Death Ex Machina (13 page)

“Surely, Lysanias, this cannot be a matter of war or peace,” I said.

“The entertainment a man provides for his friends says as much about him as how he carries his spear,” Lysanias said, and his voice became hard. I remembered that this was a man who’d carried his spear many times. He added, “The Great Dionysia tells the rest of the world how we wish them to see us. Our poets are as much a function of the state as our diplomats.”

We had passed through to the second courtyard, where we found Sophocles lying face down in the shade, on the cool stone floor. A slave rubbed olive oil into his shoulders and back.

He looked up as we approached, and said, “Join me.”

Lysanias said, “Hello, Sophocles. Don’t mind if I do.” He dropped his clothes and lay down beside Sophocles. His whole body was wiry and thin. A slave appeared with oil flask in hand. The slave began at once to massage the back of Lysanias and pour oil on his skin.

I hesitated. I wasn’t used to enjoying the gymnasium with respectable old men. In fact, unlike most men I rarely visited the gym at all—somehow I never seemed to have the time—and when I did, it was usually to see my friend Timo, who would often be surrounded by young men our own age.

I knew the etiquette though. It would be rude if I stood, or merely sat beside them.

I pulled my chiton off over my head—it saved having to undo the shoulder knot—and handed the clothing to a slave, who placed it on the bench against the wall. I lay down on the other side of Sophocles.

Another slave appeared, also with a flask of oil. He commenced to massage my shoulders with oily hands. I tried to relax.

I said, “I came to see you, Sophocles, because I must learn about Romanos.”

“He was a metic,” Sophocles said, as if that explained everything.

“Yes, but what was he like?”

Sophocles considered the question.

“As a man, I really can’t say,” he said, after thinking about it. “Professionally, he was a good actor. I had used him before in minor roles. Certainly this play offered him a big chance and I must say he impressed me. It’s unusual for a metic to have a major role in a Dionysia.”

The slave began to massage my legs.

I said, “Did you socialize?”

“As I said, he was a metic.”

It occurred to me that Sophocles preferred the company of his peers.

“What about Lakon?” I asked.

“Lakon’s a citizen,” Sophocles said. “And I’ve known him a very long time.”

“Then how does he come to be an actor?” I asked.

“You have it the wrong way round,” Sophocles said. “Most actors are citizens. The exceptions are the metics.”

I asked, “In the play, with the original cast, was Phellis the only man to use the machine?”

“Both the first and second actors flew on the machine. Lakon played Zeus in a later scene.”

“What about the third actor?”

“Third actors never play a god. They’re not important enough.”

“How does that work?” I asked. “Does importance matter?”

“Not the way you’re thinking, but consider the scene casting,” Sophocles said. “There’s only one machine. There can never be two gods onstage at the same time.”

“Oh, I see. Is there much squabbling over the parts?” I asked.

“Constantly,” Sophocles said.

His tone alone was worth a day of explanation.

“You said you’d used Romanos previously?”

“Several years ago, when another actor failed me—the poor fellow had been beaten by brigands as he traveled the country roads—I needed a quick study. Someone suggested I look at Romanos. Well, I was desperate, I would have hired a donkey if it could speak the lines. But Romanos was everything the recommender had said.”

“Then you knew Lakon first?”

“Citizen actors start when they’re boys. They come up through the chorus. Throughout the year there are festivals and choral performances where we need children to sing. I and the other directors choose from among the sons of respectable citizens.”

I knew that part all too well, because when I was a boy I had volunteered, but had never been chosen. I remembered standing nearby while someone told my father it was because I couldn’t sing. My little brother Socrates had never been chosen because they said he was too ugly.

“Most of the boys are talentless, of course,” Sophocles said, not knowing my own history. “Perhaps a quarter of the boys can sing passably well. We directors notice the ones who sing well. We choose the cream from throughout the year to fill the choruses for the Dionysia. Of the cream, a handful can also dance. From each year, perhaps one or two of the best will like the stage well enough that they stick with it when they grow to men.”

I was astonished. “Do you mean to say you hired Lakon when he was a boy?”

