Mary Renault - Greece 5 - Mask Of Apollo

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THE MASK OF APOLLO
Copyright 1966, by Mary Renault
Tears were for Hekabê, friend, and for Ilion’s women,
Spun into the dark Web on the day of their birth,
But for you our hopes were great, and great the triumph,
Cancelled alike by the gods at the point of glory.
Now you lie in your own land, now all men honor you-
But I loved you, O Diôn!
plato
(Translation by Dudley Fitts)
THE MASK OF APOLLO
I
NOT MANY PEOPLE REMEMBER LIAMPRIAS NOW IN ATHENS. But his company is still
talked about in the Peloponnese. Ask in Corinth or Epidauros, no one will have heard of him; but down
in the Argolid they will go on about his Mad Herakles, or his Agamemnon, as if it were yesterday. I don't
know who is working his circuit now.
At all events, he was in Athens when my father died, and owed him more money than anyone else did;
but as usual he was nearly broke, and trying to fit a tour out on a handful of beans. So he offered to take
me on as an extra; it was the best he could do.
As I suppose everyone knows, my father Artemidoros was an actor before me; the service of Dionysos
runs in our blood. Indeed, you could call him a sacrifice to the god. He died of a chill he caught here in
Athens, playing second roles in the Bacchae of Euripides, which was that year's classical revival. It was
one of those bright spring days you get at the Dionysia, warm in the sun but with a cutting wind. He came
on first as King Pentheus, wearing a heavy sleeved costume, red cloth with thick embroidery, also some
padding in the chest and shoulders, since like me he was a slender man. I don't know what possessed
him to put on under all this his maenad dress for Queen Agave. There is plenty of time after Pentheus'
exit; but he was always proud of changing quickly. Of course he sweated; when he changed masks and
came on again in this damp thin robe, the sun went in and he got chilled to the bone. One would never
have known it. I was on as a Maenad, and thought he was at his best. He was famous for his women's
roles, especially the crazy ones, like Agave and Cassandra, or tear-wringers like Niobe.
He had no luck that day, for the leading man, who had played the god, got the actors' prize and gave a
party. My father did not like to leave early, in case it was misunderstood, so he stayed drinking till past
midnight. The cold went to his chest with a high fever, and on the third night he died.
Though I was nineteen at the time, it was the first death in our own house since I was born. I felt
half-dazed, and confused with the noise of the rites, the house all upside down, my father on his bier, feet
to the door, my mother and grandmother and sister flinging their arms across him wailing, the small room
full of neighbors and actors edging and shouldering in and out to pay respects and hang on the door their
black-ribboned locks of hair. I can still feel the pull on my scalp as I stood in a dark corner, hacking at
mine with my mother's scissors. It was short already, like every actor's; being fair and fine it seemed to
go to nothing, however close I cut. I tugged and hurt myself, my eyes running with the pain, and with
grief, and from fear I should not have enough to show up in the grave-wreath.
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From time to time the wailing broke off as some new caller spoke his lines. The neighbors left
soon-outsiders don't know what to say about an actor-but his fellow artists hung about, for he was
always a well-liked man. So indeed they kept saying -how good he was to work with, and always ready
to help a friend. (My mother, I thought, would sooner have had the news that he had saved a little.) He
never dried, they said, he could keep going through anything; and they told some tales that made me
stare, not having learned yet that anything can happen on tour. What talent he had, they said, poor
Artemidoros! A disgrace he was passed over at the Lenaia; no one remembers seeing Polyxena done
with more feeling; but the lot fell on some poor judges this year.
I put down my scissors and ran inside, my hair half-shorn like a felon's, leaving my clippings on the towel.
As though everyone would not have approved my weeping, I hid like a dog, gulping and choking on my
bed. It was not the mourners I was hiding from, but my father on his bier, as silent as an extra, masked in
his dead face, waiting for his exit.
I'm not sure how long I had known I had more talent than he had. Two years-no, three; I was sixteen
when I saw him as the young Achilles in The Sacrifice at Aulis, and I doubt if it came new to me even
then. He always moved well, and his hands could say anything. I never heard his voice more charming.
