The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  Going out, I had to shake off a low fellow who seemed to think a free supper would be my price, and nearly forgot to look at the west gable. But a guide was herding a gaggle of rich women with their children, nurses, and big straw hats; I saw him pointing, and talking of the sculptor Pheidias. My eye followed his finger.The triangle of the gable end was full of the battle between the Greeks and Kentaurs. Theseus and Pirithoos and their men were battling to save the boys and women: men against half-men, wrestling, bashing, trampling, swinging axes; and in the midst, tall and alone, his right arm stretched above the melee, was the Apollo of the mask.

  You could not mistake it. But here the mouth was closed, and the face had eyes. I walked back to see better, so lost that I bumped a lady, who scolded me. I scarcely heard. My flesh shivered with delight and awe. Even now sometimes, at Olympia, that shudder will come back to me.

  He stands above the battle, needing only to be, not do. The world is still green and raw. He alone knows it is for him the Greeks are fighting; yet some light from him shines back in young Theseus’ face. The Greeks must win, because they are nearer his likeness; his prophetic eyes look far beyond. He has no favorites. He is stern, radiant, gracious and without pity. A perfect chord is the friend of him whose strings are tuned to it. Can it pity the kitharist who fumbles?

  I walked back doing a speech for him, boyish nonsense in the hack verse any actor can think in. There was no time to finish it, for Demochares had drunk himself silly, and had to be got back while he could still stand. He greeted me as his lovely Hylas, making the other drinkers laugh and cheer; but I was used to that. “Hylas?” I said. “You know what happened to him. Herakles let him go sightseeing on his own, and the local nymphs took and drowned him. And Herakles lost his passage in the Argo. Heave-ho, shipmate. Come back on board, before the skipper casts off.”

  But when I unpacked the hampers at Phigeleia, and hung the mask of Apollo on its peg, I plucked a bay-sprig to stick above it, and poured a few drops of wine on the floor below. As I went with my flickering lamp out of the old wooden skeneroom, I half thought as I turned that there were eyes in the eyeholes, watching me off.

  On the morning of the performance, long before sunup the audience was pouring in. Every soul who could walk must have been there; indeed, I saw one old granddad carried from his donkey to his seat.

  I made sure Demochares took his breakfast watered, buckled him into the panoply of Ares, laid out everyone’s things, and tuned my lyre, which I should have to play for the bridal song. Then I got dressed as the Theban Warrior.

  Everything went quite smoothly, as far as I remember, until about two-thirds through. Lamprias and Demochares were on stage as Kadmos and Telephassa. Meidias had exited as Harmonia, to do his change for Apollo; presently he would appear and prophesy, on the god-walk above the skene. I was still on as a warrior, with nothing to do but hold a spear.

  Standing upstage center by the royal door, I was looking out beyond the theater at the hillside it was carved from. Suddenly I noticed a crowd of men coming down towards it. My first thought was that the citizens of some neighbor town had come to see the play, and got here late. When I saw they all had spears and shields I still did not think much of it, supposing they were going to do a war dance at the festival. Looking back, I find this simplicity hard to credit; but when you work in Athens, you get to thinking the world stops still for a play.

  Lamprias went on with his speech; the men got nearer, till suddenly, down in the orchestra, one of the chorus gave a yell and pointed upward. The audience stared, first at him, then where he was pointing. Then chaos began.

  The troop above gave the paean, and charged downhill. The Phigeleians, all weaponless, started tearing up the wooden benches and their struts, or running away. The women, who had been sitting in their best on the other side, began to huddle, scramble and scream. One young man, a quick thinker, jumped up on stage from the chorus and snatched my spear from my hand. I hope he got some good from it; it was a property one with a wooden blade. I offered him my shield, which he would need still more, but he was off, with his bearded mask pushed back on top of his head.

  I don’t know what I would have thought of doing next. But, booming away close by, I heard the voice of Lamprias, still speaking his lines.

