The Mask of Apollo (45 page)

Shortly after this I put on
The Persians
, sharing the leads with Menekrates, who had said that he must work or lose his mind. He had dashed home from Italy, but happily too late to find the bodies of his family. So I paid off the man I had engaged, who did not like it but understood; it was little enough to do for an old friend. I played the Messenger and the Ghost; he did Queen Atossa and Xerxes. It was a bad production. I had not given my mind to it, and was off form myself; the chorus was a scratch one; Menekrates, though I think he saved his reason by purging his grief through this tale of old disasters, gave a poor performance, as actors do when playing from raw emotion instead of considered art. However, as always at these times, the audience was sure that, feeling what he portrayed, he must be superb, and received the play accordingly. He was in tears by the end—no matter, the action called for it—but from then on he could eat and sleep again.

He left Syracuse soon after for Ionia, which was new to him, trying to forget. His house had been burned to the ground, but his money was still buried there in a place he had shown to nobody. I don’t suppose the knowledge would have saved his wife, after she had told the soldiers; but they might have killed her more quickly. Since he knew nothing about this, he could find some relief in not being destitute. I myself stayed on a little longer, teaching Rupilius to write Greek. He would soon be on his feet again, but had come to count on me meanwhile; his daughters were married, and he had no sons living. It was a reason to give myself for staying on. I don’t know if it was hope or fear that really held me.

Dionysios had settled down in Lokri, his mother’s city, up the coast north of Rhegium. It was said he was rarely sober much after sunup. But his captains were, and his fleet was troublesome. So Herakleides’ navy sailed north to sweep the straits, and anchored at Messene.

The ships’ fighting men were soldiers serving under their own officers in the usual way. They had scarcely made camp when their commander sent dispatches back to warn Dion that Herakleides was working up the fleet to mutiny.

Its men had always served under him; he had won their favor by slack discipline; they did not know Dion like the troops. In Syracuse as elsewhere, the seamen are poorer than the citizen soldiers, who have their own panoplies to find. All sailors are democrats; but ours in Athens are used to public business, and have heard promises from too many demagogues to take them all on trust. These men had had less practice. Herakleides was telling them that whereas their old tyrant had been too sottish to do worse than neglect them, their new one was cold sober, and would never let them be.

The soldiers being loyal one and all to Dion, the whole expedition was almost in a state of war. Soldiers and sailors would wreck any wineshop where they met. The officers meantime were watching Herakleides like dogs around a foxhole. A doubtful messenger was pounced on; it turned out he was treating with Dionysios.

On this, they faced him with it, threatening to march their men back and accuse him if he would not sail home. This he was forced to do, just at the time when Dionysios sent a mercenary army, Spartan-officered, across to Sicily. They met no trouble from Herakleides’ ships, and got ashore near Akragas.

Rupilius was hobbling about by now, but could not have marched across his garden. I thought he would kill himself when this news came in, trying to drill himself into fighting shape. I felt a fool running about after him, trying to make him rest, while he held himself back from asking what I knew about such things. The wound started to look angry, the doctor angrier still. He had put himself back instead of forward, and would have wept, I think, if Romans ever did.

Leontini is the sort of small town in which an Athenian feels mewed up; I soon found business to take me into Syracuse. The city looked dreadful, full of rat-ridden rubble with people squatting under wattles, hurdles or hides. The theater tavern, in order to keep open, was selling raw wine to anyone who came by; there was not an actor to be seen. Still, it was where Dion was and things were happening. He was never seen, he just sent out orders; but the factions from Messene had come back here to breed. Street fights were three a day. There were always soldiers marching about to clear the streets; often the sailors met them, stoning them or trying to hold them up.

I met in the street Timonides of the Academy, that same man who wrote the history later, and who was now keeping Plato posted with the news. Though I hardly knew him, our being Athenians, here, made us greet like friends. He was a small wiry man, with a high bald head now covered by a helmet. He told me the force of Dionysios was digging in, and Herakleides kept urging that the army should march to meet it, though a child could see it would be madness as things were. As with the land division, it was left to Dion to say no. Herakleides then accused him of dragging out the war, to prolong his time in power.

