The Mask of Apollo Read Free Page B

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 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