The Mask of Apollo (11 page)

“I’m sorry,” I said. “An artist ought to have known better.” We sat down on a bank under an olive tree. Once one got used to her, I found her easier to talk to even than easygoing Gyllis of Thebes. The one could have furnished a regiment from her lovers; the other had virgin written all over her, but she was used to men’s companionship, friendly without brazenness and self-respecting without defiance. It seemed Plato had known his business.

After we had talked a while longer, I told her I had met Dion at Delphi. Her face lit up, and she said, “He is our hope for all the world!”

I had expected praise of him, but this was a good deal more. “You look surprised,” she said. “Have you read nothing of Plato’s, then, not even
The Republic?
” I confessed that this was so. “You will find it all,” she said, “in Books Four and Five, where he says mankind will never be free of evil till some great state comes under the control of a philosopher trained to kingship. Someone has to begin, before people will believe it works. He says most polities today are like ships being steered by a half-blind master. The crew know he’s off course, and plan to mutiny; but if they manage to seize the helm it will be no better, for none of them can navigate; they’ve not learned that such a science exists. If a real pilot came by and said, ‘Steer by Arcturus,’ they’d mock him for a star-struck zany. The philosopher is the pilot. He knows where the harbor is, and the reef; he knows the constant stars. But men still pursue illusions. Their prejudice will not be broken till such a man takes the helm and shows them. Once he has saved them from the rocks, that will be the end of guesswork. No man will drown if he sees the remedy, will he?”

She paused for a feed-line, as philosophers do—just like comic actors, though one must not say so. I answered, “Surely not.”

“So, then, when Dion gets his ship, a new age will begin.”

“What?” I said startled. “Is Dion planning revolt then?”

“No, how could you think such a thing? He is a friend of Plato’s. Plato has always taught that violence and treachery can beget nothing better than themselves. This was also the teaching of Pythagoras, the wisest of men.”

“Then what does he hope for? It’s true, he is like a man the gods made for kingship. But Dionysios has an heir.”

“One he despises.”

“Blood is blood, when the last push comes.”

“Sometimes pride talks louder. Dionysios didn’t build up the Syracusan power to bequeath it to the Carthaginians at his death.”

“Is that what he thinks of his son?”

“So everyone says. He has scared him since his childhood; now he despises him for a coward.”

“Is he really one?”

“Maybe. Maybe he just wants to keep alive the best way he can. Old Dionysios is brave enough in war; but he sees an assassin behind every chair. Did you know that even his own family can’t come in to see him till they’ve been searched down to the skin? Almost since his childhood, young Dionysios, the son, has lived in dread that his father may suspect him of some usurping plot, and decide to make away with him. He can’t be made to touch any sort of public business; he’ll scarcely offer a sacrifice at the Games, or dedicate a fountainhouse.”

“Well, you can’t kill the cow and milk it too. What did his father expect?”

“Who knows what an untrained mind will think? One thing is certain; he trusts Dion further than any other man alive. He is even let off the searching, because the tyrant knows him for what he is—incapable of treachery. He is kin by marriage, not by blood; he comes of the old nobility, while Dionysios is a nobody; he is an envoy other states respect and will do business with, when they’d not trust Dionysios across the street; a soldier proved in battle, whom his men would follow anywhere. He has not always even carried out his orders; where he was sent to strike terror and make examples, he has done justice and won respect. Yet the heir is searched, while he is not.”

“I can believe all that. But only a philosopher, surely, would pass his own blood over and choose an heir for virtue.”

“Oh, yes. We don’t expect it. But Dionysios has two sons by his other wife, Dion’s sister. They’re young yet, but he has helped bring them up; the elder thinks the world of him. Dionysios might decide to name him heir; and then Dion would have the chance he needs. It’s not the show and pride of power he wants—only to change a city ruled by men to one ruled by laws.” I could tell, by the way she spoke these last words, that she was quoting, I suppose from Plato.

“Which laws?” I asked. “Athenian?”

“Oh, Nikeratos, how can we talk till you’ve read
The Republic?
Listen. Wait here. I’ll see if it’s free in the library. You’ll take good care of it? If it gets lost, I couldn’t afford to pay a copyist; I’d have to do it from the wax myself, and it would take a year.”

