The Mask of Apollo: A Novel

by Mary Renault

  Plato was turned a little my way. He was talking, sitting with his massive brow and heavy shoulders leaned rather forward, as if with their own weight; I remembered the pose. His hands were on his knees; sometimes he would lift one in a gesture so spare, but clear, that an actor could not have bettered it. Dionysios came further round, so that I partly saw his face. His lips were parted, and his countenance changed like a field of barley in a breeze, to show he was following every word.

  My guard walked about looking for a chamberlain, passing on his way a couple of Gauls at the further door. The sight of them reminded me what a change this was. Nobody had searched me.

  Dionysios beckoned my escort, who told his errand and presently came to fetch me. I scrambled across the balustrade, picked my way over the sand, side-stepped a diagram (Plato’s I suppose) they had been discussing, and made my bow.

  Dionysios had changed greatly. Of course, last time he had been in mourning, unshaven and with cropped hair; but it was more than that. His skin looked clearer, he fidgeted less; he seemed better-favored, like a plain girl pleased with her marriage. Plato was watching him, not as I had once seen him look at Dion, close and proud; still, there was a kind of affection in his face, like a mother’s when her child is learning to walk.

  “Well, Nikeratos,” Dionysios began, but then at once turned round. “Here, Plato, is a man you know, though without, I daresay, knowing his face. This is Nikeratos, the tragedian of Athens, who was protagonist in my father’s play.”

  Plato greeted me with courtesy, but as a stranger. It did not offend me; I guessed the cause, and replied suitably. He complimented my performance, and congratulated me on my crown. He did, at least, seem to hear and see me; Dionysios, from first to last, talked through me at Plato, not slightingly, but as if nobody else were real to him.

  “And what brings you to Syracuse?” he asked me.

  Good, I thought; now we shall see. “Just the business of my calling, sir. I have come to work.”

  He looked pleased with this answer. “Well, Nikeratos,” he said, going back to his opening line, “so you have lately been in Athens at the Dionysia; and I suppose, after your success at the Lenaia, you were given a leading role?”

  I told him yes; he inquired the name of the poet, the theme of the play, how it had been received—things that anyone might ask. But as he went on, I began to recognize that special tone I had observed at the Academy, when they played the game of questions, leading someone on till they scored a point. Being new and half-baked at it, he sounded rather silly. With the side of my eye I glanced at Plato. He was a man who would not have fidgeted if he had sat down on an anthill; but his patience was starting to show.

  “So you enacted Orpheus. Did the play treat of his descent into the underworld to ransom his wife, or of his death at the hands of the maenads?”

  “The second,” I said. “Though he relates the first in a soliloquy.”

  He brightened. I must have given him the right feed-line.

  “Orpheus was the son of Apollo, as we are told. Is it possible that being god-begotten he should have failed to calm the maenads with his song, inspired as he was by the divinity?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But some audiences don’t want the best, and let you know it.”

  “Tut,” he said, brushing this off. “How will men think of the gods, if their sons are shown in error, or defeated?”

  “Perhaps, sir, that they took after their mothers’ side.”

  Plato’s eye flickered, like an old war-horse’s when he hears the trumpet. But he kept quiet, and left it to the colt, who as I saw was looking put out. I should have held my tongue, as Anaxis would have told me.

  “In any case,” he said, “you imitated the passions of Orpheus in his desires and fears, hopes and despair; and the audience was pleased with you?”

  “I think so. They gave the usual signs.”

  “And I expect you are also skilled in imitating women, whether old and in sorrow, or young and in love?”

  “Yes, I can do that.” I wondered how long he could keep this up, in any hope of making me look more foolish than himself. I recalled the quick smooth give-and-take at the Academy, and the humor, of the sort you get when people are really serious. So did Plato, I suppose.

  “And you can imitate, too, brawling drunkards, scolding wives or thieving slaves?”

  “A comedian would do it better.”

  “Then you think such parts unworthy of you?”

  “No, my skill is different.”

