The Walled Orchard (2 page)

Although I disliked goats (and still do), I preferred goat herding to education and soon became as proficient at the business as it is possible for a small boy to be. At Pallene we were between two mountain ranges, so that pasture was available at no great distance from home, and since the beasts themselves were generally docile I was able to devote most of my time spent on goatherd-duty to what was, even then, my greatest passion and preoccupation; the composition of iambic verse.

At first I composed Tragedy, since Tragedy, and in particular the works of the celebrated Aeschylus, was what was mostly recited at home and in the village. Most people had at least a few passages of the great man’s plays by heart, and one old man, who made his living mostly by paying visits and staying to dinner, claimed to know all the seventy-four plays. He had been (so he said) a member of the State Acting Corps; and he certainly had a fine reciting voice, which I used to carry in my head when deciding whether a line would sound well when spoken.

But I soon gave up Tragedy; the long streams of polysyllabic compounds and arcane kennings that make up the high Tragic style seemed to me both difficult and ridiculous. As soon as I saw my first Comic play — it made such an impression on me that I cannot now remember who wrote it or what it was about — I decided to compose only Comedies; and, with one exception which I shall tell you about in due course, I have kept that vow all my life. The Comic style, after all, is closely based on the patterns of speech of ordinary people, so that the greatest compliment you can pay a Comic poet is to say that you didn’t realise that his characters were speaking verse at all. In fact, I maintain that Comedy is far harder to write than Tragedy (nobody believes me, of course) since Tragedy has a language all of its own which is expressly designed for writing plays in, whereas ordinary speech was never meant to be chivvied into an iambic line and neatly broken up with caesuras. Fortunately, I was born with the knack, and my mother used to say that I spoke in verse virtually from the cradle. Coming from my mother, that was not a compliment; she came from a minor political family and had been brought up to despise satirists.

From the age of nine onwards, then, I took to warbling childish
parabases
and
stichomythiae
to the goats and the thorn trees. I had not as yet learned the art of writing on wax tablets or Egyptian paper, and so I carried the lines, once finished, in my head. I still do this even now, and only write a play out when it is finished. After all, actors have to learn their parts, and if the author cannot remember the play, how can the actors be expected to?

By the time I was eleven, I had started composing choral lyrics, which in fact I have always found easier than iambic dialogue, and soon I had completed my first Comedy, of which I was absurdly proud. It was called
The Goats
after its Chorus and first audience, and it was awarded first prize in the Pan-Hymettic Festival by the old white billy-goat whom I had elected as chairman of the twelve judges. Since my play was the only entry that year, I don’t suppose he had much choice in the matter, and shortly afterwards he butted me very painfully when I was trying to pleat his forelock, which gave me an early and invaluable lesson in the fickleness of audiences.

The Chorus, dressed as goats, represented the People of Athens, and their goatherd was the glorious Pericles, the great statesman who led Athens at the time. No Comedy worth the name was complete without a vitriolic and obscene attack on Pericles, and
The Goats
was no exception. One day, the goatherd is pasturing his flock on the fat uplands of the empire when a band of Spartan bandits waylays him and steals from him the cheeses he has himself stolen from his master the Treasury. I am rather better at allegory now, I am pleased to say; at the time, I thought this the height of subtlety.

Enraged at this cowardly attack, Pericles resolves to declare war on Sparta and build a wall of trireme ships all round the empire to keep the Spartans out and the goats in. There was a nice scene in the Goat Assembly, where Pericles proposes the motion; his speech, the
agon
of the play, was a parody of all I could remember of a speech by the great man that almost everyone in Pallene had learned by heart, while the counter-speech by Tragosophus (‘Wise Goat’) was a close imitation of the reply by one of his opponents. There was also a good Chorus scene where the Potidaean goat tries to break through the wall to escape, and is sacrificed and eaten by Pericles and the other goats (that was for my father, of course). To this day I could quote you the Prologue speech, the first I ever composed (‘This goatherd now; he’s quite another thing/We think he means to make himself our King’); but I have acquired a certain reputation as a Comic poet, and it is not quite worthy of me.

