by Mary Renault
“I doubt you were singled out. He has refused himself to a good many people lately. He found if he tried to advance anyone’s interests, just the opposite happened. That was Dionysios’ way of making himself felt, without an open quarrel. He won’t, if he can help it, force Plato into taking sides; he might learn what he has no wish to know. So he pricks in ways like these. Dion found he did his friends no good by taking notice of them. That’s why he shuts his door.”
“I am sorry for it. But with me, I’m afraid he must be really angry. If not, knowing I would think so he would have sent a letter.”
Speusippos drew his black brows together, and shook his head. “No, Niko. You think so, because it is what you would do yourself. Dion is proud. Till you know that, you do not know him.”
I remembered his desk, piled with petitions and state papers. How should a man like him beg pardon of a man like me, for being no longer even a trusted servant? The thought freed me from bitterness.
Since the year of my father’s death, when I had come on as an extra, I had never been in The Bacchae. While a second actor, I had once been offered my father’s roles but had turned them down, more, I suppose, from superstition than from piety, for no doubt he would have thought me foolish. Now, as protagonist, I would play the god, with one short double as Tiresias the Prophet. Menekrates, as Pentheus and Queen Agave, was keen and shaping well.
It is a play about a mystery, and a mystery in itself. Ask any actor what he thinks Euripides meant by it, and he will tell you something different. Myself, I have played in it now some seven times, and still don’t claim to know more than what one man makes of it, on one day. It is even possible, I suppose, that it was written to show that the gods are not. If so, someone crept up behind the poet, and breathed down his neck when he wasn’t looking. One thing I take it we may agree upon: the god of The Bacchae is not supposed to be like men.
There are first-class mask-makers in Syracuse, and of course we had the best. The Dionysos was most beautiful, a delicate blond face, almost feminine, as the play describes him, but with slant eyes, darkly drawn round like a leopard’s. It seemed to me just right. Menekrates was very pleased with the Agave, and Pentheus was nearly finished.
Philistos gave no trouble. He looked in now and again at rehearsals, sat quietly in front, would come behind to say it was going well and ask if we were satisfied with the machines, for there are a good many effects, with the earthquake and so on. Of course such things are better done at Syracuse than anywhere in the world, but he seemed anxious to be cordial, and even asked the cast to a drinking party. The others went, which I did not hold against them. I begged off with the excuse that I had had a feverish flux on tour (a common complaint in Sicily, where there is much bad water) and the doctor had me under orders. He could hardly press me, if he wanted the play to go on, so I was left in peace. I was doing this role to serve the god, not as Philistos’ sycophant.
During the half-month of rehearsals, I made it my business to visit small wineshops in poor streets and find out what the people were saying. I reckoned in this way to cover ground Speusippos would miss; for he could never look like anything but a gentleman, while I, if I choose, can look like a soldier or an artisan, not by dressing up but just in small ways of sitting and standing and slicking down my hair. As a rule I said I was a skene-painter from Corinth. The accent is very easy.
From being so much in Ortygia among the soldiers and servants of the Archon, I had begun to think Dion had not a friend left in the city. I now learned otherwise. The working folk, with one accord, had blamed the theater ban on Plato, a foreign sophist of whom they only knew he was Dionysios’ latest fad, which in itself was enough to damn him. Dion, they were all sure, would do nothing so impious or so odd. Dion was a great gentleman. When the old Archon died, and he had got the young cub at heel, it had been an age of gold while it lasted. People could bring their wrongs to judgment, even against the rich; taxes had been fairly levied, and the worst extortioners had gone to the quarries. The mercenaries had been made to behave themselves in the town, instead of acting like conquerors. And so on. Everyone, they said, had had hopes of his doing great things for the city; but it seemed, when it came to the push, he was too much the gentleman.
I could not make out just what it was they thought he would do, without help from them. Subvert the mercenaries, I suppose, and form a conspiracy and seize Ortygia; but nobody seemed to have a notion how such things are really done. Used as I was at home to being told I was a fool at politics, here any Athenian, even I, seemed as expert as a man among children. However careless we may be, there are some things we take for granted grown men will do for themselves. All this they had forgotten.
