by Mary Renault
The sky was covered with fiery smoke which hid the stars; I lost count of how the night was passing. I thought of Thettalos, whom I might have to leave without farewell; she, of Lasthenia, who had begged her not to go. We talked of our lovers, for comfort, holding each other’s hands. I kept to myself the thought that if the Campanians were coming here, it had better be before daybreak. It would be long odds against our fooling them in the light.
The night was rent by an outcry that made what had come before seem like a hush. A thousand women seemed to be shrieking at once, amid the death cries of as many men. A child screamed on and on, shriller than a bird. They had found the temple of Apollo. I wrapped the curtain round Axiothea’s ears; she pushed out her head to say, “Shall we try the thunder?” I answered, “No. The acoustics only work inside. Poor souls; may the god avenge them.”
It took them a good while to go through the temple. After a time, we heard the wails of the women left alive, being dragged off to Ortygia. The child screamed on one note until, I suppose, it died. I looked over Axiothea’s head at the sky beyond the window, fancying every moment the first gray of dawn.
Then they came. I could hear their uncouth shouts as they went through the top entrance and found themselves on the upper tiers; bewildered at the strange-shaped precinct, then baying at the loot below. “Let them come down further,” I whispered to Axiothea. “Get them all well in, don’t play to half a house. I’ll make you a sign.” By now we could see in the night like cats. I gave her a kiss for luck.
The board at Syracuse has a secret, which you don’t learn unless you are in the right play, one like The Bacchae, or one with a ghost. Turn it a little to the right, and it catches a shaft to the echo chamber. The noise is dreadful; it is hard to believe a human mouth has made it, even though it’s one’s own. I waited, getting it placed just right. They were coming down the center steps and scrambling over the seats, a hundred or so; by now looters straggled as they chose. When I saw no more were coming, I gave them still a little longer, to feel the space and quiet. Then I filled my chest, and yelled, “Iakchos! Iakchos!” praying the god in my heart for his gift of terror. He did not fail me. The sounding board was unearthly; but when it came back from the echo chamber, it was like all the Furies in full cry.
All the shouts ceased. I waited, it seemed forever, wondering if the lever had stuck or she had pulled the wrong one. Then came the first peal of thunder, the great drum turning its stones. That sounds too into the echo cave. It is loud enough by day, with a full house to tone it down. In the empty theater, by night, it was beyond belief. Feet started scrambling. I yelled, holding it longer this time. Again the thunder. In the pause before the next effect, I heard them all clattering off like madmen. I doubt if even one stayed on for the earthquake.
I ran back to Axiothea, who stood clutching the earthquake lever as if frozen there, and picked her up in my arms. I remember carrying her over to our heap of curtain, hollowed like a dog’s bed. We fell down clinging together, laughing silently, and kissing. I can’t, though I have often tried, remember just how it happened; all I know is that we surprised ourselves and one another, yet there seemed nothing strange in it, and it did us good. All was still in the theater; in a little while, as if the god had told us we were in his care, we slept, and did not wake till daybreak. When I had watched in dread for dawn, it cannot have been more than an hour past midnight; such are the illusions of fear.
Doves were cooing in the trees outside; there was still noise from the city, but broken now and further off. Axiothea stirred, and looked at me dazedly, wondering, as I could see, how much she had dreamed of it all; but having been a virgin in respect of men she could not be in doubt for long. I pushed back the hair from her brow and stroked her head, saying, “Well, dear friend, we gave ourselves into the hand of Dionysos, and you know the sort of god he is. After all he did for us, we can’t grudge him his little offering. Come, it’s another day, and you are Apollodoros once again. You know, nothing that happens at a Dionysia needs to be remembered after.”
She shook her head a little, as if to clear it, then kissed me quickly, and started putting her clothes to rights. I went off to find the water tap; her mouth had been as dry as mine.
