When still Speusippos did not answer, I began to be anxious, lest in some way I had offended him; but before I could ask him if this was so, he said drily, “You are mistaken. He has been urging it.”
I got him to repeat this. When one sees two moons in the sky, one assumes that it’s the wine, not that they are there. Having heard it again, I said, “Why? I don’t understand.”
“Ask a god why, who can read men’s souls.”
“But,” I said, laboring it over, “even before Dion’s exile, Syracuse was not safe for Plato. Philistos’ faction hated him; the soldiers openly wanted his blood. Then he was kept there all winter against his will; he was sick; and he was younger then. As it was, he lost a year of work, at an age when every year counts. How can Dion ask him to go back there?”
“We must be just,” said Speusippos, appealing to himself. “It is not simply the money. Dion hopes Plato will procure his recall.”
I asked, “Does Dion himself say this?”
“Certainly. He said it to me.”
“How can he hope so for a moment? Dionysios was ready to believe the worst of him without any cause but jealousy. And now, for years, all Greece has been praising the Great Exile, every word of it at Dionysios’ expense, every word a stab to his pride. He must detest the very name of Dion. Besides, they couldn’t dare have him back; he is the hero of all the democrats in Sicily. Dionysios does not even offer it to get Plato there, for which he would offer nearly anything. Can Dion dream he would be recalled?”
“It is man’s nature to believe what he greatly wishes.”
“That’s true. But is it the nature of philosophy?”
He stopped still in the street. The linkboy paused at the corner, missed us, and came running back to make sure we were still on our feet. Speusippos waved him on. “So, Niko, you were listening all the time. And back it comes, just when I run to you for comfort.”
“I am sorry,” I said. “What do I know of philosophy? All that sticks in my mind is that Plato is his friend.”
Speusippos said, “Yes, you have your own elenchos. I should have feared the logic of your heart.”
Now both of us were silent. We walked on through the dark, following the bobbing torch; presently we reached the turn of the road before my house, and the boy ran ahead to light my door. We lingered, both thinking, I suppose, that there must be something cheerful to part upon, if we could lay hold of it in time.
I said, “One thing I can’t believe is that Dion would do this only for the money. He has had all the luxuries of Syracuse at call, just for clapping his hands, and has gone without from choice. Look at his style of living.”
“I am sure he has no wish to change it. But there is one danger to a rich man in simple tastes: they enable him to be generous. Of course he has asked for no return; he would abhor the thought of buying sycophants. But, the world being what it is, there is a crowd about him—not all disinterested, I’m afraid. It has given him great consequence, without his having anything to be ashamed of. Now he is used to it. As you know, he has his pride.”
We had come to the house. For form’s sake I asked him in; he thanked me and said he must be at work early tomorrow. We dawdled towards the porch, still seeking the hopeful word.
“I can’t forget,” I said, “how nobly he used to speak of Plato, the first year of his exile. Of course, you were still in Syracuse … There is a book of Plato’s I read once—yes, truly, I read the whole of it. It was a supper party where they made speeches in praise of love. I daresay you know it?”
“Yes,” said Speusippos. “Yes, I have read The Symposion once or twice. I reread it yesterday.”
“I just meant that Plato has lived up to it.”
“I see. I misunderstood. I thought perhaps you knew for whom it was first written.”
Our eyes met. I exclaimed, “This must be a passing mood with Dion. Good actors have days when they can do nothing right; no doubt good men do, too. Now he knows how Plato feels, he will remember himself and think no more of such a thing. I daresay we are troubling ourselves over very little.”
Dawn was breaking. Birds sang in the willows, the same that had wakened me when the house was warm within. In the gray light, I saw Speusippos’ face creased like a monkey’s which has bitten a sour fig. He said, “I see I must tell you everything. As early as last year, Dion wanted Plato to accept the Archon’s invitation. Since he refused, nothing has been quite the same between them. Then, when this latest summons came, Dion called to discuss it, walked out in anger, and has not been near Plato since. Plato has written, I know. But there has been no answer.”
A cloud had caught the hidden sun, and glowed pink above us. Looking up to the High City, I saw the gilded ornaments on the temple roofs glitter in the first shafts of day. Before the house stood the lad with the torch waiting for leave to quench it. Something stirred in my memory; a shudder like a cold finger rippled up my backbone. I began to speak, and ceased.
“What?” asked Speusippos, roused from his thoughts.
“No, nothing,” I answered. “I forgot you missed the play.”
15
IN EARLY SUMMER, THETTALOS GOT BACK FROM his tour. I had awaited this with more pain than hope. Days are long for the young; the past is soon crowded out. But like a homing kingfisher, he came flashing straight back to his bough beside the stream.
All the spoils of his voyage, the theaters, cities, triumphs and troubles, his many scrapes (he was more adventurous than wild) he flung before me. He talked half the night—about the plays they had done, how Miron had directed them, and how he could have done it better. He was just at the age when one must let out one’s new thoughts or burst. Now he was free to tell them all. When he jumped out of bed at midnight to show me how he would have done an upstage entrance if Miron had let him, I saw beyond the open door the mask smiling down on us, amused and kind.
We went everywhere together, a joy to those who wished us well, a grief to the backbiters whose meat is broken friendship, and who had been busy when he left.
One day, when we were sitting with friends in the scentshop, I slipped away to Sisyphos the goldsmith’s to order a ring for him as an anniversary gift—a sardonyx, carved with Eros on a dolphin. While Sisyphos did his sketches, I idled round the shop, and heard some merchant ask if it was true a ship was in from Syracuse. Someone said yes, but not a trader. This was a state trireme, sent by the Archon to fetch Plato the philosopher.
I had been taken up with my own happiness. This news so shook me that I dropped all my morning business, fetched Thettalos from the scentshop, and told him I must go out to the Academy. Though he knew nothing of Plato but what I had told him, he was quite concerned.
“Yes, do go,” he said. “I’ll walk with you. It is wicked to treat the poor old man like this. I suppose he’ll listen to no one but Dion (whom you know I never took to) and his philosophic friends. But one should at least take notice. We owe him a happy evening.” He was remembering a supper for two at home, when we had read The Symposion together. I said that Plato would have enough to do without my troubling him, and I would just ask for news.
“I would like some day, Niko, to talk theater with that man. I doubt all his notions are as silly as you think. It’s time they stopped turning every play on the gods. Half the modern writers don’t believe in them; the rest think like you and me, that they are somewhere or everywhere, but in any case not sitting in gold chairs on Mount Olympos, feuding and meddling like a brood of Macedonian royalty, ready to chop down any virtuous man who forgets to flatter or bribe them.”
Though myself not much above thirty, I often found the talk of the new generation standing my hair on end. At his age we whispered such thoughts; in my father’s day they were a hemlock matter. Yet Plato had said something not unlike it, and he was seventy.