“How old do I look?” Sophocles demanded. I’d insulted him. Lysanias tittered.

“Sorry, Sophocles, but I don’t understand.”

Sophocles rolled over so the slave could massage his front. He added, “That’s something Lakon and I have in common. We both got our start in the chorus.”

“You were an actor, Sophocles?” I said, surprised.

“I was passable, in my day,” he allowed, in the tone of voice a man uses when what he means is that he’s too modest to say he was the best.

Sophocles continued, “I was selected by Aeschylus to perform in the chorus. These days Aeschylus is my friend, but back then he was my director. Lakon too, when he was a boy, was selected by Aeschylus. By that stage I was a young man, serving as an elder member of the chorus. I remember standing in the same chorus line with Lakon.”

“In a sense you grew up together,” I said.

“No. Lakon returned with his parents to their home town, Rhamnus. He didn’t play again until he returned to Athens more than a decade later, as a young but fully grown man. By then I had given up acting. A man can’t be both an actor and the writer, and the writer is of more service to the state.”

“He is?”

“Certainly he is,” Sophocles said. “I’m surprised you even question it. Tell me, young man, why do
you
like tragedies?”

I didn’t like tragedies. I’d always preferred the comedies. But this didn’t seem the moment to mention it.

“Well,” I said, desperately trying to think of something. “Tragedies are very … er … tragic—”

Lysanias laughed.

Sophocles frowned. “Of course you know the purpose of our plays—”

“To entertain people,” I said at once. “That’s why more people go to see the comedies than the traged …” I trailed off.

Sophocles stared at me openmouthed, and I suddenly realized I’d blundered.

“Er … that is …” I groped for the right words.

Lysanias was rolling on the floor, tears running down his face.

“I’m sorry, Sophocles,” I said.

Sophocles sighed.

“Don’t bother trying to talk yourself out of it,” Sophocles said. “Now listen closely, young man. The whole point of tragedy is to teach people the difference between right and wrong.” He glared at me.

“It is?”

“It is. In tragedy a great man makes a mistake. He does wrong when the Gods gave him the power to do right. Then we see his downfall: the consequences of his mistake. This teaches the people that right might not always be rewarded, but wrong is always punished. A tragic writer has the greatest responsibility to the people, because we are the teachers of morals. If we produced plays that praise bad behavior, then the people would copy the behavior of their onstage heroes and the state would collapse.”

“I see.”

“We must hope that as you grow older you acquire some taste for both the tragedies
and
the comedies. I despair when I look at the stuff that passes for comedy these days. How anyone could think it’s funny to watch people hitting each other with pigs’ bladders is beyond me.”

Sophocles clearly didn’t frequent the same circles I did.

“Tell me about the noose,” I said.

Sophocles said, “It was my idea to hang the god of death. The noose is joined to the machine’s rope on a stretch that is
longer
than the remaining rope to the actor’s harness. The difference is only a hand’s length, but it’s enough.”

Sophocles demonstrated with his hands.

“You see the effect?” Sophocles said, warming to his subject. “I thought, since it was impossible to hide the rope from which Thanatos hangs, I may as well make it work as a part of the play. The real remaining length of rope is painted blue to match the sky. The noose seems to be the only rope up there. To the audience they see the god of death appear as a hanged man.”

“It was certainly realistic from where I sat during rehearsals,” I said. “Everyone was terrified.”

Sophocles beamed. “It’s always nice to hear that an effect worked.”

“Perhaps a little too well?” I suggested.

“That’s not my fault.”

I was frustrated. I’d hoped to learn something of Romanos. But other than that he was a good actor, which I already knew, I’d learned nothing. It seemed odd that the man should be such a cipher. He’d seemed perfectly open when Diotima and I had spoken to him in the rain. I said as much to Sophocles, who shrugged.

But Lysanias poked up his head from the massage and said, “Have you talked to his sponsor?”

“Who?” I said. “What sponsor?’

“Didn’t you know? All metics are required to register with the state, and they must have a sponsor.”

