As he left, he said, “If you want me later, Sim, I’ll be at the workshop of your sculptor friend, Theodoros. He wants to sketch my buttocks, or some such thing.” We exchanged mock punches, as we’d done when we were boys.
What Theodoros really wanted of him was to have him pose for a bronze of Perseus. He did it, too, staying for some days as the sculptor’s guest. He always liked, he told me, to see how things were made.
I too enjoyed the making of a bronze, though I’d seen it once already. It had a kind of magic, unlike the slow chipping and smoothing of stone or marble. Theodoros had been to Egypt to learn the art; there, they had been casting life-size time out of mind, when only little votives were being made in Greece.
He had a huge yard down by the harbor, full of sheds and hoists and scaffoldings, all powdered white with marble-dust that got up one’s nose. The noise was dreadful, at least for an ear like mine, what with slaves sawing blocks or chipping them down for columns, grinding and polishing column-drums. There was also a clattering forge where they were making rivets to fasten wall-blocks together. Clang-clang went the great hammers, and tink-tink-tink the little ones, as some skilled apprentice made the trims for a bronze. Hands over ears, I threaded my way to Theodores’ own workroom, which was swept and polished and had a great table full of drawings and plans. On a dais stood my brother, splendid in nakedness, one arm propped up on a wooden stand. He was to be holding up the Gorgon’s head, and the torso muscles had to show the lift. Before him stood Theodoros in his working dress, which was a small apron to keep the grit out of his private parts, and a great deal of clay daubed here and there on the rest of him. He had set up the core and was putting on the first surface, talking with Theas; the touchy part of the work was still to come. Theas used to say he learned enough good stories as Theodoros’ model to dine out on for the rest of his life.
Two days later, he could hardly open his mouth without being snapped at. I myself had known enough to come in on tiptoe. Theodoros was washed clean from dust and clay. My brother’s face returned me to my boyhood; he had shaved his beard. It was the statue’s skin that was being finished, down to the finest touch; the nipples, the hair of head and groin, the face. Its color had changed from clay-grey to a creamy white like alabaster. Theodoros was working upon the wax.
It had been spread with a hot knife over the clay and left to harden. Now he was smoothing it with a warm tool, or graving it with a cold one. Not to be in the way, I went over to the table. At one end were the set-squares and compasses and plumb lines of the architect; at the other, under the window, the tiny tools of his gem-carving, the vise and the treadle-wheel for the drill. A young man came in, and set down softly a hideous white waxen mask. The chief apprentice had been trusted with the Gorgon’s head.
“Please, Theodoros,” said Theas like a boy at school, “may I go outside?”
“If you must, if you must,” said the master, who must have known he was too well-mannered to ask unless he was bursting. “Yes, take a rest, I can finish the ears without you. Look in that tray, Sim, and you’ll find his eyes.”
It was full of split agates; set on one side was the perfect one, brown at the core with a milky rim, each half curved and smooth. “They don’t come in blue,” he said, “not with the markings right.”
At last the wax was finished; there stood complete a white ghostly man, pierced with rods through body and limbs and head, to tie the form firmly within the mold. Theodoros walked round and round it, making a tiny line with a stylos upon the eyebrow, or stroking a tendon with his broad thumb. Then he turned his back on it, and said to his apprentices, who were watching in dead silence, “Yes. Get on.”
Slaves had dragged in a tub full of wet clay. Into this slip the apprentices dipped their hands, working it with fingers and thumbs to test its fineness. One found a grain of grit, at which they all exclaimed with outrage, and started over again. Theodoros strode over and rubbed some between his palms, and said it would do, but let Sesostris look out next time. On this they scooped up the clay, which was so soft that it almost ran, and began to smooth it over the waxen body. Their touch was tender and delicate, as if they were anointing it; but as they worked, the fine outlines blurred, and in a while it was clay-grey again. Theodoros said to us, “Come back in four days. There’s nothing to see till then.”
As we walked off past the forge, Theas lifted his voice to shout, “I don’t know what the father will say. I should be home by now.”
All the same, he did not look anxious. Sculptors like Theodoros don’t find their models among men who want to be paid. You will see peasants strong enough to take an ass on their shoulders, hardier than soldiers; but they are not built like the athlete who has had the chance to train, and shape from his own body a work of art. Our father would not be sorry to see his heir shining in Samos, in eternal bronze. It was another thing than singing in a tavern. For that he would wait a few days longer, to see what had become of me.
Next day we spent with Kleobis, who had cheered up, and told Theas about our Ionian days. I hoped he would soon be putting on flesh again. He had lost his old healthy tan; his face was almost the color of Theodoros’ wax. He came with us, though, to the workshop to see the bronze broken from the mold. In any great city it’s a common sight today; but when I was young, hollow-cast statues were still a marvel in Samos, and unknown in the rest of Greece. A whole crowd who could not get in to watch the modeling were allowed to enjoy the sight.
Theodoros, I saw, could have done without us all. He enjoyed his fame; but, like most artists, not everything it brought with it. He’d have liked to view the work in peace, complete the finishing, and then show it perfect; and I do not blame him. No one can make me disclose a half-formed song; my mold, my furnace, are safely within my head.
After the smooth slip, the statue had been coated with thick strong clay, turning the waxen man into a clumsy giant with just a head, body and limbs. He was stained with the fire, in which he had been slow-hardened; and pierced with vents, through which his delicate waxen flesh had vanished away. When it had been melted out from him, in its place had been poured the bronze.
Theodoros never had sightseers when that was done. It was an agon, he said, a contest, win or lose all. His chief apprentice, who venerated him, confided to me at the tavern that he went on like a madman, shouting at them all, hitting them over the head, calling them bastard sons of slaves. If the mold was not propped and chain-slung just right above the fire; if a bit of unmelted metal closed a channel within the mold; if a hand or a foot had not been drained of all its wax before the casting, it would be disaster. “It’s like childbirth,” the apprentice said. “You know what went in at the start, but you don’t know what will come out.”
The fire-stained mold, holding its heavy secret, had been hoisted with a crane, and laid down on an oaken frame. Theodoros and his apprentices stood round with mallets and chisels made of hardwood. He stepped up to the mold. I saw him close his eyes a moment, and wondered what god he was appealing to: Hephaistos, I suppose. Then he hit the head a few sharp taps down the face, and it split open like a chestnut shell. There was Theas, in all his beauty and even a little more, noble and calm, each curl on his forehead perfect. He was dark from the furnace, his sockets awaited eyes, the tie-rods still stood out from his crown and nape, there was a nick on his brow from a bit of grit in the clay. All that would be mended before the burnishing. Theodoros swore at the nick, and cursed Sesostris, and set about cleaning the ears. The apprentices started on the body.
At last they craned it up onto its feet, for us to see it whole. Even unfinished, you could see it was one of the artist’s master-works. I looked from this immortal to my brother, gazing at it with his head on one side, the only time I could remember him looking shy. I thought of him as a child, crying when our father had his young dog killed for sheep-chasing; or staring open-mouthed at a thrall’s wife we had discovered bathing in a stream, then grabbing my hand and running away; or exercising with his javelin, creasing his brow to recall his trainer’s instructions. His beard was starting to grow again, and had just reached the untidy state. One day it would be grey, if he lived so long; and here forever would shine this burnished hero. Tears came to my eyes; but everyone was sneezing from the dust of the broken clay, and no one noticed.