  “You mean,” he said, his nose pointing like a game-dog’s, “that you find no kind of person too base to imitate?”

  “That depends on how the author uses baseness.”

  I could see I had cut his cue, whatever that should have been, and it had annoyed him. He came pretty close to asking me how I dared to argue, but then remembered the principles of debate. He peeped round at Plato, partly for approval, but partly in hope that the champion would ride into the battle, and spear me through.

  Plato did not notice this appeal, and I saw why. A man was coming along the colonnade which ran round the empty pool. He seemed about Plato’s age, and held himself like one who has been somebody all his life. His red weathered soldier’s face was getting pouchy with good living, but his light blue eyes were still bright and hard; they had an air of having seen everything worth notice, and knowing what to think. He was well dressed for Sicily, meaning very florid by our standards, but within the bounds of breeding there, covered with clasps of malachite and heavy gold, even to his sandals. He came along by the balustrade, limping a little, from a stiff joint or some old wound, eyeing each man and acknowledging greetings, sometimes warmly, sometimes not; one felt none of it was without meaning.

  Plato had noticed him, Dionysios not yet. When he passed two men drawing in the sand, he said something, straight-faced, which made them grin, and followed it with a mock reproof. Plato, clearly, was meant to see. Then he swept along till he was level with Dionysios, to whom he bowed deeply.

  The young man said, “Good day, Philistos,” and their eyes met. Philistos paused a moment. His face was that of a man who sees his superior, a nice inexperienced boy, making a fool of himself, but blames rather the man who should know better, yet leads him on. The glance was eloquent of respect, discretion, and quiet irony, with a touch of patronage to make it sting.

  Dionysios looked in two minds whether to call him over. He refrained however. There was a moment when Philistos seemed to ask himself whether anything he could say would open his poor friend’s eyes; then, as if deciding the time was not yet ripe, he gravely withdrew. He remained, though, at the far end of the court, watching the geometrists.

  Dionysios looked after him, then back to me. He had been put off, and was now stuck. I would have given him his line, if only I had known what it was.

  “But,” said Plato, “we were talking, I think, about the nature of the actor’s skill.”

  He was not joining the debate, just making himself felt, like a protagonist who enters upstage and, though silent, at once commands the scene. That was his quality; it cut down Philistos at once to a rich old gentleman, rather overdressed and overfed, who is getting set in his ways and sniffs at everything beyond him. Dionysios revived. He was ready now to dash on and finish the scene.

  “Well, Nikeratos, in spite of all your varied skills, I would rather hear from you always that dignity and seemliness with which you spoke the Eulogy. Shall I tell you why?” I saw Plato stir, but his pupil was off by now, showing his paces. “All things here below are only imitations of the pure forms God knows: good if they approach the likeness, bad if they fail. So, when you enact men and their qualities, you are imitating an imitation, isn’t that so?”

  “So it would seem,” I said. I was anxious to keep him going, and get it over.

  “Then, if you imitate the worse rather than the good in men, however well you do it, you are giving, really, the worst imitation, the least like the true
model. Doesn’t that follow?”

  I had not met Axiothea and her friends for nothing; one must keep the rules. “Yes,” I said. “It would follow on the first.”

  “But, Dionysios, are we not forgetting how recently Nikeratos joined us?” Plato’s clear voice came in like a silver knife slicing an apple. “You and I have come step by step to the concept of divine originals; but he in his courtesy conceded the premise without demonstration. There is a saying that one should not press a generous man too far. At present we may thank him for the pleasure his art has given us; later, when he has followed all the argument, we may win him to our conclusions.”

  Dionysios looked dashed, as well he might. He took it, though, as pupil from master. The lord of the fleet of Syracuse, of the gates and the catapults and the quarried prison, sulked like a chidden boy. He shot me a look. I saw not the anger of a tyrant put down before a traveling actor, but just a pique, because Plato had not taken his side.

  I was trying to think of some civility which would get me off, when at the end of the colonnade I saw Dion enter.

