A dead girl was lying on the threshold in a pool of her blood. My eye was caught by her hair, which I felt I had seen disheveled like this before. So I had. She was Speusippos’ little flute-girl, whose wrongs had made up his mind to war. Much good it had brought her.
Axiothea stood beside me in the porch. I tried to pull her away, but she stood her ground. “No. I have been concerned with making laws for men, and have only known the best of them. I’ve no right to hide from the worst.” She went forward, and took a long look. “Now come,” I said, “that’s enough,” and dragged her to the steps by force. In the street she said, “Plato and Dion have both been soldiers. I suppose they knew.”
“I’m told it is worse with Carthaginians. This will be just a common sack. Now let’s talk of something else, before we fall into despair. Let’s talk of the good men we have known; they are real too.”
Not to make a long tale of a tedious business, we got out of the city by the northern gate of the New Town, and started walking along the road to Leontini. We had what was left of the caretaker’s food to keep us from hunger on the way. The road was not crowded. I suppose few citizens wanted to take refuge in a city filled with Dion’s soldiers.
A man stood shouting by the road, a seaman, making his profit as someone does from every disaster, offering at a high price a passage along the coast to Rhegium. Though it was certain the boat would be overloaded, we closed with him at once. Both of us longed for Athens like the babe for the breast.
We were just walking the last stretch of highway before the turnoff to the shore, when the clatter of hooves sent everyone scattering. We looked after the six flying horsemen, wondering what news they carried. One had stared at me as he passed; I heard him call my name to another. Then they all pulled up and rode back.
They were Syracusans, so I waited. A man dismounted; he looked like a gentleman through the dirt and dust. “I am Hellanikos,” he said, and told me who the others were. “You are known to Dion. I beg you, in the name of Zeus the Merciful, ride with us to Leontini, and join us when we throw ourselves at his feet. The Achradina has fallen. He is our only hope.”
I could hardly credit my ears, even in Syracuse. Not wishing to insult men in misery, I just said, “You cannot suppose he will come. If he would, his men would not. My friend and I have just taken our sea passages for home. I am sorry.”
“Niko,” said Axiothea, “don’t be a fool. Do as they ask. I’ll see you in Athens.”
She had forced a boy’s voice so well, it quite startled me. She pulled me aside. “Go to him. If he is still Dion, he will come.”
“Impossible! What man upon earth …”
“He despises vengeance; he says it is sharing in the evil. Isn’t that what he told you at Delphi?”
“Nikeratos!” someone shouted. “I beg of you. Time presses.”
“No, by Zeus! To leave you on the road like a stray dog …”
“I came for the cause. Since I could not help, at least don’t let me remember that I hindered it. I’ve learned how to manage on the ship; it will be nothing, after all this. Goodbye, Niko. You have made me a truer philosopher. Go with God.”
The men coughed and fidgeted, hiding, since they needed me, their contempt for the silly actor who could not set out without kissing his fancy boy. One of them, who had agreed to stand down because Dion did not know him, gave me his steaming horse. From the bend of the road I looked back at her; but she did not turn, walking with her thin shoulders held straight, down the path to the sea.
21
WE GOT TO LEONTINI AT EVENFALL, when the men were strolling in the cool and sitting outside the taverns under the trees. At our noisy entrance they all came crowding. When we asked for Dion his own voice answered: he had been taking the air with Kallippos and his other friends.
We all dismounted and ran to him. While the onlookers stood on tables or climbed trees to see, we knelt in the pose of supplication. It is a thing one needs training to do with grace. One man almost fell over.
Hellanikos told the hideous tale without excuses; an old-time, decent small squire, eating dirt for what he had had no part in—a clever choice, for an envoy to Dion. Then each of us said something. His eyes moved from face to face in a kind of wonder; one could not tell what he thought. Not being a Syracusan, I spoke last. “Sir,” I said, “we come before a man more deeply wronged than Achilles, asking far more than Priam did. But the city is Syracuse, and the man is Dion.”
He gazed down, his face held stiff, swallowing and biting his lip. Then a hard sound came from his throat. I saw that he wept.
When he had mastered his voice, he said, “This does not rest with me alone. The men must judge for themselves. Is the crier here?”
The Assembly met in the theater, as it does at Leontini. Last time I was in it, I had played lead. Now I was an extra; but there is no protagonist I have felt so honored to support. Gladly I would have swept the stage for him.
Hellanikos did his speech again, this time to the soldiers, and we ad-libbed as best we could. Then Dion addressed them. “I have called you here so that you can decide what you think best for you. For me, there is no choice. This is my country. I must go; and if I cannot save her, her ruins shall be my grave. But if you can find it in your hearts to help us, foolish and wretched as we are, you may to your eternal honor still save this unhappy city. If that is too much to ask, then farewell, and all my thanks. May the gods bless you for your past courage, and the kindness you have shown to me. If you speak of me after, say I did not stand by to see you wronged, nor forsake my fellow citizens in disaster.”
I don’t think he could have gone on, but the cheering drowned his voice. They yelled his name like a war cry, then shouted, “To Syracuse!” I suppose Hellanikos made a speech of thanks; I think he embraced Dion. I could scarcely see for tears.
They stayed only to eat and get their kit; that same night we saw them off on the thirty-mile march to Syracuse. As for me, having served Dionysos all my life, I never bore arms except upon a stage; and this was work for professionals, not walkers-on. But though the boatmen were still hawking passages to Italy, I did not sail. I had witnessed an act of magnanimity it would not be impious to call godlike; I felt a need to know the outcome. Great evil, or great good, seem the concern of every man; they touch our destiny.
This is what happened, as I heard it later from Rupilius. All day in Syracuse the raiders had been plundering, or storming the few street barricades that held out. Herakleides and his officers dashed hither and thither, trying to order their scattered forces; but they could not overtake the wasted hours of drunkenness and panic. At nightfall, like wolves gorged with prey, the men of Ortygia went back over the causeway, to the women they had taken.
The Syracusans crept forth, and spent the night searching for kindred, or patching some shelter from the ruins. Daylight showed the city still their own. They shored up the crosswall with half-charred timbers, and got it manned again. By noon, a rider brought news that Dion was on the way. Are you supposing they flocked to the temples to give thanks? This was Syracuse.
Herakleides took the news as his own death warrant. As it was, the people were blaming him for the debauch rather than themselves; for his petty triumph he had lost the city. If Dion, whom he had driven out, marched in as savior, what could he expect? Perhaps he thought of Philistos. Such men see in others what they know about themselves.
He and his friends rode among the distracted people, crying out that the danger from Ortygia was over; they would be mad to let in a tyrant they had expelled, with his own army, every man hot for vengeance. Fear was the air they breathed; tyranny they had grown up with; it all made sense to them. They dispatched envoys to tell Dion he was not needed, and could go back.