Death Ex Machina (35 page)

“Thank you, Mother,” said Diotima firmly.

“Congratulations, young man,” Aeschylus said to me. “You’ve joined the ranks of theater people.”

“I didn’t do a thing,” I said. “I only arranged for everyone else to play their parts.”

“Yes,” Aeschylus clapped me on the back. “That’s what a choregos does, you know. By the way, who wrote those lines?”

“A fellow named Euripides.”

Aeschylus looked blank. “Who?”

“A wannabe,” Sophocles explained. “You might have seen him around. He’s a little weird. You know the type.”

“Ah,” Aeschylus said, and nodded. Apparently he did know the type.

“What happens to Theokritos?” Petros asked.

“Trial for impiety,” Aeschylus said. “Followed by death. He can’t avoid it now. Not with every man, woman, and child in Athens present at the confession of the winemakers.”

“What of them?”

“They’ll get off,” I said. “Nobody wants to run out of wine. The vintners did it to kill the competition. But Theokritos led them into it because he’s a religious fanatic.” I turned a hard look to Maia. “That’s not a good idea around here.”

Maia looked solemn and said, “I understand you, Nicolaos. Sabazios will no longer attempt to convert the Athenians.”

SCENE 40

DENOUEMENT

I
SURVIVED THE WRATH of the archons better than I hoped. Which was to say, they didn’t actually draw their daggers and knife me where I stood. But if words had edges then I would have died a thousand times. Pericles admitted to me later, as the people brought down the decorations and prepared to resume normal, post-Dionysia life, that it had been easy to placate the official visitors.

“They enjoyed your show,” Pericles told me. “Several of them asked if we could do the same again next year.”

That left Pericles happy. He was satisfied as long as nothing disturbed his grand strategy. What he had in mind I didn’t know, but whatever it was, the psyche of the Great Dionysia hadn’t interrupted his plans.

There were only two last points to see to. I went to talk with Lakon.

I FOUND HIM in his courtyard, where he quietly celebrated a triumph. Not of the theater, but of his personal survival. Lakon invited me to sit and offered me wine. I accepted both and got to the point.

“Lakon, you’re not a murderer, but you’re guilty of the crime of fraud. You’ve lived off the name of the real Lakon for decades, and never given his family a thing in return.”

He sipped his wine and said, “I could hardly do that, could I?” He leaned back in his dining couch. It was clear he felt comfortable now that the crisis was over.

I said, “I didn’t reveal your secret to the others, when I accused Theokritos.”

“I will be forever grateful, believe me.” Lakon sounded sincere. I believed him.

“There’s to be no official trial for you, Lakon, so I must be your judge,” I said. “My judgment is this: that there is restitution to be made. I sentence you to play the part of Lakon to his mother. That poor old lady is in a terrible state. Her mind is gone. When she sees her son returned, she’ll be overjoyed. You will make her last days restful. You will be the most dutiful son a mother ever had.”

“I see.” Lakon toyed with his wine cup. “You know, I’m not the monster you think I am.”

“Prove it.”

“I will.”

“And another thing. There’s a girl there named Lysine. She will inherit the family’s farm.”

“Fine. I don’t want it.”

“You will treat her like a cherished sister. You will spend whatever it costs to fix up the place. You will give her slaves to work the farm. If she wants to marry, you will dower her. You will scrupulously check over her choice of husband like a brother should.”

He held up his hands in defeat. “I’ve got the idea. You’ll have no cause for complaint.”

I had better not. Or Lakon the Actor would be exposed as a fraud to his admiring fans. I hadn’t voiced the threat, but I didn’t need to with Lakon.

LAKON’S HOUSE LAY not far from Diotima’s. It was only natural that I should stop by, to see how the Phrygians were getting on.

The house was in pristine perfect condition. The Hand of Sabazios was returned to its place in the courtyard. The beer vat out back had disappeared.

