“I don’t deny it,” Menedemos said earnestly. “That is part of his character. But it’s not the only part, and the tragedians do him wrong by making it out to be all of what he is. Odysseus is sophron: he gets the most out of the wits he has. He’s not so great a warrior as Akhilleus, but he has more sense in one toe than Akhilleus does in his head.”
“That isn’t saying much,” Sostratos put in.
“Well, no,” Menedemos agreed. “Odysseus, though, is the man who can do everything well. He outwits Polyphemos the Cyclops, he can build a boat or a bed, he fights bravely whenever he has to, he can plow a field, and he’s the one who, at Agamemnon’s assembly, keeps the Akhaioi from giving up and sailing home.”
“You admire him,” Protomakhos said.
“Who wouldn’t admire a man like that?” Menedemos said. “Except a tragedian who thinks he knows more about him than Homer does, I mean.”
“Don’t you think modern poets are entitled to take what they need from the Iliad and Odyssey?” Sostratos asked. “We’d be missing a lot of our tragedy if they didn’t, you know.”
“Taking what they need is one thing. Of course they can do that,” Menedemos replied. “Deliberately twisting what they take, though, turning it into the opposite of what it was… That goes too far. And I think that’s what this Diomedon did. You notice the judges didn’t give him a prize. Maybe they felt the same way.”
“Your cousin has strong views,” Protomakhos said to Sostratos.
“He’s a free Hellene. He’s entitled to them,” Sostratos replied. “We don’t always agree, but we have fun arguing.”
“What did you think of Dolon?” the proxenos asked him.
“I’d forgotten it was Diomedes who killed him in the Iliad” Sostratos confessed. “That being so, I think this poet may have gone a bit too far myself.”
“Ah, well,” Protomakhos said with a shrug. “You Rhodians have been luckier in your government lately than we have. I can see how an Athenian might want to write a play about a clever, devious politician who stops at nothing to get what he wants.”
“Oh!” Sostratos’ eyes widened. “You’re telling me this isn’t just about Odysseus. It’s about Demet-”
Menedemos stepped on his foot. “If it is about Demetrios of Phaleron,” he hissed, “how big an idiot are you for shouting it to the housetops? Do you want Macedonians breaking down Protomakhos’ door in the middle of the night to haul you away and see how many interesting things they can do to you-and to our host-and to me?” To him, plainly, the last was most important.
But he was just as plainly right. Sostratos admitted as much, adding, “Even so, it does make me more inclined to forgive Dolon.”
“Well… maybe,” Menedemos said grudgingly. “I still don’t care for what it did, but our kind host has shown a reason why.”
“Comedies tomorrow,” Sostratos said. “You won’t have to worry about ferreting out nasty political messages there.”
“I wouldn’t have had to worry about ferreting them out in Aristophanes’ day, either,” Menedemos said. “He came right out and shouted them in people’s faces.”
“We can’t get away now with what he did then,” Protomakhos said. “He couldn’t get away with it, either, by the end of his career. Look at Ploutos. It’s about wealth, but it’s not about, or not very much about, the people of the time. It looks forward to the kinds of comedies poets write nowadays, in fact.”
“The kinds of comedies people write nowadays…” Menedemos muttered.
“He’s not much for them,” Sostratos told Protomakhos. “I told him to wait till he’d heard one by Menandros. I certainly hope he’s finished the piece you said he was working on.”
“I don’t know one way or the other,” the Rhodian proxenos replied. “We’ll find out tomorrow.”
“So we will.” Sostratos sounded cheerful.
“So we will.” Menedemos sounded anything but.
At supper that evening, Protomakhos made no remarks about going out to celebrate the Dionysia. Menedemos didn’t urge him to go out or ask questions about whether he would. Sostratos hoped that meant his cousin really hadn’t seduced or tried to seduce the proxenos’ wife. Menedemos enjoyed making him nervous almost as much as he enjoyed adultery.
The next day dawned chilly, with a nasty wind whipping down from the north. Protomakhos wrapped himself in a himation before heading for the theater. It was cold enough to tempt Sostratos to do the same, but he didn’t. Menedemos acted as if the weather had nothing to do with him. “Aren’t you fellows going to freeze?” Protomakhos said.
“We’re sailors,” Sostratos replied. “When was the last time you saw a seafaring man in anything but his chiton?”
“Have it your way,” Protomakhos said. “But if your teeth chatter too loud to let me hear the lines, I’ll be annoyed at you.”
They got splendid seats. The cold weather kept lots of people indoors till after sunup. Sostratos’ teeth did chatter. He clamped his jaw tight as he could to keep Protomakhos from noticing.
Out swaggered the actors for the first comedy. They didn’t wear big phalloi strapped to their waists, as they would have done a couple of generations before. Their masks were more realistic, less burlesqued, than they would have been in earlier times, too. Indeed, little except the play itself distinguished them from tragic actors, and some performers worked in both types of drama.
Their play, unfortunately, did not distinguish itself. The verse limped-a couple of times, badly enough to make Sostratos wince. Even by the loose standards of comedy, the plot was stupid. And the jokes fell flat. As the dancers of the chorus twirled out to separate one act from another-they didn’t also sing, as they would have in Aristophanes’ time-Menedemos turned to Sostratos and said, “How does a play this bad ever get produced?”
“I don’t know,” Sostratos answered. “But I’ll give you an even more frightening thought, if you like.”
“What’s that?” Menedemos sounded as if he doubted Sostratos could come up with one.
But Sostratos did: “Just remember, only Dionysos knows how many worse comedies were written, comedies not even a maniac would want to bring to the stage.”
His cousin shuddered. “You’re right. That is frightening.”
As the play dragged on, the audience grew more and more restless. People shouted at the actors. They threw onions and squash and cabbages. One of the actors, after nimbly dodging a squash, turned to face the crowd. In smoother verse than the comic poet had given him, he said,
“If you think these lines are hard to listen to,
Remember-we have to bring them out.”
He got a bigger laugh for his own words than he had for the poet’s. The vegetables stopped flying.
“So much for this comic poet’s reputation,” Sostratos murmured.
“Yes, but the other question is, how much has the actor hurt himself with his quick tongue?” Protomakhos said. “Some people won’t want to hire him now, afraid he’ll step out of character again.”
At last, mercifully, the comedy ended. The one that followed was better-but then, bad wine was better than vinegar. Menedemos said, “I don’t think Aristophanes has much to worry about this year.”
Sostratos would have liked to argue with him. He knew he couldn’t, not by what they’d seen so far. But then the herald announced the third and final comedy: “Kolax, by Menandros!”
“Now you’ll see something worth seeing,” Sostratos said.
“Not a bad title: The Flatterer,” Menedemos said. “But what will he do with it? If he makes a hash of it the way these last two fellows did…” He leaned back and folded his arms across his chest, as if challenging Menandros to impress him.
To Sostratos’ vast relief, the poet did not disappoint. His portrait of a flatterer was alarmingly realistic; the strutting soldier against whom the title character played came from a breed all too common since Alexander’s time. And his cook might have been Sikon, straight from Menedemos’ household.