Dionysia
Athens, 431 B.C.
“Aeschylus.”
The word came from his mouth without permission, nearly
choking Mesatus as he groaned awake. His face was rather firmly planted on the
ground, again, dust from the coarse limestone steps clinging to his white beard
as he sat up.
Athens was already awake, the sounds of creaking carts
sliding down the Panathenaic Way to the agora. Jumbled conversations parried
around both sides of the street as Mesatus brushed the dirt from his face,
stretched, and marched into the growing thicket.
The rural folk were still pouring into the city on the orders
of Pericles, stirring fervor about the inevitable war with Sparta and creating
a great deal of excitement and hand-wringing, and all those silly whispers
about doom and damnation. Not that Mesatus really gave a fig that Athens was
filling up a bit, except that his glorious daily jaunts to the theater were
taking quite a bit longer these days.
“Put your cock away, at least,” he heard from an old washer
woman as he marched past a string of merchants, who were setting up their wares
in the nascent morning sunlight.
Mesatus looked down. “Quite right, ma’am,” he said, tugging
his toga down as best he could and continuing his march.
His old knees, spry beyond expectation, took Mesatus to the
tavern on the far side of the agora, where he showed his scrupulous devotion to
the great god of wine, Dionysus, with as much fervor as he could summon. A
couple cups of the godly nectar later, Mesatus was flushed with piety, his mind
racing ahead to the infinite possibilities of the day’s unknowns.
It was the third day of the Dionysia, where the gods
themselves were heard through the quills of the greatest playwrights in Athens.
Mesatus hadn’t missed one in 40 years, his very blood committed to the players
of the stage, and the gods that whispered in the ears of the chosen ones.
In yesterday’s daydream, it seemed that half of his fellow
Athenians had declared that Mesatus was stupid beyond conception for trading a
modest fortune for a lifetime of wine and bread at his favorite tavern;
everyone else thought he should just be kicked out of the city for sheer
madness, or simply dragged into the Aegean and drowned. In any case, it was
long ago, and the infamy had faded rather quickly as it turned out – along with
any need to bring up the glory that once danced with the name Mesatus. Heading
along the slender, rock-filled path to the theater, with the softly colored
world just starting to brighten against the marble pillars of the nearly
finished Parthenos, the laughs of faded men from yesterday did not much concern
Mesatus. Except for the one, of course.
The familiar walk from the tavern to the theater always gave
Mesatus just enough time to piece together the previous night – or at least to
venture an attempt to do so. The ever-capricious Dionysus was always dropping
him off in the most remarkable of places after days of full devotion, providing
beautiful morning walks as Mesatus migrated back from wherever sleep had
corralled him. He had awoken in ditches in some of the most terrific slums of
Athens, and also on the steps leading up to the palace of Pericles himself.
Several dozen times he had wandered all the way to the countryside, where he
would inevitably end up at the foot of Aeschylus’ olive tree, conversing with
his old counterpart while relieving the expendable parts of the night's wine.
"Sorry, old friend," Mesatus would always dare to say.
Technically
speaking, of course, they were not actually friends. Indeed, some in the older
days would have called Mesatus an adversary, which could have been accurate, he
supposed, given that he did occasionally poison Aeschylus' actors and actively
rooted for Apollo to strike him down on the steps to the Parthenos. Mesatus did
even possibly succeed in killing the great man himself, although the true
nature of that ghastly event could only be guessed at by the gods. In any case,
there certainly had been none of the deserved retribution that rightfully would
accompany such foulness as causing the death of an icon, and Mesatus had been
blessed to live a long life in between the cracks of Athens, nearly untethered
to the nuisance of guilt.
Though
most men of his advanced age had given over to full-blown lunacy at this late
stage, Mesatus had even retained a decent retinue of the fragments from his old
life. Of walking only a few paces behind Aeschylus on the very same stones, a
wide-eyed boy of 20 who trembled at the prospect of the audience actually
seeing his work. And the crushing sound of sandals scraping over stone and
sand, disturbing the silence as Aeschylus murmured to himself final details
before the impending performance. Despite his advanced state, the gods had even
allowed him strong legs and a back that had not yet gone, an astoundingly
generous gift that Mesatus never did trust. Even now, the memories of being
called an adversary of the mighty Aeschylus could warm Mesatus on the coldest
of nights, accompanying his morning strolls even these 20 years after Aeschylus
was committed to the dirt.
Still
a few hundred paces off, Mesatus realized that he had beaten the masses, as
there was none of the usual clamoring that seemed to follow uncontained into
the theater. Especially on the third day of the great festival, the last of the
drama before giving way to the childish comedies that closed the event. With
the seats rising high above on his approach, Mesatus stepped onto the
peerlessly smooth stone of the main stage, his pulse simmering the same as it
always did when on holy ground. There were a few servants polishing some of the
stone seats in the first few rows, but the rest was abandoned to the ghosts of
olden days, not a whisper to be heard above the soft scrubbing against the
limestone.
