The Mask of Apollo Read Free

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.”
    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