We found the streets round about all quiet now. The Achradina still held out, and the soldiers had been called back to their work. We picked our way through smoke, ashes and blood. Of what we saw on our way, I have forgotten as much as I am able to—but not the temple of Apollo. It would have been better not to look in. An old priest, with a bandage round his head instead of a bay wreath, wandered round among the corpses, crying like a child with his hands pressed over his mouth, the whole shrine one vast defilement and only he to cleanse it. Somewhere the dying moaned in corners. And on its plinth stood the statue of Apollo, the gold bow wrested from his hand, his head bald as an egg. The gold hair had been made like a wig, just fixed with pins. I don’t know why this should have seemed the crown of horror; yet if ever to this day I see a bald young man in the street, my stomach turns.
A dead girl was lying on the threshold in a pool of her blood. My eye was caught by her hair, which I felt I had seen disheveled like this before. So I had. She was Speusippos’ little flute-girl, whose wrongs had made up his mind to war. Much good it had brought her.
Axiothea stood beside me in the porch. I tried to pull her away, but she stood her ground. “No. I have been concerned with making laws for men, and have only known the best of them. I’ve no right to hide from the worst.” She went forward, and took a long look. “Now come,” I said, “that’s enough,” and dragged her to the steps by force. In the street she said, “Plato and Dion have both been soldiers. I suppose they knew.”
“I’m told it is worse with Carthaginians. This will be just a common sack. Now let’s talk of something else, before we fall into despair. Let’s talk of the good men we have known; they are real too.”
Not to make a long tale of a tedious business, we got out of the city by the northern gate of the New Town, and started walking along the road to Leontini. We had what was left of the caretaker’s food to keep us from hunger on the way. The road was not crowded. I suppose few citizens wanted to take refuge in a city filled with Dion’s soldiers.
A man stood shouting by the road, a seaman, making his profit as someone does from every disaster, offering at a high price a passage along the coast to Rhegium. Though it was certain the boat would be overloaded, we closed with him at once. Both of us longed for Athens like the babe for the breast.
We were just walking the last stretch of highway before the turnoff to the shore, when the clatter of hooves sent everyone scattering. We looked after the six flying horsemen, wondering what news they carried. One had stared at me as he passed; I heard him call my name to another. Then they all pulled up and rode back.
They were Syracusans, so I waited. A man dismounted; he looked like a gentleman through the dirt and dust. “I am Hellanikos,” he said, and told me who the others were. “You are known to Dion. I beg you, in the name of Zeus the Merciful, ride with us to Leontini, and join us when we throw ourselves at his feet. The Achradina has fallen. He is our only hope.”
I could hardly credit my ears, even in Syracuse. Not wishing to insult men in misery, I just said, “You cannot suppose he will come. If he would, his men would not. My friend and I have just taken our sea passages for home. I am sorry.”
“Niko,” said Axiothea, “don’t be a fool. Do as they ask. I’ll see you in Athens.”
She had forced a boy’s voice so well, it quite startled me. She pulled me aside. “Go to him. If he is still Dion, he will come.”
“Impossible! What man upon earth …”
“He despises vengeance; he says it is sharing in the evil. Isn’t that what he told you at Delphi?”
“Nikeratos!” someone shouted. “I beg of you. Time presses.”
“No, by Zeus! To leave you on the road like a stray dog …”
“I came for the cause.
Since I could not help, at least don’t let me remember that I hindered it. I’ve learned how to manage on the ship; it will be nothing, after all this. Goodbye, Niko. You have made me a truer philosopher. Go with God.”
The men coughed and fidgeted, hiding, since they needed me, their contempt for the silly actor who could not set out without kissing his fancy boy. One of them, who had agreed to stand down because Dion did not know him, gave me his steaming horse. From the bend of the road I looked back at her; but she did not turn, walking with her thin shoulders held straight, down the path to the sea.
21
WE GOT TO LEONTINI AT EVENFALL, when the men were strolling in the cool and sitting outside the taverns under the trees. At our noisy entrance they all came crowding. When we asked for Dion his own voice answered: he had been taking the air with Kallippos and his other friends.