He made Achilles a delightful youth, spirited, sincere, with an arrogance too boyish to offend. They could
have eaten him up; they hardly noticed his Agamemnon, waiting for him to come back as Achilles. Yes;
but the shadow of all that darkness, of that black grief beside the shore, the dreadful war yell whose rage
and pain scared all the horses, it is close ahead, his goddess mother knows already. One ought to feel it
breathe. It crept in my hair, where he speaks of his slighted honor; I shivered down my backbone. And I
heard another player, hardly yet knowing whom.
If he had been self-satisfied, jealous or hard to work with, I should have learned to justify myself. But he
had all an artist needs, except the spark from the god. No one knew better than I did what he was like
backstage. I had been on with him almost since I could stand alone.
At three, I was Medea's younger son, though I can't remember it; I don't suppose I knew I was on a
stage. My father told me later how he had brought home his Medea mask beforehand, in case it
frightened me; but I only stuck my fingers through its mouth. It is hard to make actors' children take
masks seriously, even the most dreadful; they see them too soon, too near. My mother used to say that at
two weeks old, to keep me from the draft, she tucked me inside an old Gorgon, and found me sucking
the snakes.
I do remember, though, quite clearly, playing Astyanax to his Andromache. I was turned six by then, for
Astyanax has to work. The play was Euripides' The Women of Troy. My father told me the plot, and
promised I should not really be thrown off the walls, in spite of all the talk about it. We were always
acting out such tales as a bedtime game, with mime, or our own words. I loved him dearly. I fought for
years to go on thinking him great.
"Don't look at the Herald," he said to me at rehearsal. "You're not supposed to know what he means,
though any child would that was right in the head. Take all your cues from me."
He sent me out in front, to see the masks as the audience saw them. Climbing up high, above the seats of
honor, I was surprised to find how human they looked, and sad. While I was there he did his part as
Cassandra, god-mad with two torches. I knew it by heart, from hearing him practice. It was his best role,
everyone agrees. After that he changed masks, ready for Andromache. This is the play where they bring
her in from the sacked city on a cart piled up with loot, her child in her arms, just two more pieces of
plunder. A wonderful bit of theater. It never fails.
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I was still small enough to be used to women's arms; it was odd to feel, under the pleated dress I grasped
at, the hard chest of a man, holding each breath and playing it out with the phrases, the rib cage vibrant
like the box of a lyre. If one thinks, I suppose most men's sons would die of shame to hear their fathers
weep and lament in the voice of a woman. But as he never missed his exercises, I must have heard them
from the first day I drew breath: old men, young men, queens and booming tyrants, heroes, maidens and
kings. To me it was the right of a man to have seven voices; only women made do with one.
When the day came, I was still aggrieved there was no mask for me, though I had been told again and
again children did not use them. "Never mind," said my father, "the time will come." Then he pulled his
own mask down, the smiling face going into the solemn one. He was in the prologue as Athene.
Outside the parodos the cart was waiting, drawn by four oxen, with the gilded spoils of Troy. At last
came the call boy, and my father in the pale mask of the shorn-haired widow. He clambered up,
someone hoisted me after, he settled me on his knee, and the oxen started.
Out beyond the tall gateway was the great curve of the theater. I was used to the empty tiers. Now, filled
with faces, it seemed vast and unknown, murmuring and dangerous as the sea. My father's voice
whispered, "Don't look at the audience. You're scared of strangers. Think how they chopped up your
poor old granddad. Lean on me."
This is not how I myself would direct Astyanax. He is Hector's son; I like him alert and bold, thinking no
evil till the time. But my father knew his business too. Even the men were sighing as we came slowly on
into the orchestra; I could hear the little coos and cries of the women, floating on this deep bass.
Suddenly it took hold of me. My father and I, by ourselves, were doing this with fifteen thousand people.
We could carry them all to Troy with us, make them see us just as we chose to be. I can taste it still, that
first sip of power.
Then I felt their will reach out to me. It was like the lover's touch, which says, Be what I desire. All
power has its price. I clung to Andromache my mother and leaned upon her breast; but the hands I
answered to were Artemidoros the actor's. As they molded me like wax and sculptured us into one, I
knew the many-headed lover had caught him too; I felt it through both our skins. Yet I felt him innocent.