The Phrygians treated me like an honored guest. They installed me on a fine couch—I decided not to ask where it had come from—and they brought me wine and food of the highest quality. Petros sat beside me and we talked as we ate.

I said to Petros, “After that performance you’ll be able to win more roles.”

“I’m not sure I’ll be able to fit it into my schedule,” he said. “We have more work than we can cope with.”

“You do?” I said, confused.

“After the funeral of Romanos we attracted much attention,” said Petros. “We put on a show that was tasteful and elegant, much better than the usual hysterics that our customers demand. We showed Athens how a funeral should be done. Next day, we had a couple of men at our door—your door, rather, Diotima’s house—”

“I understand.”

“It seems people liked what they saw. They wanted advice on how to stage funerals for their own relatives. Of course, we charged them for our expertise.”

“Of course.”

“We’re very good at burying people. Every day we have more customers lined up outside your house. They want us to manage the funerals of their parents, aunts, uncles, brothers, sisters.”

Which meant Diotima’s house was being filled every day with people in a state of ritual pollution. The neighbors were going to love me for this.

“We’ve upgraded from being mere professional mourners,” Petros went on. “We think of it as burial consultancy. People come to us for all their funerary needs. We arrange the jars for the ashes—I’ve done a deal with some potters in Ceramicus—we can get some excellent alabaster. We supply the mourners and build the pyre and sweep up the mess afterward. All you have to do is sit back and enjoy the show.”

“I’ll keep your services in mind. Are your rates affordable?”

“Oh, we’d bury you for free!”

“You’re very kind.”

“I can’t thank you enough for what you’ve done for us,” Petros said. “If it hadn’t been for you, we might already be on our way back to Phrygia. I can’t help but feel, now that we’re making money, that we should be paying you rent. Would the going rate suit you?”

“I accept,” I said at once.

There’s a bright side to everything.

AUTHOR NOTE

G
REETINGS TO YOU, cherished reader. Here I’ll talk about the real history behind the story. If you haven’t finished the book yet, this would be a good time to turn back to the front, because this section is full of spoilers.

If you
have
finished the story, welcome!

THE GREAT DIONYSIA was the premier arts festival of the ancient world. Every great play which has come down to us from ancient times was first shown at a Dionysia.

The three masters of tragedy were Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. They belonged to successive generations, and they were very different playwrights. If they were alive today, Aeschylus would be writing military adventure and techno-thrillers, Sophocles would be writing courtroom dramas and family sagas, and Euripides would be writing mainstream literary.

I had to set this story in 458
BC
because it was my only chance to get all three men into the same book. It’s the final year for Aeschylus, Sophocles is in his prime, and Euripides is three years away from his first outing.

Aeschylus retired to Sicily, where he was promptly killed in unusual circumstances. History tells us that a passing eagle, seeking to crack open a turtle it had captured, mistook the famous writer’s bald head for a rock, and let go. Aeschylus was struck down by the plummeting turtle. Aeschylus was not only the world’s first playwright whose works survive, but he also set the standard for tragic author deaths.

Nico mentions in passing the one event that we know for sure did happen at the Great Dionysia of 458
BC
. Aeschylus’s contribution was the famous
Oresteia
trilogy. The chorus was made up of Furies, and they really did rush on stage with live snakes writhing in their hair. Young boys fainted of fright and a pregnant woman immediately went into labor.

This anecdote proves, in passing, that women and children attended the theater, and that the great plays of the ancient world were watched by all the family.

THE STYLIZED MASKS of Comedy and Tragedy that we see on modern theater playbills are wrong. There is a surviving vase illustration that shows an actor holding a mask. It’s called the Pronomos Vase and is held at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples. Though there are other vases that depict actors, this vase is one of the oldest, dating to perhaps 400
BC
, and has greater wealth of detail than any other. The Pronomos Vase is close to being the entire textbook on early acting.

