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.