He did not sell, but gave freely, love for love.
The Herald came, with the news that I must die. I remembered I was not supposed to heed him; but I
thought I should look sorry for my mother's grief, so I reached up and touched the mask's dead hair. At
this I heard sighing and sobbing rise like a wave. It was coming from the block where the hetairas sit;
they love a good cry more than figs. But it was a few years yet before I knew enough to look for them.
When the Herald bore me off to die, I thought everyone backstage would be there to pay me
compliments; but only the wardrobe master's assistant came in a hurry, to strip me naked and paint on
my bloody wounds. My father, who had exited soon after me, ran over to pat my bare belly as I lay, and
say, "Good boy!" Then he was off; it's a quick change from Andromache to Helen, what with the jewels
and so on. It is always a splendid costume, meant to show up against the other captives'. The mask was
most delicately painted, and had gold-wreathed hair. He went on, and I heard his new voice, bland and
beguiling, answering angry Menelaos.
Soon after came my cue to be brought on, dead. They stretched me out on the shield, and a couple of
extras lifted it. The day was warm, but the breeze tickled my skin, and I gave my mind to lying limp as I
had been told. The chorus called out the dreadful news to my grannie Hecuba; lying, eyes shut, while the
Herald made a long speech about my death, I prayed Dionysos not to let me sneeze. There was a pause
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which, because I could not see, seemed to last forever. The whole theater had become dead silent,
holding its breath. Then a terrible low voice said just beside me:
"Lay down the circled shield of Hector on the ground."
I had been well rehearsed for this scene, but not with Hecuba. I had nothing to do but keep still; and this
was Kroisos, the leading man. He was then at the peak of his powers, and, fairly enough, did not expect
to tutor children. I had seen the mask, and that was all.
I had already heard him, of course, lamenting with Andromache; but that is her scene, and I had my own
part to think of. Now, the voice seemed to go all through me, making my backbone creep with cold. I
forgot it was I who was being mourned for. Indeed, it was more than I.
No sweetness here, but old pride brought naked to despair, still new to it, a wandering stranger. At the
bottom of the pit a new pit opens, and still the mind can feel. Cold hands touched my head. So silent
were the tiers above us, I heard clearly, from the pines outside, the murmur of a dove.
I was not seven years old. I think I remember; but no doubt I have mixed in scraps from all sorts of later
renderings, by Theodoros or Philemon or Thettalos; even from my own. I dreamed of it, though, for
years, and it is from this I remember certain trifles-such as the embroidery on his robe, which had a
border of keys and roses-glimpsed between my eyelids. When I think of these dreams it all comes back
to me. Was it Troy I grieved for, or man's mortality; or for my father, in the stillness that was like a
wreath of victory on Kroisos' brow? All I remember for certain is my swelling throat, and the horror that
came over me when I knew I was going to cry.
My eyes were burning. Terror was added to my grief. I was going to wreck the play. The sponsor would
lose the prize; Kroisos, the crown; my father would never get a part again; we would be in the streets
begging our bread. And after the play, I would have to face terrible Hecuba without a mask. Tears burst
from my shut eyes; my nose was running. I hoped I might die, that the earth would open or the skene
catch fire before I sobbed aloud.
The hands that had traced my painted wounds lifted me gently. I was gathered into the arms of Hecuba;
the wrinkled mask with its down-turned mouth bent close above. The flute, which had been moaning
softly through the speech, getting a cue, wailed louder. Under its sound, Queen Hecuba whispered in my
ear, "Be quiet, you little bastard. You're dead."
I felt better at once. All I had been taught came back to me. We had work to do. I slid back limp as his
hands released me; neatly, while he washed and shrouded me, he wiped my nose. The scene went
through to the end.
In vain
we sacrificed. And yet had not the very hand of God gripped and crushed this city deep in the ground we
should have disappeared in darkness, and not given a theme for music, and the songs of men to come.
As the extras carried me off in my royal grave-clothes, I thought to myself, surprised, "We are the men to
come." As well as everything else, I had been responsible to Astyanax. His shade had been watching
from the underworld, hoping I would not make him mean. What burdens I had borne! I felt I had aged a
lifetime.