They talked of Dion as of a god, whose mind they did not expect to know. But even the gods have oracles, and priests who will take them messages from common folk. Dion had no such thing. I suppose, in Sicily, it was to be expected.
I sought out Speusippos with my findings. He was glad of the information, saying he had had most success himself with the middle-class citizens, with whom, he said, the friends of Philistos were daily making headway. They did not attack Dion directly, knowing how he was respected; it was through Plato they slipped their poison in. “In the time of our fathers,” they were saying, “the Athenians sent out two armies and a battle fleet to conquer Syracuse. None got home alive but a few wretched fugitives from the mountain brush, or slaves on the run. But now, Athens sends just one sophist with a silken tongue, and look what he has achieved. He has wound up the Archon in his web; soon he will suck him dry and hand over the power to Dion, who, as all the world knows, has been his fancy boy.”
Speusippos said that the men of culture, who had read Plato for themselves or spoken with those who had, were not so easily led; but even they were starting to believe what they were always being told, that the reforms would be hurried breakneck in, and cause civil chaos. Dion’s most solid support, he said, lay among men whom I had seen nothing of and he not much—the ancient aristocracy of Syracuse, whose fathers had fought the older tyrant. Their rising had been brief but savage; Dionysios’ revenge no less so; they, or their widows, had passed on the blood-feud to their sons, and it smoldered still.
All this he told me, and much more that I forget, for I was now in The Bacchae up to my neck. I recall, though, his saying there was talk of a Carthaginian embassy coming about a peace treaty. In the old Archon’s day, Speusippos said, their envoys had always been seen by Dion; they trusted his word, and his manners were such as they admire—commanding, spare of words, and stern, for he knew their ways. Now he was getting anxious lest Dionysios should try to handle it himself. He would be no match for them; at best they would get the profit of the bargain, at worst he might lose his head and provoke them into war; they might be all too ready once they had seen his quality. Dion was doing his best, therefore, to keep their chief men ignorant of his fall from power.
I said I hoped he would succeed, wondering in my heart whether he would come to see me act, and whether, if I did well enough, it would change his heart to me and open his door again. I feared this was not his play; he might only see it as one more folk-tale of Olympians behaving worse than men. But one cannot take this deity with the head; that, I suppose, is what the play is about. I must do it as I felt it, and leave the rest to the god.
Stratokles, old Dionysios’ chorus-trainer, had stayed on in the city to put on dithyrambs, so was here at need. He was good at his work, and not above taking some direction from the protagonist, which is important in this play. Everything went so well that, lest some god should be getting jealous, we were almost relieved when the mask-maker told Menekrates his Pentheus mask had been spoiled by some apprentice spilling paint on it, and would not be ready till the day.
“At the worst,” he said, “I can wear the second mask from the Hippolytos.” (There are three: the happy, the angry and the dying.) “Pentheus is an angry young man all through; it will do well enough in a pinch, and we can s
ay that the luck-god has had his sacrifice.”
“Amen,” I said.
Plays start at dawn in Sicily, for the heat of the day comes soon. The theater of Syracuse faces southwest, built into the slopes of Achradina. Behind these the sun comes up; one begins in the dusk of their shadow, till presently the long sun-shafts strike the stage.
That day there was a glowing sky, with great wings of flame from the hidden east almost to the zenith. But when we opened, the wings were folded still; we had a subtle and somber glow, dusky-red, bronze and purple. Seeing this light, spellbound and lowering, which Euripides himself might have written in, Menekrates and I looked at each other, neither daring to say, “A lucky omen!”
They doused the cressets which had lit the audience to their seats. I pulled down my mask as the flutes began.