Then came the outbreak of the Great War against Sparta, and my idyllic life of poetry and goat herding was interrupted every year by the annual invasion by the Spartans, which involved two unpleasantnesses; going to school to learn oratory and the poetry of Homer, and having to live in the City while the Spartans were about. On the whole, I thought Homer more of a nuisance than the Spartans, because inside the City there were men who had recently been in a Chorus and so could recite the latest Comedies. Since there was nothing for men to do in the City between Assemblies and trials, with most of the population cooped up inside the walls for months at a time, everyone had time to spare for a small boy who said he was going to be a Comic poet as soon as he was old enough to be given a Chorus. The only condition was that I should give Pericles a hard time in my first Comedy; little did they know that I had already done this.

The leading Comic poet of the time was the celebrated Cratinus, whom I was privileged to meet when I was twelve years old. There are few people in this world who truly merit the epithet Disgusting, but Cratinus was one of them. He was a little, stooped man with a leering smile, and his hands never stopped shaking, even when he was relatively sober. There was always vomit on his gown somewhere, and his interest in small boys was not that of a teacher. Nevertheless, he was always an honoured guest, at least for the early part of the evening, and in spite of his unfortunate personal habits, such as wiping his fingers on his neighbour’s hair when he sneezed, I never met anyone (apart from other Comic poets) who really disliked him. He was a born politician, and he loathed and despised Pericles with every ounce of his small, frail, unpleasant body. It was therefore quite easy to win his undying friendship, and my mother’s uncle Philodemus, who knew him quite well, instructed me in the art when I said that I would like to meet him.

To endear yourself to Cratinus, all you had to do was this. As soon as the conversation turned to politics, you had to look troubled, as if you were on the point of making some dreadful confession. ‘I know it’s very foolish of me,’ you would say, ‘and I know he’s made this country what it is today, but in my heart of hearts I think Pericles is wrong about…’ (Here insert the leading issue of the day.) ‘I can’t tell you why,’ you would continue, looking sheepish and if possible mumbling slightly, ‘it’s just a feeling I have.’

This was Cratinus’ cue. He would break in and start explaining, very forcibly and with many gestures, exactly what was wrong with Pericles’ latest policy. During the exposition, you would frown and nod reluctantly, as if you were being forced, against your will, to accept some great truth. Cratinus would then believe that he and he alone had converted you to the right way of thinking, and you would be his friend and political ally for life.

After several rehearsals I was judged to be word perfect, so a drinking party was arranged and a cheap second-hand dinner-service was bought from the market, in case Cratinus started throwing things when he got drunk. It was my job to be Ganymede and pour the wine, and my uncle invited a couple of old friends with strong stomachs to be the other guests. As usual, Cratinus was unanimously appointed King of the Feast (which means he had the right to choose the drinking-songs and topics of conversation and declare who should sing or speak first), and the food was quickly and messily eaten. Then I was brought forward to play my scene, which I did perfectly.

Cratinus swallowed the bait like a tunny-fish, and started waving his hands about furiously. If only, he exclaimed, spilling his wine over my uncle’s gown and tilting the neck of the jar I was carrying over his cup, all in the same movement, the voters of Athens had the common sense of this clear-thinking brat!

‘You’d think,’ he said, quivering with indignation, ‘that if the idiots award first prize to a play entirely devoted to obscene and scurrilous attacks on a man, then they don’t like him. It stands to reason, surely. Not in this miserable city it doesn’t. Every year I put him on the stage and those imbeciles in the audience wet themselves laughing at his expense. Then they go home, change into something clean, and troop off and elect him for another term. I don’t understand it; it’s almost as if having the piss taken out of him makes the bastard more popular.’

‘Maybe it does,’ said my uncle. ‘Maybe all you’re doing is giving them an outlet for their natural frustration. If they didn’t have that, maybe they wouldn’t vote for him so much.’

‘And anyway,’ said one of the other guests, a neighbour of my uncle’s called Anaxander, ‘so long as you win your prize you don’t care, surely?’

Cratinus nearly choked. ‘What the hell do you take me for?’ he snapped. ‘I wouldn’t give you a dead frog for all the prizes ever awarded. What do you think I want out of life, for God’s sake?’

‘Come off it,’ said Anaxander cheerfully. ‘All this crusading stuff is just for the audiences. Everyone knows that as soon as the Chorus have left the stage, the poet and the politicians go off and get drunk with each other, which is why we have all those pools of curiously coloured vomit in the streets the day after the Festivals. I bet you fifty drachmas that if Pericles died tomorrow you wouldn’t know what to do with yourself. He’s your meal-ticket and you’re his pet jackal.’

