"I see nothing new so far," said Diognetos. "Wax has been used for casting patterns since ancient times."
"Ah, but wait! When the mold is finished, instead of taking , the mold off the model or digging the model out of the mold bit by bit, he puts the entire thing in an oven. The wax melts and runs out through pipes called sprues, which the sculptor has provided, leaving a thin but continuous space between model and mold. Then this vacant mold is taken out and inverted. The sculptor pours the molten bronze into the sprues, filling this empty space. When the mold is broken off the outside, and the core broken up and shaken out of the inside, he has a hollow casting, perfect save for rods of bronze where the sprues and air vents were. These have to be sawn off and the surfaces finished by hand."
Diognetos had become more hostile with each sentence. Now he shook his fist and burst out:
"Oh, tricks, technical tricks! A plague upon them! That sort of thing is killing the spirit of the arts. A true artist should work without casts and models and measurements. Do not tell me about your wonderful Sikyonians! Mere mechanics, I deem them. Go to a real sculptor if you can find one, somebody who preserves the true spirit of Pheidias and Praxiteles. Learn from him not to lean on tricks of technique.
"At least, if you will take an older man's advice, do not try to bully your way into the Guild by boasting of your technical sleights. And now, if you will excuse me ..."
I left Diognetos' house in a fury. Kavaros, who had waited outside, said: "Does the young master be angry, now?"
"I certainly am," I said. "The old dung-eater put me off. He even had the insolence to suggest that I needed another apprenticeship!"
"Shall .we break his neck?" said the Kelt, little savage lights dancing in his blue eyes. "I am thinking his head would look fine over your door."
"No, you bloodthirsty savage! Come along."
"It is like the time my great-grandfather called on the king of the Elves," said Kavaros, plunging into another of his many tales of fascinating if improbable adventures, which he employed to put me in a good humor:
"Gargantyos—that was my great-grandfather's name— went into the king's castle and asked for the king's daughter as his bride, for she was more beautiful nor any mortal woman. But the king of the Elves was not pleased. 'A mortal asking for my darling daughter? Be off, you impudent rogue, you!' he said, putting out his tongue at my ancestor to show how he despised him.
" 'So that is your Elvish courtesy?' said my great-grandfather. And he caught hold of that tongue and with one jerk turned the king of the Elves inside out. 'Now, my fine lad, we will talk of plans for the wedding,' said he.
"Of course, the king of the Elves was even less pleased than he had been before. He uttered a terrible spell at my ancestor, to turn him into a spider. But, what with being inside out and all, the spell came out backwards and turned a spider into my great-grandfather instead. Then there were two of them, and before the confabulation could go further, they had to find out which was the real one.
"Now, to a Keltic gentleman there is only one way to settle such a question. The two Gargantyoi pulled out their swords and had at each other. But, because they were exactly alike, they fought for three days and three nights without being able to break through each other's guard at all. By then the swords were so notched that they would have made better saws than swords; and, to tell the truth, one of them was used as a saw in building the magical ship Nodon's Chariot, which I will be telling you about someday.
"They would be fighting still, except that, when they paused to catch their breath, the king of the Elves called time out for refreshments. 'For,' he said, 'this is the finest fight I have seen since my father fought his shadow, that the witch Morrigana had put a spell on, and I do not want it to stop because the fighters are after getting tired.'
"But when the cakes and wine were brought, one of the Gargantyoi would not eat them. Instead, he leaped upon a cricket that was creeping by and ate it. So the king of the Elves knew that this one was really a spider, and he said to my forebear—the real one—'Quick, Gargantyos darling, turn me back right side out, so I can reverse the spell, and you will be marrying my dear Brigantia as fast as I can fetch the Druid.' So my ancestor caught hold of him by the spleen—which was on the outside, naturally—and jerked him back right side out. And that is how I come to have one part in eight of Elf blood in my veins. And the moral is: Do not despise any man until he has done something despicable, or you may have to own you are wrong."
When I got home, I told my father of Diognetos' refusal and urged him to think again about renting me space for a studio. But he was firm.
"For seven years," he said, "we've been sending you money whenever you wrote that you were short, even though we often disapproved of how you spent it. First, you hadn't been in Athens two years when you left the professors recommended to you and rushed off to Sikyon to take up sculpture under Lysippos. Then you bought that great lout of a slave. Well, now that you're a man, no longer to be bent to your parents' will, you can take care of yourself. If you fall foul of the one man in Rhodes whom you ought to treat with extra care, I don't see why I should pay for your folly. Besides, we cannot afford it."
"It's not my fault if that stupid old Cyprian ox—"
"That will do, Chares. The Diognetos may be conservative, but stupid he is not. I've dealt with him and know."
"Well, then, why not let me tear up all these useless flowers and use that as a working space?"
"You would tear up your mother's flower garden?"
"Why not? It's but a Persian fad that will soon—"
"Hold your tongue! I always told your mother she was spoiling you, and this proves me right. The answer is 'no'."
He turned his back and returned to the foundry. I ate my midday meal in glowering silence, feeling abused by the world.
I spent the afternoon pacing the court and going over the argument I should present to the Guild, while Kavaros brushed my clothes and blacked my shoes. I could not afford to fail again.
I reached the Town Hall at sunset, being the first to arrive except for Makar. The other members of the Artists' Guild straggled in. Some I knew from aforetime, such as Lykon the sculptor, Glôs the engraver, and Protogenes the painter. Glôs, our fattest member, greeted me:
"Rejoice, old fellow! How are the girls on the mainland?"
I said: "The pickings are poor. They expose so many daughters that the men outnumber the women two to one."
Glôs laughed. "The mainlanders so love their sodomy that they'd never notice the lack of women."
Protogenes, as president, led the Artists' Guild in adoration of the Telchines, the demigods who invented the graphic and plastic arts. Dinner was a typical Rhodian meal of assorted sea foods. A Rhodian gentleman proves his refinement by judicious criticism of each finny or tentacled item, but I could not be bothered. Instead, I made much of my work under Lysippos and Lysistratos.
"I have even," I said, "helped in the building of the world's largest statue."
"What's that?" asked Lykon. He was a broad-shouldered man, a few years older than I, with cold gray eyes in a sharply chiseled face; he had lately been elected herald of the Guild.
"The bronze Zeus at Taras," I said. "It stands forty cubits* (*A cubit = about 1-1/2 feet.) high and took us nearly two years to complete. Lysippos also made a twenty-cubit bronze Herakles for Taras, but that was before my time. I suppose that, in sheer mass, I've handled a greater weight of material for statuary than all of you together."
"By the Dog!" said Lykon. "How can that be, young man, when we are experienced artists and you are a mere beginner?"