He told me he had been touring each time I came before. I don’t think it was true; I think he had been out of work, and was afraid of seeming to trade upon the past. Never having heard his name in Syracuse, I had thought he must be dead; but it was just that he was not a very good actor. His robe was darned; he looked hungry, but had bought his own drink before he spoke to me. I suppose that now, when no one had work in the city, it had come easier.
I resolved at once that I would take care of him, get him to Athens, and find him something; but that must come later, for he was a man with self-respect. So we talked of the past, and so on, while at the long table the young soldiers muttered together, or laughed sharply like boys up to something bad which frightens them, but not enough to make them cry off.
Once I heard something, some phrase I can’t bring back, which caught at my mind, so that for a moment I tried to listen. I think it was, “He’ll have gone to his house,” which might have meant anyone in the city. I don’t know why I noticed it. Yet I did, and my attention wandered from Ariston, just long enough for him to feel it, and for me to know he did. This I could not bear. I was too well dressed to afford it. I would not have hurt him for the world. It is true, too, that I would not think of myself as such a man. To each his own shape of pride.
So I turned my mind to him, and talked, and listened, and got him to take a good meal with me; and before we had finished, the young Greeks left all together.
We parted, arranging to meet again (I knew better than to ask where he was living), and I walked towards my inn in the dying sunset. In the south night falls quickly; red turns to purple as you look. Whether it was this brooding light, or words heard and not heeded stirring in my head, or whether some new note reached me through the city’s noise, I cannot tell, but of a sudden my heart jumped, and I understood. I had heard the truth from Kallippos. It was to Dion he had lied.
I began to run through the streets towards Ortygia. People stared at me; I ran as a child does from some bugbear he knows that only he can see. As the fading day sank to a murk in the west like blood, I knew I was running from the knowledge in my soul that it was too late.
Already shouts came from Ortygia, passed along from gatehouse to gatehouse. On the palace roof stood a man with two torches, signaling his news against the darkening sky.
I did not run on, in the hope that my fears were folly, that the tumult had some other cause. I knew; and now fear was over, I did not even grieve. It was all that was left him, to die like a king in tragedy, treading upon purple to the axe behind the door. He was freed from his prison in Ortygia, in the only way he could be freed, before it closed on him forever. I had no need to be told he had died with courage, fighting like a soldier against them all. I hoped, for as long as it was possible to hope in vain, that he had not fought alone.
I had no wish to stay on in Syracuse and speak his epitaph. There was no one here to write it; that was for the old man in Athens, who had written it, I suppose, already in his heart. As for me, Kallippos would not take time to look for me, a vain actor with a head for nothing but his roles. I would sail with Ariston, who had been kind when kindness or cruelty had power to shape my soul, and see he did not die hungry, or alone. That, I thought, is as much as most men can hope to bring away from the march of history, when all is said.
24
A DOZEN YEARS HAVE PASSED SINCE THEN. I HAVE never been back to Syracuse. They say grass grows in the streets there, and it has fewer people now than a country town in Attica. Tyranny has followed tyranny (that of Kallippos was so hateful that it only lasted a year) and for a time even Dionysios himself came back to rule over the desolation. At last Corinth, the mother city, taking pity on her wretched child, sent them a general, a good man it seems. He has driven Dionysios out again; whether he can get rid of the Carthaginians, only God knows. Meantime, he has had faith enough in men to disarm Ortygia; the walls of that lair are rubble now.
Dionysios got off just with his life. He is no one any more; he keeps a boys’ school in Corinth, and goes shopping in the market for his own dinner. Last time I played there, he came behind to commend me. The gods did him a backhand favor, for he can’t afford to drink himself into the grave, and is merely getting fat. He still thinks himself a good judge of the drama, and held forth for some time, till some more important citizen interrupted him.
Except in Corinth, which has an interest of its own, no one thinks much about Syracuse. It is a place where things happened once. Too much is going on now in Greece, with Philip of Macedon pushing south and meddling everywhere. No one has time for a backward island, full of squabbling bandits, with all its glories in the past. I suppose now and then there are a few hundred folk in that great theater. All the good actors left years ago.
Greece has plenty of work for us. It is said that technique has never been so advanced, though it’s long since I read a good new play. The great successes are all revivals, which we try to shed some new light on, or at least to present with a splendor worthy of the mighty dead.
Thettalos and I still share the house by the river, and tour as partners every few years. We have our own ways and our disagreements, but neither of us can conceive of being without the other. It is lucky I am the elder. There is a life in him which will demand its own span to work in, when I am gone, whether he likes or not.
We were together through most of this year’s spring. He was crowned at the Dionysia, and gave a party which, like all his others, will be talked of through the year. Then he went touring north, to Pella. Nobody nowadays who wishes to be considered at all in theater can leave Pella out for long. Actors are so esteemed there, we even send them on embassies.
Thettalos enjoyed his tour, and came back with some handsome presents as well as his fee. He told me he felt startled when, being presented to Queen Olympias, he found her wreathed with tame snakes, which stood up and hissed at him; she seemed to have stepped straight out of The Bacchae, but then Pella was never dull. “Besides,” he said, sighing and shaking his head, “I am in love. I have lost my heart forever. I shall never be the same again.”
I was used to this declaration, and to pulling him out of whatever scrape it meant, and said I hoped this time she was not the wife of a general. I was quite relieved when he told me it was a boy, and asked if he had brought the fair one to Athens. He laughed immoderately, and said when he could get it out, “No, I was afraid of his father.”
Macedon being as full as it is of powerful brigands, I praised his wisdom. He added, “And still more of his mother, and more than all of him.” I raised my brows and waited. “No,” he said. “You’ll be at Pella next month, and can see him for yourself.”
“Excellent. Tell me his name.”
“You will know when you see him. He will be there. He never misses a play.”
He would tell me no more, but said a little later, “When you go up to Pella, why don’t you put on The Myrmidons?”
“My dear,” I said, “I think it is time I hung up the mask of Achilles. I’ve left fifty behind, though it is kind of you to forget.”
“Nonsense. You wear a young mask as well as ever. You know if you were making a fool of yourself I’d be the first to tell you. Do it while you can; you are a beautiful Achilles. Give them something to remember.”
I was touched, and pleased, for it was true he could not have lied about it. Then I said, “But why The Myrmidons?”
“Well, it has not been done there for something like ten years; the young generation has never seen it.”