Cratinus went as purple as the wine and started to growl, so that I was quite frightened; but my uncle just smiled.

‘That’s just the sort of crap I expect from a voter,’ said Cratinus at last, when he had finally managed to control his fury. ‘I’ll bet you fifty drachmas you voted for the little sod at the last election. Well, didn’t you?’

‘As a matter of fact,’ said Anaxander, ‘I did. What of it?’

Cratinus leaned over and spat into Anaxander’s cup. ‘Now we’re even,’ he said. ‘You foul my cup, I foul yours.’

Anaxander didn’t think this was terribly funny, and my uncle started to frown.

Just then, it occurred to me that I might be able to save the situation, so I cleared my throat timidly and said, ‘But isn’t what Anaxander said right, up to a point? Isn’t winning the prize, or at least writing a good play, what it’s all about? Just because the audience don’t get the point, that doesn’t make the play any less good.’

Cratinus turned on me and scowled. ‘The boy isn’t quite so sensible after all,’ he said. ‘If I wanted to write good plays, I’d be a Tragedian, and then perhaps I wouldn’t get thrown out of quite so many polite parties. If all I wanted to do was write good iambics I wouldn’t fool about with Comedy, which is mostly hard work; I’d write Oedipuses and Sevens against Thebes and all that kind of crap, and then I’d win all the prizes in the world, and nobody would have the faintest idea what I was on about, and neither would I. You listen to me, and I’ll tell you something. If ever you want to be a Comic poet —God forbid you should, it’s a really rotten life, I’m telling you — find yourself someone to hate, and hate them as much as you possibly can. For me it’s easy, I’ve got Pericles and I actually do hate him. That’s why I do Comedy better than anyone else. But you’re young, you probably don’t hate anyone enough to want to eat their guts warm off a meat-hook. In which case, you’ll have to imagine you hate him. Picture him in your mind’s eye killing your father, raping your mother, pissing down your well, smashing your vine-props. When you cut your little toe, say “That’s Pericles’ fault”; if it rains during harvest, say “Pericles has made it rain again.” Everything that goes wrong in your life, I want you to pin it on this enemy of yours. That way you’ll get a sort of lump in your intestines like a slowly forming turd which you’ve just got to squeeze out, somehow or other, and then you’ll start writing Comedy. At first, you’ll just write hours and hours of vulgar abuse, like “Pericles has got balls like a camel”, but then you’ll realise that that doesn’t do any good. You’ll find that if you want to hurt you’ve got to write well, so that when the audience laugh they’re siding with you and against him. Now I’m still not good enough to be able to make them do that, but it’s too late now. One of these days I’ll have his nuts, and then I can retire and grow beans.’

‘You’ll never manage that,’ said my uncle. ‘Or don’t you know anything about Athenians?’

‘I’ve been a Comic poet for fifteen years,’ Cratinus replied. ‘I know more about Athenians than any man living.’

‘No you don’t,’ said my uncle. ‘All you know about is making Athenians laugh, which is a trade, like mending buckets. You obviously don’t know what makes them work, or you wouldn’t still be trying to put a message across in the Theatre. If you knew the first thing about your fellow citizens, you’d have realised by now that what they love above all things is the pleasure of words. The Persians love gold, the Spartans love bravery, the Scythians love wine and the Athenians love clever speaking. The fact of the matter is that an Athenian would far rather listen to a description of a banquet in the great king’s palace than eat a nice bean stew, and he much prefers voting to annex the silver mines of Thasos to harvesting his own winter barley.’ He paused, took a long gulp of wine, and continued. ‘Why do you think we invented the Theatre, for God’s sake? Come to that, why do you think we have a democracy? It’s not because a democracy makes for better government; quite the opposite, as you well know. It’s because in a democracy, if you want to have your own way, you’ve got to make the best speech, and then all the farmers and the sausage-merchants and the men who work in the dockyards go away from Assembly in the morning with their heads full of the most glorious drivel and think they own the world. That’s how your beloved Pericles got to be Zeus’ favourite nephew; by clever speaking. And it’s the likes of you that keep him there, because just as soon as the fumes of all that oratory have worn off and the voters start wanting to see some public expenditure accounts, along you come with your incredibly funny plays and your brilliant speeches, and soon they’re all soaked to the skin in words again.’