We had an engagement at Phigeleia, a small town near Olympia. This was an important date, because the city had hired us. They were celebrating, on the feast of their founding hero, their liberation too.
This was one of the towns which the Spartans, after they won the Great War against Athens, gave into the power of their oligarchs to keep the people quiet. Here as usual they had chosen their Council of Ten from the worst of the old landowners, who had been exiled by the democrats and had most to gain from holding them down. These Dekarchs had paid off old scores tenfold—done as they chose, helped themselves to any pretty young wife or handsome boy they fancied, or any man’s best bit of land. If anyone complained, the Spartans would send a troop there, and when they had done with him he thought he had been well off before. Then came the Theban rising; Pelopidas and the other patriots there had shown the world that Spartans are made of the same stuff as other men; and while the Sons of Herakles were rubbing their heads and running about to see what hit them, the subject cities seized their chance. The Phigeleians had been prompt in this; but as they had begun by rushing with one accord to tear in pieces the most hated Dekarch, the others with their faction had got away to the hills.
The City Council had sent us word of this beforehand, and asked for a play to suit the feast, no expense spared; some of the Dekarchs’ gold had been saved from looting. Lamprias had found just the thing for them—a Kadmos by Sophokles the Younger, glorifying Thebes. It was a new, middling piece, which no one has thought worth reviving; Kadmos, punished for killing the War God’s dragon, is redeemed from bondage, made king, married to Harmonia, and so on to the finale with wedding procession. For good measure Demochares, who doctored scripts well when his head was clear, had written in some prophecies for Apollo, somehow dragging in Phigeleia. The Council was delighted. We had a week rehearsing with our chorus, who were about as good as you would expect when leading democrats’ sons had been chosen first and voices afterwards.
I looked forward myself to this production, because it gave me more to do than usual. I had a few lines as an extra (one of Kadmos’ earth-born warriors) and for the whole finale I was standing in for Apollo, since Meidias, who played him, was doing Harmonia as well.
This was the first time I had worn the mask of the god.
Meidias, who sneered at all our costumes to show what he was used to, despised more than anything this Apollo mask. He said it must be all of fifty years old; and in this I found he was right. It was heavy, being carved from olive wood, but no hardship to wear, for it was finished as smooth inside as out, a real craftsman’s job. No one makes them to last, nowadays.
I remember the first time I unpacked the hampers, at Eleusis, and saw it looking up at me. It gave me a start. It was a face, I thought, more for a temple than a stage. I know I sat back on my heels, among all the litter, looking and looking. Meidias was right in calling it old-fashioned, one must allow him that. No one would say, as they do before a modern Apollo, “Delightful! What a nice young man!”
Demochares, whom I asked about it, said it had been left to Lamprias by some old actor who had thought it brought him luck. It was supposed to have been made for the first revival of Aischylos’ Eumenides, where the god has a central role. That would be in the great days of Alkibiades and Nikias, when sponsors were sponsors, Demochares said.
Our overnight stop, before Phigeleia, had been at Olympia; I had never been there, and could not stare enough. In fact the place was stone-dead, it not being a Games year; but youth is easily pleased, and I set out with Demochares to see the sights. Like an old horse to its stable, he plodded to his favorite tavern near the river, and, seeing in my eye that I was going to move him on, said in his ripest voice, “Dear boy, you were asking me about the mask of Apollo. It has just come back to me whose workshop it came from, as I was told. Go along to the Temple of Zeus, and you will see. Let me think … yes, the west gable.”
I gave in, not sorry to get on quicker. Heat filled the wooded valley, for spring comes like summer there. Already the river was shallow in its pebbly bed; the dust was hot to the foot, the painted statues glowed. A tender Hermes, dangling grapes before the baby god he carried, made one want to stroke his russet flesh. Further on were the penalty statues, given as fines by athletes caught cheating; shoddy hack-work done cheap. The giltwork dazzled on the roofs, the white marble glared. The great altar of Zeus, uncleaned since the morning sacrifice, stank and buzzed with flies. But there are always sightseers for the temple. The porch and colonnades were noisy with guides and cheapjacks; peddlers sold copies of Zeus’s image in painted clay; quacks cried their cures; kids and rams bleated, on sale for sacrifice; a rusty-voiced rhetor declaimed The Odyssey while his boy passed round the plate. I went in from the hot sun to the soft, cool shadows, and gaped with the rest at the great statue inside, the gold and ivory, the throne as big as my room at home, till my eye, traveling upward, met the face of power which says, “O man, make peace with your mortality, for this too is God.”
Going out, I had to shake off a low fellow who seemed to think a free supper would be my price, and nearly forgot to look at the west gable. But a guide was herding a gaggle of rich women with their children, nurses, and big straw hats; I saw him pointing, and talking of the sculptor Pheidias. My eye followed his finger.The triangle of the gable end was full of the battle between the Greeks and Kentaurs. Theseus and Pirithoos and their men were battling to save the boys and women: men against half-men, wrestling, bashing, trampling, swinging axes; and in the midst, tall and alone, his right arm stretched above the melee, was the Apollo of the mask.
You could not mistake it. But here the mouth was closed, and the face had eyes. I walked back to see better, so lost that I bumped a lady, who scolded me. I scarcely heard. My flesh shivered with delight and awe. Even now sometimes, at Olympia, that shudder will come back to me.
He stands above the battle, needing only to be, not do. The world is still green and raw. He alone knows it is for him the Greeks are fighting; yet some light from him shines back in young Theseus’ face. The Greeks must win, because they are nearer his likeness; his prophetic eyes look far beyond. He has no favorites. He is stern, radiant, gracious and without pity. A perfect chord is the friend of him whose strings are tuned to it. Can it pity the kitharist who fumbles?
I walked back doing a speech for him, boyish nonsense in the hack verse any actor can think in. There was no time to finish it, for Demochares had drunk himself silly, and had to be got back while he could still stand. He greeted me as his lovely Hylas, making the other drinkers laugh and cheer; but I was used to that. “Hylas?” I said. “You know what happened to him. Herakles let him go sightseeing on his own, and the local nymphs took and drowned him. And Herakles lost his passage in the Argo. Heave-ho, shipmate. Come back on board, before the skipper casts off.”