  Those people who did not say that actors are mostly mad, said afterwards that a god possessed us. But in fact there is more sense in going on at such times than you would suppose. At least everyone knows who and what you are; we would have stood a far better chance of being speared or trampled on if we had bolted than we did by staying on stage. Man’s nature asks a reason, say the philosophers, so there I offer one. I doubt if I thought of it at the time. Theater, to me, was still the Dionysia at Athens. I was used to ceremony, respect for the sacred precinct, priests and statesmen and generals in the seats of honor, everything done decently, and the death penalty for violence. This brawling outraged me. We had rehearsed the play especially for this one festival, and I had not done my stand-in as Apollo yet.

  The turmoil was getting worse. Here and there men in the audience had jumped up, paused in two minds, and run round outside to join the oligarchs. Some women had clambered over to the men’s side to grab their kin and keep them out of it. Now men who had run away at first, not in fear but to fetch their weapons, were coming back armed. But Demochares had come in on cue, and was fluting gravely as Telephassa. He even had an audience—one ancient priest in front, who had noticed nothing amiss, and some children, who it seemed were used to faction fights but had never seen a play.

  I had just noticed, startled, that blood was flowing out in front—the first I had ever seen shed in war—when Lamprias ad-libbed something, beckoned me near, and said out of the side of his mask, “Get Apollo on.”

  I made an exit and ran behind. Before I reached the skene-room I knew what I would find, which of course was nothing. I even looked in the hampers. He must have run off still costumed as Harmonia. His own clothes were there.

  The robe and mask of Apollo were where I had put them out. I stripped and scrambled into them, picked up my lyre, and went out to the back. The skeneroom was just a flat-topped shed, with a crazy ladder to the god-walk on its roof. Meidias, but not I, had rehearsed getting up there, holding on with one hand and managing with the other both lyre and skirts. As I floundered up, tearing my sleeve on a nail, I cursed the oligarchs of Phigeleia who had got so rich without spending a drachma on this wretched theater. Down with them, I thought; up with the democrats. Apollo blesses their cause.

  As I waited under the entrance ramp for my cue, I ran over all I knew of Apollo’s speech from hearing Meidias plowing through it. It was just the thing for the Phigeleians, if anybody listened. I touched the mask for luck, saying “Help me through this, Apollo, and I’ll give you something”; there was no time to think what. Then I swept up the ramp, striking my lyre.

  From on top, I could see a proper battle. About half the citizens were now armed, if only with knives or cleavers. There were spears and swords too, serious business. To stand up here, mouthing away unheard, seemed stupid in an actor, and undignified in a god. I raised my arm, in the pose of the Pheidias Apollo, and cried out, “Victory!”

  Some women exclaimed and pointed. A few men started to cheer. At once the speech of prophecy went clean out of my head. For a moment I felt like dying. Then—how sent, I leave you to decide as your nature prompts you—there came back to me my own childish voice, declaiming the Messenger from Salamis, in Aischylos’ The Persians. It was the first long speech my father had made me learn. I slammed a loud chord on the lyre, stepped to the god-walk’s edge, and threw it out for all I was worth.

  Onward, sons of the Greeks! Set free the land of your fathers!

  Rescue your sons, your wives, and your holy places,

  Shrines of ancestral gods, and tombs of those who begot you!

  To battle! Winner takes all!

  The theater at Phigeleia was short of everything else, but at lea
st it had good acoustics. The cheers came back from right up the hill. Later, I was assured that some of the women thought it really was Apollo; from what I have seen on country tours, it would not much surprise me. The men, if less simple than this, still thought it a lucky omen, believing it was in the play. I heard them calling on the god, as they pushed the oligarchs backward.

  The rest of the speech would take the Greek sons to sea, which I feared might spoil it. But I was sure it would disgust my father to think I had dried because of a slight mischance on tour; besides, down below, on stage, Demochares was blowing kisses and saying, “Go on! Go on!” So I took it all as it came, bronze beaks, rammed sterns, shattered cars, corpse-strewn beaches, wallowing keels, wailing upon the waters. I broke off now and then and played Dorian marches, to spin it out.