My father, who had been standing behind the prompt-side revolve and seen it all, ran up as they slid me
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off the shield, asking what had come over me. If it had been my mother, I daresay I should have raised a
howl. But I said at once, "Father, I didn't make a noise."
Kroisos came off soon after, pushing up his mask. He was a thin man, all profile, like a god on a coin
except that he was bald. When he turned our way I hid behind my father's skirts; but he came towards
us, and fished me out by the hair. I came squirming, a disgusting sight, as you may suppose, all smeared
with blood-paint and snot. He grinned with big yellow teeth. I saw, amazed, that he was not angry "By
the dog!" he said, "I thought we were finished then." He grimaced like a comedian's slave-mask.
"Artemidoros, this boy has feeling, but he also knows what he's about. And what's your name?"
"Niko," I answered. My father said, "Nikeratos." I had seldom heard this used, and felt somehow
changed by it. "A good omen," said Kroisos. "Well, who knows?"
Now, while the women wailed over the bier, a dozen such scenes from my childhood up came back to
me. My father always got me in as an extra when he could.
Outside came a lull; Phantias the mask-maker had come to condole, bringing a grave-pot painted to
order with two masks and Achilles mourning by a tomb. The women, who were getting tired, broke off
to talk awhile. I was master of the house, I ought to go out and greet him. I could hear his voice, recalling
my father as Polyxena, and turned over again, biting the pillow. I wept because the god we both served
had made me choose, and my heart had forsaken him for the god. Yet I had fought the god for him.
"What a house today," I would say. "They must have heard the applause at the Kerameikos. That
business with the urn would have melted stone. Do you know I saw General Iphikrates crying?" There
was always something one could say, and something true. But the great things every artist hopes for, the
harsh god closed my mouth upon, and pushed them back down my throat. He missed them; I know he
missed them; I saw it sometimes in his eyes. Why not have said them, and left the god to make the best
of it? The gods have so much, and men have so little. Gods live forever, too.
I could not lie there like a child. I got up and wiped my face, greeted Phantias, finished cutting my hair for
the grave-wreath, and stood at the door to receive people. I was there when Lamprias called.
When he made his offer, my mother, without asking me what I thought, thanked him with tears. Lamprias
coughed, and looked at me with apology, knowing what I knew. His great black eyebrows worked up
and down, and he glanced away at my father. I too, as I accepted, half looked to see him sit up on his
bier and say, "Are you mad, boy?" But he said nothing; what indeed could he have said? I knew I should
have to take it. I would do no better, now.
At nineteen, one is good for nothing in the theater but extra work. To get into a company, even as third
actor, one must have the range that will let one play not only youths and women but warriors, tyrants and
old men. No lad of that age can do it; whereas a good man, who has kept his voice in training and his
body supple, can wear juvenile masks till he is fifty, and do everything else as well.
So long as my father lived, I always got work, singing in choruses, carrying a spear, or doing silent
stand-ins, when two roles played by one actor overlap, needing an extra to wear the mask and robe for
one of them. Lately I had even gotten odd lines here and there, in modern plays where the rule of three is
not so strictly kept, and the extra sometimes speaks. Though I knew little else, I knew the theater; and I
was not fool enough to think that any more of this would come my way. Any actor good enough to
appear in Athens has a son, or a nephew, or a boy friend training for the stage. From now on, I would be
like the little orphan in The Iliad, who gets no table scraps. "Outside!" say the other boys. "Your father is
not dining here."
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I reckoned I would need three years to make my way, at the very best, before I got parts in good
productions; and even for three months my mother could not keep me idling. We had been left really
poor; she would have to sell her weaving, my sister would have to earn her own dower or else marry
beneath her. Somehow I must pick up a living at the only trade I knew.
Lamprias was pleased I agreed at once and said nothing to embarrass him. He would be getting
something for money he owed outright, when cash down was what we needed. "Good boy, good boy,"
he said, patting me on the back. "The choice of a real professional, and your father's son. The range will
come, we all know that; meantime, you've a head start over most lads I could get. You've lived
backstage since you could stand, you know something of everything, from lyre-playing to working the
crane. A tour like this will be the making of you. No artist knows himself till he's done a tour."
