I thought, Perhaps it is impossible for a philosopher to be a king—at any rate, to be both at once. Perhaps that is only for the god. There at his side stand Theseus and Pirithoos, the heroes who will win his battle. We are weary of ourselves, and have dreamed a king. If now the gods have sent us one, let us not ask him to be more than mortal.
18
IT WAS A YEAR BEFORE DION WAS READY. The talk about Olympia would have died down, but for the rumors that ran underground like the shoots of the aloe, always coming up somewhere new. Greece was scattered with Syracusan exiles; father and son, the tyranny had lasted nearly half a century. These people were being sounded; I can confess, after so long, that I did some of this work myself. Sometimes I carried a letter to someone of importance, sometimes just took the feeling of the exiles in the place. I did not often see Dion; usually Speusippos took my reports. The Academy was in very deep.
Plato I never saw, except by chance as I came and went. He would greet me, but never ask my business. He had told everyone where he stood. Dion had been wronged. He had the right to claim satisfaction; their friends had the right to support him. Plato would neither blame nor praise. Himself, he believed about civil violence what his hard youth had taught. Besides this, he was Dionysios’ guest-friend, with all its religious duties. When people reminded him of the days in outer Ortygia, he would answer that Dionysios had done nothing to him, though he had had power to take his life and had been angry with him; the sanctities of their bond still stood inviolate. He was old; he could not bear arms, even if he had had the right. Therefore (though often urged to it, I believe) he would not make war with his tongue or pen, which he thought a coward’s compromise. If ever the two kinsmen could be reconciled, his duty would be to mediate, being bound to both.
Corinth, the mother-city, had more Syracusan exiles than any other place. It costs a good deal to live there; so it was mostly the exiled aristocrats who had been settling there over the years. With these I did not deal; Dion’s brother Megakles did that, being one of themselves. He was Dion-and-water, you might say: good-looking, dignified, soldierly, fairly tall, but everything scaled down. I doubt if the wrongs of Syracuse had ever irked him much while he suffered none himself; but he was a Sicilian noble, well-bred and brave, and eager for revenge. I minded my own business; but from what I knew of the exiles whose children were growing up Corinthians, I did not think they would be rushing to leave this pleasant city and take arms against the greatest power in Hellas.
Thettalos agreed but was less concerned than I. He came and went, trying his hand at whatever he felt he could grow by; he was now wanted as a second by good leading men, and his range was stretching with each new role. We understood each other. I knew pretty well, by now, what kind of actor I was, and how to use it; he was still learning to know himself (I daresay there was more to know); as this or that choice crossed his path he was restless and moody, all ups and downs. Neither of us could have borne for long to work together; owning this frankly, and taking the weather as it came, we escaped shipwreck and found new shores. He came back from Delos, where he had made a hit, swearing nothing had gone right with him, and demanding to work with me, if only for one production. “You taught me how, Niko; now you remind me to ask why. Perhaps it’s these philosophers you can’t keep away from.”
Just now, as I have explained, one could learn a good deal at the Academy besides philosophy—for instance, that Dion was hiring soldiers. With all his Sicilian losses, he was still richer than I had guessed till now. Most of the exiles had failed him; he did not get firm pledges from more than thirty. The rest had suffered too much before they got away, or feared for their kin in Syracuse, or liked their comforts, or simply did not think the venture had any chance. So the landless, banished Dion hired spearmen like a king. They were taken on in the Peloponnese, marched west, and ferried over to Zakynthos, where they were trained by Megakles. Only he and the captains knew what they were to do. Zakynthos is a quiet island, very rustic; I don’t think there is even a theater. Not much leaked out from there.
Nonetheless, by next year’s sailing weather, something was known in Syracuse. No doubt the exiles had talked. Greece was as full as ever of Dionysios’ agents—which meant Philistos’. The latest fugitives, friends of Herakleides, went straight to him and Dion, and said that the old man now ruled Syracuse in all but name. They added that he could have had that too if he had tried; he had at least the virtue of loyalty. Since Plato left, Dionysios had thrown himself back into dissipation, and was seldom sober enough for any serious business. As the drink gained on him he grew grosser in his pleasures; Philemon, who had lately appeared at the theater there, assured me that the very hetairas, when the Archon asked them to supper, drew for the short straw because no one wanted to go. His son Apollokrates, now a growing youth, despised him openly, preferring the company of the mercenary captains. But young Hipparinos was still to be seen at every party, his uncle’s favorite, very much at home.
Speusippos supported the war without reserve. The little flute-girl, whose sleepy face I remembered, had kept him awake to some purpose. Afterwards he had met some of her friends; and, in the end, people had talked to him who, because he had been received by the Archon, had fought shy of him before. The more he heard, the angrier he grew—but also the more hopeful. Dion’s exile had made him a legend among the people. He would come again, like some ancient hero-king, to lead them all to freedom. If no one would sail with him, let him come alone, and he would have an army from the moment his foot touched land.
Some of the younger men of the Academy were already setting their affairs in order, to be ready for the call. Axiothea confided to me her grief that she could not be one of them. “I must have done wrong,” she said, “in my last life on earth, and this is the punishment I chose when my eyes were opened. So I ought to bear it patiently, and hope for better next time. But oh, it is hard.”
Speusippos himself would not be going. Plato, now trying to make good a lost year of work, could not have spared him; besides, he too had been, even if uneasily, the Archon’s guest; he ranked next to Plato at the Academy, and it would have been almost like Plato going himself. But some of their most distinguished men were putting their books aside and polishing their armor. One of them, Miltas of Thessaly, came from a long line of seers in Apollo’s service; it was he who chose the day when Dion sailed, just after the god’s feast day. Dion arrived at Zakynthos in time to perform a sacrifice of dedication.
He reviewed his troops the day before, and told them what the war was. They were shocked; they were professionals, and knew the defenses of Syracuse. They started to shout; but Dion had not commanded troops all those years for nothing. He got them quiet, told them the prospects of success, with no words wasted, and had them cheering for him at the end.
On Apollo’s day, he arranged a splendid ceremony, every vessel made of gold; then he feasted his men, all eight hundred, at the race track. Such wealth he had left, after hiring, keeping and training them. The display did its work; they were certain he could not spend like this unless he were sure of support in Sicily.
Word of all this came back to Athens, then and later, as the Academy men sent news. To tell it whole, however: on the very night before they sailed, when everyone was happy, singing by moonlight round the fires, the full moon started to wane and to change her color, and presently was in eclipse. The men were appalled. No omen, they said, could be worse for an army; this very same sign had come to the Athenians before Syracuse in the Great War. The whole force had perished off the earth, and even that had been only the beginning of evils.