The real Athenian actor mask was more realistic than we imagine, with hair and paint for a lifelike expression. The masks probably were rigid with a fixed face. The mask for comedy had a comic expression, and the masks for tragedy looked serious and grave. The mouth must have been open. The eyeholes were good enough to see forward but with very limited peripheral vision.

The entire staging of
Sisyphus
in this story is my invention. It’s known for sure that Sophocles wrote a play by this name, but the play is lost. We don’t even know in what year it was placed.

WE KNOW THAT the official cult statue of Dionysos was placed on stage to watch every play. The ancient Greeks believed that the Gods could inhabit the statues created for them.

This is why it is such a big deal that Romanos was murdered in the way that he was. The crime has been committed
in the presence of the God.
It would be hard to conceive anything more likely to bring down a curse on the city.

THESPIS WAS THE world’s first actor. We’ve been calling actors thespians ever since.

Before Thespis, tragedy was a choral performance where the chorus sang the action, and that was it. After Thespis, an actor acted out the story while the chorus sang the action. With only one actor on stage, masks were necessary to denote the different characters.

In the next generation, Aeschylus added a second actor. Dialogue became possible.

In the generation after that, Sophocles added a third actor.

By the time of the Great Dionysia of 458
BC
, tragedy is a story told between three actors, with a chorus singing to open the play and in between scenes.

THIS ISN’T THE place for literary criticism, but I want to mention briefly the Athenian concept of what made a play a tragedy. It was, simply, the story of a great man who makes a mistake and suffers the consequences. In so doing there’s supposed to be some form of catharsis (a very Greek word).

If you’re interested in this subject, I encourage you to read
Poetics
, by none other than Aristotle. Aristotle is often translated as saying that tragedy is the tale of a great man with a fatal flaw. But that isn’t what he says, strictly speaking. The tragic hero simply makes a big mistake.

In the same context, it’s worth mentioning the famous saying, “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.”

In its usual wording as above, it comes from Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. But he was rephrasing a saying that goes back more than 2,500 years. The earliest use is the play
Antigone
, by Sophocles. I’ve stolen this translation from the Perseus version:

For with wisdom did someone once reveal the maxim, now famous,

that evil at one time or another seems good,

to him whose mind a god leads to ruin.

Sophocles then adds:

But for the briefest moment such a man fares free of destruction.

Which is a variant of, “Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time!”

THE CLASSICAL TRAGEDIANS riffed on common myths that everyone already knew, very similar to how jazz musicians play standards that they then alter to their own taste. What kept the audience enthralled was how the writer varied the plot and the characters.

That meant if you were sitting in the Theater of Dionysos in 458
BC
, then the audience about you
already knew how the story ended.

THE GOD MACHINE on which Romanos dies was very real. It was used as Sophocles explains in the story. No tragedy was complete without the god machine delivering a deity into the thick of the action.

We usually think of the Greeks as being a non-mechanical people, but it would have been impossible for Athens to maintain the world’s largest fleet without a thorough practical knowledge of machinery. Greek machines were wooden, which is why none survive.

The very word machine is Greek. In their language it is
mekhane.

What they didn’t know were the laws of mechanics. The rule of the lever and the physics behind the pulley were discovered by Archimedes, two hundred years after the time of this story. The machines in Nico’s time were designed with a complete lack of theoretical knowledge but a great deal of practical know-how.

The healing machine used by Doctor Melpon is only partly a figment of my imagination. Most of it was real. Forty years after this story, Hippocrates wrote a treatise called
On Joints
, in which he described a machine much like Melpon’s, for the purpose of fixing hips and spines. It’s known as the Hippocratic Bench, and it was every bit as horrible an experience as Phellis goes through in this book.

For this reason some people credit Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, as also being the inventor of that well-known instrument of torture: the rack.

DEUS EX MACHINA
means literally “God from the machine,” and it’s a curiously Latin term for what is very much a Greek concept.
Deus ex machina
means any abrupt, arbitrary action that closes down a story too quickly.