The mask looked formal and holy, as in a temple. “Truly, friendship is sacred. Guest-friendship above all.”
“You mean Menekrates. My lord, I know. I am bound to both. What shall I do?”
“Most men count the cost.”
“To my fortunes? Little either way. If I play, I shall have a fine role with a handsome fee, and my company will love me. If not, I can go back to Athens and say I refused the tyrant. Everyone will admire me, and someone will give me an important lead, to reward my constancy, and because a well-liked protagonist helps a play to win. Someone else will pay: Dion, or Menekrates, as the case may be.”
“Which loses most?”
“Each loses something dear.”
“Are you a god, to measure loss with loss?”
“Apollo,” I said, “we are starting to talk in stichomythia. This is not a play.”
“You say truly. Well? Are you asking me to help you choose between your friends? You said you would choose me.”
He had stared me out. I laid my face on my folded arms, but not to weep. I could do that later. The courier was still waiting. At last I said, “It is my turn to ask you if I am a god.”
He answered in the voice of Speusippos, “We all come from the light, Niko. The soul can remember, or forget.”
“Dion remembers, or so he and Plato claim. Justice, and the good life.”
“They remember their share.” A sun-glint through the shutters struck the pillow near him; the reflected light changed his face; he seemed to smile. “And you? What do you remember?”
There came before my eyes, seen through those very eyeholes, the theater at Phigeleia. I felt on my head the hot gold wig, smelling of Meidias, the lyre in my hand, my youth beating like wings in me, and words sounding out across the empty battlefield. I said aloud:
The gods wear many faces,
And many fates fulfill
To work their will…
Far off in the mountains a shepherd’s pipe was sounding. Now Phigeleia was gone; I heard Athenian flutes receding, the singers dying away beyond the parodos, the stillness left in the heart.
“Well?” said the god impatiently. “So you remember the tag of The Bacchae. I should suppose as much. No more?”
He was going to tell me, so I waited. “It seems to me, Nikeratos, that when last you sat in front to see this play, you said something to the youth beside you. He was not attending, since it was not for his knowledge of Euripides that you had sought him out; but I, as it happened, overheard. Don’t you remember? ‘To my mind, Phrynon, one cannot go everywhere with Euripides. He is sometimes impassioned over dead things, the war, the oligarchs and demagogues of his day, or that old scandal when the Spartans bribed the Pythia; then he gets angry himself, instead of leaving justice to the nature of things, which after all is tragedy. The old scores are settled, the scar on the play remains, like the mark of an old rotted goat-tether on a living tree. With The Troiades he rose above it; but with The Bacchae he digs down far below, to some deep rift in the soul where our griefs begin. Take that play anywhere, even to men unborn who worship other gods or none, and it will teach them to know themselves.’”
There was a silence. He waited a little longer, then said in a voice as cool as water, “Do you deny those words?”
I answered, “No, my lord.”
“Goodbye, Nikeratos,” said the mask, making its eyeholes blank. “The oracle is over.”
11
I CALLED ON PHILISTOS AS SOON AS I GOT BACK. He was genial, brisk and businesslike, had clearly done choregos countless times, and knew what he was about. The secret of my work for Dion must have been well kept, for it was a sponsor’s interview like any other. He was very correct, knowing what was due to his rank and to my standing; he would not nag or fuss, or try to teach me my work. If he had been a stranger in a strange city, I should have gone home well satisfied. As it was, I thought how easy he must have found it to undermine Dion with this one weapon the other lacked—the knack of pleasing useful men for whom he did not care two straws.
The company was treating me like the eldest son’s wife who at last has borne a boy. While I was thinking the matter over at Heloros, the news of the courier had got to all of them. Menekrates told me the other two had almost gone on their knees to him to intercede with me, but knowing me best he had more sense. When I told them I would play, they looked like men reprieved from the quarries. I had to go drinking with them, or we should never have been at ease again.
One thing rode my mind, that I must get to Dion—not to excuse myself, for I had broken no pledge to him, indeed had declared I would do this very thing I was doing, but to say I was sorry to cross him even for the god I served, and was still at his service in any other way. But I had never used his name to get through the gates; if he had private work for me, it was the last thing I ought to do. I could have gone on there from Philistos, who also lived in Ortygia, but he gave me the feeling that spies surrounded him, and I feared he might have me followed.
I was wretched over this matter for two nights and a day; then I was summoned to go and see Dionysios.
This, as before, might serve my turn. I must own that I was full of curiosity, too. He was a man who could put on three masks in a day, believing each to be his face, and I longed to know the latest one.
The gatehouse guards all seemed to be in better humor. The Roman officer remembered me and asked if I had come looking for Plato, not angrily, but as a man jokes with a boy. When I showed him Dionysios’ letter, he became very correct. Once more I noticed how his men’s obedience was without servility, how well they kept their panoplies, and the air they had, as if they not only thought themselves the best, but expected the world to know it.
I was led in through the searching room, where I was well gone over. The eunuch even ran his fat fingers through my crotch. But the robe he gave me was handsomer than before; I had gone up a class, it seemed.
The room of state had been altered. From the quick look I had time for, I should think nearly everything good of the old man’s had been bundled out, and the places filled (for the room seemed fuller than ever) with modern art. The Zeuxis had gone; the statues were all gesturing like orators, or, if female, wrapping their arms round their privates. One Aphrodite looked as shy as if she had just been through the searching room. Luckily, before I started to laugh I saw Dionysios waiting.
He was sitting at the marble desk (it would need a crane to shift that) in an ivory chair which, this time, he had quite succeeded in filling. He was dressed up to the height of Syracusan fashion, and a bit beyond. His hair had been camomiled, curled, and dusted with powdered gold; his robe, which seemed all border, was bordered with purple embroidery. I wondered if I could get at his chamber-groom and offer for his castoffs; you could have played Rhadamanthos in this one. Close up it almost knocked you down; so did his scent, which was drenched on like an old hetaira’s. He had painted his face with Athlete’s Tan and carmine, and touched up his eyes with kohl. I was surprised to find he wore all this stuff as if he were used to it, till I remembered Menekrates’ stories. Of course, it had been put away when Plato came. I daresay I was the only man in Syracuse whom it could still surprise.
He was cordial, but had nothing much to say to me; it seemed he was just giving me an audience by way of favor. Presently, as he talked about past productions in the city, praising this artist or that, I saw why I was there: to spread the news that the theater ban was over.
I wondered how Plato had been chased out of Syracuse this time, and pictured the dejection at the Academy. I must bring home some gift for Axiothea, to cheer her up.