“Well,” I said, “you speak good Attic, which is right if you want to act.” Then, putting in the soft northern s’s, “When did you come from Thessaly?”
“That was my father,” he answered. “I was born here myself, and we are citizens since last year.” But of course, while a metic, he had not been eligible for chorus work at the sacred festivals, so though now eighteen he was quite without experience, and had picked up all he knew from sitting in front, or in ways like this today. His father would do nothing to help; he had come south with little, in flight from one of his country’s oppressive local lords, and worked hard till he owned a riding school. He was waiting, none too patiently, for the boy to outgrow his nonsense.
“It seems,” I said, “that you chose me to be your teacher. So why not have come to me, and asked for help?”
“I meant to,” he said, as if I should have understood. “But I was waiting till I was better.”
At these words I refrained from singing a paean, or embracing him, but asked where he went to practice. He just walked, he said, till he found an empty field. “Let me hear something,” I told him. “Do what you like.”
I thought he would go straight into Electra or Antigone or Ajax, and tear himself to bits. But no. He gave me a speech for the third actor, young Troilos pleading to Achilles for his life. Not only did he know his limits, he turned them to account; he was the youth who would not see his manhood. There was no softness, nothing pretty, but under the pathos a muted terror as he read the doom in Achilles’ eyes. I could have sworn I saw the relentless figure standing over him; the placing of his gestures shaped it out of air. He would die with his scream unuttered, because he was a prince of Troy, and had despaired in time. When it was over, he sat back on his heels, a light sweat on his brow, and waited for me to speak.
I forget what I first said. For just then I saw his eyes look up past my shoulder, caught and held. I had no need to turn. I knew where the mask hung in its shrine. It was just as if a look had passed between them, of recognition, or of complicity.
They say that Daidalos, the first artificer, saw his apprentice would surpass him and threw him off the roof. In the soul of every artist the murderer’s ghost lives on. Some make an honored guest of him; some chain him, and bolt the door, but know that he is not dead. Well, I could not have been cruel to this boy. That was not in me. There are things, however, one can do and live on with the thought of them. One can say, “You show great promise, but it’s useless to start till you have more range. Come back when you are twenty.” That would have wasted his time and got him stale, and put back his career five years. But having seen him without the mask as he spoke for Troilos, I knew I could do better for myself than that: “My dear boy, I think you have a future, when you have lived a little. What you need is to feel, to know the passions. Come back at sundown. We will have a little supper, and talk it over …” There are more ways of killing a bird than wringing its neck.
Once more he looked past me, and I saw that meeting of silent eyes. Though they only spoke to one another, they spoke to me. No good ever came, I thought, of robbing a god, and this one above all.
“Well, Thettalos,” I said, “I think you have learned as much as you will manage from behind a wall. It’s time you got up on a stage. Tell me what kind of man your father is, and I will do my best with him. There’s not much time; I am taking a company to Epidauros a month from now, and I shall need an extra.”
This, then, is how the god acquired his servant Thettalos, an artist seldom surpassed—at his best, unequaled in our day. It was a few years yet, though, before he knew himself, coming to the art so late. He was uncertain, scared often of his own force. It was like training a nervous blood-horse.
Our play for the Epidaurian Festival was Iphigeneia at Aulis. From the first I let him understudy the third roles, which include the name part; with only a little more technique, he would have been better than the man I had. At first I took him through the lines once or twice alone. Soon I thought better not. He played it all from the heart, knowing no other way; he was so eager, mulling half the day over everything I taught him; his eyes were flecked with green, and his chestnut brows met in fine down above them; in a word, he was starting to break my rest. But he was using himself so hard, and was stretched so taut, that I dared not disturb him. Besides, he was both proud and honest, and his whole life, as he must see it, was in my power. I waited. Some god said to me that a time would come.
We made a hit at Epidauros. What with the festival, the beauty of the theater, and his first appearance, he was quite drunk with joy; I was relieved that he kept his head. After the performance, I took him sightseeing. Going up to the portico of the Asklepeion, we met Dion coming out. He seldom missed these great occasions. Though men of note were pressing round him, he stopped and greeted me, spoke well of the production, and had a gracious word for Thettalos when I presented him. He, as soon as we were alone, said, “Who was that?” I told him Dion’s story, adding, “There goes the best man of our age.”
He followed my eyes, then broke out suddenly, “Yes, and how he agrees with you.”
“My dear boy!” I said, quite startled, for though frank he was never impudent. “What a thing to say. His modesty is proverbial.”
“And he knows that too.” He kicked a pebble, and swallowed a curse when it hurt his toe. I could see no cause for this sudden anger, which was quite unlike him, but took it he was overwrought.
“You mistake him,” I said. “He is shy by nature; but he is a man of too much pride to own it.”
“Why not? Who is he to be proud with you? You’re just as great as he is. Why, the first time you spoke to me, I thought I should stifle before I could get my breath to answer you. Even now, if it weren’t that I—” He broke off, red to the ears, almost swallowing his tongue backwards, and looking round like a thief for somewhere to run. I just put my hand behind his arm, and quietly walked him on. In silence we said everything.
So the god rewarded us. It may be that when I am dead, if he lives his span, he will hand on, to the young men coming after, small things I taught him. Since memories die with men, that’s as near as one gets to immortality.
Success brought his father round; before long, he could leave home without discord, and live with me. Even before that, we were never long parted, and could do as we liked on tour. As I said, those were happy years.
Young as he was, he could manage everything except the heavies. He was, and I think will always be, one of those actors in whom feeling works like intellect, so clearly it forms its concepts. They have it straight from the god; they give reasons if you ask, but those came later. But he was greedy for technique; born knowing why, he had to know how before he could bring it forth; and his reverence for me was touching. He would come to the end of it soon, I thought; what then? Meantime we read The Myrmidons, talked half the night, and taught each other; for the thoughts he threw off while we walked, or ate, or lay in bed were full of careless wealth.
At about this time, Speusippos married a young wife, a niece of Plato’s. He seemed contented, and praised her to me. I don’t know how much she saw of him, between his work and his diversions. As for Dion, I met him often, as I had at Epidauros. I could never think without a smile of Thettalos’ betraying jealousy; Dion had come as our god of luck, as the lad himself admitted, adding that no doubt he had been unjust, for what could he know of such a man? To me it seemed that Dion, though a king in exile, was still a king; he might lead no armies, but men would serve him with their minds, for by believing in him they could believe better in themselves.