It
was as if Dionysus himself then carried Mesatus right along the stage, where he
could feel his heart battering away at his chest, much the same as when his
very first play had sprung into motion before his fellow Athenians. Mesatus
gasped as the images and sounds of long ago once again flooded into his head,
almost unnaturally, causing him to sit down in order to escape from the
swirling delirium.
“You
all right, sir?”
Mesatus
came to, looking over at a man of 30 standing a few steps onto the stage – an
innocent face with the dimples of a boy.
Mesatus
stared for a long moment and then cleared his throat loudly, not wanting to
commit the sin of poor annunciation at the foot of the gods. “Perfectly fine,
young man.”
The
man cautiously approached, cocking his head as he studied Mesatus’ face through
his long, scraggly beard. Mesatus had very successfully sculpted the look of an
all-out beggar over the years, which often allowed him to avoid social contact
for days at a time. Why this immaculately groomed and well-born half-wit would
be staring at him like he was Apollo escaped Mesatus entirely.
“I
know you, do I not?”
Mesatus
frowned. “Keep moving, friend.”
The
man was not deterred, plopping down only a few steps away, a grin sitting on
his lips.
“Sure
I do.”
“May you piss off and die,” Mesatus said kindly as he quickly rose and slipped to the empty wood seats above the stone ones, and picked a row more suitable to his stature.
But
the young man resisted, producing a large sack of wine.
“You
won’t even talk to me if I share my wine?”
The
tables, as ever, did tend to turn rather quickly. Mesatus slipped back down the
steps almost immediately, as he was too old to pretend he wasn’t going to
accept the offer. Given the man’s appearance – a finely tailored toga and
sandals only lightly brushed by dust – it was likely that he had some of the
finest flavors of Athens in his oversized bag of wine.
Mesatus
took the blood of Dionysus and drank thirstily. There was no hesitation before
the transaction began –
“So
you were a writer,” said the man. “I can see it. I’m a bit of one myself.”
Mesatus
frowned and tilted his head, judging the man’s prim appearance before taking
another sip and capping the bag. He passed it back over and propped up his feet
on the seat in front of them, careful to pull his toga down this time. “So
you’re a young writer who follows around old men to find something to write
about. That the way of it?”
“Mainly
I was curious whether you were mad or a fanatic.”
“And
which am I?”
“I’m
meeting you for the first time, and there are many forms of madness.”
Mesatus
nearly grinned as a very slow trickle of men, and even a few women, was
beginning to slip onto the theater grounds, which were softly whispering with
growing excitement. The women weren't supposed to be there, of course, but the
ones who showed up with the biggest wine jugs were regularly deemed too
righteous to be turned away.
The young man reclined. “Tell me a story and I’ll have a better notion. We have
some time.”
Mesatus
judged the man for a bit, looking to the quietly filling theater that would be
transforming for hours yet. They were there to share stories, Mesatus supposed,
and there was no harm in giving the young man a tale dipped lightly in truth
and intrigue. Mesatus sighed deeply, and instinctively lowered his voice to fit
the audience.
He
began with the earliest memory he could summon – the day he heard an Illyrian tradesman
talk of the great theater of Athens. Born of a farmer who would take in wary
travelers, Mesatus couldn’t have been much further from the theater in his
youth. In truth, had the farm been any more remote, Mesatus would have been
unburdened by the great lust of his life, the seeds of passion sowed in
entirely different soil. He often thought about how strange it all would have
been had he never even laid eyes upon the great theater, or perhaps never heard
of it at all.
From
early on, Mesatus was relegated to hearing only poorly remembered
reincarnations of stories from dimwits selling spices and olive oil. Once in a
while, his cousins – a set that contained two mouths and one brain – would put
on a dastardly performance of the Iliad following a harvest feast. Such plays,
if you could call them that, were enormously painful to watch, and always
spectacularly too short. But when Mesatus went to correct their folly, erecting
a version of his own with what limited talent and resources he had available,
his father had simply beaten him senseless.
“Where
are these great theaters you have heard the tradesmen talk of? Are they just
beyond our olive trees. You are a farmer. Just be happy you’re not a Macedonian
eunuch.”
And
yet Mesatus couldn’t help himself from staying up deep into the night, faking
sleep in the shadows, to listen to a traveler tell of the great city where the
stories were told by masters created by the gods themselves.
Mesatus
had run into the nearly pitch-black fields the night of the final beating, not
because he was too upset with his father, but because he suspected he was
right. Mesatus could recall marching along the path, many miles from home,
determined to walk all the way to Athens as a symbolic gesture of his faith. He
made it nearly two full days before turning back, stopping only to yell at
Apollo for the misfortune of a cowardly soul.
