‘I just felt like it.’ Metris embraced him, and they lay down together on the small bed, an ancient item which, Luxos noticed, had never felt as comfortable as it did when he lay there with Metris in his arms.
Bremusa
Outside, it was stifling. As if Helios himself had decided to add to the city’s problems, the sun blazed overhead making it far too hot for the time of year. It added to the general unhappiness. In the small shrine at the harbour, Bremusa spoke to the Goddess Athena through her altar.
‘You were right, they’re trying to kill Aristophanes. I can’t believe there’s so much fuss over a play.’
‘Peace is a grave matter in Athens these days.’
‘Isn’t he meant to be a comedian?’
‘Yes,’ said the goddess. ‘But nowadays Aristophanes does like to think of himself as a man with a message. Really, I preferred his earlier, funny work.’
‘I can’t stand him. You know I had to give him a place to sleep last night because he was too drunk to get home? It’s outrageous. I’m an Amazon. It’s against my sacred Amazon creed for a man to spend the night in my room.’
‘It’s not, actually. You just made that up.’
‘Well, I still don’t like it.’ Bremusa ached from sleeping on the floor. It was another annoyance. Too much time in a comfortable mansion on Mount Olympus had made her soft.
‘I’m afraid I’m not doing much good here, Goddess. Laet is causing chaos all over the city and I don’t know how to stop her.’
‘Is the nymph Metris unable to calm things down?’
Bremusa laughed bitterly. ‘Metris? She spends all her time with Luxos. She claims they’re in love.’
Athena was annoyed. ‘I didn’t send her to Athens to fall in love.’
Aristophanes
After Callias’s symposium Aristophanes had his worst hangover since Alcibiades’ twenty-first birthday celebration, a momentous forty-eight hours of overindulgence which had gone down in legend. He was late for rehearsal, and the people bustling around made him feel nauseous.
‘Sorry I’m late, Hermogenes, I have a hangover worthy of Dionysus himself.’
He told a junior assistant to bring him a hangover cure. ‘And if Luxos appears, poke him with a spear.’
‘Good time at Callias’s symposium?’ asked Hermogenes.
‘Mostly good. Didn’t end so well.’
‘I’m glad you’ve finally arrived. We’re just about to rehearse the scene where the giant statue of the Peace Goddess is hauled out of the cave, flanked by the beautiful maidens, Harvest and Festival.’
Aristophanes nodded, winced, reminded himself not to nod again while he had a hangover, then followed Hermogenes over to the stage. He was eager to see what the prop-makers had come up with. For a successful comedy at the Dionysia, good props were vital. The flying beetle was an excellent start, but they needed more. The rehearsal space contained a rough replica of the stage they’d be using, with a small building in the back, and a trapdoor towards the front. Both could be used in various ways, and for this scene the trapdoor represented the mouth of an underground cavern. It was undecorated at the moment, but when the play was staged they’d put rocks and branches around it for better effect.
In Peace, after Trygaeus flew to heaven on the giant dung beetle, he seized the chance to rescue the Goddess of Peace from a cave, where she’d been trapped by War. All the Athenians onstage at the time, represented by the eighteen-man chorus, were to pull her out of the cave at the end of a rope. At the theatre there was a mechanism for raising objects hidden beneath the stage so they appeared through the trapdoor. It was an impressive effect, if the company got it right. When the Goddess of Peace emerged through the trapdoor, freed by honest Athenians, Aristophanes was expecting it to create quite an impression. As he arrived at the stage, the chorus had finished their dialogue and were straining mightily on the rope. At least they were meant to be. Aristophanes wasn’t convinced there was a lot of straining going on.
‘Put some effort into it!’ he said. ‘Make the audience think you’re working!’
As the chorus weren’t professionals, but ordinary citizens recruited for the Dionysia, it made life a little harder for Aristophanes. He couldn’t yell at them in quite the way he’d have liked. They set to it well enough, however, and gave a reasonable impression of men straining to pull something heavy from the ground. The trapdoor opened. With a final, mighty effort, the chorus pulled the Goddess of Peace from the cave. Or at least they would have, if the Goddess of Peace was actually a shabby children’s doll, no more than ten inches tall.
Aristophanes stared at the pathetic little artefact.
‘Hermogenes, what is that?’
‘Our statue.’
‘But it’s a child’s doll.’
‘I know, but it’s all we’ve got.’
‘What do you mean “it’s all we’ve got”? You told me the statue-maker was sending over the real one today.’
Hermogenes shrugged. ‘He sent a note saying he wasn’t letting us have it till we paid him.’
‘This is no good! I can’t send my chorus onstage with a child’s doll for a statue! The audience will riot.’
Aristophanes’ head was pounding. ‘I feel dreadful. For a rich man, I’m not certain Callias serves good quality wine. What the Hades are we going to do about this statue?’
Hermogenes looked hopeless. ‘Can you pay the statue-maker?’
‘No.’
‘In that case, I don’t know.’
‘What sort of assistant are you? Find a solution!’
Hermogenes was too competent to be bullied. He stood his ground, informing Aristophanes that as writer and director, it was his responsibility to make sure the play was well enough funded by their producer. Aristophanes scowled at him. Hermogenes was right. The playwright felt like exploding in anger at everyone on stage, but realised there wasn’t any point. It wouldn’t help, and it would only make his hangover worse.
‘Well where are the beautiful maidens that are meant to accompany the statue?’ he growled.
Hermogenes pointed to two male actors, both in poor physical shape, wearing very unconvincing female costumes and masks.
Aristophanes shuddered. ‘Is everything in this production designed to humiliate me?’ He looked round for the junior assistant. ‘Didn’t I ask you to bring something for a hangover? Stop dawdling!’
He turned to Hermogenes. ‘We can’t put the play on like this. We’ll never get out of the theatre alive. You know what a drunken rabble that audience is. By the end of the festival all standards of decency will have disappeared. Have you ever been hit by an onion thrown from the back row where the sailors’ wives sit? I have. I don’t intend to let it happen again.’
‘Then you probably shouldn’t look at the latest phalluses,’ said Hermogenes. Aristophanes looked over to where two gloomy-faced actors were trying, unsuccessfully, to erect their fourteen-inch penises. There was something obscenely hopeless in the way they were working the drawstrings inside their tunics, to little effect. And not, reflected Aristophanes bitterly, obscenely hopeless in a funny way. He shuddered again. The junior assistant arrived back at a run, carrying a goblet.
‘Your hangover cure.’
‘Fine. Now bring me some wine, and make it quick.’
The Assembly
Hyperbolus met Euphranor before they entered the assembly. They talked quietly, standing a little aside from the mass of white-clad Athenians making their way inside. Some distance away, lines of Scythian archers were walking down the main streets carrying ropes daubed with red paint. It was a crime to miss the democratic assembly. All male citizens were obliged to attend. Anyone tardy enough to turn up with red paint on their tunic was liable to a fine.