The Orpheus Descent (28 page)

‘Make sure you don’t,’ he warned me, and sauntered away.

‘Now,’ I said to my new pupil. ‘Where shall we begin?’

‘I liked hearing Homer’s stories,’ he offered hopefully. ‘They were exciting.’

‘I’m sure they were.’

The Greeks are a scattered people – divided by dialects, gods, seas, mountains, food and politics. Against all that, the only thing that unites us is two poems written by one man in the ancient darkness between myth and history. I don’t deny that they’re powerful stories and masterful poetry but, as the basis for any kind of virtuous civilisation, their cast of vain heroes and petty gods leaves a lot to be desired.

But I didn’t want to get off to a bad start with my new pupil. ‘What stories had you learned?’

He stood, puffed out his chest and recited:

‘Enough, enough,’ I flapped. ‘Who on earth taught you that?’

Sullen-faced, the boy pointed past me. Quick footsteps were coming across the courtyard. I turned and saw Euphemus, still wearing his absurdly overembroidered robe.

‘You’ve changed your tune,’ he huffed, before I could say anything.

‘Sorry?’

‘“I hate tyrants and I’m too good for politics.” Now look at you. I thought you were a man of principle.’

‘What?’ He was acting as if the night before had never happened. Perhaps clean clothes and a wash was all it took to make him forget the wretch I’d been. In his world, after all, reality is what you see. Or choose to ignore.

‘Anyway,’ I said, ‘you don’t believe in principles.’

‘Very clever.’

‘What is it that you think I’ve done?’

‘You’ve taken my job.’

‘
Your
job?’

He pointed to the boy, who had sat down and was watching us from behind his bowl of almonds. ‘
I’m
supposed to be tutoring him.’

If he hadn’t been so obviously upset, I’d have laughed.

‘Dionysius dragged me out of the quarries – he didn’t give me a choice.’

‘Everything you said about standing up to tyranny. Was that just so much
shit
?’

I glanced nervously at the boy. He looked delighted.

‘You were the one who told me to engage with the world. And you are famously persuasive.’

I’d meant it as flattery (mostly). Perhaps there was a hint of sarcasm around the edges. Euphemus didn’t miss it.

‘Snide as well as hypocritical. It doesn’t suit you.’

‘I didn’t—’

‘I thought you were better than that. He turned to go, then remembered something. ‘And good luck making any progress with
him
.’ He shot the boy a venomous look. ‘You both deserve what you’re getting.’

I picked up one of the tablets and made a show of writing something down while I tried to compose myself.

‘The trouble with poetry,’ I explained to the boy, once Euphemus had disappeared, ‘is that poets thrive on watering desires that would be better left to wither. Their whole art is showing us men in extreme states of passion, and making us feel what they’re feeling. In fact, of course, we shouldn’t be indulging our feelings. We should restrain them.’

A blank stare. Restraining his feelings didn’t seem to be a problem.

‘Let’s go to the library and find something more suitable.’

‘Once up on a time, a Town Mouse went to visit his cousin in the country. This cousin was rustic and a bit simple, but he loved his urban relative and welcomed him in. He didn’t have much food – just salt, olive oil and bread – but he offered them freely.’

I looked up to check the boy was listening. About the best to be said was that his eyes were open.

‘Aesop’s fables have a lot to commend them,’ I encouraged him. ‘Socrates spent the last days of his life thinking about them.’ Capricious to the last, he put them into verse. I think it was the only thing he ever wrote down.

We stood in Dionysius’ library, in front of wide open windows looking out to sea. The shelves around us were packed with scrolls, stacked like amphorae in the hold of a ship. Where Dionysius got them, and how, I dreaded to imagine, but somewhere on those shelves lay the book Agathon had wanted to buy from Timaeus –
The Krater
, he’d called it, a book of Pythagorean secrets worth a hundred drachmas. I was itching to rummage through the stacks until I found it, but a vigilant librarian and two guards by the door made me think better of it for now.

Instead, I was stuck with Aesop.

‘The Town Mouse turned up his nose at the simple food he was offered.

‘“How do you eat this terrible stuff?” he said.

‘“It’s all we have here in the country,” his cousin apologised.

