold quicker in this slippery time, and manage to make something out of it.
The theater was empty. Even the caretaker and cleaners had gone off, leaving it unlocked. The streets had been full of people in their working clothes. I went in, and felt better for it, more myself. As I had expected, there was too much of the best of everything—colored marble, gilding, painting, over-decorated statues—a place designed to make one think, “I am playing at Syracuse,” rather than, “I am playing in Sophokles.” I had never seen such machinery as there was backstage and under it Dionysios must have turned his war engineers loose there when they had nothing else on hand. One huge device of wheels and levers left me quite at a loss; later I found it was to raise the stage or lower it by pumping water in or out of chambers below.
However, as I had guessed I would, from here I knew where to go next. I went down into the street and found the theater tavern.
One could tell it at a glance, as one always can: a barber’s stand in one corner; a set of the tragic masks on one wall; on another a scene from the Agamemnon, with actors’ names written in. Though the theater had been empty, this was cram-full; the noise came out to meet me, the sort which, in cities all over Hellas, makes an artist feel at home. No muttering and whispering, as in the streets. An actor always knows that if one city gets too hot, there are others.
The barber’s chair was free, so, having shaved that morning, I asked to be pumiced, a good long talkative job. News buys news.
The barber was a Corinthian, as every barber in Syracuse is, or claims to be. When he asked me whence I came, and so on, I told him everything, except that I knew Dion; there seemed no sense in hiding the rest. While he spread his towels he passed on the news over his shoulder; presently, to save him trouble, people got up and sat around. Some of them offered me wine. It was as unlike as possible to the city outside. Here one could feel one’s footing. Actors understand actors, as dogs do other dogs.
No one was surprised that, having come so far for nothing, I should stay to see the city before going home. The barber, who owned the tavern, introduced me to the leading actors who were there, and to some old ones who I expect sat there all day. Then he remembered that Dionysios’ chorus-trainer, who would have worked on Hectors Ransom, lived nearby, and sent someone to fetch him. Meantime, everyone told me about Dionysios’ fatal party, some adding that by habit he was a sober man, and might have lived if he had been better seasoned to it. They talked of the plays he had put on; there was a good deal of smooth backbiting among the leading men, far more than at Athens, which came, I should say, from their having had to compete for the tyrant’s favor. The man I took to most was a second-role tragedian called Menekrates. As he seemed talkative, and I had learned nothing useful yet, I asked him whether young Dionysios would be as good a patron as his father.
For a moment everyone glanced round in search of eavesdroppers; even here one was still in Syracuse. But they seemed satisfied. Menekrates smiled, flashing his white teeth; he was dark almost to blackness, with a high-bridged Numidian nose. “My dear Nikeratos, that is the riddle of the Sphinx. No one knows anything, about theater or anything else. If you want my opinion, the man who would most like to know what young Dionysios is like is the man himself. Since he left off playing with his toys, he’s not dared to be anything that a man of rank could take seriously. He won’t even laugh at a comedy till every one round him has laughed first. He cries more easily. I made him cry once. That’s as much as anyone knows. He may be sitting at this moment, like an actor without a mask, waiting for someone to write him a part.”
“Or,” said a man with a flute-player’s flat-topped fingers, “he may be taking off the mask he’s been playing in all this time, to make his bow and show his face.”
Just then the chorus-master came in, a little bouncing man who knew artists all over Greece and demanded news of them, and I had to talk theater. After all, it was the center of these men’s lives, and it was only chance that was making me any different.
What next? I was no nearer knowing than when I landed. If I had been anyone else, I could just have walked to Dion’s house and asked how I could be of service. But what kind of entrance could I make which would not seem to say, “Here I am, stranded without work after coming all this way. You hired me; now look after me.”
The barber had done, and it was noon. But Menekrates would not let me order food, and shared with me a good fish stew. Then, when we had eaten, he said that since I had come to see the sights, he would be happy to show me Syracuse, and to offer me the spare bed at his lodging.
Here was an omen at the crossroads. I had taken to the man; he liked gossip, too, and might have some useful knowledge. All over Hellas, a web of guest-friendship binds the artists of Dionysos; it went without saying that when next he came to Athens I would return his hospitality. So I could accept it without loss of pride—a great piece of luck, with my passage home to think about.
“It will have been worth your visit,” he said, “just to see the funeral. There is always a big show for an important man; but this should be the sight of a generation.”
“Of two,” said the chorus-master. “Dionysios has ruled for two, by the common reckoning.”
I asked who would arrange the rites. “Why, the heir,” he answered. “Young Dionysios.” Plainly no one doubted who the heir was. I wondered what was going on in the island stronghold. There was not much chance of my ever knowing.
After this Menekrates took me to the small street where he lodged, in a good clean room with whitewashed walls opening to a courtyard. He showed me my bed, lay down upon his own and slept at once, as everyone does there at that hour. Even so early in the year, it was getting warm. Not being used to it, I lay thinking, looking out through the window at the court with its green shade of palms and gourds.