Returning
home, broken and embarrassed from not following through on his act of defiance,
Mesatus was greeted by an abandoned farm and a series of strange blood stains
throughout the house. It wasn’t until weeks later, upon finally making it to
Athens, that Mesatus heard about the series of raids happening around the
countryside. His family had almost certainly been captured into slavery, a fate
that would have befell Mesatus had he not made his ill-guided stab at proving
himself a man. Even while accepting sympathy from Athenians, and some free
bread and wine, Mesatus couldn’t help but relish in his newfound good luck. One
week he had been rolling his eyes at the foot of a preposterous retelling of
the Iliad, and the next he was roaming around the wonders of Athens,
emancipated at 15, and detached entirely from the burden of expectation.
It
wasn’t long before Mesatus made the theater his home, as it only took one
competition of Dionysia to realize that the traveling tales had sold it all
spectacularly short. That isn’t to say that he simply picked up a quill and fit
in with the brilliant writers of status. Mesatus admitted to the young man all
of the details he could recall of his days being a step above a derelict. Of
cleaning chamber pots, milking goats, even open prostitution with men and women
of high favor to get him closer to the players of the theater – the rich men
who opened their purses to pay for the plays. Although very few of them
actually had much of an eye for talent, and several were nearly incapacitated
by outright stupidity, applying them with flattery was fairly easy for a writer
of any skill.
Still,
it was nearly a decade before such efforts truly paid off, when he was able to
accompany a wealthy family to the coveted stone seats of the Dionysia. He was
suddenly close enough to see the trembling figures of the poorer actors, and
the booming confidence of the best of ones.
And
it was then that he first saw Aeschylus, who was widely regarded to be a man of
talent, but was very far from the legend now boasted about by drunkards in the
streets. Mesatus watched Aeschylus as closely as he inspected his play, seeing
him mouth along in rhythm with his actors to the story of King Xerxes being
undone by his own gargantuan hubris. By the final act, Mesatus had lost all
conception of himself, his mouth bone dry after hanging open for hours.
Afterwards,
Mesatus had slipped away under the guise of filling up more water and tracked
Aeschylus well down the theater path, finding the great man pondering the olive
trees on the outskirts of the city. Even today, Mesatus could remember how his
voice trembled as he spoke to his idol.
“How
will the rest of us rise when you are writing such…such…”
His
mind had failed him completely. Aeschylus turned, startled, but then warmly
smiled through his neatly trimmed dark beard.
“It
was a piece of goat dung.” Aeschylus raised a finger. “My next…”
Aeschylus
stopped, lost for a moment.
“My
next shall be truly spectacular.”
At
the time, Mesatus couldn’t have comprehended a work better than the play he had
just seen. “Maybe you’ll need an extra servant,” Mesatus finally said, unsure
where the words came from.
Aeschylus
looked at him for a long moment, those infinitely grey eyes freezing Mesatus in
place for the first time. “You would be my servant to get closer to my next
play?”
Mesatus
nodded tentatively.
“Well,
I have no need of another servant.”
And
Aeschylus wandered off, his eyes in the olive trees dotting the street as dust
lightly tussled around him.
Mesatus
recalled being somewhat slighted, but it quickly wore off less than a week
later. His master, a dodgy, aging man who had made a sizable fortune in the dye
trade, said that a man of influence had suggested that Mesatus be given a
commission – an invitation to write a play for next year’s Dionysia. Mesatus
recalled nearly fainting.
But
Mesatus did not wish to bore the young man with some of the less important
details of his youth, so he began leaving out a good deal of trivialities. As
is the right of any man with a quill in hand and heart, Mesatus may have even
slightly modified a few events to better suit his audience, who clearly didn’t
want a bland retelling of yesterday’s facts. There was simply no need to tell
anyone, let alone this leech, that his first two efforts at a play were an
utter disaster – amateurish retellings of kings and queens, which he was only
able to get down onto papyrus with the help of the family’s tutor. After the
second, a forgettable tale of godly revenge, his sponsor and employer called an
end to the experiment, saying that perhaps his eyes and ears were sharper than
his writing hand.
In
truth, Mesatus had to rely on a bit of deceit to regain the footing of his
career, and it was with some internal conflict that he dropped a spot of
hemlock into the wine of his replacement, a sharp young man who had his sights
set on winning first place in the Dionysia. With only a month before the event,
and the man rarely rising to do anything but vomit, Mesatus was promptly
recalled to finish the play. “Just get it done already” the old man said after
checking in on the original playwright, adding that it “doesn’t need to be some
gods-damned love song to Aphrodite. It just needs to be done so I’m not
thoroughly embarrassed.”
