Glorious Exploits

by Ferdia Lennon

Death cannot be what Life is, Child; the cup of Death is empty, and Life has always hope.

The pits show us that nothing is permanent. That’s what Diocles says. They show us that glory and power are shadows on a wall.

And there’s something in the way these tales are spun, their desperate urgency, that one feels poor Chabrias is trying to conjure it up as much for himself as for you. That he wants the ashes of his present to kindle and glow with Argos, till it all gets too much and he stops midsentence, looks at the sky, hums an odd tune, and shows you the stump of his arm. I like Chabrias.

Paches and I sit and listen to this starved bastard, half his body covered by rocks, and as we listen, something happens. The words and voice blend so that what he is blends, and he becomes two things at once, a starving Athenian, yes, but something else, hidden, then rising. He’s Medea, poor princess Medea from Colchis, and she lists her grievances against Jason: how she’d cast spells so he could get the golden fleece, murdered her brother, and betrayed her father so he could regain his kingdom. How he’d sworn eternal love under starry skies, told her he’d never leave and then did as soon as the opportunity arose, fucked off with a girl half his age, made a show of her, and now she’s abandoned, now she has nothing to do but wander Greece a lonesome, wretched thing. When I hear all this, I ache at the injustice and turn to Paches and curse him.

Look, it seems to say. Here’s Gelon: godlike, broken Gelon. Look and remember beauty isn’t all.

“It’s poetry we’re doing,” he whispers. “It wouldn’t mean a thing if it were easy.”

Not much, you think? But great things are made up of a load of not much, and that battle was the greatest thing of all.

The light on the water is different from any I’ve ever seen in this world, yet it seems I know it. Gelon says that’s what the best plays do. If they’re true enough, you’ll recognise it even if it all seems mad at first, and this is why we give a shit about Troy, though for all we know, it was just some dream of Homer’s, and I walk towards this green soul river, and for a moment it’s like I’m going home.

“That’s why we have to do it,” Gelon says with feeling. “You’re right, they’re doomed, and in a few months, they’ll be gone. With the war, it might be years before we ever see another Athenian play in Syracuse. Some people are saying when Athens falls, and it has to fall, the Spartans will just burn it to the ground. There might never be another Athenian play again!” The cup cracks in his hand, and the wine splashes on the ground. “For all we know, those in the quarries are all that’s left of Athenian theatre, at least as far as Syracuse is concerned.”

This is different. It’s a story of the old man’s life in song, and though it’s no special life, he sings it for all to hear, gives it everything he has, and I admire that.

The rope on his knee begins to glow and pulse like a coil of flame, and he understands that his pain, all that stuff with his ma, and what followed, they were part of the gods’ plan, that even the worst of it was sacred, but then the rope darkens, and he looks up at the sky and sees it was just the moon and a cloud had passed over.

“You don’t rob a man of his suffering,” says Gelon quietly. “That’s his.”

Epic poetry was everything, especially to Gelon, and you could say, if it weren’t for Homer, we’d never have been mates.

And he smiled; his eyes were violet with bruises, his lip busted, and then he started into the first book of The Odyssey, and for a while, I didn’t care that I was poor or that Ma and I were alone ’cause my da did a runner, and now I’d betrayed her. I didn’t care about anything but the words he was saying. After that, we were inseparable.

A tragedy without a tune is like a sun that doesn’t give off heat: dead, and nothing will grow from it. When men go to war, they do it to music. When they set sail for better shores and row into the vast blue, they do it to music. Even our hearts beat to some rhythm, and the director who neglects it neglects what makes us men.

I think she’s proud, and for some reason, this pride in some palace thousands of miles away that she’ll never see again makes me sad, and yet I like her all the more for it.

Is the source of all love a lacking? Is that what creates emotion? Not a presence but an absence. Do you need to be emptied to be filled?

