“We were,” he said after a pause, “so I will tell you why. You have been very sick this year. When the fever had left you, could you get up at once, and go about your business? Or did you need an arm to lean on? Well, Syracuse has been sick for almost forty years. A whole generation, reared in sickness … even to the highest.”
“And so,” I said, “you must begin with the child at nurse, with the schoolboy at the theater. And Dionysios—he must begin with mathematics.”
He clenched his hand on the desk, as if begging the gods for patience. “Nikeratos, don’t make me angry. Don’t treat me like a child, and Plato like a fool. He was learning politics at first hand before I was born; and so was I, before you were. If you think you know your own business best, give us some credit for knowing ours.”
I was ashamed, and begged his pardon. He only put up with me out of gratitude, and because I had shown him my heart.
“Try to see you are not in Athens now. This is Sicily. Beyond the River Halys are the lands of Carthage. The enemy stands with his foot in the door, pushing as soon as our shoulder slackens. What use is it to pay off the mercenaries, and pull down the walls of Ortygia, and set the people by the ears with a new regime, before we have made a man to lead them? They are better off as they are than as slaves in Africa, or nailed on crosses, or spitted over fires, and they have always known it. Dionysios has no root of greatness”—he had forgotten in his deep earnestness even to drop his voice—“he cannot lead men nor make them love him. But he can still save Syracuse, if he can only be taught to think.”
“Yes,” I said. “All this is true, if you had time. How long do you think you have?”
He began to answer, then asked sharply what I meant.
“Only what you have surely seen yourself—that Dionysios is working at his geometry not because he likes it, but because he is in love.”
“In love?” He frowned to himself, looking for a joke. Like many good men, he had not much sense of humor. Plato had far more.
“You are not serious,” he said. “Plato could be his father.”
“True indeed. He should know himself better. He is in love all the same. Youth worships the mask of love; that is his Eros, a powerful god. Didn’t you once know him?”
“No. Our play was real.”
“How the gods loved you. Do you think all men have such fortune? That poor little man in the palace has had to be his own poet. His father wrote plays, he lives them. He has got right into his part, too; don’t you see what it is? A young aristocrat, brilliant, dissolute, charming, reckless, called to the good life by a philosophic lover?”
For once he laughed aloud. “Alkibiades! Come, this is a serious matter.”
“It is to him. He is rather short of beauty and charm, but, as he sees it, he can still improve upon his model, that bright falling star. He will be true to Sokrates’ teaching, and deserve his love.”
“You cannot mean this. Plato’s conduct has been in every way correct.”
“How not? Yet the young man’s devotion touches him, and he is kind. After all, Sokrates mastered his desires; do you think Dionysios wants to know the difference? All he wants is to be the beloved disciple, to know that he comes first. If something seems to stand in his way, will he prefer to blame Plato’s coldness, or an old rival who won’t stand out of the light?”
“My dear Nikeratos! This is not one of your tragedies.” He was brisk, yet not quite at ease.
“Maybe not,” I said, “but it’s theater all the same. I don’t know much of politics, as people are always telling me; but at least an actor knows jealousy when he sees it. You should watch his eyes.”
He paused, biting his lip. “That is nothing new. I was proving myself among men, fighting battles, leading embassies, while his father kept him shut up like a woman.” He did not add, though he must have known it, that it was he who had Alkibiades’ lifelong beauty. “Envy is natural.”
“Well, this is one thing more. You can load so much on a donkey, then he won’t go. How long do you count on? A generation? From what I saw today, I’d not lay two obols on it to last a year.”
He gazed at me, only half his mind on the matter. He was wondering, as I could tell, how it had come to pass that I could take such liberties. A just man, he blamed himself and would not punish me. Maybe he still liked me a little; it was time to go, while this held good. But there was something I had forgotten to mention.
“I think,” I said, “that it would be as well if Plato’s friends warned him not to walk alone about Ortygia. The soldiers want to cut his throat.”
“What? Who told you this?”
“They did. I heard it at every gatehouse. They all say he’s working to get them turned off.”
Aroused at last, he struck the desk with his hand and cursed as if he were in the field. “The young fool! He will talk—like a barber, a bawd, a midwife. He leaks like a cracked water jar. He cannot be kept from talking.”
No need to ask whom he meant. “Then Plato didn’t advise it?”
“Plato has fought in war! Of course he counsels it, but as the goal, not the means. When the new laws are established; when the citizens are trained in public business, content, and loyal; when the ruined cities, which the Carthaginians wasted, are resettled and could fight beside us. Who but a madman would strip the city now?”
“Now I understand. Dionysios proclaimed his good intentions? He’s always wanting to be crowned before the race.”
“You may as well know, Nikeratos, what it seems has become known all over Ortygia. Not long ago was his name day, and the usual sacrifices were offered. The priest made the accustomed prayer, composed in his father’s lifetime, to the appropriate gods that they might preserve the Archon in his power. In the middle of the prayer, he flung up his hand and cried, “No! Don’t invoke a curse on us!’ Then he looked at Plato, expecting praise.”
I forget what I said. Anything would do, except what I was thinking: Why, in the name of every god, do you keep this mountebank playing lead, instead of taking the role yourself?
I might not, as he had told me, know much about affairs. But I was not such a fool as to suppose that if I said this aloud, I could enter his door again. If I could think of it, so could he; there must have been times when he could think of nothing else but that, and his honor; and as fiercely as he had thrust aside temptation, so he would thrust me. So I covered my thought; but it burned within like a banked-down fire. From these unspoken words till I took my leave, there is no more of our talk that I remember.
10
I ENJOYED MY TOUR WITH MENEKRATES. WE worked well together, though I had been warned of him, behind his back, as a man who would not give. Theater in Syracuse is full of malice. Maybe he did not like being put upon, having had plenty of that at home, but as I never tried it I cannot say. After running through a few scenes with him I knew that he was sound, so chose plays with strong second roles, and never had to regret it.
It was at his suggestion that we put into our repertoire a modern comedy by Alexis. He is such an innovator, tragedians might as well play him as old-style comedians. Not only has he got away from all the topical satire and scolding which stale as quickly as cheap wine; he has even dared to put away that poor old prop the phallos, too tired these many years to pleasure the goddess Thalia much. Alexis has real men and women in real scrapes, natural masks for the juveniles and the sympathetic characters, and, between the jokes, much kindness for mankind. Menekrates said he liked to think, when he took off his mask, that maybe someone in front had gone home less ready to beat his children. This was about as near as he got to talking about his boyhood. It was a pity, I thought, that he and Dion would never understand each other.
We had both started young and poor and slept hungry in old straw; we laughed over it together, sharing our pleasure in good food at clean inns. Often we improved even on this, for Sicilians are theater-mad, and lords with land to the horizon would not only ask us to supper, but put us up. The backstage gossip of Athens or Corinth was all they asked; if one felt like giving an excerpt from some success not yet on tour, then nothing was too good for one. As for the peasants, they would walk all night to see a play, when the grind of their lives would let them. At Leontini, Tauromenion, Akragas and Gela, even in the little towns, the audiences were splendid and took all the finer points. The skies were blue, the fruit trees blossomed, thyme and sage scented the hills; and we had, as Menekrates had foretold, no competition. The leading men of Syracuse feared to lose status by doing local tours, and were holding out in the city for better times and then, when they did not come, going off to Italy. Our own third actor and extra were much better men than we would have had when things were easy. We made good money, and lingered in the pleasant places.