Dionysos opens alone. I have a bit of business I always use when the play starts early in half-light. I cross to Semele’s altar, where, as the dramatist directs, the fire is sinking; then, picking up a torch which lies there, I kindle it, lift it, and gaze around. I do the whole opening speech like this, walking here and there, looking at the royal house I shall destroy. The god must not seem like a mortal man plotting malice. He is curious, smelling out the ground, a stalking panther from the upland forests who snuffs at the walls of men, softly prowling, innocent of what he is.
I like this quiet start. Then when I raise my voice to call on the Phrygian Maenads, everyone jumps, which is good. In they come dancing, with their pipes and drums and cymbals, shattering the hush and stealth. There were young satyrs with them, doing a torch dance.
Coming off, I found Menekrates dressed, with the Hippolytos mask pushed up; his new one had not come. I said it was hard, the masks being so good, that only he should have an old one. “I’d rather, now,” he said. “I’m played-in with this. I was only afraid the other would come by a panting messenger while I was lacing my boots. I know these eminent artists; one daren’t offend them, the choregos always takes their side because he’ll need them again. I should have had to wear it, with barely a glance in the mirror. One can’t do oneself justice.” Grateful he took it so well, I went to do my change for the seer Tiresias.
When I went on, I found the sky growing blue. The highlands were in sun, and the dewy chill was lifting. This is right, when mortals take the place of gods.
One can work up Tiresias if one likes; some leading men do; but I had rather give this scene to King Kadmos, that old trimmer who will dance on the hills with god or mountebank, no questions asked, if it gives him status. I just did straight man for his laughs. It helps the play; for bigoted and stiff-necked as Pentheus is, one must point up his integrity. That is the tragedy’s core.
Tiresias has a blind-man mask; one sees through slits between the eyelids. Turning my empty gaze upon the house, I perceived the play had taken.
Menekrates started his shouting off, denouncing the Bacchae and their rites. Just at his entrance-cue, the first sunbeams struck the stage, one falling on the very door, all ready. I thought, Some god loves us today.
Into the light stepped Menekrates, a big upstage entrance with supporting extras. The bullion and gilt jewels of his costume flashed, the crimson glowed. And he had on his new mask. It must have come at the very last, while I did my change. Enough to unsettle any artist; but he was sound and would keep his head.
Then I started to hear the audience. There was a pause, a buzzing, an angry mutter, a laugh. Good masks get their best effects with distance. I peered through my blind-man slits, which are less good than proper eyeholes, trying to see what was amiss, while Menekrates came on in the mask of Pentheus. A good character mask: a harsh proud face for an enemy of laughter and the joyous god. What, then, was wrong with it? Then I saw.
It was a portrait mask, such as they use in comedy, only less crude; a caricature, but a subtle one, toned down to the tragic style. It was the face of Dion.
I stood rooted, wooden as a post, while Menekrates went into his long entrance speech. I recalled the delays, the mask maker’s excuses, then its coming at the very last, after I was on stage and would not see. And just as a man will stare at a spear in his flesh, as if asking what it is, till suddenly the pain begins, so it broke upon me that Dion must be out in front there, in the seats of honor, getting this full in the face. What could he suppose, but that I knew?
He had thought the worse of me, no doubt, only for playing; and now, how much would he think Philistos and his master had paid me to make this worth my while? A nothing in a mask, a seller of illusions, a poets’ whore, whose life is spent in the public show of those passions the philosopher lives to master; a stroller from town to town, without a household; such men are easily bought.
My stomach heaved. For a moment I thought I would throw up on stage. By now Menekrates was halfway through his speech.
They tell me that a stranger out of Lydia
Has come to Thebes …
Dionysos, in whose mask I would soon be entering. I thought of that opening speech by torchlight, promising vengeance on the man who forbade my worship. Dionysos, god of the theater. A perfect buildup—for this.
As when I was a naked child on a Trojan shield, I longed for an earthquake to swallow up the skene. But that came later. I was a god, I would be giving the cue for it. I could have sat down, at that, and laughed until I cried.
Just let me get him here within my walls;
He’ll swing his thyrsos no longer, nor toss his head …
Menekrates came forward, gesturing threats. Poison was everywhere. I thought, What does he know?