“Is it so long?” I asked, alarmed. But then I thought of Dion and said, “Yes, I’ll keep it safe.”

She was gone some time; at last I saw her hurrying through the trees, the dark curls ruffled on her brow. Certainly she had made her confession none too soon; I wondered if Plato had felt the same.

“I am sorry,” she said, “it’s out. And then Speusippos, Plato’s nephew, kept me talking. But I’ve brought you this. It’s quite short, and of course you will like it better. I should have thought of it at first.”

There was only one roll, not thick. I thanked her, perhaps too gratefully. “Is this about law too?”

“No; love.”

“I shall surely like it. Tomorrow I’ll meet you here to return it, at about this time.”

“I will be here. Do you know, you are the first man to be my friend who has not been a philosopher? The rest have thought me a monster.”

“That would come ill from an actor. When I put on a woman’s mask I am a woman; I could do nothing if I were not. There are two natures in most of us who serve the god.”

“You will like this book. I’m glad I chose it.”

“And I that we met.” And there was more in this than civility.

I had meant to meet friends that evening; but it being too early, I untied the book and looked into it. It was called
The Drinking Party
, a cheerful start at least; and my interest quickened when I found it was supposed to take place at the house of Agathon the Tragedian after his first winning play. I had acted in his
Antaeus
, a charming piece, and the beginning of modern theater, for he got rid of the chorus from the action and enabled us to have plots which don’t assume the presence of fifty onlookers. Though to my disappointment there was no account of the production, the dialogue held me, and I kept reading. Presently they started a party game, a round of speeches in praise of love. The next thing I knew, it was getting too dark to see. I lit the lamp, and went back to the book, and did not move till it was done.

As one finds later, the early speeches are only supposed to show the bottom of love’s ascent. But it was the dream of my boyhood, the knightly bond of Aristogeiton and Harmodios, Achilles and Patroklos, Pylades and Orestes. I remembered how I had lived it with my first lover, the Syracusan actor. He had worn the hero’s mask for me, not in deceit, but, as I had long since understood, at my demand. Poor man, he would far sooner have had a listener for his little troubles—the rival who topped his lines or spoiled his big scene with bits of business, the tour that went broke in the wilds of Thessaly. I looked back at his kindness gratefully; he had been tender with my illusions; I had been lucky, as it mostly goes today. I had long since ceased to believe that the reality existed. Now I knew that it did, though not for me.

Plato and Dion had known it. I had seen proof. Twenty years after that torch was kindled, with all the heat burned out of it, it still gave light. It was bitter to me, though I had hoped nothing for myself; such is man’s nature. However, words and their sound being in my blood, I could not cease to read. I was like someone who, hearing a lyre upon the mountain, must follow it over rocks and thorns. The man wrote like a god. Now he is dead, people begin to say his mother conceived by Apollo. Well, he was mortal. I met him; I know. But I can understand the story.

Aside from all this, it was splendid theater. One itched to put it on a stage. Alkibiades was a bravura role I would have given my ears for. Sokrates seemed to fall between tragedy and comedy (the modern writers are just starting to explore this ground), but the character arrested me, since I knew him mostly from the lampoon in
The Clouds.
If he was really such a man as Plato makes him, then his death was murder, and Aristophanes’ hands are far from clean. This set me thinking that it was not wonderful if Plato had no time for dramatists, nor much for actors.

When I gave the book back to Axiothea I asked her if this was so. Though it was long before her time, she had heard the tradition of the school: that at Sokrates’ trial Plato had got up to speak for the defense, which, considering the temper of the court and of the government, must have put him in great danger. He had opened with, “Gentlemen, though I am the youngest who ever stood up before you—” planning to say he spoke for the young men Sokrates was accused of having corrupted. But the dikasts all bawled out, “Sit down!” and, being an amateur, he could not make himself heard. I suppose it was hardly surprising that he never got over this; but, as I told Axiothea, it was a real loss to the theater. There was no doubt he had it in him.