  I can’t tell how I felt. It was wind against tide. There he stood, the same man as always, without a mean thought in his soul, a man who, if he had pledged protection to a suppliant, would have stood to it till death, though it were for a thrall on a peasant farm. Yet this same man wanted to take away not just the bread out of my mouth, not just the reputation I had worked for all my life, but, as it seemed to me, the soul out of my body.

  As he came on, he passed Philistos. I saw it was a greeting of open enemies. They measured one another, like men who do it daily as the fortunes of conflict shift. A child could have picked the better man. Philistos went out sneering; Dion did not look back. I saw a glow on him of victory and hope. He saluted Dionysios. But before that, his eyes had sought Plato’s from far off, and the young man had not missed it.

  When he noticed me, Dion did not show surprise. He must have known I was coming. His greeting was formal, but I knew he wanted to see me afterwards. When, therefore, I was dismissed from the presence, I made my way to his house. Waiting in the anteroom, I had a good while to think, but found no answer. It needs a sophist, I thought, for that.

  At last he came. Keeping his distance before the servant, he went in, then sent for me; but, once we were alone, he greeted me even more kindly than before. He shone with happiness. I had thought he would be ill at ease before me, but no. Among his great affairs, he had not even remembered.

  I gave him his own letter, and the one for Plato. He put down my constraint, I think, to bad news I brought, for he read Archytas’ letter standing; then, reassured, he offered me wine. The cup was Italian, the painting touched up with white, like his gift at Delphi. Memories crowded me: the crane, Meidias’ death cry, the battle at Phigeleia, my father as Cassandra, the great theater at Syracuse where Aischylos put on The Persians, Menekrates saying, “It’s all one under the mask.” The cup shook in my hand. As one learns to do, I steadied it. He had been putting back the jug, and had noticed nothing.

  Raising his cup, he said, “To the fortunes of Syracuse. A glorious dawn, Zeus prosper it.”

  I held myself in, and answered slowly, “Shall we offer the prayer of Hippolytos, Grant me to end life’s race as I began?”

  “Choose,” he said, smiling, “some prayer of better omen, for, as I remember, that one the gods rejected.”

  “I see you know your Euripides. Well then, a toast to purified Syracuse. Down with all riffraff—hired troops, spies, gluttons and drunkards, whores, and artists.” I lifted the cup, and threw it down on the marble floor.

  I had not known I would do this. The wine made a great red star, and spattered both our robes. A piece of the cup lay at my feet, a crowned goddess, in the Italian style.

  He stood stock-still, amazed, then angry. Sicilians of his rank don’t know such things can happen to them. Well, I thought, he is talking to an Athenian now, and must make the best of it.

  “Nikeratos,” he said, “I am sorry to see you so forget yourself.”

  “Forget?” I answered. “No, by Apollo, I have remembered what I am. I am a citizen of no rank; I don’t understand philosophy; when you were studying, I was playing stand-ins and extras, picking up my trade which you want to take away. But whatever I am, or you choose to call me, one thing I know: I am a servant of the god, and though I honor you and love you, I will obey the god, rather than you.”

  He had listened unmoving; but at these words he started, as if he knew them. I waited, but he did not speak.

  “You have been godlike to me.” If I had let myself, I could have wept. “But beside the god you are just a man. Farewell. I daresay we shan’t meet again.” I paused at the door, but there was nothing to stay for, so I only said, “I am sorry I broke the wine cup.”

  “Nikeratos. Come back … I beg of you.” The words came out stiffly. His tongue was strange to them. It was that made me turn.

  “Come, sit down,” he said. We sat by his desk. It was covered with letters and petitions such as are sent to men in power. There were sheets too of geometric figures and a diagram of the stars.

  “My friend,” he said, “Archytas tells me that you almost lost your life upon my business. I have grieved you, which I cannot help; but I did it thoughtlessly, and for that I ask your pardon.”

  “If the thing is true,” I answered, “does it matter how you say it? Is it true, or not?”