“But,” I said, edging him out from under a stoa with three broken columns, which looked about to fall down, “why isn’t this man brought to trial? Not only has he broken solemn pledges made in public; he is now a traitor to the city three times over.”

“Not unless the citizens say so. If not, who can try him?”

Timonides was yellow from a recent fever, as thin as a wasp, and as tetchy. “I have told Dion,” he burst out. “All of us have told him, he put himself in this dilemma when he pardoned the man at first. Moral logic, statesmanship, the common sense of a country housewife—show me even one of them in it, I said to him, even one. But no, he freezes and taps the table. He is Dion and won’t be less; and there’s an end … Law, the assent of the citizens, justice—after the sack, when the man was tried, he had them all behind him. And now what’s left for him? Only to say like old Dionysios, ‘To the quarries, because I so command.’ Can you see it? He’d as soon tumble a whore in public. He’s tied hand and foot. We all know it. He knows it. Even more to the purpose, Herakleides knows it. What can we do? Just pray the fellow gets killed in battle. My dear Nikeratos, I pray it daily, to every god I think will listen.”

“What battle? Since you can’t set out because of this?”

“Oh, we shall set out. Dion won’t endure the imputations of cowardice and of tyranny.”

“
Cowardice?
” I said.

“Oh, yes, yes. People forget. Don’t you find in your calling that the crowd forgets?”

“It’s a cold world you show me, Timonides,” I said.

“Well, that’s nothing new. We must all do the thing we can … ‘Know yourself.’ ‘Nothing too much.’ There’s truth in these old saws.” He had taken leave of me when he turned back to say, “He’s a good man. One of the best of our time. If he could only question it, like Sokrates, then he would be great.”

Sure enough the expedition set out against Dionysios’ troops, the fleet coastwise, the troops inland. They were gone some weeks, with nothing settled either way. Rupilius began walking again, telling everyone, though it was now clear he would be lame for life, that he would soon be in the field. Then came word that Dion, with all the cavalry, had come galloping back to the city on almost foundered horses. He shut the gates and manned the walls; the man who brought us the news had been kept inside till morning. Word had come to Dion just in time that Herakleides was sailing back with the fleet to seize Syracuse. Finding himself forestalled, he made a peaceful entry, pretending he had heard Dionysios’ fleet was sighted. Every one knew the truth, but no one could prove it.

The trouble was now bruited all over Greece. The Spartans in fact, with their ancient insolence, just as if they were still the masters of Hellas, sent over a general to take charge of Syracuse because its leaders could not agree. Herakleides got to him first with a pack of lies, but though a Spartan he had sense enough to look about for himself. Having done so, he declared for Dion. Herakleides had made so sure of the man, he had publicly welcomed his arbitration. So at the Spartan’s instance, he now had to go into a temple and vow to mend his ways. This contented the Spartan, who went home. They are a simple, pious folk.

Soon after this I heard from Thettalos, asking if I had gone mad to linger on in a cauldron of trouble like Sicily, by myself and without work. Had I found a new lover, as he was starting to suppose? His letter was full of theater news, neatly planned to make my feet itch for home. What indeed was I doing here, putting on plays at local festivals (I had just done
Niobe
at Katana) and watching great hopes withering? I wrote back that I was sailing as soon as I could, with unchanged heart. This was true; there had been a curly-haired, Roman-Greek lad for a while in Leontini, but nothing serious.

I had now been so long from Athens, I knew I must take care to come back on a good ship, looking like someone. So I let go the first I might have caught, because it carried hides. Some god must have guided me. It was wrecked off Lokri, with half its people drowned. And, just after I would have gone, Ortygia surrendered.

Since Herakleides had been brought to heel, the blockade had been kept tight. The gatehouse guards had stopped singing. A deserter who had swum across by night revealed that they had eaten the elephant, though it was at least forty years old. Even then no one dared voice his hopes till the envoy came from Apollokrates. He agreed to give up Ortygia, with its standing army, navy, war engines and all, in exchange for a safe-conduct covering five triremes, to take away his mother and sisters with their things. It seems Dionysios had left these ladies behind when he ran away. To do him justice, he may have feared being attacked at sea.