We all dismounted and ran to him. While the onlookers stood on tables or climbed trees to see, we knelt in the pose of supplication. It is a thing one needs training to do with grace. One man almost fell over.
Hellanikos told the hideous tale without excuses; an old-time, decent small squire, eating dirt for what he had had no part in—a clever choice, for an envoy to Dion. Then each of us said something. His eyes moved from face to face in a kind of wonder; one could not tell what he thought. Not being a Syracusan, I spoke last. “Sir,” I said, “we come before a man more deeply wronged than Achilles, asking far more than Priam did. But the city is Syracuse, and the man is Dion.”
He gazed down, his face held stiff, swallowing and biting his lip. Then a hard sound came from his throat. I saw that he wept.
When he had mastered his voice, he said, “This does not rest with me alone. The men must judge for themselves. Is the crier here?”
The Assembly met in the theater, as it does at Leontini. Last time I was in it, I had played lead. Now I was an extra; but there is no protagonist I have felt so honored to support. Gladly I would have swept the stage for him.
Hellanikos did his speech again, this time to the soldiers, and we ad-libbed as best we could. Then Dion addressed them. “I have called you here so that you can decide what you think best for you. For me, there is no choice. This is my country. I must go; and if I cannot save her, her ruins shall be my grave. But if you can find it in your hearts to help us, foolish and wretched as we are, you may to your eternal honor still save this unhappy city. If that is too much to ask, then farewell, and all my thanks. May the gods bless you for your past courage, and the kindness you have shown to me. If you speak of me after, say I did not stand by to see you wronged, nor forsake my fellow citizens in disaster.”
I don’t think he could have gone on, but the cheering drowned his voice. They yelled his name like a war cry, then shouted, “To Syracuse!” I suppose Hellanikos made a speech of thanks; I think he embraced Dion. I could scarcely see for tears.
They stayed only to eat and get their kit; that same night we saw them off on the thirty-mile march to Syracuse. As for me, having served Dionysos all my life, I never bore arms except upon a stage; and this was work for professionals, not walkers-on. But though the boatmen were still hawking passages to Italy, I did not sail. I had witnessed an act of magnanimity it would not be impious to call godlike; I felt a need to know the outcome. Great evil, or great good, seem the concern of every man; they touch our destiny.
This is what happened, as I heard it later from Rupilius. All day in Syracuse the raiders had been plundering, or storming the few street barricades that held out. Herakleides and his officers dashed hither and thither, trying to order their scattered forces; but they could not overtake the wasted hours of drunkenness and panic. At nightfall, like wolves gorged with prey, the men of Ortygia went back over the causeway, to the women they had taken.
The Syracusans crept forth, and spent the night searching for kindred, or patching some shelter from the ruins. Daylight showed the city still their own. They shored up the crosswall with half-charred timbers, and got it manned again. By noon, a rider brought news that Dion was on the way. Are you supposing they flocked to the temples to give thanks? This was Syracuse.
Herakleides took the news as his own death warrant. As it was, the people were blaming him for the debauch rather than themselves; for his petty triumph he had lost the city. If Dion, whom he had driven out, marched in as savior, what could he expect? Perhaps he thought of Philistos. Such men see in others what they know about themselves.
He and his friends rode among the distracted people, crying out that the danger from Ortygia was over; they would be mad to let in a tyrant they had expelled, with his own army, every man hot for vengeance. Fear was the air they breathed; tyranny they had grown up with; it all made sense to them. They dispatched envoys to tell Dion he was not needed, and could go back.
The small gentry, whose forebears had fought the elder Dionysios and paid dear, witnessed in helpless horror the loss of their only hope, together with the rags of their self-respect. They knew why Dion had marched. Since the tyrant crushed their fathers they had kept themselves to themselves; the great estates went to his friends; but a little piece of land, a few rents coming in, had bought them schooling from mainland teachers; they had learned to wrestle by the rules, to sing the old skolions, even to remember honor.
