Nothing surprised me much by now. I said, “Do you mean what I think?”
“I daresay,” he answered. Then: “I was talking to that girl last night. She was twelve years old when some scout of Philistos’ saw her and hauled her off from home to amuse Dionysios. Her father objected; he went to the quarries and was never seen again. Dionysios hadn’t even decency enough to have her sent home after. She was put out like a stray cat, picked up by some Iberians, and passed around the barracks. Her own story’s nothing to some she told me; but sharing a bed seems to bring it home. He can do anything he likes, to anyone, that one man alone. It’s hard for the mind to grasp it.”
He was right; when one is not bred to it, one doesn’t conceive it, it must be smelled and tasted. Like me, he was too young to remember it at home. For that matter, even the Thirty had at least to agree together. “One man,” he said again.
“If you call him that. I doubt the troops do, now.”
“What was it old Dionysios said on his deathbed, Niko? ‘A city in chains of adamant.’ The chains are rotting. Dion should know.”
16
THE SOLDIERS REJOICED ALL NIGHT, AT THE expense of anyone they found at hand; then they went back on duty, and the city breathed again. I was scolded by Menekrates for going to Ortygia, and by Thettalos for not having taken him with me. At the mention of Herakleides, our host looked so nervous that, remembering his past hints, I added two and two. Though it was hard to think of so frank a soldier conspiring, yet it was certain that the mutiny had tested the troops’ loyalty, and the Archon’s strength. I wondered if Speusippos guessed.
Two days later, all being still calm, I went to call on Chairemon the tragic poet, taking with me Thettalos, whose work he would certainly know. After asking around (just like a poet, he had forgotten to say where he was staying) we learned he was in Ortygia, as a palace guest.
“Good,” said Thettalos as we went. “This time you can’t leave me to bite my nails all morning, wondering if you’re lying dead in a gutter. Lead me to the tyrant’s lair.”
It was with no great delight that I approached Ortygia. If the gates were to be closed again, I had no fancy to be inside. However, I showed our passes for outer Ortygia (these were easily got from the Athenian embassy) and had them endorsed for the palace citadel by the captain of the guard.
I had expected slackness at the guardhouses, after yesterday, but not what met us everywhere—restlessness, rumor, suspicion. At the Iberian gate two men were quarreling. As the first blows were struck, an officer came up cursing; there was a dangerous moment before they obeyed. We went on, not envying him his employment, nor indeed much liking our own. “Never mind,” said Thettalos. “It’s all in the business. One must study how men behave. Something can happen anywhere—pirates in the islands, satrap wars in Ionia, and in Macedon they’re forever assassinating the king.”
Our one strict check was the last, into the palace citadel. In the park, we found the groves full of men running about, light-armed Cretans going like beaters through the coverts, calling to one another. Some of them stopped us, but passed us through without saying whom they wanted.
In due course we found our way to the second-class guesthouse where Chairemon had a room. All the other inmates—poets, envoys, minor philosophers and so on—were huddled in the courtyard muttering. When Chairemon recognized us they all ran up asking for news. “Of what?” I asked. “If you mean the mutiny, it seems to be over.” Someone said, “Then they’ve not caught him yet?” When I asked whom he meant, he said, “Herakleides.”
“I don’t think so. The place is full of men searching. Why, what has he done?”
Of a sudden, everyone became careful; Chairemon said one could not be sure, one merely heard he was being searched for; if we would come to his room, he had a play he would like to talk about.
When the door was shut, he wrung our hands and thanked the gods for the sound of Attic speech. I thought he would burst into tears. “Never again! I came with Karkinos; he’s been before, and persuaded me to accept—the works of art, banquets, music and so on. Never, never again! Not that I’m concerned in this, not at all.” He looked round at the door. “It’s knowing that anything can happen—really, anything. It’s the thought, just the thought of it.”
I answered, “Pythagoras said, ‘Accept in your mind that anything which can happen can happen to you.’” I had heard this aphorism at the Academy. He looked at me in appeal, as if I could make it otherwise. I saw Thettalos laughing to himself.
It seemed Herakleides had been accused of causing the mutiny, and had gone missing. His friends, including Plato, had been pleading for him, because he had belonged to Dion’s party; and had got a safe-conduct for him from the Archon, to prepare his affairs for exile. Then today, on news that he had been seen, troops had been sent out to catch him. It was now supposed that the safe-conduct had been a trick, to delay his getting away.
“Maybe,” I said. “Or Dionysios just changed his mind.”
“But, surely, Nikeratos, his honor …”
“There’s only one judge of honor, in Syracuse.”
Chairemon blinked. I said, “Never mind, there’s still the theater. If Troy hadn’t fallen, where would we be today?” His eyes reproached my frivolity, but he consented to talk business.
He had a choregos for his new play, Achilles Slays Thersites, and wanted us to do it for the festival. Although he would read it aloud (why do so few poets read well?) it was a good piece of work. It started with the Amazon Penthesilea arriving as a Trojan ally. She challenges the Greeks; Achilles, still mourning for Patroklos, is brought the tale of her victories. Now he has resumed his place as champion of the Greeks, it is for him to meet her. They hail each other, she on the walls and he below, to exchange defiance. Love at first sight. But they are equal in pride and standing; each values honor more than life; they must fight to the death. Achilles wins. He enters from battle walking by the bier on which they bring her breathing her last. There is a lovely speech in which he praises her valor to cheer her parting soul. She’s gone. He kneels and weeps for her, bowed upon the bier. Thersites the mocker, who has been longing to hear that the great Achilles has fallen at last by a woman’s hand, now has his say. What a mourner! he cries. You’ve only just done grieving for Patroklos; now it’s this Amazon, and both of them died through you. Achilles gets up; Thersites takes fright and runs; off stage sounds his deathcry as Achilles fells him with a blow. After a lively scene with Diomedes, who has to demand satisfaction for the blood because Thersites was his kinsman, Artemis appears to stop the fight and reconcile the heroes. Big choral procession, Penthesilea given to her Amazons for burial, to end the play. It is now well known in Athens, but this was its first performance.
Achilles is for the protagonist, but there is a great deal of fat for the second too. Penthesilea dying is a dummy; he can play both her and Thersites. Chairemon had had the script copied so that we could take it home; we walked off so full of it that we hardly noticed the Cretans still rummaging the boskage. Reading as we went, we missed our way, and found ourselves in a new part of the park, among houses which looked dangerously important. I pushed the script into my robe, saying, “We must go back the way we came.”
“By all means,” said Thettalos, “if you know which it is.”
There were three paths behind us, all much alike. Beyond a grove of pink oleanders one could glimpse the palace roofs. “We had better look through,” I said. “If I see which side we are on, I can steer by that.”