“I felt awful that night. I cried and had a fever. Why had the gods let Oedipus kill his da and marry his ma and blind himself? Why let that happen when it was clear he was a good man? Could they not stop it? Were the gods weak? Did they not care? I cried and didn’t understand, but you know what? I remembered that Oedipus was good. That even though he’d done and suffered all those horrible things, he was still good; whether the gods cared didn’t matter. And I remember as a kid feeling that this was awfully sad and beautiful. There was dignity even in the worst that could happen under this sky, and I felt less alone. I think, most of all, I was a very lonely kid.”

“I love Athens. I think I’ll always love the city that wrote that play. I prefer Euripides now, but I’ve told you of Oedipus because it was the first one that got me. I don’t hate you. How could I? Even though I know you came to make us slaves. I can’t hate you. I believe any city that gave us those plays has something worth saving. That’s why I’m here.” Gelon looks around him. “I think.”

This fellow on the wheelbarrow loves their theatre. Is hopelessly in love with it, and in some small way, he loves them because of it, and that more than anything else is why we’re here.

Broken down and starving as they are, you’d imagine they wouldn’t give a shite if some Syracusan loved Athenian theatre, but they do. You only need the quickest scan of their faces, and you see it. Something that I haven’t glimpsed since I stared across at these Athenians two years previous in battle when they were gleaming in armour. That very same thing is in their eyes now, though in a much, much frailer form: pride. These fellas are proud to be Athenian. It doesn’t last long, but while it’s there, it’s unmistakable and kind of beautiful and foolish.

for a moment, I have the feeling that the future and the past aren’t separate at all, just different snatches of a single song always sung, given consequence when heard.

I’d throw in my lot with you and work till the skin came off my fingers if it were for us and not just me.”

Laughter in the distance, the shuffling of small feet. The other children are arriving, and you feel the change they make to the air. Like their chatter is filling up the lonesome road with some of that excitement for life, and as if in sympathy, even the sun seems to be emitting a bit more heat.

something in the way the Athenians take the boys’ hands and the way the kids’ expressions change makes me wonder if, unbeknownst to them, that’s what these poor bastards are doing, performing fatherhood and childhood for each other, ’cause surely a lot of these men have kids back home that they’ll never see again, and I feel like I should look away, like I’ve caught an intimacy, and so I turn around and count the cheeses in the wheelbarrow.

The voice isn’t beautiful, and at first, I’m disappointed, yet as the words tumble out, I feel a tingling on my skin because there’s a wildness to it—an uncommon thirst for life and other things—and I see that I don’t know this woman at all, only wish to.

Anything is possible, and it always has been. For the world was once just a dream in a god’s eye, and the man who gives up on himself makes that very same god look away.

It’s hope that makes us afraid, and I remind myself that a man should be grateful for his fears, ’cause it means he has something to lose and to win.

Other days I’m last and hear laughter before I see them: the kids chasing about the wheelbarrow, Dares yapping to Gelon as Gelon listens with a contented grin, and I wonder is it Euripides we’re saving at all?

“Excuse me?” “We all watched Nicias die. He died with dignity. What good does it do to taint a man so?” “But he did!” “What’s wrong with you? You degrade a man’s suffering like that for coin. Don’t you see it’s all of us who lose?”

think they’ve found a sort of innocence in their ruin.

He says the best theatre isn’t about showing something but finding it. Certainty is the way of cowards and fools, and Euripides is neither.

“There’s more to Athens than tragedy,” says Paches with feeling. “We laugh till we cry, and we drink.” Another swig. “We drink till we fall down, but we’re up first thing in the morning to scheme and love and build and do it all again. It’s a city of belief, not despair. That proverb has nothing to do with the Athens I knew.”

In a little while, people will come down and watch. How many will come? I can’t say, but we’ll know soon enough. I believe you’re going to show them something they’ll never forget. When they leave here later today, the few or many will be changed, and whatever happens in the future, Athens will be remembered, and you will be a part of that remembrance. This is what I believe.”

Alcar plays that aulos in a way I didn’t think it could be played, and whatever else happens, we’ve done the music right.