They sent their own envoys, begging Dion’s pardon for this last disgrace to Syracuse, praising his greatness of heart, and imploring him not to repent of it. It was madness to suppose that Nypsios’ troops were sated yet, or could be contained again. Without Dion all would perish.
Both messages reached him nearly together, and he heeded both. He now ceased to force-march his men; but he still came on. I suppose by now nothing much could surprise him.
At sunset, to keep him out, Herakleides posted troops at the northern gate. But they were called to other business. With the fall of dark, Nypsios’ men burst out from Ortygia and poured over the crosswall like a river in spate. This time they had come to destroy the city.
By now, I suppose, Dionysios valued nothing but Ortygia. The city had rejected him; let it perish with its rabble, and if he got back he could repeople it more to his mind. Nypsios and his army must have brought dispatches with them; their leader must have had orders. Perhaps Dionysios now saw himself in the role of Herakles translated; except of course that the pyre was not for him.
Everything worth having had been looted; there was nothing left but to kill. They went through the city not like men but like Gorgons or unpitying Furies, cutting up the women, spitting children on spears or hurling them into burning houses; they brought fire wherever they went, and shot flame arrows at the roofs too high to reach. In that night died Glyke, the wife of Menekrates, and his young sons with their golden skins. It seems she had come back to the city just before Herakleides’ victory feast, to prepare for her man’s return. I have heard how they died, but have always denied to him that I knew anything, and as far as I know he has not learned it. May the gods keep him ignorant.
The roar of the fires, the incessant screams, like a single cry of the dying city, the crash of falling houses sounded as if the gods had sent Death himself to end mankind. Into this Tartaros came Dion and his men, and were received like rescuing gods. How not? He was brave, generous and noble—true as gold. No one remembered, that night, that it was he who had begun the war.
All night they fought among the smoke and flame and cinders and charred corpses, keeping discipline, holding their lines of communication open, threatened not only by the enemy but by falling walls and beams. Before morning the raiders were driven back. Those who were trapped under the cross-wall were killed where they were found. After that, there were the fires to be put out.
All this Rupilius told me, when he was carted back with the wounded to Leontini. After fighting all night with a burned arm, he had taken a leg wound which went half through the tendon; the doctor forbade him to walk or stand. I repaid a little of his kindness by doing such business for him as was beyond the servants, or
reading Greek to him; he only knew it by ear. Dion, he said, had been wounded too, but had fought on, bandaged with a rag torn from the clothes of a corpse, the usual dressing that night. As for Herakleides and his friends, they had gone like ghosts by cockcrow; seeing the temper of the people, they had been wise.
News came in daily to Leontini. When victory was certain, the City Council came to me, offering me a chorus to put on The Persians, as a thank-offering to Apollo. I accepted, provided I could find some supporting players alive in Syracuse. I went on this business sooner than I had meant, when we got the news that Herakleides had come and given himself up to Dion, throwing himself upon his mercy.
Rupilius frankly disbelieved it; the teller was offended, and said he would demand an apology in three days’ time, when Herakleides and Theodotes were to be tried by the Assembly. I calmed Rupilius by undertaking to be there.
I rode, therefore, from the cool of the hills across the hot dusty plain with its cactuses and aloes, down to Syracuse. Roofs had been patched, corpses and wreckage cleared away; but the place still stank of burning, fear and death. I wondered if they had destroyed the theater in the second raid, but it was unharmed. There was a rumor that it was haunted at night by the vengeful god. At present it was full, since they were using it for Assembly. I was just in time to get a tenth-row seat.
Entering through the orchestra to roars of applause, Dion went up on stage with his brother and Kallippos. Then Herakleides and Theodotes were brought in under guard, with a cordon of soldiers round, to keep the crowd from lynching them. Theodotes had given up and looked like a corpse already; but Herakleides was still giving a performance. He stood upright, brave without defiance, a man whom fate had tricked into folly, who, if he must, would accept his doom without repining. More than ever I could imagine him an actor: talented, but making mischief everywhere and stealing from other artists, till no company would have him.