Now here they were, just as described: shaved chins and long mustaches, braided ropes of yellow hair down to their waists and bound with scarlet, long swords with curiously wrought hilts, neck and arm rings of plaited gold. I had not much time to stare; the captain shouted to me, without leaving his place by the gate, and asked my business. Just getting the drift of his vile Greek, I went up and told him. He must have topped me by a head, and I am not short. I showed him my letter; he waved it off, as if it were my fault he could not read, and in their lilting tongue ordered a man inside to ask. At last the portcullis went up. A new Gaul beckoned me. We crossed the causeway, passing between the great catapults I had seen from afar and their piles of throwing-stones. At the far end was another gateway, more Nubians on top, more Gauls below. My Gaul gave a password. This gate opened at once. I was inside Ortygia.
I had not entered a fort, but a hidden city. In fact, this had been the first Syracuse, the colonists from Corinth having perceived its strength at sight. They had held it against assault both from sea and land, till the city had burst its bounds and overflowed across to the rise upon the mainland. Dionysios had enclosed all of that in his defense walls; then for his own benefit he had cleared Ortygia of all its ordinary citizens. Each man in this teeming town was in the Archon’s personal service. It was self-sufficient; all trades needed to maintain it in peace or war were established here. I saw a street of armorers; a great clattering forge; a tannery, with a leather works as big as a small market; potters’ and fullers’ shops; and as for timber-yards, I passed three, not counting the shipwrights’.
The ground rose; going up steep cobbled streets and steps, we came to the barrack quarter. It was more like a soldiers’ town, with a street for each race: Greeks, Gauls, Campanians, Iberians, Nubians, Egyptians. We went through that of the Spartans, whose officers would not let them mix with their fellow Greeks for fear they should be corrupted. They stared from their doorways, haughty and stupid, and looking quite little beside the Gaul, which made me laugh. Now we were higher, I could make out the towers of a huge castle, jutting into the sea at the island’s toe. I asked the Gaul if that was Dionysios’ house: but he said it was the grain store. It was clear that this place could hold out forever, if it had ships to command the sea.
At last we came into a much wider street, all one side of which was a great high wall studded with watchtowers. The Gaul knocked at a postern and spoke into a grille. The oak door opened. Sun sifted through green shade; there was bird song; water plashed and tinkled. We were in a garden. I don’t know what I had expected—anything but this. It had seemed the core of Ortygia must be solid iron.
It was really a royal park; scattered among the lawns and groves were handsome houses, belonging to people of rank and office. There were a good many statues, modern ones, fluent and suave; the old man must have gone on collecting to the last. It was hard to believe in the Ortygia outside. At a fountain under a marble porch, women were drawing water in polished jars. Then I began to hear the shrilling of professional mourners, and knew we must be near the palace.
A tall portico, gilded and painted, was flanked with seated lions of red Samian marble. A guard of Gauls stood outside; but otherwise it was a palace, not a fort. So at least it seemed; but as I went through (the Gaul had passed me to a Greek chamberlain) I saw there was an inner wall fully six feet thick, before one got to the royal rooms. Outside its door of gilded bronze stood eight Gauls, the tallest yet. When they let me through, I was led into a place for all the world like the changing-room in an expensive bathhouse. There were clothes stands, shoe racks, all full—even a mirror. Two of the guards had come in with me. Up from a chair got a fat Egyptian eunuch, bowed, and started without a word to undo my girdle. I was just about to hit him over the ear, when I remembered. This little ceremony had quite slipped my mind.
The eunuch stripped me, shook out my clothes, looked at both sides of my sandals, and hung them up. Then he fitted me out from head to foot from the stands beside him. Some of the robes here were quite splendid; the one I got, second or third class I suppose, was better than my own. While he dressed me, the guards never took their eyes off him. Being used to putting on what I am given to wear, I suppose I minded less than most people.
When I was ready, the chamberlain scratched at the further door, listened, threw it open, and announced, “My lord: Nikeratos, the Athenian actor.”
I entered the presence chamber.
But, after all this, there was nothing royal about it. It was just a rich man’s room, and new-rich at that, overfilled with valuables, statues, murals, enamel inlays from Egypt, an easel with a Zeuxis on it. The excess, though vulgar, had yet a certain air of sincerity; this was not bought taste; good and gaudy were one man’s choice. By the window was the best piece in the room, a massive green marble table standing on gilded Sphinxes, Corinthian of the best period. I remember admiring it, before I really noticed who was sitting at it.
Perhaps old Dionysios was still loitering about somewhere; he can’t have been one to let go easily. At all events, the young man at his desk seemed like some clerk who would get up and ask me to wait. Luckily I have been taught how to come through doors, so these thoughts did not betray themselves. I bowed.
I can’t remember how he greeted me, or told me what I was wanted for. He was not, as you will have understood, a man of memorable words. One’s mind was inclined to wander. I reflected that this was no doubt the desk at which his father had written Hector’s Ransom, and that he himself was ill at ease here, having some homely lair of his own where he would rather be. When I looked at the room, it seemed natural he should keep me standing; when I looked at him, I remembered I was a prize protagonist of Athens, and thought I should have had a chair. I said what was proper—that I was honored, and so on—adding something about his father’s work and the loss to the theater.
“Well,” he answered, fidgeting with a scroll before him, “his last wish, almost, was to hear you in his play, so I hope it may please him to hear you speak his eulogy—at least, if the dead know anything, which we cannot tell.” He said this last like a man who liked to sound up-to-date. “Here it is; may I hear you read some?”
What’s this, I thought, an audition? But I suppose he thinks it due to him.
As I was unrolling it, he said, “I hope you can read my writing. I worked late, and there has been no time to get it copied.”
It was quite clear, and I said I wished my theater scripts were always as good. His face brightened like a child’s. I asked which passage he wanted.
“Let me see,” he said, and fumbled through it head down, like a dog in long grass. He was nearsighted. “This part,” he said.
I read a paragraph about the building of the walls of Syracuse. To my surprise the prose was excellent—an Attic style, restrained yet forceful, with beautiful speaking cadences. It almost spoke itself. Looking up, I saw him eyeing me anxiously under a front of judicial calm. Of course, I thought, I should have guessed; he did not want to test me but to hear how his own work sounded. I had met such authors before. So when I came to a passage which was muddled and fidgety and without much shape, I gave it a pleasing contour, as one can if one learns the knack.
A very good piece came next, but he held up his hand and said, “Thank you, Nikeratos. That was excellent. Do bring up that chair there; then we can talk.”