  “This is hard,” he said, and leaned his brow on his open hand. “Plato could say this better than I; but it rightly falls on me, the man who you feel betrays you … What did you mean, Nikeratos, when you said you served the god? Not just that you perform the sacrifices to Dionysos and Apollo, and respect their precinct, but something more?”

  “Surely,” I said, “you don’t need to be an artist yourself to understand me. It means not setting oneself above one’s poet, nor being false to the truth one knows of men. When one can see that the audience wants the easy thing, or the thing just in fashion, and even the judges can’t be trusted not to want it too, for whom does one stay honest? Only for the god.”

  “You hear him speak, and obey him. But could you have heard so clearly, if you had not learned your art from boyhood?”

  “No, I think not. Or not so soon.”

  “Suppose you had been badly trained, and always heard bad work praised above good.”

  “A great misfortune. But if an artist is anything, sooner or later he thinks for himself.”

  “But others, not? Bad teaching spoils them past remedy?”

  “Yes, but they are men the theater can do without.”

  “You mean they can take up some other calling. So they can. But, Nikeratos, all men have to live, either well or badly, as they are taught. If enough are taught badly, the bad will get rid of the good. And you, whether you choose or not, are a teacher. Young boys, and simple men, don’t go to the theater to judge of verse; they go to see gods and kings and heroes, to enter the world you make, to steep their minds and souls in it. Can you deny this?”

  “But,” I said, “one plays for men of sense.”

  “You keep faith with your art, Nikeratos. You will not offend the god with anything unworthy, even though men would reward you for it. But your power stops there. You cannot rewrite your play, though the poet may be doing the very thing you would scorn to do.”

  “That is his business. I am an actor.”

  “But you both serve the god. Can his god say one thing, and yours another?”

  “I am an actor. He and I must each judge for ourselves.”

  “Truly? Yet you have to enter his mind. Have you never once felt you were entering a false world, or an evil one?”

  I could not lie to him, and replied, “Yes, once or twice. Even with Euripides, in his Orestes. Orestes has been wronged, but nothing can excuse his wickedness. Yet one is supposed to play him for sympathy.”

  “Did you do so?”

  “I was third actor then. I should have to try, I
suppose, if I were drawn for it.”

  “Because that is the law of the theater?”

  “Yes.”

  “But, my dear Nikeratos, that is why we want to change it.”

  “I understood,” I said, “that you wanted to destroy it.”

  “No, not so.” He looked at me with kindness, as if I were a decent soldier he had beaten in war. “Plato believes, as I do, that an artist such as you, who can portray nobility, has his place in the good city. In some such way as this: that the parts of base, or passionate, or unstable men should be related in narration, while only the good man, who is a fit example, or the gods speaking true doctrine, should be honored by the actor’s imitation. In such a way, nothing evil would strike deep into the hearers’ minds.”

  I gazed at him, solemn as an owl. If, having begun to laugh, I could not stop, which seemed likely, he would despise me for instability. I told myself this, to sober up. Not that I feared his displeasure now; as I had said, he was just a man. But the man was dear to me.

  “You mean,” I said, “that in the Hippolytos, for instance, where Phaedra reveals her guilty love, and where Theseus curses his son in ignorance, all that would be narrated? Only Hippolytos would speak?”

  “Yes, just so. And we could not admit of evil being caused by Aphrodite, who is a god, to a just man.”

  “No, I suppose not. And Achilles must not weep for Patroklos nor tear his clothes, because that is a failure in self-command?”

  “No, indeed.”

  “But do you think,” I asked at length, “that any of it would strike deep into the hearers’ minds? You don’t think it might be dull?”

  He looked at me, patient, not angry. “As wholesome food is, after those Sicilian banquets that have made us the scorn of Hellas. Believe me, our Syracusan cooks are artists too, in their way. Yet you would not lose your figure, health and looks to please one of them, would you, even if he were a friend? And is not the soul worth more?”

  “Of course it is. But …” It was no use, I thought, against a trained wrestler of the Academy. I had learned my art by asking how, rather than why.