I did not tell him I had toured only last year, with my father, playing Samos and Miletos as extra in a
first-class company, berthing aft and eating with the captain. I would make what was coming no better by
putting on airs and being resented. It might have been worse. Boys left like me have had to choose
between selling their favors to some actor in return for work, or going right to the bottom; the village
fit-ups where, if they don't like you, you can make your supper off the fruit and greenstuff they throw. At
least Lamprias’ company played in theaters, though only in the little ones.
At sunset they buried my father. There was a very good turnout; it would have pleased him. Philotimos
himself showed up, with a tale of some scrape my father had got him out of when he was young and wild.
When it was over we went home and lit the lamps, straightened the room, and looked about as people
do, not wanting to think what next.
I would be leaving within the month. I went out and walked about; everything looked strange. On my
way I passed the door of an old hetaira I had had a night with when I was seventeen, because I was
ashamed never to have tried a woman. I could hear her now inside, humming to her lyre. She was always
kind to boys. But I owed my father more respect; and all I had really wanted was a little mothering. My
first real love affair was still fresh in my heart, though it was three years since. An actor visiting from
Syracuse had come for a month, and stayed another for love of me. We had had a beautiful parting,
quoting from The Myrmidons; a whole year after, he had written to me from Rhodes.
Before we started rehearsals, I was asked to sup at Lamprias' house and meet the company. We lived at
Piraeus near the theater; he had lodgings on the waterfront. I walked there anxiously, picking my way
over fishy nets and around kegs and bales.
"The scourge of a third-rate tour," my father used to say, "is the second actor. He's the failed one. As a
rule he makes everyone pay."
This time he was wrong. Old Demochares had had his taste of honey, and it had kept him sweet. More
than once he had worn the victor's ivy crown; he had come down through serving Dionysos all too well in
a crown of vine. When I got there he was pretty drunk already; and in the end, to keep him from falling in
the harbor, I helped carry him home. He was as jolly in his cups as Pappasilenos, except when we were
putting him to bed; then he clasped my hand and cried a little, and quoted O fair young face, sorrow and
death pass by you, in a voice that still showed some beauty through the fog. As we walked back after,
Lamprias coughed, referred to his past triumphs, and gave me to know I would be expected, along with
my other duties, to share the common task of getting him on stage sober.
The third actor, Meidias, had gone home already in a pet, if you will believe it, because I, rather than he,
had had compliments from an old drunk who could not see straight to walk. My father had been half
right; here was the failed man; not six and twenty, yet he had outlived his hopes. Some mocking god had
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given him a handsome face, the one beauty an actor can do without; it had brought him some success
offstage, to which he owed his start, and made him think the world was at his feet. Now he was learning
that feet are to stand upon, but did not want to know it. We had barely filled the first cups when he began
telling me what splendid roles had been offered him if he had cared to sell his honor. He was as free with
great names as some old madam showing the girls her jewels. Though young-looking for my age, I knew
enough to guess he had gone through whatever his honor would fetch before he signed on with Lamprias.
I fear he saw this in my eye.
Next day we started rehearsals. We had a repertory of two or three modern plays, without chorus, and a
couple of classics in case some sponsor hired us for a festival.
Of course we were bypassing Corinth. Corinthians know what is due to them, and throw things if they
don't get it. We were opening at Eleusis, then on through Megara and south around the Argolid. When
Lamprias went on, as he did every day for both our good, about the fine experience I would be getting,
what he meant was that we would hardly see a bit of modern equipment from first to last, or, probably, a
sponsor; we would cart along our own costumes, masks and props (stuff bought secondhand after the
Dionysia, when richer companies had had their pick), fix up the skene with whatever we found when we
got there, and practice making do. Though I never thought I would live to say so, one can make worse
beginnings.
It seemed a pity that in the last week of rehearsals I had to knock Meidias down. Even though he took
against me from the first, I had tried to get along with him for the sake of peace; but that day he thought
fit to quote me a piece of envious bitchery about my father, from one of his fancy-friends. He was bigger
than I, but had not troubled, as my father had made me do, to go to a good gymnasium where one learns
how to stand and move. One also learns some throw-holds. We had been rehearsing in the Piraeus
theater and were walking up the steps between the benches when I hit him and tipped his knee; so he did
not fall very soft, and rolled a good way down. Some little boys, who had perched at the top like
sparrows to watch us act, were glad to get so much for nothing, and cheered the scene. Luckily he broke
no bones, and his face was no one else's business. So Lamprias said nothing. I knew I should be made to
pay; but that could not be helped. Little I guessed, though, how far along my life that blow would cast its
shadow.