When the shadows started lengthening, he woke up. As we splashed well-water on our faces, he said, “Let us go and see if my cousin Theoros has got home yet. He should have been purified from the death chamber by this time. We shall learn something at first hand from him.”
As we slipped along a crooked alley where two could not walk abreast, I asked who this Theoros was. He answered, “Oh, he is the great man of our family. He works for Leontis the physician, puts on his poultices and so on. For three days now he and his master and the other leading doctor, Iatrokles, have been locked up in Ortygia. My cousin (he is really my cousin’s husband) has been at her wits’ end, poor girl. She said if the Archon died they woul
d all be executed. I told her not to fret; there was no one the old man’s life was as precious to as it was to him.”
Apollo, I thought, you have not forsaken your servant.
“He does not approve of me,” said Menekrates. “He thinks I should have had foreknowledge of so dignified a person marrying into the family, and chosen another calling. But we’ll hear something from him; he is too self-important to keep it in.”
Some children playing in the street told us he was back. We went on, and found a small room fast filling up with kindred and acquaintance. The women had hidden inside, but the door-curtain bulged with them; two little boys ran about underfoot like chickens. There was no room to sit down. Theoros, a weighty fellow with a long combed beard and a manner copied from his master, held forth beside the hearthstone. He received me civilly, but condescended to Menekrates. I saw that all the family, except for him, was quite fair and Greek. This often happens in Sicily.
I will cut Theoros’ opening narration, which followed Dionysios’ sickness from the first shiver through rigors, vomitings, sweatings, purgings, and so on, with all the treatment. He described how every time Leontis sent him outside for anything, before being let back into the sickroom he was searched to the skin by the guards. “A foolishness, when so many means of healing can be means of death, misused. But they had their rule and no one dared change it; when Iatrokles, our colleague, complained of the delay, the captain related how a guard was once put to death for handing a javelin to the Archon’s own brother, when all he wanted was to draw a siege plan in the dust for Dionysios to see. He would not have a razor near him, even to shave himself, but singed his beard with glowing charcoal. So now, as you can understand, they feared he might yet recover and make them answer for it. When he began to sink, and they heard us say it was only a matter of time, they stopped searching young Dionysios; but you could see it made them anxious. If it had been Dion, that would have been different; the rule had always been waived for him.”
There was a buzz in the room. Someone said, “Dion was not there?”
Theoros coughed, and stroked his beard. “It was difficult. A very delicate matter. On the one hand, the patient was exhausted, and just the man, as his son had no need to remind us, to overtax what strength was left. On the other, he was the Archon still. Yet to obey a sick man without discretion may be to make oneself his murderer.”
The company weighed this in a respectful pause. My question was burning my tongue, but the manners one is bred with stick. It was a white-haired old granddad, sure of his standing, who piped up, “What? What? Did Dionysios ask for Dion?”
“That again, Glaukos, is a thing more easily asked than answered.” He nodded approval of himself, till I thought I should go mad. “In the earlier phase, when the patient was full master of his faculties, he was occupied, as often happens, with trivialities, the gods having sent him no foreknowledge. He discussed his play, sent for Timaios the skene-painter, and talked a full hour with him against our advice, sending out more than once to learn if the actors had come from Athens.” Then he remembered, bowed, and said, “Ours is the privilege denied him.” I bowed back. Menekrates caught my eye and winked.
“Dion of course visited his kinsman, but found him full of these affairs. Calling us to the anteroom, he charged us to inform him at once if our prognosis altered. ‘I have seen these fevers in the field; they change quickly, either way. If he worsens, tell me directly, without fail.’ You know his manner. My principal said, afterwards, that a general he might be, but we were not his men though he seemed to think so.”
My heart sank. From the man one may infer the master, and I could see the scene.
“He was given the civil answer due to his rank. It went without saying that the heir must hear first of any change. And he said at once, ‘My uncle has never known how to spare himself. Nor has my father. It will be his death if we let them meet.’ When Dion returned, therefore, he was told the patient must have quiet. Indeed, with the fever’s evening rise he grew restless, wandering in his thoughts, giving and canceling orders, then demanding something to make him sleep. In the course of these ramblings it is likely that, as you, Glaukos, were asking, Dion’s name came up. Had we obeyed them all, we should have had the sickroom full of mercenary captains, engineers, envoys, tax-collectors, masters of horse and actors—a chaos, as our new Archon put it. He himself behaved with great propriety. As for Dion, I believe he did come back once or twice, and latterly brought his sister’s sons; and once Dionysios called out to him to come in if he wanted anything, not stand talking with the guard. But at once the patient had rambled off again, cursing us for calling ourselves doctors when we could not so much as dispense a draught of poppy. His son, who was there, begged us not to refuse this comfort, so likely to be the last. We therefore complied, and the end was peaceful.”
