The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

  Next morning was the formal opening of the Games; the air rang with trumpet calls from the heralds’ contest; presently the winner, who would give out all the victories, sounded for the dedication. We saluted Zeus and Pelops from a distance; the crowd round the Great Altar was as thick as porridge, and as hot.

  By now the sleepy valley was like a city, and all the side shows were on. In the recital hall some political philosopher, from the school of Isokrates, I think, was delivering an endless lecture, instructing the world’s leaders on how to conduct their state affairs for their own good and that of Greece. All the envoys, sophists and politicians were there; the hall was packed and they were standing in the stoa, even out in the sun. Theodoros pointed out to us the secret agents, who, indifferent to what the expert insisted should be done, were moving among his auditors to learn what was really happening. We noticed too a knot of bright-haired Macedonians, loaded with massive jewelry (I admit they can wear it and it is exquisitely made) all listening just like Greeks. Though they make wildly enthusiastic theater audiences (every actor has a stock of stories about Pella) this sophistication surprised me. Theodoros, however, said he noticed a change each time he went there; they were getting more and more involved with the southern states; not, he added, that it would come to much until one of their kings could contrive to stay alive for two Olympiads running. It was remarkable, he said, that the role was still so much sought after. He wondered how the lecturer would shape in it.

  We walked on, visiting a booth of dancing dwarfs, a concert in the mixolydian mode for double-flute, aulos and kithara; a diviner who foretold the winner of the stade race by casting pebbles (the morrow proved him wrong), and even, briefly, a lawyer’s exposition of how he could win his client’s case when justice, law, public opinion and all the evidence were on the other side. Then we walked back the way we came. In all this time, the political philosopher had only just stopped talking. The street crowd had dispersed, and the audience was coming out, discussing as keenly as if all these words might engender some real event.

  I was saying this to Theodoros, when at the far end of the street I saw someone coming, whose walk I knew at a glance. It was Plato. Speusippos was with him, as well as Xenokrates, and a group of friends and well-wishers. I was glad to see him back where he belonged, among people fit for him, and pointed him out to the others. Thettalos remarked that he was looking better, but that Syracuse had left its mark. Theodoros, who had been watching intently, said, “From the people greeting him, it seems he has only just arrived.”

  “Yes,” I answered. “He’ll have come straight from Tarentum.”

  “Then, my dears, let us wait where we are, for unless I’m wrong we shall see a memorable bit of theater. In a moment he will meet with Dion.”

  “Are you sure?” For some reason I wished to doubt it. “There were none of his men working on the pavilions.”

  “Niko, my dear, you don’t suppose Dion has to bring his own tent like common people? He’ll be at the state hostel, the Leonideion, with the other lions. Look, here he comes now.”

  He came out into the sunlight, with a train about him, among them Herakleides and his Athenian friend Kallippos. They were conversing, and well out in the street before they noticed anything. Plato saw Dion first. He slowed down; those with him all fell silent. As he came on, people round them became aware. He must have felt it; but he had had practice lately in keeping his thoughts to himself, if he had needed it. I saw, or fancied, a searching in his face, either of the man down the street, or the man within.

  Now Dion had noticed the stares. He scanned the street, stopped dead, strode forward. Thettalos’ hand closed round my wrist.

  They met. Dion clasped Plato’s hands, took his arm, and drew him aside. The gesture was explicit, dismissing both their retinues; all fell back, and stood looking after them as they walked our way. I saw Kallippos pour out words to Herakleides. I don’t know what they were looking for; as for me, I had seen what I had seen: the perfect seemliness with which Dion had greeted Plato and asked after his health, and his impatience showing behind it like fire round a furnace door. It was something to be got through, before he could ask for news.

  Of all places on earth, I should think none offers less privacy than Olympia in Games Week. One can’t even relieve nature in the presence of fewer than a dozen; one would need walk a mile into the country to find oneself alone. Dion was a Council guest; Plato no doubt was sharing a tent with friends. Neither was one for creeping into a corner. What Plato had to tell Dion, he told him in the Street of Victors, upon the marble seat under the statue of Diagoras the Runner. Standing between two plinths nearby, we saw it all.

  No doubt Dion must have heard something about the selling-up of his properties; but I think he must have supposed the capital still intact, if Dionysios could be made to send it. In any case, I could tell the truth had taken him by surprise. One could guess just how it was going: Plato leading in with the loss of the money, as the least of the evils, Dion swallowing that without too wry a face, his calm just setting hard, then asking after his son. I knew that from Plato’s pause. He told, I suppose, as much truth as he had to. Dion swallowed, his mouth clenched; this touched him closer. Plato offered some consolation; I don’t know how much he heard of it. He was watching Plato’s face, which told him something unguessed was still to come. I could tell just the moment when he cut him short to ask.

