His long, sharp nose quivered. I figured that I’d have to deal with a bruised chin after all. But I’d be able to inflict some pretty good damage myself.
Nicias stepped back. His weasel nose twitched.
I smiled.
Behind Nicias, I saw Sophides and the man who’d left Tysander’s with him walk by, glaring at the two of us. I was in bad company.
“Kleides,” someone to our right said. We both turned. It was my friend Phryne, the flute girl, looking rather pretty, her full breasts nicely outlined by her light white chiton, the flowing dress draped fetchingly over her body. Nicias promptly forgot about me.
“I need an escort over to Aris’ villa. Accompany me, please.”
“Aris?” I said. “A handsome aristocrat. You are moving up in the world, Phryne.”
“Not as handsome as Alcaon, but wealthy. That’ll do for now.”
I took her arm. “Give Alcaon time,” I said. I knew she was in love with the young man who had been the lover of the beautiful flute girl who had been murdered a year ago. We walked away, leaving Nicias staring.
“What are you doing with that weasel, Kleides?”
I laughed.
“Kleides, Nicias is unprincipled. He goes about disparaging everyone’s reputation, thinking it is the way to win. Someday, somebody is going to drown him like the rat he is.”
“Weasel,” I said, thinking that our Greek penchant for competition in everything could be dangerous.
As we walked away, I saw Sophides and his companion still staring at Nicias’ back.
The rising sun shone brilliantly on the Pentalic marble columns of the unfinished Parthenon on the second day of the Great Dionysia.
The population of Athens streamed down the Panathenaic Way, past the entrance to the Acropolis and down toward the theatre. Anticipation ran high. The statue of Dionysus, the patron god of the festival, had been brought to the theatre yesterday. Here and there in the street were discarded masks and satyr tails from yesterday’s great phallic procession. Most of the young men of Athens would watch the plays today with throbbing hangovers. Phidias and I had shared two bottles of top-notch Chian wine. Even old Sophides seemed to enjoy himself, though he argued again with a drunken Nicias who gestured and sneered in his usual bragging way. Phidias and I, amused, had watched from a distance.
I walked to the theatre with my half brother, Lamicus; Phidias; Socrates; and my aging father, Almenias, who leaned heavily on my arm. Pericles had gone to the theatre before sunrise, anxious that all was well organized and that Athens would be at its best. In his youth, he had sponsored Aeschylus’ play The Persians. I wondered if Nicias knew that.
Around us, tongues buzzed about the play Sophocles was to present today and about the young, iconoclastic Euripides, and the now conventional Ion, needing a victory to maintain his reputation. The general opinion was that the real competition would be between Sophocles and Euripides. Yesterday, the urns containing the names of the possible judges had been carried to the theatre, and ten names had been pulled out. The judges had taken the oath to judge honestly. We all knew that the the wealthy producers of the plays, the choregos, tried to get friends’ names put into the urns, but we also knew that after the festival a committee would meet to make sure that no impropriety had taken place. Still, I couldn’t help but wonder if Nicias’ cynical opportunism were not a built-in part of our democratic ways. The Spartans would say so.
We paid our two obols for a theatre token, got in line behind a group of prisoners released for the festival, attendance being a civic and religious duty, and filed into the great semicircular seating area, spreading our cloaks onto the wooden benches. Some people wrapped themselves in their cloaks, as the early morning air was still chilly. Some of the audience were already playing games whose boards were scratched into the wood. Sounds filled the theatre: people coughing, greeting each other, laughing. Some were already arguing over the merits of the playwrights and actors. Phidias threatened that if Nicias won the acting award, he’d call for an ostracism next year. Socrates was about to launch into a discussion of what excellence really meant when the day’s festivities began.
Young men carried into the theatre the tribute money from our allies, and we all cheered. Our generals, including Pericles, poured libations to the god Dionysus and drank wine in his honor. Pericles summoned in the children of Athens who had been orphaned by war and led them to seats of honor.
Once the opening festivities were over and the priests had taken their seats in the front row, the audience quieted. An occasional cough or murmur drifted over the audience to dissipate into the green cypress tree grove and the pale blue sky beyond the theatre. Behind us, the great rocky cliffs of the Acropolis rose majestically, and the red tiled roof of Pericles’ Odeon, the music hall that incorporated the spars of Persian ships, stretched out to our left.
I turned to ask Socrates for a drink of his water.
“Look,” breathed Phidias, “at what is on the skene. It is Sophocles’ innovation.”
I looked at the skene. On the wooden stage building, the skene, men had unrolled a canvas. On it was painted the scene of an army camp and behind it great towers. Already Sophocles had managed to transport us to that great walled city the warriors of the Greek army had destroyed: Troy. Sophocles intended today to stage three plays about the warriors of that great Greek army that had leveled that city.
From the middle double doorway of the skene, a group of fifteen men, dressed in long blue chitons with black stripes running from the shoulders to the hems of the flowing robes, emerged, swaying and walking slowly to the great circle below us. The chorus.
The double doorway opened again, and a figure emerged, on his mask a look of stoic concentration, his red chiton unsleeved and checked with gold at the chest, as if he wore armor. From the top of the skene, a second figure emerged, a gold chiton fluttering. It was Athena. The actor spoke, his voice booming through his mask:
You, Odysseus, you are always searching for
opportunities against your enemies. Now, you look
for Ajax.
The play had begun.
We watched mesmerized, all of us. Sophocles had our minds and hearts. We watched Tidius, in a black chiton, his mask a twisted face of madness and tragedy. He took us back to that long ago war at Troy, with its tragic aftermaths, and to Ajax, the great warrior, mad with dishonor, killing sheep he thought were his enemies.
As Tidius spoke, the audience leaned forward to catch the aging actor’s once-great voice, a little weaker now, intoning Ajax’s despair:
The years bring everything from darkness,
then send them back to darkness in the earth.
No one coughed.
We watched Ajax come to realize that all things change and pass: enemies become friends and friends become enemies. His fellow warriors had not given him honor. Even the gods had turned against him, making him mad. We watched, our eyes big, as Sophocles showed us something seldom seen on our Athenian stage, violence: Ajax committing suicide, falling on his sword before our eyes, the glory of his days gone. We watched, wondering, as Sophocles showed us Odysseus refusing to laugh at his old enemy Ajax, and giving him, like a friend, an honorable burial.
When the chorus spoke the last words of the play, “No human can know his future,” we did not move. No one left to relieve themselves; no one reached for a piece of bread or fruit. We sat, pity and fear filling our hearts. We were all Ajax. None of us knew our future. None of us knew then that a murder awaited us.
As the day wore on, we put on our hats for protection against the sun, the azure sky now holding a warm spring sun, ate our honeyed bread and goat cheese, our olives and radishes, and roared at the satyr play, a drunken Heracles persuading an angry Amazon. But when the day was over, we all walked home, talking only about Ajax. Even Phidias was solemn. In front of us, Sophides walked, his head bowed in thought.