There was a long, murmuring hush. I thought how if this had been a play, the applause would have stopped the show. It was magnificent, spoken with a whole heart by a man whose voice and presence were equal to every word. And yet I sat here, dry-eyed, in the tenth row, bearing my part in the troubled silence. It had not been so when he spoke at Leontini. Was the fault in me? I still did not know, when next day I sat down by Rupilius to tell my story.
He listened at first with exclamations, then in silence, just like the Syracusans. At last he said, “And they gave the pardon?”
“They did it for Dion. The men went off with their friends. Of course there were speeches first. I left before the end.”
He gave a long sigh. “What is it?” I asked. I was asking myself as well, as I suppose he saw. “Do you believe, Nikeratos,” he said, “that Herakleides will keep his word?” I shook my head. “Well? Then what’s your question?”
“Perhaps Dion was right, even so. He was the victor in virtue.”
He leaned over, grunting from a twinge in his wounded leg, and patted my knee. “Don’t take offense,” he said, “at my plain speaking. A friend to a friend. Dion is the best man I know. I’d die for him, and not wait to ask why. But at bottom, when all’s said, he’s a Greek. If he had been a Roman, he’d have known why he couldn’t pardon Herakleides. In Rome, you’d not be asking yourself.”
All Romans are vain of their home customs, even if they can’t make a living there and have to hire out their swords. I had become fond of Rupilius. When he saw I was not angry, he went on, “You Greeks, I know, excel us Romans in all the gifts of Apollo. But in the gifts of Jupiter—Zeus, I mean—you sometimes seem like children. It’s each man for himself before the city, and each city for itself before Greece. You’ve come to harm from it often, and you will again. Dion I thought was different. He’s never looked out for his life or anything he owned, if the people needed it. But now see what he’s done. Because this man was his personal enemy, whom he wants to excel in virtue, he lets him loose on the Syracusans, as if it weren’t through him their streets were like a shambles the other day. If he doesn’t mend his ways, which Dion, being a man and not a god, can’t guarantee, mayn’t it be so again? By Hercules, he could at least have insisted on exile! To a Roman’s way of looking, he’s helped himself to public property, as surely as if he’d put his hand in the treasury. Not that I hold it against him. He’s a Greek, he thinks like a Greek; that’s all. He’s still the best general I ever served under. Perfection is for the gods alone. But the truth’s the truth.”
I suppose it was knowing we both loved him still that made us able to talk. I said, “He has been like a god, Rupilius. It must be hard to come down. Our greatest sculptors leave some little bit unfinished, or rough, so as not to challenge the gods. Once one has been a god, one must be perfect, and seen to be perfect. I don’t know how that seems to you, as a Roman. I’m a Greek. And it frightens me.”
22
AT THE NEXT ASSEMBLY, WHEN THE DEAD WERE scarcely buried and the prisoners just ransomed from Ortygia, Herakleides proposed that Dion should be offered the title of supreme commander with full powers. It was the old office of the Archons. Dion neither agreed nor refused, but left it to the people. The gentry and middle citizens were for it; the commons, led by his friends, cheered Herakleides’ bigness of heart, and voted him back into his rank of admiral, with equal status.
I was rehearsing for The Persians, but getting this news in the agora of Leontini, I brought it straight to Rupilius. “Thundering Jupiter!” he groaned. “The man’s not fit to take a grain fleet across the straits. How did Dion stop it?”
“How could he? He has forgiven Herakleides solemnly, in public; he has refused supreme power on principle. If he’d opposed it, he’d have looked suspect both ways.”
“And Herakleides knew it. Dion shouldn’t have let him live.”
“He once said to me that a state is the sum of its citizens; if they have all renounced their private virtue, how can they build a public good? Surely it’s true.”
“Well? What then?” He felt about for his stick; I put it in his hand.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Even Plato has gone home to think again. But he’s old. He hasn’t much time left.”
“Plato! Don’t name that man to me.” He leaned politely over, to spit on the far side of the couch.
At the next Assembly, Herakleides brought up again the re-division of the land, reminding the people it had already been passed once, but not mentioning what had followed. It got a majority vote. Those against were the landowners, large and small, who were also the citizens trained in arms, bearing the brunt of the war. Dion, without wasting words on a formal speech, vetoed it as supreme commander of the land forces. The people went off grumbling, as poor men would anywhere on earth, and Herakleides’ faction went among them murmuring, “Tyranny!”
Shortly after this I put on The Persians, sharing the leads with Menekrates, who had said that he must work or lose his mind. He had dashed home from Italy, but happily too late to find the bodies of his family. So I paid off the man I had engaged, who did not like it but understood; it was little enough to do for an old friend. I played the Messenger and the Ghost; he did Queen Atossa and Xerxes. It was a bad production. I had not given my mind to it, and was off form myself; the chorus was a scratch one; Menekrates, though I think he saved his reason by purging his grief through this tale of old disasters, gave a poor performance, as actors do when playing from raw emotion instead of considered art. However, as always at these times, the audience was sure that, feeling what he portrayed, he must be superb, and received the play accordingly. He was in tears by the end—no matter, the action called for it—but from then on he could eat and sleep again.
He left Syracuse soon after for Ionia, which was new to him, trying to forget. His house had been burned to the ground, but his money was still buried there in a place he had shown to nobody. I don’t suppose the knowledge would have saved his wife, after she had told the soldiers; but they might have killed her more quickly. Since he knew nothing about this, he could find some relief in not being destitute. I myself stayed on a little longer, teaching Rupilius to write Greek. He would soon be on his feet again, but had come to count on me meanwhile; his daughters were married, and he had no sons living. It was a reason to give myself for staying on. I don’t know if it was hope or fear that really held me.
Dionysios had settled down in Lokri, his mother’s city, up the coast north of Rhegium. It was said he was rarely sober much after sunup. But his captains were, and his fleet was troublesome. So Herakleides’ navy sailed north to sweep the straits, and anchored at Messene.
The ships’ fighting men were soldiers serving under their own officers in the usual way. They had scarcely made camp when their commander sent dispatches back to warn Dion that Herakleides was working up the fleet to mutiny.
Its men had always served under him; he had won their favor by slack discipline; they did not know Dion like the troops. In Syracuse as elsewhere, the seamen are poorer than the citizen soldiers, who have their own panoplies to find. All sailors are democrats; but ours in Athens are used to public business, and have heard promises from too many demagogues to take them all on trust. These men had had less practice. Herakleides was telling them that whereas their old tyrant had been too sottish to do worse than neglect them, their new one was cold sober, and would never let them be.
The soldiers being loyal one and all to Dion, the whole expedition was almost in a state of war. Soldiers and sailors would wreck any wineshop where they met. The officers meantime were watching Herakleides like dogs around a foxhole. A doubtful messenger was pounced on; it turned out he was treating with Dionysios.