But when I unpacked the hampers at Phigeleia, and hung the mask of Apollo on its peg, I plucked a bay-sprig to stick above it, and poured a few drops of wine on the floor below. As I went with my flickering lamp out of the old wooden skeneroom, I half thought as I turned that there were eyes in the eyeholes, watching me off.
On the morning of the performance, long before sunup the audience was pouring in. Every soul who could walk must have been there; indeed, I saw one old granddad carried from his donkey to his seat.
I made sure Demochares took his breakfast watered, buckled him into the panoply of Ares, laid out everyone’s things, and tuned my lyre, which I should have to play for the bridal song. Then I got dressed as the Theban Warrior.
Everything went quite smoothly, as far as I remember, until about two-thirds through. Lamprias and Demochares were on stage as Kadmos and Telephassa. Meidias had exited as Harmonia, to do his change for Apollo; presently he would appear and prophesy, on the god-walk above the skene. I was still on as a warrior, with nothing to do but hold a spear.
Standing upstage center by the royal door, I was looking out beyond the theater at the hillside it was carved from. Suddenly I noticed a crowd of men coming down towards it. My first thought was that the citizens of some neighbor town had come to see the play, and got here late. When I saw they all had spears and shields I still did not think much of it, supposing they were going to do a war dance at the festival. Looking back, I find this simplicity hard to credit; but when you work in Athens, you get to thinking the world stops still for a play.
Lamprias went on with his speech; the men got nearer, till suddenly, down in the orchestra, one of the chorus gave a yell and pointed upward. The audience stared, first at him, then where he was pointing. Then chaos began.
The troop above gave the paean, and charged downhill. The Phigeleians, all weaponless, started tearing up the wooden benches and their struts, or running away. The women, who had been sitting in their best on the other side, began to huddle, scramble and scream. One young man, a quick thinker, jumped up on stage from the chorus and snatched my spear from my hand. I hope he got some good from it; it was a property one with a wooden blade. I offered him my shield, which he would need still more, but he was off, with his bearded mask pushed back on top of his head.
I don’t know what I would have thought of doing next. But, booming away close by, I heard the voice of Lamprias, still speaking his lines.
Those people who did not say that actors are mostly mad, said afterwards that a god possessed us. But in fact there is more sense in going on at such times than you would suppose. At least everyone knows who and what you are; we would have stood a far better chance of being speared or trampled on if we had bolted than we did by staying on stage. Man’s nature asks a reason, say the philosophers, so there I offer one. I doubt if I thought of it at the time. Theater, to me, was still the Dionysia at Athens. I was used to ceremony, respect for the sacred precinct, priests and statesmen and generals in the seats of honor, everything done decently, and the death penalty for violence. This brawling outraged me. We had rehearsed the play especially for this one festival, and I had not done my stand-in as Apollo yet.
The turmoil was getting worse. Here and there men in the audience had jumped up, paused in two minds, and run round outside to join the oligarchs. Some women had clambered over to the men’s side to grab their kin and keep them out of it. Now men who had run away at first, not in fear but to fetch their weapons, were coming back armed. But Demochares had come in on cue, and was fluting gravely as Telephassa. He even had an audience—one ancient priest in front, who had noticed nothing amiss, and some children, who it seemed were used to faction fights but had never seen a play.
I had just noticed, startled, that blood was flowing out in front—the first I had ever seen shed in war—when Lamprias ad-libbed something, beckoned me near, and said out of the side of his mask, “Get Apollo on.”
I made an exit and ran behind. Before I reached the skene-room I knew what I would find, which of course was nothing. I even looked in the hampers. He must have run off still costumed as Harmonia. His own clothes were there.
The robe and mask of Apollo were where I had put them out. I stripped and scrambled into them, picked up my lyre, and went out to the back. The skeneroom was just a flat-topped shed, with a crazy ladder to the god-walk on its roof. Meidias, but not I, had rehearsed getting up there, holding on with one hand and managing with the other both lyre and skirts. As I floundered up, tearing my sleeve on a nail, I cursed the oligarchs of Phigeleia who had got so rich without spending a drachma on this wretched theater. Down with them, I thought; up with the democrats. Apollo blesses their cause.
As I waited under the entrance ramp for my cue, I ran over all I knew of Apollo’s speech from hearing Meidias plowing through it. It was just the thing for the Phigeleians, if anybody listened. I touched the mask for luck, saying “Help me through this, Apollo, and I’ll give you something”; there was no time to think what. Then I swept up the ramp, striking my lyre.
From on top, I could see a proper battle. About half the citizens were now armed, if only with knives or cleavers. There were spears and swords too, serious business. To stand up here, mouthing away unheard, seemed stupid in an actor, and undignified in a god. I raised my arm, in the pose of the Pheidias Apollo, and cried out, “Victory!”
Some women exclaimed and pointed. A few men started to cheer. At once the speech of prophecy went clean out of my head. For a moment I felt like dying. Then—how sent, I leave you to decide as your nature prompts you—there came back to me my own childish voice, declaiming the Messenger from Salamis, in Aischylos’ The Persians. It was the first long speech my father had made me learn. I slammed a loud chord on the lyre, stepped to the god-walk’s edge, and threw it out for all I was worth.
Onward, sons of the Greeks! Set free the land of your fathers!
Rescue your sons, your wives, and your holy places,
Shrines of ancestral gods, and tombs of those who begot you!
To battle! Winner takes all!
The theater at Phigeleia was short of everything else, but at least it had good acoustics. The cheers came back from right up the hill. Later, I was assured that some of the women thought it really was Apollo; from what I have seen on country tours, it would not much surprise me. The men, if less simple than this, still thought it a lucky omen, believing it was in the play. I heard them calling on the god, as they pushed the oligarchs backward.
The rest of the speech would take the Greek sons to sea, which I feared might spoil it. But I was sure it would disgust my father to think I had dried because of a slight mischance on tour; besides, down below, on stage, Demochares was blowing kisses and saying, “Go on! Go on!” So I took it all as it came, bronze beaks, rammed sterns, shattered cars, corpse-strewn beaches, wallowing keels, wailing upon the waters. I broke off now and then and played Dorian marches, to spin it out.
I forget how far I got before the oligarchs fell back out of sight beyond the hill-ridge. (They ran till they got to Sparta, where they stayed, and got just what they deserved.) So I lost most of my audience, the citizens going in pursuit. Since the play seemed over, I tagged it off from Euripides this time:
In vain man’s expectation;
God brings the unthought to be,
As here we see.
Then I came down, and tore my sleeve on the nail again.
The evening’s party went on all over Phigeleia. They had a great krater in the Agora the size of a well-head, full of free wine. I left Demochares to enjoy Dionysos’ bounty—he had earned it—and wandered off. People kept asking me who had enacted Apollo; a man of towering stature, they mostly said, who had appeared as if from heaven. I had been meant to wear lifted boots, but had not had time to lace them on. It is a fact that you can make an audience see nearly anything, if you yourself believe in it.