The day of departure came. My mother saw me off by dawn and lamplight, shed a few tears, and
warned me against temptations, which she did not name, guessing no doubt that I could have instructed
her. I kissed her, shouldered my bundle, and went whistling down the twilit streets where half-wakened
birds replied. The shouts of the night-fishers, bringing in their catch, rang far over the gray water. At the
meeting-place I found that Lamprias, to show we were a troupe of standing, had hired a handyman for
the baggage-cart, asses and mules. This cheered me; I had thought I might have to do that too.
It was a chancy year for touring, he said as we moved off. It was-like most other years. Lately the
Thebans had amazed the world by throwing the Spartans first out of their citadel and then out of their
city. They had run them clear of Boeotia; we Athenians had beaten them at sea; all over Hellas men
stretched, and breathed more deeply. However, with all this, troops were forever marching about the
Isthmus; Lamprias said he would be glad to leave it behind. No doubt Megara would be quiet; they are
apt there to mind their own business; but in the Peloponnese the cities were working like a pan of yeast,
throwing off the dekarchies the Spartans had set over them. We might run into anything.
People are always saying what fine free lives we actors lead, able to cross frontiers and go anywhere.
This is true, if it means that hired troops have nothing against us, and others respect the sacred edicts.
You are likely enough to get where you are going with a whole skin, and can count there on roof and
food at least from your choregos, always provided this sponsor is alive, and not exiled overnight. But for
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a company working its own way, to arrive is hardly enough, if you find that the men have taken to the
hills, the women have battened themselves inside the houses, while a squadron of cavalry has hitched its
horses in the orchestra and is chopping up the skene for cook-fires.
However, it was a fine morning. The straits of Salamis glittered against the purple island; remembering my
Aischylos, I peopled the water with grinding oars and crashing prows, and rammed galleys spilling
gold-turbaned Persians into the sea. Eleusis was just ahead; we would be playing there tomorrow, setting
the skene today. I rode my donkey, getting the cart when I could between me and Meidias. Lamprias led
on his riding mule; Demochares liked to start the day on the cart, where he could have out his sleep on
the bundles and favor his morning head. I looked at him hopefully, planning to ask him if he had ever met
Euripides. He looked old enough.
There is nothing really worth telling about the first part of the tour. A hundred artists could tell it for me: I
had the hardest bed at the inn with the oldest straw, ran everyone's errands, mended the costumes, put
laces in the boots, combed the masks' hair and beards, and daubed on paint when some old skene
needed freshening. I did not mind, except when Meidias told people it was what I had been hired for.
He was the gall under my harness-not the fleas in the straw, nor the hard work, nor looking after
Demochares. I loved the old soak, even when he drove me mad, and soon learned to manage him. In his
heyday, as he let me know, he had been a great amorist; it was some while, I think, since he had taken to
a youth whom he trusted not to mock him. Being the ruins of a gentleman, he was never disgusting, even
in his drink; more like some old dancer who, hearing the flute, steps through his paces where the
neighbors will not see. Self-respect kept him in bounds when sober; after the play, when he started
drinking, he had no time for lesser interests. All it came to was that he taught me a great deal, which has
been of use to me ever since, and recited me some beautiful epigrams composed by Agathon and
Sophokles. for youths they courted, with the name changed to mine wherever it would scan.
It was only in the morning, before the play, that he gave me any real trouble. Then he would slip off for a
cup to warm him up, and, if I did not watch out, go on and finish the jar. I would run to the wineshop for
him, mix in the water on the way, and keep him talking to spin it out. With luck I would have him dressed
in time to get my own work done.
"The theater is in your bones," he used to say to me. "You have the open face. Not like that oaf Meidias,
who is in love with the mask he happened to be born with, and soon won't have even that, since his
fatuous conceit is already marking it. The artist flows into the mask the poet offers him; only so will the
god possess him. I have seen you, my dear, when you have not seen yourself. I know."
