Presently Dion said, “You will want a good supporting actor. I thought of Hermippos, whom I have never seen give a bad performance.”
I ought to have foreseen this. I thought of Anaxis with his fancy cloak and his barber, fussing and nagging, simply because he trusted me not to be making what I could for myself alone—by no means a thing one can take for granted in the theater. Well, I thought, I may not be much in this company, but I’ll keep honest at my trade. “I know Hermippos. A sound artist. But my partner is Anaxis, whom you saw today.” Our contract was only for the tour; but with laymen one has to simplify.
He looked rather put out. I suppose most people think theater men live hand to mouth, taking what they can get. “Forgive me,” I said, “but we servants of the god have our honor too.”
“Say no more,” he replied at once. “Your partner is welcome.” It was Plato who had looked the more surprised.
But Dion had now started talking about plays, and I saw before long that here was a man who could teach me something. Nothing, as a rule, is more tedious than an amateur ignorant of technique and full of theories; and he was ignorant enough. But what he talked of, he knew. Most of tragedy is concerned with kingship, and the choices it compels men to; and what he said that evening has been of use to me all my life. The theater, after all, can only teach one how; men as they live must show one why.
He knew war and command, what soldiers trust in a leader, how one must be strong before one dares be merciful. His favorite poet, he said, was Sophokles, who wrote about responsibility and moral choice—Antigone and Neoptolemos weighing their own decency and honor, which they knew first-hand, against causes they were asked to take on trust. “A city,” he said, “is only a crowd of citizens. If each of them has renounced his private virtue, how can they build a public good?”
“And Euripides?” I asked. “We’ve said nothing yet of him.”
He said at once, “I only like The Troiades, which teaches mercy to the conquered, though no one shows it in the play. For the rest, his men and women are the sport of gods who behave worse than human barbarians. What can one learn from that?”
His heat surprised me. “I suppose he shows how things are, and that men have to bear them. He lived in hard times, from all one hears. Hecubas ten a drachma.”
Plato said, “He was dead before the worst.” It gave me a start, as always when one meets a man who lived it through; to me it was childhood tales. “As it happens,” he said, “I know what he wished to teach, though he died when I was still a boy. Sokrates told me. Euripides used to show him his work before he sent it in, because their purpose was the same. Sokrates told him he would never come at it by the means he used, but he said he was an artist, not a philosopher. They had this in common, that it disgusted both to see the gods debased by crude peasant folk-tales which made them out worse than the worst of men. Sokrates called it blasphemy. For this fools killed him; but they could not kill his truth, because he did not destroy without offering something better. Not so Euripides, a maker of phantoms as all poets are. The truth is one, illusion manifold, and diversity makes a play. He believed it was enough to show these gods of the field and agora as the legends make them—capricious, lustful, lying, outrageous in revenge, careless of honor—and leave the audience to its thoughts. His cure for a leaky roof was to knock the house down. Sokrates taught that since it is inconceivable the gods should be evil, they must be good. But Euripides sent home his audience—and still does—saying, ‘If those are the gods, then the gods are not.’”
I thought this over; I could see what he meant. “It’s true,” I answered, “that if we leave out The Bacchae, which is something by itself, he is not so successful with the gods as with humankind. You, sir, will know best whether he meant it so, or couldn’t help it. But you will allow, I think, his skill in the second. He was the first to show men and women as they really are.”
“Say, rather, he was the first to say they can be satisfied with what they are, and need try to be no better. ‘I know,’ says his Medea, ‘what wickedness I am about to do, but passion is stronger than good counsel.’ ‘I am helpless,’ says Phaedra, before she deceives a just king into killing his innocent son. Men are seldom helpless against their own evil wishes, and in their souls they know it. But common men love flattery not less than tyrants, if anyone will sell it them. If they are told that the struggle for the good is all illusion, that no one need be ashamed to drop his shield and run, that the coward is the natural man, the hero a fable, many will be grateful. But will the city, or mankind, be better?”
Not being a sophist, trained to bring out answers pat, I could only say, “But it’s such marvelous theater.”
Plato raised his brows; then he looked down into his wine cup. An audience of twenty thousand, sitting on its hands, could not have produced such an echoing silence. I went hot right up into my hair.
Dion leaned over, and laid his hand on my shoulder. “Plato, I won’t have even you scold Nikeratos. Haven’t we seen him risk his life only today, rather than that a god should speak unworthily? He was a pattern for us all.”
Plato replied at once with something graceful, making amends. I think he even meant it. Though he was certainly not drunk, I daresay the strength of his own thoughts had carried him away. So, though it was time to go, I stayed a little longer to show there was no offense.
When I took my leave, Dion filled my cup to drink to the Good Goddess; then, when I had done so, dried it and put it in my hand. “Please keep this,” he said, “to remember the evening by, and in thanks for a performance I shall not soon forget. I wish there had been time to get one painted with Apollo or Achilles, especially for you.”
I went out into the sinking moonlight. Fathomless shadows filled the gorges. In the bowl of the wine cup, Eros crowned with white flowers played his lyre. Behind me in the house I heard the voice of Dion, telling his friend whatever could not be said with strangers there. As for me, I knew I had met a man I would gladly die for.
4
THE DELPHI PEACE CONFERENCE WAS A PLAY THAT failed to hit, and won no prizes. Dion put this down to the delegates not having prayed or sacrificed beforehand. One would think that being in Delphi they might at least have consulted the oracle; but I suppose each of them was afraid of finding himself at the losing end.
“Some of our guests,” Dion said when he sent for me to confirm our contract, “who had seats of honor at the theater, should have gone to school there. If men with weightier business had shown half your piety, they might have prospered better.” I saw he meant this well; so I did not ask whether a jobbing treaty, meant to last till everyone goes home and thinks again, is weightier business than Aischylos, who has been with us a hundred years and looks good for another hundred.
Anaxis was in ecstasies, and had scarcely stopped talking since he got the news. Of course I never told him it was Hermippos whom Dion had wanted. Some actors never miss such chances; but they hadn’t lived with my father. One pays for it later, too; and it’s always at the bad time that the bill comes in. He was delighted I had chosen to take Priam; Achilles was just the sort of part in which he saw himself. He was like a cat in a cream bowl.
“No year could be better,” he said. “There was never less public feeling against Dionysios in Athens than there is today. If you remember, when he lent us troops in the Theban War he was given the freedom of the city. With any luck, the judges will vote upon the play and not against the author. Have you thought, Niko, that if it wins he is sure to want it put on in Syracuse with the original cast?”