I met her often in the park, because I liked her company, and for the sake of what she could tell me about Dion. Not having lost hope of bringing me to philosophy, she introduced me to her friends, one of whom was Speusippos, Plato’s nephew. He was an elegant young man, spare and wiry, with a face like a handsome monkey’s, who usually looked as if he had been up late, sometimes at his books, but sometimes not. In spite of this he missed nothing; Axiothea said he was one of their most brilliant men. He certainly had charming manners, and, though he knew every play worth hearing, always asked my opinion first.

On the other hand there was Xenokrates, a lean fellow with an untrimmed beard and dirty nails, who never moved any of his face but his mouth to talk, so that I often felt like telling him he could buy a better mask for ten drachmas. As coolly as if I had been a deaf post, he maintained to the company that it was casting nets for the wind to try and philosophize an actor, a man, he said, who lent himself to every passion, not to learn the mastery of pain and pleasure, but rather to display their worst excesses for the applause of the ignorant. As well expound chastity in a brothel. No one rebuked him for his rudeness; it was their custom that any proposition must be debated before it was condemned. Perceiving this, I kept my temper; the discussion lasted some time, but Speusippos took my side, and was agreed to have won the day.

They often talked about Dion without any prompting from me. They believed (getting it from Sokrates) that a memory of justice is born in man; and Dion was their favorite illustration.

His father, Hipparinos, had come of the highest blood in Syracuse, and had always spent like a king. What with race horses, palace-building and banquets, he was nearly broke when he backed Dionysios’ rise to power, and got his stake back fivefold. Dionysios must have liked the man as well as valuing him, for he bound their families as close as law allowed, marrying Hipparinos’ sister, Dion’s aunt, and, when she bore a daughter, betrothing the girl to Dion, whom he treated almost as a son.

Sicily, however, is not Greece, whatever the Greeks there tell you. Dionysios, a king in all but name, indulged a king’s whim and took two wives. Aristomache, the sister of Dion, was for friendship and support at home, Doris of Lokri for foreign policy. It might have set the kindred at each other’s throats if he had not been a resourceful man. He avoided disputes about precedence by marrying them both the same day; what’s more, he lay with them both that night, and no one was allowed to see which door he entered first.

It was Doris of Lokri who first bore a son; this was not, it would seem, what he had hoped, for after some time, Aristomache still not conceiving, he had Doris’s mother put to death for casting a barren spell on her. (As I was saying, Hellas stops at the straits.) Doris’ son was a growing lad when Aristomache’s first son was born.

Meantime, young Dion was growing up, all the gods’ darling: as free of the Archon’s house as of his own; so rich he need never ask what anything cost; ranking like a king’s nephew, or rather higher; and with the looks of some youth on a frieze by Pheidias. Courted both for his favor and his person, in that most dissolute of cities, he managed to keep his honor. It left its mark on him; though not vain, he learned aloofness in self-defense, and people called him proud. At sixteen he escaped, with relief, to war. The gods had stinted him of nothing; he was brave as well. Campaigning in Italy, he found time to study with the Pythagoreans. At twenty, with his brilliant youth dawning into a manhood not less splendid, he received news that Plato was their guest. He dashed at once across the straits to offer homage.

By now I had read one or two of Plato’s dialogues, written some time before this happened. There is nearly always, somewhere, a glorious youth, Lysis or Alkibiades or Charmides, as athletic in mind as body, who neglects his jostling suitors to alight by Sokrates, asks all the right questions, modest but keen, and goes off all radiant from the play of minds, sure to return. Here was the dream come true. I could imagine how Plato felt.

Before long they were in Sicily, climbing Mount Etna to view the craters. The pure form of the distant mountain, floating in ether, white as foam; the climb above the orchards among fierce shapes of black lava; the snows bathed in light sighing out dragon’s breath; the fire-fuming stithy plunging unfathomed from the skies to the core of earth—nothing less, I daresay, seemed worthy of the elements released within them.

Meantime, Dion had sent word to Syracuse; and Dionysios, who loved to think his court a Helikon of muses, sent the expected summons.

Young Dion was enraptured. Love and philosophy had opened his eyes; he saw all was not well in Syracuse where things had gone so well for him. But he had learned too that man only sins from ignorance. He must love the good, once seen. And—how not?—everyone must love Plato.