He spoke to comfort me. No one was kinder, when he could be kind sitting down. I never hoped of him
that he would stay sober to fight my battles. He was near sixty, which seemed very old to me; but he still
moved like a man who knows he looks distinguished, and behind a mask it was surprising how young he
could sound, on a good day. I bore him no grudge for Meidias, who would snigger to strangers in taverns
about the old man's darling.
So things were jogging on, till the day we put on Philokles' Hector. It calls for Homeric battle dress,
showing one's legs to the thigh. Meidias was thin-shanked, had to wear padded tights, and still had
knock-knees. He was cast as Paris.
We were playing at a little market town between Corinth and Mykenai. Such places always have the
local wit who gives his own performance. Paris exits saying, "What do I care, while Helen shares my
bed?" This man yelled out, "She must have got thin, to fit between those knees." It stopped the play for
some time, and worse was to come. Meidias was playing the Greek herald too, and Paris, who must be
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on to hear his challenge, is a stand-in bit. Backstage, Meidias gave me his kilted corselet and his mask as
if he wished they were steeped in poison. Sure enough, when I came on this joker cheered, and set the
whole house off.
After this they had Paris in a long robe for Hector, writing in a line about his unwarlike dress; and
Meidias, from plaguing me in spare time, became a serious enemy.
Let us omit the daily chronicle of his devices. Sit down in any wineshop by any theater, and you will hear
some actor pour out the ancient tale as if he were the first man it had happened to; but at least the listener
has been bought a drink. We will pass by, then, the thorn in the boot, the sewn-up sleeve, the broken
mask-string, and so forth. One morning I found a dark sticky splash and a broken wine jar by the seat
where Demochares had taken the air. The wine had been neat, and I guessed who had sent it; but that
time he reckoned wrong. Demochares might be too easy with himself; but he was not easy enough to let
a Meidias make use of him. I think at this time he warned Lamprias we should have trouble. But
Lamprias wanted to hear of no more troubles than he had; and he knew about Meidias all that signified,
namely, that there was no chance till the tour was over of getting anyone else.
We had an engagement at Phigeleia, a small town near Olympia. This was an important date, because the
city had hired us. They were celebrating, on the feast of their founding hero, their liberation too.
This was one of the towns which the Spartans, after they won the Great War against Athens, gave into
the power of their oligarchs to keep the people quiet. Here as usual they had chosen their Council of Ten
from the worst of the old landowners, who had been exiled by the democrats and had most to gain from
holding them down. These Dekarchs had paid off old scores tenfold-done as they chose, helped
themselves to any pretty young wife or handsome boy they fancied, or any man's best bit of land. If
anyone complained, the Spartans would send a troop there, and when they had done with him he thought
he had been well off before. Then came the Theban rising; Pelopidas and the other patriots there had
shown the world that Spartans are made of the same stuff as other men; and while the Sons of Herakles
were rubbing their heads and running about to see what hit them, the subject cities seized their chance.
The Phigeleians had been prompt in this; but as they had begun by rushing with one accord to tear in
pieces the most hated Dekarch, the others with their faction had got away to the hills.
The City Council had sent us word of this beforehand, and asked for a play to suit the feast, no expense
spared; some of the Dekarchs' gold had been saved from looting. Lamprias had found just the thing for
them-a Kadmos by Sophokles the Younger, glorifying Thebes. It was a new, middling piece, which no
one has thought worth reviving; Kadmos, punished for killing the War God's dragon, is redeemed from
bondage, made king, married to Harmonia, and so on to the finale with Wedding procession. For good
measure Demochares, who doctored scripts well when his head was clear, had written in some
prophecies for Apollo, somehow dragging in Phigeleia. The Council was delighted. We had a week
rehearsing with our chorus, who were about as good as you would expect when leading democrats' sons
had been chosen first and voices afterwards.
I looked forward myself to this production, because it gave me more to do than usual, I had a few lines
as an extra (one of Kadmos' earth-born warriors) and for the whole finale I was standing in for Apollo,
since Meidias, who played him, was doing Harmonia as well.
This was the first time I had worn the mask of the god.