Peaceful for the doctors, too, I thought. If you can’t save your patient, it’s next best to know when you can stop fearing him, and start fearing his heir. They were better off than the guards.
After this everyone started telling stories of Dionysios. It seemed even those who hated him were powerless to look beyond him; how not, when no man under fifty could remember the days before he ruled? But before Menekrates and I slipped off, I overheard Theoros impart to some favored friends the last sensible words of the old tyrant. When he had had the draught, he beckoned his son and said, “If these fools let me die, even a fool like you should be able to keep hold on Syracuse. I leave you a city bound with chains of adamant.” These words he repeated, like a craftsman speaking of a good job done, and closed his eyes.
As we walked away, I thought, Whatever part did I think to play here? This is not Kreon’s Thebes, but the modern age, the hundred and third Olympiad. Well, I would stay on with Menekrates to see the funeral. It would give me a glimpse of Dion, since I could not think now of calling on him; he had trouble enough, without being touted by resting actors. I would just stand in the crowd, and see him pass.
Perhaps, I thought, he would spend more time in Athens now. I asked Menekrates his opinion. “Rather less, I should think,” he said, “unless young Dionysios is an even worse fool than his father thought. He never apprenticed him to his trade, for fear he’d want to own the business; he will need Dion at his elbow for years to come, to run the state at all. If that man is human, he must be waiting for his chance. Thank God I’ve no family of my own. I think I shall go on tour.”
“If you mean,” I said, “that Dion might seize power, I don’t think it likely. He doesn’t hold with revolutions, or civil war. I met him once.” He might hear this any day from some actor lately in Greece; it would look strange to have said nothing, unfriendly too. I told him the story, dwelling only on the theater part.
“Don’t dream,” he said, “of leaving before the funeral. No one will dare give parties, but we’ll pass the time. Not with my father’s kindred, whom I’m sure you have seen enough of. I don’t mix much with them; there was a family quarrel over my birth. As you see, I’m dark; my father’s sister, the fat frog, put it about I’d been got by our Libyan slave. Do I look like a Libyan? My father believed my mother, but the scandal soured him; he never had much use for me. When I was a man I searched the records. The Numidian strain’s from their side, and I told them so, for which they liked me no better. Well, I vowed I’d turn out the best of them, and so I have. Theoros is a servant for all his airs. Last year, when my brother stabbed a man and they had to find the blood-price, whom did they come to? Me. He’s as fair as you to look at; but inside, Numidian to the bone, savage as a desert wildcat. I am all Hellene; but they don’t look below the skin. However, it’s all one in the theater, under the mask.”
Rather than I should lack entertainment, he offered to take me to the best boy brothel in Syracuse, which he assured me would keep open. I thanked him and excused myself; I like Eros with unclipped wings, and the smiles of a slave, who might spit in one’s face if he did not fear the whip, have no power to warm me. So
instead, that evening we went back to the theater tavern, finding it fuller than at noon; there Menekrates told everyone about Delphi and the crane, so that I was forced to relate the story. Then Stratokles, the chorus-master, said he had never seen the full text of Hector’s Ransom, having been given only the choral parts, and everyone demanded a recital. In no time they had me up on the barber’s stand, with an audience packed to the doors; some court gentlemen had come in who had no diversion that night, on account of the mourning, and were eager to hear the play which, as they said, Dionysios had died of.
“The verse is not bad,” said one of them. “Not quite Sophokles—except where it is Sophokles—but not bad at all. There was an oracle, you know, that the Archon wouldn’t die till he had won a victory over his betters. He’s let the Carthaginians off lightly more than once, when he could have pushed them into the sea.” Everyone started looking about in terror. The youth who had been speaking said, “He’s dead.” The green shoot bends quickest to the changing wind. “They made it worth his while, and he needed them now and then, to keep the city needing him. But this was the destined victory, after all. Two-tongued Apollo laughs last.”
“I don’t think so,” I said. “I heard the other plays and I thought the judging fair. It usually is, in Athens.” My mind went back to Theoros’ story of the old tyrant shouting for his sleeping draught, with Dion at the door. Yes, he had beaten his better at the end.
Next morning Menekrates woke me early, to go sightseeing in the cool. We were crossing the Agora, when we heard a crier calling all the citizens to the Assembly. I was surprised that under a tyranny such a thing existed, but Menekrates assured me all these forms had been kept on. “Come and watch,” he said, smiling sourly, “and you will understand. My friend Demetrios, the coppersmith, will let you stand on his roof.”
The Assembly place was down on the flats. On the way we passed the quarries where they put the Athenian prisoners in the Great War, and where so many died; they are not far from the theater. Menekrates told me Dionysios had had them carved out twice the size and there was no knowing who might be in them. “Well,” he said, “things may change, who knows? Let’s go and see.”