  I forget how far I got before the oligarchs fell back out of sight beyond the hill-ridge. (They ran till they got to Sparta, where they stayed, and got just what they deserved.) So I lost most of my audience, the citizens going in pursuit. Since the play seemed over, I tagged it off from Euripides this time:

  In vain man’s expectation;

  God brings the unthought to be,

  As here we see.

  Then I came down, and tore my sleeve on the nail again.

  The evening’s party went on all over Phigeleia. They had a great krater in the Agora the size of a well-head, full of free wine. I left Demochares to enjoy Dionysos’ bounty—he had earned it—and wandered off. People kept asking me who had enacted Apollo; a man of towering stature, they mostly said, who had appeared as if from heaven. I had been meant to wear lifted boots, but had not had time to lace them on. It is a fact that you can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.

  I missed Lamprias for some hours, and wondered where he had got to. Later I learned he had spent all that time in the skeneroom, sitting on a hamper-top as patient as the Fates, waiting for Meidias to come back for his clothes.

  He had a story ready, how he had seen some citizen being set upon and rushed to help. This ungrateful fellow never came forward; and Harmonia’s wedding dress was ruined, all over muck from a nearby pig-house, where there had not been room to stand.

  The City Council begged us to do Kadmos again next day, to celebrate the victory. We did so, with much acclaim. When it came time to pay, they said they could not give more than half-fee for the first performance, since we had not finished it. I still laugh when I think of Lamprias’ face. For myself, I had no complaints, being cast this time as Apollo and Harmonia, while Meidias stood in for me.

  As I was saying, anything can happen on tour. At all events, that is how I got my first chance as third actor.

  2

  BY THE TIME I WAS TWENTY-SIX, I WAS NOT QUITE unknown in Athens. I had played first roles at Piraeus, and at the City Theater done second in some winning plays. But they had had big male roles for the protagonist, and my best ones had all been women’s. It would be easy to get typed, being my father’s son; while anyone casting a great female part would think first of Theodoros. It was a time which comes to many artists, when one must break away.

  It would take more than applause at Piraeus to get my name on the City Theater fist of leading men. Competition was deadly; the books were full of old victors who could hardly count their crowns. But there were still contests in other cities; it was now I should try to bring home a wreath or two.

  My mother was dead. I had dowered my sister decently and got her settled; nothing held me in Athens; and I am footloose by nature, like most men of my calling. For all these reasons, I went into partnership with Anaxis.

  It is a good while now since he took up politics full time. His voice and gestures are much acclaimed; and every rival orator, who wants a stone to throw at him, accuses him of having been an actor. Well, he chose his company, and is welcome to it. But though he might not thank me now for saying so, at the time I am speaking of he was very promising; and I have always thought he gave up too easily.

  He was older than I, past thirty, and had a name for touchiness; but one could get on with him if one did not tread on his corns. His family had been rich, but lost everything in the Great War; they never got back their land, and his father worked as a steward. So Anaxis, though he had talent, only wanted to be an artist with half his mind; with the other he wanted to be a gentleman. Any fellow artist will understand me.

  He was the only actor I’ve known to wear a beard. How he bore it under masks I can’t think, but even in summer he only trimmed it. He valued the dignity it gave him, and he certainly had presence. But he was growing no younger, and had not got on the list; so he was getting anxious.

  Under our contract, we would take turns as directing protagonist. He was fond of the stately parts, like Agamemnon, which meant that even when the choice was his, he would be handing me some first-class acting roles. Always the man of breeding; on other hand, he did live up to it. He might be pompous, but was never sordid or mean, which is worth something, on tour.