Meidias, who sneered at all our costumes to show what he was used to, despised more than anything this
Apollo mask. He said it must be all of fifty years old; and in this I found he was right. It was heavy, being
carved from olive wood, but no hardship to wear, for it was finished as smooth inside as out, a real
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craftsman's job. No one makes them to last, nowadays.
I remember the first time I unpacked the hampers, at Eleusis, and saw it looking up at me. It gave me a
start. It was a face, I thought, more for a temple than a stage. I know I sat back on my heels, among all
the litter, looking and looking. Meidias was right in calling it old-fashioned, one must allow him that. No
one would say, as they do before a modern Apollo, "Delightful! What a nice young man!"
Demochares, whom I asked about it, said it had been left to Lamprias by some old actor who had
thought it brought him luck. It was supposed to have been made for the first revival of Aischylos'
Eumenides, where the god has a central role. That would be in the great days of Alkibiades and Nikias,
when sponsors were sponsors, Demochares said.
Our overnight stop, before Phigeleia, had been at Olympia; I had never been there, and could not stare
enough. In fact the place was stone-dead, it not being a Games year; but youth is easily pleased, and I
set out with Demochares to see the sights. Like an old horse to its stable, he plodded to his favorite
tavern near the river, and, seeing in my eye that I was going to move him on, said in his ripest voice,
"Dear boy, you were asking me about the mask of Apollo. It has just come back to me whose workshop
it came from, as I was told. Go along to the Temple of Zeus, and you will see. Let me think... yes, the
west gable."
I gave in, not sorry to get on quicker. Heat filled the wooded valley, for spring comes like summer there.
Already the river was shallow in its pebbly bed; the dust was hot to the foot, the painted statues glowed.
A tender Hermes, dangling grapes before the baby god he carried, made one want to stroke his russet
flesh. Further on were the penalty statues, given as fines by athletes caught cheating; shoddy hack-work
done cheap. The giltwork dazzled on the roofs, the white marble glared. The great altar of Zeus,
uncleaned since the morning sacrifice, stank and buzzed with flies. But there are always sightseers for the
temple. The porch and colonnades were noisy with guides and cheap jacks; peddlers sold copies of
Zeus's image in painted clay; quacks cried their cures; kids and rams bleated, on sale for sacrifice; a
rusty-voiced rhetor declaimed The Odyssey while his boy passed round the plate. I went in from the hot
sun to the soft, cool shadows, and gaped with the rest at the great statue inside, the gold and ivory, the
throne as big as my room at home, till my eye, traveling upward, met the face of power which says, "O
man, make peace with your mortality, for this too is God."
Going out, I had to shake off a low fellow who seemed to think a free supper would be my price, and
nearly forgot to look at the west gable. But a guide was herding a gaggle of rich women with their
children, nurses, and big straw hats; I saw him pointing, and talking of the sculptor Pheidias. My eye
followed his finger.
The triangle of the gable end was full of the battle between the Greeks and Kentaurs. Theseus and
Pirithoos and their men were battling to save the boys and women; men against half-men, wrestling,
bashing, trampling, swinging axes; and in the midst, tall and alone, his right arm stretched above the
melee, was the Apollo of the mask.
You could not mistake it. But here the mouth was closed, and the face had eyes. I walked back to see
better, so lost that I bumped a lady, who scolded me. I scarcely heard. My flesh shivered with delight
and awe. Even now sometimes, at Olympia, that shudder will come back to me.
He stands above the battle, needing only to be, not do. The world is still green and raw. He alone knows
it is for him the Greeks are fighting; yet some light from him shines back in young Theseus' face. The
Greeks must win, because they are nearer his likeness; his prophetic eyes look far beyond. He has no
favorites. He is stern, radiant, gracious and without pity. A perfect chord is the friend of him whose
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摘要：

THEMASKOFAPOLLOCopyright1966,byMaryRenaultTearswereforHekabê,friend,andforIlion’swomen,SpunintothedarkWebonthedayoftheirbirth,Butforyouourhopesweregreat,andgreatthetriumph,Cancelledalikebythegodsatthepointofglory.Nowyoulieinyourownland,nowallmenhonoryou-ButIlovedyou,ODiôn!plato(TranslationbyDudleyFi...

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