Mesatus
was all too happy to slide back into his coveted role while his colleague
recovered from his misfortune. He asked the gods nightly whether he had gone
too far, yet his inquisition gave way to vivid dreams that inspired a rousing
final act to his play, and ultimately to all those ravenous claps that still
echoed off of Mesatus’ memory. Although it was Aeschylus who took first place
for his annoyingly perfect little epic about Thebes, Mesatus arrived to the
pitch of prosperity and acclaim, and was promptly celebrated as a treasure of
the theater after settling for second prize. Even the poor originator of the
material, finally making his way from his sick bed, shook Mesatus’ hand and
thanked him for being kind enough to save him from ruin and disgrace. The poor
bastard died only a few months later – kicked in the head by a mule – and left
Mesatus with a reputation as a man of talent as well as a nice purse of coin.
Mesatus immediately sacrificed a goat to Apollo and Dionysus, for all their
gifts and favors, and still had enough coin for a night full of wine coupled
with one of the best prostitutes in the city.
What
came next was as much of a shock as the Trojans slipping from the horse. While
being toted around to dinner parties by the bored and wealthy, Mesatus amassed
a reputation for being the best playwright in Athens. To be sure, he repeated
to the young man that none of the sponsors had a true taste for the theater,
reminding that several had even been smashed over the head by an ever-ripening
buffoonery. Yet it was with only a hint of embarrassment that Mesatus accepted
first prize at the following year’s Dionysia. Bought by reputation and the
sponsors’ lust for novelty, which accrued long before anyone had actually laid
eyes or ears upon his play.
“YOU
beat Aeschylus at the Dionysia?” the young man blurted out suddenly when the
story arrived at the pinnacle of Mesatus’ life.
Mesatus
took a beat, slightly narrowing his eyes. “I did not say it was deserved, or
happened more than once.”
The
young man, polite if nothing else, pursed his lips and feigned being impressed
– plainly not believing a word of it, of course. Mesatus could have gone on at
some length about this period, about being a young man welcomed into the
highest ranks of Athenian society. But he could see that his audience was
beginning to glaze over, as there was little excitement in celebrating glories
disbelieved. The young man’s posture, caving back onto the bench, betrayed his
diminishing interest, an audience feature that Mesatus was quite familiar with.
Yet, if Mesatus had learned anything from the great man, there was always a
solution to a fading audience.
“It
was that period that sowed the seeds for the murder of Aeschylus,” Mesatus said
quietly, looking off to the steadily growing crowd filing into the theater.
The
young man immediately leaned forward. “Murder?”
Mesatus
slowly turned. “Certainly you don’t believe that an eagle dropped a turtle on
his head.”
“That
is what they say.”
Mesatus
grinned. “Tell me, why would the gods allow such blasphemy?”
The
young man had no answer, but Mesatus could see that he had regained his
attention. For out of the many eternal truths he had discovered from Aeschylus,
there was one more eternal than some of the others: murder was always to be
right at the height of fashion.
“Yes,
my dear friend, I have good reason to believe that the great Aeschylus was
indeed murdered.”
The
young man’s eyes were suddenly burning, his elbows on his knees as he leaned
in.
“I
was far from the only playwright in Athens who had believed that Aeschylus’
time had come and gone, and expectation was that he would slide quickly after
being knocked off the top slot of the Dionysia. But I…” Mesatus grandstanded a
moment, pretending to be lost in thought. He could see that there were now a
couple of other men in the area, quietly listening as the theater filled up.
“Yet
I was not surprised to see him regain his proper seat just a couple of years
later – a masterful work that reignited his love within the city. But what
Aeschylus did not know was that the most spectacular jealousy began to rip
through his contemporaries.”
He
didn’t need to point out that he was the covetous ringleader.
“And
just a week before the next Dionysia, three of his best actors all mysteriously
became violently ill and he was forced to pull his play from the competition.”
“My
father told me about that,” said a teenage boy, leaning in with glee. “Someone
murdered five of his actors!”
“Your
father was quite the storyteller himself, it seems, for only one actually died,
and it was many months later. Yet it did send Aeschylus into a low point in his
career, and once again his competitors believed him to be a beaten man.”
“Who
did it?”
“I
dare say that there were many fingers pointed, dear friends. The truth of it is
that we cannot know.”
Across
the theater, Mesatus spotted the familiar scraggly beard and bald spot of
Sophocles, who sat well away from the crowd, going over final cues with his
prime actor.
Filled
with wine and escalating glee, Mesatus lowered his voice, leaned in. “Perhaps
even Sophocles himself was involved. Who’s to say? He was a young man on the
rise at the time.”
Mostly
gasps.
“Goat
shit,” said one man with narrow eyes, drinking his wine and turning his back to
Mesatus.
“Perhaps,
friend,” Mesatus retorted.
There
was no reason to say that he had personally spiced up the actors’ wine with
hemlock, it having been a method that served him so well in the past. Mesatus
had been confident in his own work, yet he was admittedly more confident once
Aeschylus pulled himself from competition. Still, Mesatus remembered the
second-place pedestal beneath Sophocles that year, and the diminishing crowd
that held sovereign over his nightmares.
