From being so much in Ortygia among the soldiers and servants of the Archon, I had begun to think Dion had not a friend left in the city. I now learned otherwise. The working folk, with one accord, had blamed the theater ban on Plato, a foreign sophist of whom they only knew he was Dionysios’ latest fad, which in itself was enough to damn him. Dion, they were all sure, would do nothing so impious or so odd. Dion was a great gentleman. When the old Archon died, and he had got the young cub at heel, it had been an age of gold while it lasted. People could bring their wrongs to judgment, even against the rich; taxes had been fairly levied, and the worst extortioners had gone to the quarries. The mercenaries had been made to behave themselves in the town, instead of acting like conquerors. And so on. Everyone, they said, had had hopes of his doing great things for the city; but it seemed, when it came to the push, he was too much the gentleman.
I could not make out just what it was they thought he would do, without help from them. Subvert the mercenaries, I suppose, and form a conspiracy and seize Ortygia; but nobody seemed to have a notion how such things are really done. Used as I was at home to being told I was a fool at politics, here any Athenian, even I, seemed as expert as a man among children. However careless we may be, there are some things we take for granted grown men will do for themselves. All this they had forgotten.
They talked of Dion as of a god, whose mind they did not expect to know. But even the gods have oracles, and priests who will take them messages from common folk. Dion had no such thing. I suppose, in Sicily, it was to be expected.
I sought out Speusippos with my findings. He was glad of the information, saying he had had most success himself with the middle-class citizens, with whom, he said, the friends of Philistos were daily making headway. They did not attack Dion directly, knowing how he was respected; it was through Plato they slipped their poison in. “In the time of our fathers,” they were saying, “the Athenians sent out two armies and a battle fleet to conquer Syracuse. None got home alive but a few wretched fugitives from the mountain brush, or slaves on the run. But now, Athens sends just one sophist with a silken tongue, and look what he has achieved. He has wound up the Archon in his web; soon he will suck him dry and hand over the power to Dion, who, as all the world knows, has been his fancy boy.”
Speusippos said that the men of culture, who had read Plato for themselves or spoken with those who had, were not so easily led; but even they were starting to believe what they were always being told, that the reforms would be hurried breakneck in, and cause civil chaos. Dion’s most solid support, he said, lay among men whom I had seen nothing of and he not much—the ancient aristocracy of Syracuse, whose fathers had fought the older tyrant. Their rising had been brief but savage; Dionysios’ revenge no less so; they, or their widows, had passed on the blood-feud to their sons, and it smoldered still.
All this he told me, and much more that I forget, for I was now in The Bacchae up to my neck. I recall, though, his saying there was talk of a Carthaginian embassy coming about a peace treaty. In the old Archon’s day, Speusippos said, their envoys had always been seen by Dion; they trusted his word, and his manners were such as they admire—commanding, spare of words, and stern, for he knew their ways. Now he was getting anxious lest Dionysios should try to handle it himself. He would be no match for them; at best they would get the profit of the bargain, at worst he might lose his head and provoke them into war; they might be all too ready once they had seen his quality. Dion was doing his best, therefore, to keep their chief men ignorant of his fall from power.
I said I hoped he would succeed, wondering in my heart whether he would come to see me act, and whether, if I did well enough, it would change his heart to me and open his door again. I feared this was not his play; he might only see it as one more folk-tale of Olympians behaving worse than men. But one cannot take this deity with the head; that, I suppose, is what the play is about. I must do it as I felt it, and leave the rest to the god.
Stratokles, old Dionysios’ chorus-trainer, had stayed on in the city to put on dithyrambs, so was here at need. He was good at his work, and not above taking some direction from the protagonist, which is important in this play. Everything went so well that, lest some god should be getting jealous, we were almost relieved when the mask-maker told Menekrates his Pentheus mask had been spoiled by some apprentice spilling paint on it, and would not be ready till the day.
“At the worst,” he said, “I can wear the second mask from the Hippolytos.” (There are three: the happy, the angry and the dying.) “Pentheus is an angry young man all through; it will do well enough in a pinch, and we can say that the luck-god has had his sacrifice.”
“Amen,” I said.
Plays start at dawn in Sicily, for the heat of the day comes soon. The theater of Syracuse faces southwest, built into the slopes of Achradina. Behind these the sun comes up; one begins in the dusk of their shadow, till presently the long sun-shafts strike the stage.
That day there was a glowing sky, with great wings of flame from the hidden east almost to the zenith. But when we opened, the wings were folded still; we had a subtle and somber glow, dusky-red, bronze and purple. Seeing this light, spellbound and lowering, which Euripides himself might have written in, Menekrates and I looked at each other, neither daring to say, “A lucky omen!”
They doused the cressets which had lit the audience to their seats. I pulled down my mask as the flutes began.
Dionysos opens alone. I have a bit of business I always use when the play starts early in half-light. I cross to Semele’s altar, where, as the dramatist directs, the fire is sinking; then, picking up a torch which lies there, I kindle it, lift it, and gaze around. I do the whole opening speech like this, walking here and there, looking at the royal house I shall destroy. The god must not seem like a mortal man plotting malice. He is curious, smelling out the ground, a stalking panther from the upland forests who snuffs at the walls of men, softly prowling, innocent of what he is.
I like this quiet start. Then when I raise my voice to call on the Phrygian Maenads, everyone jumps, which is good. In they come dancing, with their pipes and drums and cymbals, shattering the hush and stealth. There were young satyrs with them, doing a torch dance.
Coming off, I found Menekrates dressed, with the Hippolytos mask pushed up; his new one had not come. I said it was hard, the masks being so good, that only he should have an old one. “I’d rather, now,” he said. “I’m played-in with this. I was only afraid the other would come by a panting messenger while I was lacing my boots. I know these eminent artists; one daren’t offend them, the choregos always takes their side because he’ll need them again. I should have had to wear it, with barely a glance in the mirror. One can’t do oneself justice.” Grateful he took it so well, I went to do my change for the seer Tiresias.
When I went on, I found the sky growing blue. The highlands were in sun, and the dewy chill was lifting. This is right, when mortals take the place of gods.
One can work up Tiresias if one likes; some leading men do; but I had rather give this scene to King Kadmos, that old trimmer who will dance on the hills with god or mountebank, no questions asked, if it gives him status. I just did straight man for his laughs. It helps the play; for bigoted and stiff-necked as Pentheus is, one must point up his integrity. That is the tragedy’s core.
Tiresias has a blind-man mask; one sees through slits between the eyelids. Turning my empty gaze upon the house, I perceived the play had taken.
Menekrates started his shouting off, denouncing the Bacchae and their rites. Just at his entrance-cue, the first sunbeams struck the stage, one falling on the very door, all ready. I thought, Some god loves us today.