‘“Then come with me, and I’ll show you how to live. After a week in town, you’ll wonder how you ever managed to tolerate life in the country.”

‘The two mice set off and arrived at the Town Mouse’s residence late at night.

‘“I’m starving,” said the Town Mouse. He took his country cousin into a grand dining room filled with cakes and jellies and wine. The Country Mouse ate so much he felt sick, not being used to so much rich food.

‘Suddenly they heard a terrifying growl.

‘“What’s that?” said the Country Mouse.

‘“Only the cats,” his cousin said through a mouthful of food.

‘“
Only!
” squeaked the Country Mouse. The door flew open, and in came two huge tomcats. The mice had to run for their lives and just squeezed through a hole in the floor before the cats got to them. The Country Mouse scampered to the door.

‘“Goodbye, Cousin,” he said.

‘“Going so soon?” said the other. “But what about the cakes?”

‘The Country Mouse shook his head. “I’d rather eat salt and bread in peace, than cakes and wine in fear.”’

I put down the scroll.

‘What do you think the fable’s trying to say?’

The boy shook his head.

‘Which mouse was the more virtuous?’

He gave it some thought. ‘The Town Mouse.’

‘Why?’

‘He was braver. The other one ran away.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I can see why you think that. But although the Country Mouse ran away, he was actually doing the right thing. Being virtuous isn’t an unthinking reflex. It means acting appropriately, depending on whether something should be pursued or avoided.’

He didn’t understand. ‘Isn’t courage a virtue?’

‘Yes.’

‘And cowardice isn’t.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘So the Town Mouse is virtuous.’

‘I think it would be better to take the fable allegorically,’ I said hastily. ‘This isn’t about the mice. It’s about the societies they live in. The Town is a society which has every luxury, but its citizens live in fear for their lives.’

I looked around the room, letting my gaze linger on the guards at the door, hoping he would make the connection.

‘The Country, on the other hand, may appear simple and uncivilised. But it has the greatest luxury of all – freedom from fear.’

‘But they have cakes and jellies in the Town.’

‘Those are ephemeral,’ I explained. ‘They taste good for a moment, but they have no lasting value.’ I could see he didn’t believe me. Not surprising: he was round as a pudding. ‘The wholesome fare in the Country is much more nutritious.’

‘Bread and oil is boring.’

I tried to stay patient. ‘We’re not really talking about food. We’re talking about virtue. You have to set up your life for maximum control over your own appetites if you’re to win loyal friends and subjects – or how will they be able to trust you?’

He still looked confused. I tried to put it in terms he might understand.

‘Wouldn’t you rather be in a place where you could live your life without worrying you’d be eaten by cats?’

He scratched his ear. ‘Not if I was the cat.’

A door opened. A warm breeze blew in. The boy’s face lit up and, for the first time, I saw some trace of his father. He pushed past me, ran across the room and threw his arms around the new arrival.

‘Dion!’

The newcomer was around twenty, tall and strong with tousled hair and a solemn face. Whatever his relation to Dionysius, he looked far more like the tyrant than the feeble son. The same confidence, the same certainty. But Dionysius had a black aura, menacing you with his power. In Dion, the power flowed golden.

‘You must be the new tutor,’ he greeted me. ‘I’m his uncle Dion. His mother is my sister.’

The tyrant’s brother-in-law. Even that didn’t chill the warmth I felt from him.
Everything that moves makes music
, Archytas said. That must include people. We don’t hear it with our ears, but I think we catch the resonance when we come close. The music that accompanied Dion was perfect harmony, a sparkling bright melody underpinned by deep seriousness.

‘I hear you knew Socrates,’ he said.

They’ll put that on my tombstone. ‘Perhaps some day I’ll be known for something else.’

He flashed a smile that was bright as the sun, that made my reply sound peevish. ‘Tutoring my nephew to be a great ruler, I hope.’

I nodded and tried to smile. If Dion noticed my lack of enthusiasm, he didn’t say anything. He tousled his nephew’s hair. ‘Run along.’

The boy slipped out of the door, followed by a guard. Dion rolled up Aesop and put him back on the shelf.