The
feast before the following year’s Dionysia, it turned out, was one of the determining
events of his life, and Mesatus remembered – even then – the unnatural feel as
he soaked up the polite praise of second place. How much different it had been
than when he was a young talent believed to be on the rise, despite being the
same pedestal of accomplishment. All evening, his eyes remained on Aeschylus,
who had been gracious earlier in his life but was beginning to have difficulty
with talking small with the Athenian elite as his beard grew white. Mesatus was
even there when one aristocrat, well-plied with wine and idiocy, asked
Aeschylus if he was a writer. Aeschylus then proceeded to get monstrously
drunk, talking in parables while others attempted to converse about the more
comfortable trivialities.
But
when the host of the feast, a boisterously fat old beast, asked Mesatus about
the substance of his next play, Aeschylus had perked up a bit in his seat
across the table. Mesatus could see the master listening intently through his
admittedly thin story of Pegasus, and, in between long sips of wine, was kind
enough to offer a more poetic solution to Mesatus’ finale. He had nearly choked
out his gratitude for Aeschylus’ spontaneous, and unsolicited, improvements to
his work, then reminded his audience that it was far from finished.
When
Aeschylus was asked about his next play, he merely thanked the host and
abruptly departed into the darkness.
Within
the hour, Mesatus had made up his own excuse to leave, mumbling something about
having enough wine for a few weeks sitting in his belly. It was well down the
darkened path that he came across a lump off to the side – an awkward figure
that looked closer to a dead deer than the puppet of the gods. Aeschylus was in
a bad way, wine-drunk five or six times over and sleeping in the middle of twigs
and shrubs. Mesatus remembered having an urge to just leave him there for the
critters, but instead he slapped Aeschylus awake and managed to help him
stumble back to his villa, where Mesatus plopped him down into his bed and lit
a fire. After a time, the inebriated man came to a low state of consciousness,
followed by the murmuring that was eternally stamped on Mesatus’ recollection.
“Mesatus.
I figured you would piss on me rather than walk me home like I was your
heroine.”
Mesatus
cracked a grin. “Is that how you would have written it.”
At
this, Aeschylus had opened his eyes as best as he was able, and sat up to
inspect Mesatus through slits. “They don’t have the right to ask us about our
work.”
And
then he grunted and went to sleep, snoring loudly. There was a sense of pure
pride bubbling in Aeschylus’ kind words as Mesatus headed toward the door, but
his betraying eyes wandered to a piece of rolled vellum sitting on the floor
near the edge of Aeschylus’ den. Checking over his shoulder to ensure
Aeschylus’ state, Mesatus snapped up the papyrus and brought it to the fire
light, unrolling it in silence.
It
was a play. Aeschylus’ hurried handwriting was hardly legible, but Mesatus sat
on the floor by the fire, baffled and aghast at the perfection of a stunning
tale that would carve Agamemnon into the immortal stone. There wasn’t a scratch
of the quill out of place, not a crossed-out phrase or a change of any kind,
and it was nothing short of immaculate. It was nearly dawn when Mesatus
finished reading, with Aeschylus still snoring away, oblivious. Mesatus sat
against the wall in a defeated lump, the papyrus clinging to his hand.
He
couldn’t say how long he thought about what happened next, but in the fire the
play went, Mesatus’ blood turning to ice as he fled from Aeschylus’ villa,
hoping in a fit of insanity that it would burn to the ground with Zeus’ child
still in it.
After
carefully returning to finishing his own work, it was with a great deal of
shock that Mesatus met the next news about Aeschylus, this time over a barrel
of wine with some of the other prominent playwrights.
“Those
rumors of Aeschylus not competing this year are a foul lot, I’m afraid,” said
one middle-aged man.
“How
so?” Mesatus remembered asking naively. Certainly Aeschylus’ Agamemnon play had
taken him many months, even if he was taking a form of dictation from the gods
themselves. Even the great Aeschylus could not overcome such a loss that close
to the Dionysia.
“He’s
not just entering a single play – it’s a trilogy,” said Sophocles, clearly
annoyed and frustrated. “He said it was only supposed to be one but that he got
so drunk that he threw it in the fire one night. When he had to rewrite it, he
claims Dionysus himself gave him the two greatest plays ever written to finish
his masterpiece. He’s calling it The Oresteia.”
“Grown
no less haughty in his old age then,” said another man before gulping
thoroughly.
Sophocles
hit it with precision: “We’re fighting for second place, my friends.”
Everyone
grumbled and found their wine chalice, and then the conversation switched to
the spring weather as if everything was perfectly ordinary.