  We had a booking at Corinth in a brand-new play, Theodektes’ Amazons. Anaxis, who had the choice of lead, took Theseus, leaving me Hippolyta, which to my mind was the better role. Herakles was done by our third actor, Krantor. He was the best we could afford to hire, a steady old trouper, long past ambition but not gone sour, who stayed in theater because he could have borne no other life. For extra we had a youth called Anthemion, who was Anaxis’ boy friend. Anaxis likened him to a statue by Praxiteles. This was true at least of his head, which was solid marble; for the rest he was harmless, and would do as he was told. I could have improved on this choice, but had known Anaxis would never stir without him, so kept quiet rather than have words right at the start.

  The Corinth theater is one of the best in Greece. It has seating for eighteen thousand, and in the top row they can hear you sigh. The revolves turn smoothly; the reveal runs out on oiled wheels; you won’t find Clytemnestra, brought forth in the final tableau of the Agamemnon, come jerking and tottering with a couple of bouncing corpses at her feet. The crane swings you up over the god-walk as if you were really flying, and puts you down like a feather right on the mark; it will take a chariot with two life-sized winged horses and two actors, without a creak.

  Our sponsor, who like all Corinthians was so rich that gold ran out of his ears, had hand-picked a chorus of the loveliest boys in town to do the Amazons. I spent all my free time with one of them, a splendid creature, half-Macedonian, gray-eyed and with dark red hair.

  Anaxis was very happy there. In Corinth actors are asked to the very best houses. So are charioteers and wrestlers, though I knew better than to point this out to him. What a pleasure, he used to say, to be among gentlemen, away from theater talk with its narrow jealousies. Still, theater men do know what one is doing and what it is worth; even their jealousy is a kind of praise. For me, I would rather sit drinking with a paid-off soldier from Egypt or Ionia, telling his tales, or swap advice on inns with some ribbon-seller who knows the road, than share a supper couch with some rich fool who thinks that because he owns three chariots his notice must delight you, who does not know good from bad till the judges tell him what to think, but who has you in his supper room like the Persian tapestry and the talking jackdaw and the Libyan monkey, because you are that year’s fashion, and tells you without fail that he feels it in him to write a tragedy, if his affairs would only give him time. All you can say for such a host is that he does hire the best hetairas. I can live very well without women, on the whole; but any sensible talk you get at such a party, you get from them. They really know the tragedies, starting with the texts. One soon learns, at Corinth, where their block is in the theater; everyone plays the subtleties to them.

  The Amazons is one of Theodektes’ better plays, and won the poets’ prize. He had ridden over from Athens, and was so pleased with us that he never said a word about the places where I had sharpened up his lines. Our sponsor put on a victory feast, truly Corinthian; it took us all next day t
o get over it, and I lazed with my gray-eyed Macedonian, in a rocky pine-shaded cove near Perachora. An actor’s life is full of meeting and parting; one can’t tear one’s heart out every time; but I was touched when he gave me a necklet of blue beads to ward off the evil eye. I have it still.

  Our next engagement was at Delphi.

  Anaxis was full of this prospect. With every year as his hopes in the theater fell, he went further into politics, scouting out the land; and he had got wind of this booking from afar. The reason for a play being put on outside the festivals was to entertain the delegates at a peace conference, a very big affair.

  Peace of some sort was overdue; for some years artists had had trouble in getting about at all, what with Spartans marching on Thebes, then Thebans marching on Sparta. Everyone was for Thebes in the early days. But since all her victories, the old neighborly jealousy had waked up in Athens; and we had an alliance with Sparta now. I suppose this was expedient, but it disgusted me; it is things like this which make a man like me leave politics to the demagogues. The one good thing was that those dour-faced bullies needing to ask our help proved they were down to third roles for good and would never play lead again. They had been thought invincible, only because they were in war training from the cradle to the grave; but the Great War went on so long that other Greeks too got this professional experience, though against their will. By the end of it a good many had borne arms since they were boys, and barely knew another calling. So, like actors short of work, they went on tour. There were still nearly as many wars going on as drama festivals, and all of them needed extras.