  Plato did not keep him waiting. After that, there was silence. It seemed to spread from Dion all along the street. It was like one of those great mute build-ups in Aischylos, for Achilles or for Niobe. But no big speech followed. Dion just clenched his fist and brought it quite slowly down upon his knee. His face said all the rest. Looking round, I saw Kallippos grasp Herakleides’ arm; Speusippos turned to Xenokrates, triumph in his eyes. Dion saw it too, a man used to living in public, who had said the thing he meant; no going back now. Then, as if pulled against his will, he turned again to Plato.

  Plato said something, a handful of words, and slowly shook his head. For a moment he seemed quite alone, like a man watching a ship out of sight. Somewhere she may make port; but not the harbor he faced the storm for. He commends her to heaven, and turns away.

  When they had gone, Theodoros, who without knowing what we knew had known well what he was looking for, said, “Did you see their faces? There will be war.”

  I said that it seemed so to me. We talked; but Thettalos was quiet. At last he turned to me and said, “Did he love his wife? You said not.”

  “That was my guess. But he would hardly tell me.”

  “In any case,” said Theodoros, “think of the affront. Could there be a greater?”

  Looking at me again, Thettalos said, “Well, not to him.”

  I understood him. I remembered Speusippos’ little flute-girl, whose father had died in the quarries, one of thousands in these long years. I had seen, just now, her story and his anger still burning in Speusippos’ face. I thought of Plato, thrown to the wolves of Ortygia, barely scraping out with his life. Through all these things, Dion had remembered the maxims of Pythagoras and the teachings of the Academy. But there is a limit to what the just man can bear.

  We walked on towards the temple. I lifted my eyes. There on the west gable stood Apollo, stern and beautiful among the Lapiths, shedding victory from his lifted arm.

  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.

  Here Dion, who could have explained the matter by its rational laws, showed himself a shrewd commander. He called on Miltas to read the signs. That wise man proclaimed that the moon must stand for the brightest and biggest power on earth, as in the heavens; here was the empire of Dionysios being quenched before their eyes to give them heart. No omen could be better.

  The men were cheered. One thing Dion and his brother took care to keep from them: Herakleides, who had promised to raise a fleet of ships with men to sail and fight it, had not arrived at Zakynthos.

  During the year of preparation, a coolness had begun between him and Dion. As exiles working together they had had to see more of each other than at home. Herakleides had an offhand hail-fellow way, which was part both of himself and of his politics; he made it a touchstone of good will to be met on his own terms. This Dion would not do, at first because it went against his grain, later because he grew to distrust the man. Now Herakleides sent excuses, whether good or not I don’t know—nor, I daresay, did Dion either. At all events, he p
ut his faith in the god, and set sail with what he had.

  There were three good-sized freighters in the little fleet, with two war triremes for escort. As well as his men’s own arms, he carried shields and weapons for two thousand men. At the heel of Italy, the fleet of Syracuse, under Philistos, was waiting to cut him off.

  He got word of this in time; and now truly he threw all into Apollo’s hand. Instead of hanging back in the hope of Philistos’ going away, he left the coastal route which every sane shipmaster follows and struck out across open sea. I turn queasy even to think of it.

  Apollo blessed him. They made Sicily in twelve days with a fair wind all the way. Their landfall was the South Cape, which was a bare thirty miles from Syracuse; this seemed tempting the god a little far. They stood out again; and as if to punish their doubt, ran into a storm which blew them across to Africa, and nearly ran them aground. They labored with oars off a lee shore, were becalmed off Great Syrtis Heads, and said their prayers. A breeze from the forgiving god cradled them back to Sicily; they landed at Minoa, in the Carthaginian province.

  The troops of the guard-post all turned out, thinking the war with Syracuse had started up again. For this Dion was prepared. He had warned his men that their lives would depend on their steadiness; they had the advantage of numbers, and must push back these men without bloodshed; then he could treat with the commander. They locked shields, and took the strong point without killing a man. Dion sounded for a parley. Up came the captain, and turned out to be a man he knew. Dion had accepted his surrender in some old campaign and treated him with honor. As soon as he was assured they were not marching against the power of Carthage, he came to terms. Dion gave up the strong point; Synalos quartered his soldiers and gave them stores. Anywhere in Sicily Dion’s word was good. If he threw out Philistos and his master, no Carthaginian would complain; if, as rumor had it, he meant to disarm Ortygia and disperse her mercenaries, they would object still less.