Mesatus
barely managed to go through his usual preparation with his actors in the weeks
before the Dionysia, as he was infinitely more interested in seeing Aeschylus’
work than his own. Normally it was the best and most established writers that
were held to the third day, but this time Mesatus was saved the torment, and it
was with ravenous expectation that Mesatus sat down to watch The Oresteia to
open the festival.
The
entire crowd was in sync to the actors in mere moments, with grown men who had
seen Hades himself on battlefields shooting into spasms of crying, the entire audience
mesmerized by the escalating tale of revenge and godly meddling. By the time
they made it to the finale, it was as if Diana was talking to Mesatus and not
Agamemnon’s feebly minded son, Orestes. Mesatus was too stunned to remember to
clap when the crowd finally roared to life.
Afterwards,
Mesatus was certainly not the only one to pull his play from competition, there
being little point at that late stage. The poor bastards that remained had
their actors booed off the stage and hissed at, so large was the shadow of
Aeschylus. Even Sophocles could hardly resurrect anything more than polite
clapping. When Mesatus stumbled back to his humble villa that night, he vowed
to Dionysus never to write ever again, acknowledging, perhaps with haste, that
the theater was now over.
Yet
even with the sharp memories that Mesatus was fortunate to cling to, it was in
a deep fog that he recalled meeting a mysterious foreign soldier, nearly fresh
from the field of battle, who claimed that he could kill anyone in Athens for
three talents of silver. Although the man’s vibrant dark eyes burned into his
soul, Mesatus couldn’t recall any of his other features – except for him being
willing to take the remaining silver that Mesatus had on him that night as a
down payment. Mesatus stumbled back to his tiny little house that night,
believing deeply that he had just been robbed by a clever opportunist. It was
hardly two weeks later that the news hit, a young boy sprinting around the city
with the message: “Aeschylus is dead! Aeschylus is dead!”
Mesatus
didn’t believe a word of it, of course, and followed with the group of people
out to the distant road where Aeschylus was rumored to have fallen. But sure
enough, Aeschylus’ close friends and family were tending to the great vessel’s
body, and there was even a turtle nearby befitting the rumors, its shell
shattered, the meat picked nearly clean by the vultures.
“I
heard that it was Mesatus who done it,” said the grey-bearded man, suddenly
snapping Mesatus back to the present.
The
crowd turned to the man, who sat up straight with his arms folded.
Mesatus
subdued his enthusiasm. “You've heard that?"
"Many
a time, but who cares? Mesatus is long dead, too.”
"Who?"
asked one of the others, a middle-aged man, portly and meagerly witted. Mesatus
glared at him as coldly as he could summon – Medusa on the rag, he
thought.
“Mesatus
was a playwright, you idiot," said the young man.
The
buffoon shrugged and farted, looked off.
It
was in that moment Mesatus was suddenly overcome with an odd sensation, a
deep-seeded desire to confess it all. To declare that it was him who hired the
thug to kill Aeschylus, and the weeks of sleepless torment after Aeschylus fell
as he searched for the assassin. And there was that strange dance with oblivion
as Mesatus forced himself into exile in plain sight, desiring above all to let
the gods have their way and be eternally forgotten. Like all of the other
righteous mediocrities.
The
madness grew to the point that Mesatus was on the verge of blurting it all out
when cheers suddenly burst into the theater like a rogue wave. Even these long
years later, the chill still crept down Mesatus’ spine as the first actors
slipped in front of the crowd and the chorus aligned on the side of the stage,
their terrific secrets quietly stowed until the final act. The gods, being
terrific sadists who enjoyed their torments, had ended Mesatus’ confessional
before it began, the Dionysia taking full command of the audience as Sophocles’
play commenced in front of the undeserving audience.
Mesatus
exhaled deeply and turned his body to the stage as the play opened, watching
with great annoyance as Sophocles’ tale of Heracles’s wife gently seduced the
audience. After the thunderous clapping, the good Athenian people settled back
in for the break in between plays in a state of inspired uproar, bickering
amongst themselves with wild passion.
As
always, everyone in Athens was an expert on the theater during the
intermission. There was the usual yelling and cursing that painted a rather
broad picture of the work, but mainly everyone took the time to refill their
sacks of wine from the generous barrels on hand, then settled back in as the
actors of the next play began to stir down below.
To
Mesatus’ relief, his nearby group didn’t return to the topic of Aeschylus’
potential murder, and his desire to confess his role had been entirely subdued
by the weight of Sophocles’ play. Another gift of the theater perhaps, pulling
Mesatus back to a firmer plateau of sanity.
Next
up was the young Euripides, who Mesatus had always felt had a more impeccable
reputation than an outpouring of talent. In any case, his play demonstrated
quite convincingly that women were every bit as likely to be overcome by
full-blown storms of rage and revenge, and the debate began in earnest outside
the theater as to the merits of Euripides and Sophocles.