‘Let me show you around.’

If you ever go to Syracuse, here are some facts to orient you.

It’s a huge city, sloping down from a limestone ridge to two harbours which are divided by a tongue of land. The peninsula is called Ortygia, a low hump like a tortoiseshell that used to be shipyards and warehouses. When Dionysius overthrew the democracy, this was where he came. He walled off the slips and turned the warehouses into cellars for the new citadel he threw up. He cut the peninsula three times over, and gated the bridges. Because he didn’t dare go out among the citizens in the agora, he built a new monumental core on the highest point of the island: two vast temples standing side by side, dedicated to Athena and the Goddess.

And that was where Dion led me. The Temple of the Goddess was wrapped in scaffolding for repainting: we climbed to the top, and came out among the gods on a little balcony in front of the temple’s pediment. On the neighbouring temple, Athena’s gilded shield burned in the sunlight like a flaming eye. They could probably see it in Greece.

‘What do you think?’ Dion asked.

I could see the whole city. The causeway with its massive gates and drawbridges; the warships riding at anchor in one harbour, and the merchantmen in the larger harbour to the south. In the distance, lowering over the city, the ridge where the stone for all this building had been quarried out. Where forty-two prisoners (more or less) sat shackled to a wall, awaiting their fate.

‘Very impressive,’ I said.

Except for one thing. Dionysius had built his own model city on Ortygia, but he didn’t trust anyone to live there. In Athens or Corinth or Thebes, this would have been the city’s living heart: lawyers and legislators, sophists and prostitutes, merchants and hawkers all haggling, bargaining and brawling together. Here, if I looked straight down, everything was immensely empty. I could see a few clerks hurrying across the square with bundles of documents, and the ever-present red-cloaked guards posted outside the temples. Otherwise, no one. The palace wasn’t even old enough for ghosts.

Dion leaned on the stone balustrade. ‘How are you getting on with my nephew?’

I tried to think of a reply that wouldn’t make things awkward. ‘He’s less intimidating than his father.’

He understood what I meant. ‘You can’t judge his father by Athenian standards. Sicily’s been at war for generations. It needed someone with his courage to take charge.’

The yawning streets below contradicted him. Dionysius wasn’t courageous. He’d walled himself off from the world he ruled because he didn’t dare face it.

‘How many years’ peace have there been since Dionysius took over?’ I asked.

‘Not many. But you can’t blame him for that. He took power when the Carthaginians had taken almost all of Sicily. However often he beat them back, they kept coming.’

‘But Carthage made peace, eventually.’

‘Yes.’

‘So why is his army camped outside Rhegion now? Why does every colonist in southern Italy look over his shoulder when you say his name?’

No answer.

‘A tyrant comes to power claiming he wants to rescue the state from some sort of crisis. And in the early days, he’s full of smiles and promises. He forgives debtors and doles out land, wanting to be so kind and good to everyone. Except that when the crisis is over, he finds he needs another threat to justify his position. So he starts another war.’

Dion didn’t contradict me.

‘Of course,’ I went on, ‘some people complain. Criticism threatens him, so he gets rid of them. There’s a war on, after all. But the more people he gets rid of, the more enemies he creates, the more he has to purge them until there’s no one with any courage or ability left.’

We were in a high place. Perhaps I thought no one could hear us. Perhaps the dazzling false sun of Athena’s shield blinded me to the dangers of discussing tyranny in a tyrant’s palace with the tyrant’s brother-in-law. The truth is, I wanted to trust him.

Dion looked down. Perhaps he’d never heard anyone speak so plainly before.

‘Is this your first time in Syracuse?’ he asked.

‘It’s the same everywhere.’ Like one of Archytas’ mathematical laws, the same numbers always add up.

‘They said you didn’t care about politics.’

‘I don’t.’

‘You obviously think about it a lot.’

‘Because I hate it.’

‘That’s different. Not caring
for
something isn’t the same as not caring
about
it.’

‘How old are you?’ I asked.

‘Nineteen.’

‘All you’ve ever known is your brother-in-law’s rule. I’ve seen both sides of the coin. When I was twenty-three, my uncle had the same idea as Dionysius.’