He would not have known his mother was working magic, if he had not heard her through the door one day. Though the wood was thick, he caught some of the incantation. It was one he did not know, about killing a lion on the mountain; but the meaning was always the same. So he went away without knocking.
It was Phoinix who roused him at dawn to see the play. He was too young for the chairs of honor; he would sit with his father when he came of age. He had asked his mother if he could sit with her, as he had done till only last year; but she said she would not be watching, she had other business then. He must tell her afterwards how he had liked it.
He loved the theater; waking to a treat which would begin at once; the sweet morning smells, dew-laid dust, grass and herbs bruised by many feet, the smoke of the early workers’ torches just quenched at daybreak; people clambering down the tiers, the deep buzz of the soldiers and peasants up at the top, the fuss with cushions and rugs down among the seats of honor, the chatter from the women’s block; then suddenly the first notes of the flute, all other sound dying but the morning birdsong.
The play began eerily in the dawn-dusk; the god, masked as a beautiful fair-haired youth, saluting the fire on his mother’s tomb, and planning revenge on the Theban King who scorned his rites. His young voice, the boy perceived, was being skillfully done by a man; his maenads had flat breasts, and cool boys’ voices; but, this knowledge once stored away, he gave himself to the illusion.
Dark-haired young Pentheus spoke wickedly of the maenads and their rites. The god was bound to kill him. Several friends had described the plot beforehand. Pentheus’ death was the most dreadful one could conceive; but Phoinix had promised one did not see it.
While the blind prophet rebuked the King, Phoinix whispered that this old voice from the mask was the same actor’s who played the youthful god; such was the tragedian’s art. When Pentheus had died offstage, this actor too would change masks, and enact the mad queen Agave.
Imprisoned by the King, the god broke out with fire and earthquake; the effects, set up by Athenian craftsmen, entranced the boy. Pentheus, defying miracles, infatuate for doom, still rejected the divinity. His last chance gone, Dionysos wound him in deadly magic and stole his wits away. He saw two suns in the sky; thought he could move mountains; yet let the mocking god disguise him absurdly as a woman, to spy on the maenad rites. The boy joined in the laughter whose edge was sharpened by the sense of terrors to come.
The King went off to his agony; the chorus sang; then the Messenger brought the news. Pentheus had climbed a tree to spy from; the maenads had seen him, and in their god-crazed strength uprooted it. His mad mother, seeing only a wild beast, had led them to tear him in pieces. It was over, and as Phoinix had said, need not be seen. The mere telling had been enough.
Agave was coming, cried the Messenger, with the trophy of her kill.
They ran in through the parodos in bloody robes. Queen Agave carried the head, spiked on a spear as hunters did it. It was made of the Pentheus mask and wig with stuffing in them, and bits of red rag hanging down. She wore a terrible mad mask, with an agonized brow, deep staring eyes and frenziedly grimacing mouth. From this mouth came a voice. At its first words, he sat as if he too had seen two suns in the sky. He was not far above the stage; his ears and eyes were sharp. The wig of her mask was fair; but in its streaming tresses live hair was spilling through, the dark red showed clearly. The Queen’s arms were bare. He knew them; even their bracelets.
The players, enacting shock and horror, drew back to give her the stage. The audience began to buzz; they had heard at once, after the sexless boys, that this was a real woman. Who…what…? The boy seemed to himself to have been hours alone with his knowledge, before questions began to get answers and the word ran round. It spread like a brush fire; good eyes insisting to dim ones, the women’s high chatter and outraged sibilance; the deep ebb-shoal murmur from the men above; from the seats of honor, a stunned dead silence.
The boy sat as if his own head had been transfixed. His mother tossed her hair and gestured at the bleeding trophy; She had grown into the dreadful mask, it had become her face. He broke his nails, gripping the edge of his stone seat.
The flautist blew on his double pipes; she sang:
I am exalted,
Great upon earth!
Let men praise me—
This hunt was mine!
Two rows down, the boy saw his father’s back, as he turned towards a guest beside him. His face was out of sight.
The curse in the tomb, the black dog’s blood, the thorn-pierced mammet, had all been secret rites. This was the Hekate spell by daylight, a sacrifice for a death. The head on the Queen’s spear was her son’s.
It was the voices all around that roused him from the nightmare. They waked him into another. They rose like the hum of flies disturbed from carrion, almost drowning the actors’ lines.
It was of her they were talking, not of Queen Agave in the play. They were talking of her! The southerners who said Macedon was barbarous; the lords and farmers and peasants. The soldiers were talking.
A sorceress they might call her. The goddesses worked magic. This was another thing; he knew these voices. So the men of the phalanx talked in the guardroom, about a women half of them had had; or some village wife with a bastard.
Phoinix too was suffering. A steady man rather than a quick one, he had been stunned at first; he had not thought even Olympias capable of such wildness. Without doubt, she had vowed this to Dionysos while giddy with wine and dancing at her rites. He began to put out a hand for comfort; looked again and refrained.
Queen Agave came out of frenzy to knowledge and despair; the relentless god appeared above, to close the play. The chorus sang the tag-lines.
The gods have many faces,
And many fates fulfill,
To work their will.
The end expected comes not;
God brings the unthought to be,
As here we see.
It was finished; but no one stirred to go. What would she do? She made a reverence to the cult-statue of Dionysos in the orchestra, before sweeping out with the others; some extra picked up the head; it was clear she would not return. From high up in the faceless crush of men came a long shrill whistle.
The protagonist came back to take absent-minded applause. He had not been at his best, with this freak on his mind; however, it had been made well worth his while.
The boy rose, without looking at Phoinix. Chin up, looking straight ahead, he thrust his way through the lingering, chattering crowd. All along their way, talk stopped for them; but not soon enough. Just outside the propylon, he turned round, looked Phoinix in the face, and said, “She was better than the actors.”
“Yes indeed. The god inspired her. It was her dedication to do him honor. Such offerings are very pleasing to Dionysos.”
They came out into the square of tramped earth outside the theater. The women, in twittering groups, were drifting homeward, the men standing about. Close by, exempt from convention, stood a cluster of well-dressed hetairas, expensive girls from Ephesos and Corinth, who served the officers at Pella. One said in a sweet carrying voice, “Poor dear little lad, you can see he feels it.” Without turning, the boy walked on.