Although
glory was certainly pumping through Athens that day, in truth it would be hard
to recognize as everyone scrambled to have themselves a good long piss, the
wine having been well-applied for many hours by this point. Athenians dotted
the landscape on the outskirts of the city during the second intermission, with
many screaming at each other that they had just witnessed a gift from the gods,
or an "indomitable pile of pig shit wrapped in clever words,” as one
arrogant young aristo noted loudly. An insult that awarded him a bloody nose
and the tragedy of an upended sack of wine.
Such
was the chaos that Mesatus barely made it back into the theater when the
announcement for the next play took over, and ears were burning as the
oily-voiced announcer brought up a slender young man of 25 with waves of dark
hair and a nervous demeanor.
"I
give you Europhion, the son of the great Aeschylus."
Gasps
were followed by an intense silence. Mesatus could feel his mouth parting but
could do nothing about it.
"What
the hell did he say?" called a man nearby, but the eruption of applause
soon took over, such was the love for the master.
Mesatus
could not rise, however. It wasn't out of an intention to slight Aeschylus’
progeny, but his legs could literally not move, the grip of the sirens
themselves freezing him on the hard bench 10 rows up.
But
the sensation did not last, and Mesatus was as surprised as anyone when his
mind sprang into a fever pitch he had not experienced in many years. While the
silent crowd absorbed the opening moments of the arrogantly named Prometheus
Bound, Mesatus found himself grinning, his mind elsewhere, lost in a vision.
Mesatus
realized he must have looked quite mad when he dashed down the aisle and rushed
from the theater in a great hurry. He returned to the tavern immediately,
plucking the quill that was always hidden in the back room as well as a few
rolls of papyrus. Then he tossed a jug of wine and a hunk of bread in a wool
sack, disappearing back out the door in front of the aging tavern owner, who
knew better than to ask.
Mesatus
didn't have a moment to spare, and he strode off as quick as his legs could take
him, his mind already barreling ahead. At one point, pressing away into the
darkness outside of the city, he could hear the roar of the crowd in the
distance as he marched in earnest. Impervious to the calling of the Dionysia,
the cheers of the ongoing play inescapably rolling over the hills toward him as
he fled. They were following him.
Mesatus
could feel himself pulling from the normal constraints of societal impulses in
his recent years, but he still hadn’t believed himself to be fully compromised
by insanity – not truly – until he was hurrying through the darkness towards
the sea that night, giggling uncontrollably like a virgin having her first
brush with the pleasures of life. The wine sitting in his stomach had made the
world a bit of a blur as he pushed his feet as fast as they would take him. At
one point, he even stumbled rather completely to the ground, twisting his ankle
and driving his chin into the stony path. Bleeding from at least two spots, he
merely continued, the fire inside him churning while he dragged his injured leg
along the final stretch to the sea.
The
waves and the deepening orange of the sun plunged against the rocky shore as
Mesatus slipped down the hidden path he knew so well. He came to his little
cove, which had grown thick patches of moss in the years since Mesatus had last
visited. Taking a moment, he remembered the days and weeks spent here in his
youth, the incessant praying to the gods to take control of his quill and write
something worthy of their presence, and the torment of the painstaking words
that moved ever so slowly onto the vellum. And the mild nature of the
inspiration, only a whisper he hardly could be sure was there at all.
But
tonight there was no time to think of yesterday, for he had the greatest play
he could conceive of bubbling up inside him without control. He checked to make
sure the ground was dry enough and flung the vellum down, rolling it out and
placing a couple of large stones on either end. He then plopped down on his
stomach like he was a boy, and watched as if he was above himself as the words
came spurting out onto the crinkled piece of lamb’s skin. The story came so
fast onto the page that his hand could hardly keep up, hurling the words onto
the vellum like Hercules slaying the Hydra. Occasionally, when his hand began
to ache and then go numb, he would have to pound it onto the stone wall before
he could continue. When the sea rose up and swallowed the sun, he cursed the
gods for the darkness that followed, only to swiftly receive the gift of a moon
sliver that gave off just enough light to continue. Seeing the trickle of
moonlight pouring into the cave, Mesatus again laughed like a lunatic – he had
committed quite thoroughly by this point – and remained on his mad dash to
finish his first and only masterpiece.
With
a few hours still before the return of the sun, Mesatus gave birth to the final
line and leaned back against the side of the cave in a lump. Soon, fatigue
pulled him down into a plunging and satisfying sleep, and Mesatus was rather
pleased with himself for writing one of the greatest plays ever written, his
dreams scattered with future applause.
He
awoke in a near-panic, wondering if he had slept through the final day of the
Dionysia. The fire was dwindling in the rear of the cave, and he was
bone-chilled from the cool breeze pressing in from the sea. His jaw hurt like
hell’s fury, as did his ankle, but the blood was reasonably contained and
certainly Mesatus had woken up to worse predicaments. He wandered to the barrel
nearby and splashed some crisp water onto his face, his mind still awakening
when he stopped cold, for he had not remembered bringing a barrel of water into
the cave last night, and was wondering if it might have even been impossible in
his state. But he was just about to send it up to another of Dionysus’ miracles
when his gaze landed with suspicion on the fire flickering nearby.