“I never knew,” I admitted. It occurred to me, with some surprise, that except for Diotima, who had been a metic before we married, I too had never socialized with metics.

“Who was the sponsor of Romanos?”

“You must ask the Polemarch,” Lysanias said.

“Did the Polemarch know Romanos?” I said.

“I doubt it. But the Polemarch is responsible for all metic affairs. If anyone would know who the sponsor of Romanos was, it’ll be him. You probably need to do it anyway. The sponsor must be informed that his client is dead.”

SCENE 17

THE POLEMARCH

I
T SEEMS TO be a rule that every important official in Athens must have a long queue of men outside his office door. I had never been to see an archon who wasn’t overwhelmingly busy. The Polemarch was no exception. The difference was, the men outside the Polemarch’s door spoke with foreign, non-Athenian accents.

The Polemarch’s office was an ancient building called the Epilyceum. It stood just beyond the official bounds of the agora. The Epilyceum showed several centuries of maintenance. The original wooden beams, so old that they’d turned deep black, poked out between the newer stone facade of later renovations.

It was a measure of how long you had to wait to see the Polemarch that supplicants had scratched game boards into the stone of the street outside. Even the game board scratchings were well worn from years of game pieces moving across them. Men were hunched over these boards. Others silently watched the traffic pass by, and many talked amongst themselves.

I listened carefully to the words of the other men, to place their accents. It isn’t always possible, but you can take a guess at a man’s home because most cities have slight differences in the way they say their words. At Diotima’s suggestion I had recently begun to pay attention to such differences.

A handful of accents were northern, from Thebes perhaps. The people of the north spoke with an accent that approached
barbaric, and sometimes used words common to the barbarian tribes to the north of Hellas.

The great majority spoke the Ionian dialect of the Aegean Islands. It was the same dialect that was spoken in Athens. There are a hundred of these islands. Common among them was the distinctive Ionian as it was spoken on the mainland and on the other side of the sea, in the region that is called Anatolia.

Listening to their conversation, I realized many of the men who waited with me had come to apply for permission to live in Athens.

So many men. Was it like this every day?

“Is there a Nicolaos, the son of Sophroniscus?” A voice called from the Polemarch’s door. Not the Polemarch, but his assistant. He held a wax tablet and frowned.

“That’s me,” I said.

The Polemarch sat at a writing desk, on a chair of curved timber and a comfortable rounded back. The table and chair were both expensive pieces whose legs were shaped to resemble the legs and feet of a lion. I guessed they were both from the same carpenter, and that they were the personal property of the Polemarch, the more so because the wood was polished elm, which is very heavy and hard and far beyond the budget of the state. The Polemarch was a rich man to own such things.

“You’re the man I received a note about,” the Polemarch said as soon as I entered. His voice was a deep bass. “From Pericles. Something about a total disaster at the theater? He seems to blame you.”

“A murder, sir.”

“That sounds bad. Why did you do it?”

“I think you might misunderstand, sir. I’m the detective.”

“Ah, I see. And there’s a meeting this afternoon?”

“Yes, sir. At the home of Pericles.”

“Well I have a lot of work to get through before then. What can I do for you?” he asked.

I said, “I hoped, sir, that before the meeting you could tell me something about metics. They must come to you, mustn’t they, to live in Athens?”

“Yes. That’s what that long line is outside. Any man from another city who wants to live in Athens must register with my office. As long as he pays his registration fee and names his patron, he’s in.”

“Are there any restrictions on the metics?”

“They may not own land. That is reserved for citizens. Metics pay slightly higher taxes, though the difference is nominal. I assume you know that a trial for the murder of a metic is heard in a lesser court than that for a citizen.”

“No sir, I didn’t.”

“Well you do now. If one metic kills another, we’re as likely to exile the murderer as execute him. It’s so much less messy that way.”

“What if a citizen murders a metic?” I asked.

“That’s why these cases are always heard in a lower court. The citizen would be exiled for a period of years, or face a massive fine. If metic murders were heard in the highest court, it would mean a citizen could face death for killing a non-citizen. That wouldn’t do at all.”