The mask came late. But one always finds time to stand back and look. Perhaps he had not; did not want to confuse his interpretation, and would rather just clap it on. But, I thought, what is Dion to him, to offend a powerful sponsor for, except that he is my friend? If he saw, he’ll never own it; who would? He lives in Syracuse; what free Athenian dare reproach him? So there will be this between us.
Ha, this is your work, Tiresias …
He had crossed down towards me. At the end of this tirade came my cue, for a speech about twice as long. I could not remember a line of it.
You are greedy for burnt-offerings, you scent
New fees for divination …
I should be reacting to all this. Already he felt my numbness and was losing force. I was giving him nothing. My hand came up for the affronted seer, and tapped my staff on the stage.
Well might Tiresias be angry. I thought of that vain young fool in Ortygia, sitting like a clerk at his great, wicked father’s desk; of jolly Philistos with his gentlemanly manners, the fat old spider shaking his web; and of Dion out in front, keeping a philosopher’s straight face (the good man bears pleasure and pain with an equal mind) in the hour of fallen fortune, bitten even by the stray he had fed from his own dish. There had been no time till now for anger.
One is finished if one loses one’s temper on stage; so it was lucky I had learned young to master it. If, at nineteen, you have had to keep going when you find the inside of your mask has been smeared with turd, you never really forget it. Poor Meidias had never, right till the end of the tour, given up such attempts to make me lose my lines. So, now, I grasped the weapon that had served me when I had no other. I was here to honor the god, in the precinct where if a man meets face to face his own father’s murderer, still he must hold his hand. One seldom thinks of these sacred laws; one seldom needs to; but they are bone of one’s bone. I could only fight within them. These people had tried to take the play from me, and turn it into a third-rate satire. If it cost my last breath, I would take it back.
I went into my speech on cue, living from line to fine; once I saw Menekrates’ eyes blinking within his eyeholes, and wondered how much I had just cut. Luckily, it’s the dullest speech in the play. I shook my staff, or rather held up my hand, which was shaking of itself; but Tiresias is very old, and angry. It was a ham performance; at all events it warmed Menekrates up again, and I did get his cue line ri
ght.
When I exited with young Philanthos, who was doing Kadmos, we were hardly off before he lifted his mask and gaped at me, so full of words they jammed his mouth. I raised my hand, saying, “No. We will get through this performance first. And nothing to Menekrates either.”
In my dressing room I had just started to strip when Menekrates came straight in from his exit. “What happened, Niko? What was the matter with the audience? Do you know you cut twenty lines, and ad-libbed half the rest? This mask has wretched eyeholes, too.”
I did not say, “You need not act to me, my friend.” It might well be the truth. Even with good eyeholes, one can’t see much more than straight forward; to see sideways one must turn one’s head. Anything might have happened, for all he knew, beyond his sight-line, to cause the stir.
“My dear,” I said, “leave it till after. It’s politics; but let’s keep to our own business while we are doing it. If you do find out, don’t be upset; the play’s the thing. When I’m dressed, I shall sit with my mask awhile.”
Some actors swear by this rite, and it is much beloved by wall-painters and sculptors. For myself, I get my masks home beforehand (or I make trouble) and consider them there in quiet, with no witness but the god. Yet it is a good tradition of the theater that an artist who sits before his mask should be left in peace. It gives one the chance to compose oneself, if anything has put one out. I could hear my dresser at the door, turning people away in whispers. The voices of the chorus boys rose and fell down in the orchestra as the dance brought them near or far. Chin on fist I sat, looking at the leopard eyes of bland fair Dionysos, thinking about the immortal hunter and his prey.
My call came; I was led by the guards before angry virtuous Pentheus. The god is disguised as a human youth; but all have felt divinity somewhere about him, except the King, to whom he gives soft answers, speaking truth darkly, smiling.
The audience had quieted now; but I could feel them on edge, rustling like mice in the wainscot. I must get hold of them now or never, for this passage is the axis of the play.