Although
it did occasionally happen that he forgot a moment or two from a night of
committed devotion, seeing the fire dancing about in a small inlet in the rock
made his stomach turn. He approached the slowly dying fire, and peered through
the smoke at the burned chars of what could only be vellum. He gasped loudly
and burned his hand shoving it into the flames to pull out the remains of his
play, burnt to a full crisp, not a letter to be deciphered. He immediately
paced around the cave, trying to calm himself so he could remember the story.
But not a character was able to be summoned, not a plot point, not a single
line of dialog. Abyss and ruin was all there was, and Mesatus flopped onto his
backside to lean against the stone wall, staring at nothing.
After
a long moment of despondence, Mesatus didn’t have anything to do but wander
back toward the pulse of Athens, more astounded than broken. There was no point
in missing the final prayers of the Dionysia, even if it was the day of the
wretched comedy.
It
was in a completely thoughtless state on the journey back that he heard the caw
of the eagle and looked up out of instinct. At first he didn’t believe his
eyes, seeing that a turtle was hurdling down at him from Olympus, its legs
frantically trying to grip the air. It was only in the last possible moment,
finally determining that the turtle was real, that Mesatus jumped out of the
way and let the turtle splat on the hard ground – a cacophony of deathly groans
as the turtle wiggled its legs for the final time. Mesatus slowly continued up
the path in a state of confusion, looking back over his shoulder to see the
eagle soar down and start picking at the turtle’s flesh. The eagle cawed in the
distance, sounding rather like a spasm of godly laughter.
Ultimately,
a thoroughly shaken Mesatus ended up back in the same seat he had enjoyed the
day before, with much of the same company also returning for the finale. He
didn’t notice the young man with the immaculate wine from yesterday, but that
was for the best, thought Mesatus. The thought of confessing more of his story
turned Mesatus’ stomach foul.
The
topic at hand, of course, was the very play that Mesatus had spurned the
previous night. Europhion’s work, all agreed, was good enough to be compared
with Aeschylus himself, easily outdoing the best of efforts by both Sophocles
and Euripides.
“Good,
was it?” Mesatus offered dispassionately at one point, drawing himself into the
fray.
The
group’s elder sat forward with a thoughtful smile. “It was…I dare say it was
the greatest play performed since his illustrious father.”
Even
the imbecile gave his approval admitting that “eh, it was all right.”
Mesatus
didn’t have the energy to lament missing out on what must have been one of the
greatest performances ever to grace the Dionysia.
“I’m
mighty fired up for this as well,” said the older man, rubbing his hands
together with excitement.
“It’s
a comedy,” a newcomer jumped in. “Little more than the fart of the gods after a
good shag.”
Mesatus
tipped up his sack of wine the man’s direction, as he was not close enough to
kiss on the mouth. And Mesatus listlessly turned his attention back to the
stage, filled with near-indifference and perhaps a light dusting of simmering
rage, determined as the fires of Hades to allow not a single titter of laughter
to escape his lips.
“Who’s
the writer of this one?” Mesatus heard himself say, as it was harmless enough
to know the name of those about to be eternally forgotten.
“Aristophanes
he calls himself.”
“Never
heard of him,” blurted out the imbecile. “Just another bum who thinks he’s
funny.”
“You
wouldn’t know a good play if it swam out of the Aegean and bit you on the
cock,” offered the spirited older man, sticking his tongue out at the
unconvinced dimwit.
“Aristophanes,
did you say?” Mesatus asked, feigning interest.
The
confounded old man cocked his head Mesatus’ way. “You were the one yammering
with him all of yesterday. Then again, you did run out of here like you were
moonlicked.”
Mesatus
could feel himself still deep in the fog of Dionysus as the old man pointed his
bony finger just off the main stage. An odd sensation slipped down Mesatus’
throat as he picked up the curly brown hair of the man who had graciously
shared his wine. This time, the young man wore a serious face as he quietly
huddled with his small group of actors.
The
old man shook his head at Mesatus and continued. “He said he was working all
morning on a new ending – claims that he was wandering down by the shore last
night and Dionysus himself paid him a visit.”
As
the leading actor headed out to the stage, Mesatus’ heart began pounding as the
crowd’s buzz withered to a near-silence. Mesatus slumped forward onto his
knees, his steadfast eyes locked on the sternly focused Aristophanes as the
play commenced.
But
before the actor could make it a full line, a quick burst of intense laughter
slipped from Mesatus’ lips and echoed across the quiet stands, and Mesatus sat
back and pondered if – perhaps just this once – the gods had actually earned
it.