Anyone in Syracuse who had friends within reach of the city sent them word to be there on the great day. Rupilius and I got early news, and went in overnight to be sure of good places near the sea. All at once the half-ruined city seemed to burst out with life. Porches hanging askew and propped with logs were now adorned with garlands; skinny children stuck flowers in their hair and danced in lines down the streets. All the hetairas put on their thinnest silk dresses, like nakedness but prettier, and drove shoreward in painted carriages, singing to the lyre. Boys hung on the palm trees as thick as date clusters. At every altar the priests were offering libations and wreathing the statues of the gods.

It was a bright day with fair wind; light gleamed on the unfurling sails and flashed from the dripping oar blades. Dion boarded the escort ship which saw off the last of the tyrants’ line. The trumpets sounded from the walls, and the cheers rolled like surf along the shore. Old men stood weeping; young men danced, and threw each other in the air. The gates of Ortygia stood wide and unguarded, after fifty years.

Timonides, whom I saw before I sailed, told me that as Dion reached the palace, his mother came out to meet him, leading his son by the hand. Behind them his wife, a woman with graying hair who must have seemed like a stranger, walked in tears. Since her second husband had fled before Dion, she had lived on in Ortygia, the wife of two men and of none. His mother, a noble old woman with the family’s fine bones, and little more of her left, led forth this poor soul by the hand, asking if Dion wished to receive her as his kinswoman, which she was by right of birth, or as his wife, which in her heart she had always been. Dion behaved superbly. If one were writing a play to show him at his best, one might contrive some such scene. He embraced and kissed her tenderly, committed the boy into her care, and had her led to his house with honor. Timonides, wiping his nose when he recalled it, said there was not a dry eye as far as you could look.

“How did young Hipparinos take it?”

“He looked frightened, and sullen. But he may simply have been overwhelmed by the occasion. He is only sixteen or so; plenty of time to correct his upbringing.”

“Of course,” I said. For the play must close here, with the victory procession, the wife restored, the hero at the height of honor, the chorus singing praises, the happy audience going home. I could sail back to Athens, the first with the good news. A long piece of my life, which sometimes had caught up my very soul, was ending in a paean of joy.

Next day, or the day after, I went to pay my respects to Dion, as everyone of consequence was doing. He saw us a dozen at a time; I had expected nothing else, so great was the press; my only wish was to wish him joy. He met us in a plain white robe, simple even for him. In the time of the factions, he had lost weight; but it just showed up the splendid bones of his face, now lit with his fulfillment. He was the savior of his people, had avenged his exile and his wife’s wrongs, conquered a base enemy without once sinking into baseness. He was Dion, and never had been less.

He singled me out for a greeting, saying he had given me short thanks on the Leontini road. His kindness touched me; he had forgiven me my calling, in the fullness of his heart. The plain room was brimmed with happiness and triumph, like a beautiful krater filled with wine.

Some close friends stood round, who would stay when the rest had gone: Timonides, longing, I expect, to be off and write up his history, and Kallippos of Athens, the tyrant-hater, who had long been Dion’s right-hand man. I wondered how he felt when he saw Ortygia empty. His pale eyes wandered, as if looking for something he had lost.

It was time to go. I took a last look at Dion, smiling among his friends, and there came into my mind the story of the old Olympic victor who saw both of his sons crowned in one year. “Die now!” the people cried to him, meaning
that
no moment of his life to come could equal this. I stood in the doorway, though my exit was already made, looking at his stern happy face, and a voice in my soul, which I could not silence, said, Die now, Dion. Die!

I brushed it from my mind—one must avoid words of ill omen—and went off to take my ship.

I
WAS BUSY THAT YEAR. I CAME BACK TO HEAR
what everyone else had been doing while I was out of the way. Thettalos, as he confessed, had had an affair with a youth in Corinth. Nonetheless we met again with joy, forgave each other, and talked two days without stopping. It is always so when we’ve been apart, and time does not change it.