Antigone's Wake Read online

  Antigone’s Wake:

  A Novel of Imperial Athens

  Nicholas Nicastro

  © Nicholas Nicastro 2007

  Nicholas Nicastro has asserted his rights under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work.

  First published in 2007 Bella Rosa Books.

  This edition published in 2016 by Endeavour Press Ltd.

  Table of Contents

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  Chapter I

  NOTHING TO DO WITH DIONYSUS

  Chapter II

  A TASTE OF RUE

  Chapter III

  THE HIPPOCAMP SEES HIS SHADOW

  Chapter IV

  SHIELDBREAKER

  Chapter V

  THE SANCTUARY

  Chapter VI

  TUNNELING TO GLORY

  Chapter VII

  THE SOUND OF THIRST

  Chapter VIII

  THE BACK HAND OF FORTUNE

  Chapter IX

  HYDRA

  AUTHOR’S AFTERWORD

  This book is dedicated to my friend, Todd Yellin:

  verus amicus est is qui est tamquam alter idem

  HISTORICAL NOTE

  Sophocles of Colonus (c. 496-406 BC) was author of some of the finest tragedies (Oedipus the King, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus) of classical antiquity. What is less known is that Sophocles the playwright also had a military career, serving as a general in Athens’ war against the island state of Samos in 440-39 BC. The date of this service means it was not some ephebic prelude to his productive years. Indeed, it puts him “in uniform” at the very prime of his creative life, close to the time of the premiere of Antigone itself. This novel represents an attempt to imagine what happened in this curious episode, when the histories of dramatic art and military science briefly intersected.

  A mixture of ancient and modern units of measure is used in the text. For the sake of convenience, modern units are used when they are more or less similar to their ancient counterparts (e.g., feet, hours, months). Verisimilitude is served by including a number of antique units common in the relevant historical sources. Most prominent here is the stade, a Greek unit of distance approximately equivalent to 600 modern feet (and from which our word stadium is derived).

  The common monetary unit is the Athenian drachma, which is equivalent in value to six obols. The superordinate units are the mina, worth 100 drachmas, and the talent, equaling 6000 drachmas. We know that a decent house in a suburb of Athens in the mid-fifth century BC would set the buyer back 500 to 1000 drachmas (or five to ten minas); a gallon of olive oil, more than three drachmas; a good pair of shoes, about 10 drachmas; a healthy slave, 300 to 500. Still, for various reasons, expressing the value of a drachma in today’s currency is not as straightforward as finding modern equivalents for, say, distance. According to an oft-cited rule of thumb, the wage for the average laborer in classical Athens was one or two drachmas a day. A talent, therefore, works out to the equivalent of almost twenty years of work, or in modern terms something like a million dollars.

  As for the calendar, the reader will notice there are no absolute dates given for the events depicted here. This is due to the simple fact that no universal system existed until relatively recent times (and arguably, does not exist even today, given that the Chinese, Muslim, and Jewish calendars are still in use). Instead, years were designated either by counting the years since some important event, or on the basis of who held important magistracies at that time (in Athens, years were named for the so-called “eponymous” archons). for instance, Thucydides places the war with Samos “in the sixth year of the truce [with Sparta].” More conventionally, the Athenians would have dated the events presented here to the terms of the archons of Timocles and Morychides, 441-39 BC.

  PROLOGUE

  “Oh yes, my life is marvelously fair.”

  — Electra, Electra, 1. 390

  Seen from a godly vantage, the Athenian war fleet moved over the sea with a peculiar, spring-like action. Like the head of a caterpillar, the knot of vessels with experienced crews shot ahead, pulling hard as the body of the fleet stretched out behind. Zigging and sagging, the green-handed rearguard was left behind in the westward mist. The oarsmen were lucky to row virtually submerged in wood and the flesh of their companions, with their seats facing astern. It was a rare recruit who would not be discouraged to see the veteran ships race so far ahead that their rigging sank into the blue.

  The sole advantage of arriving last was the fact that the pullouts were already illuminated by watch-fires. The latecomers would then have the obvious target of the beached triremes, lined up like stranded whales on the sand, to motivate them. It was an unlucky ship that failed to arrive by dark, when the offshore breezes rose and the task of laying up for the night became infinitely more difficult and dangerous.

  The ships rowed only in daylight, managing seven or eight miles an hour with a good crew and a following wind. Their limited range obliged the eastbound fleets to island-hop to Asia. After weathering the promontory at Sounion, the fleet caterpillared its way to the broad sandy beaches on the western shore of Keos. If going on to the Hellespont and the Black Sea, it touched in turn at Andros, Chios, and Lesbos; if making for Ionia proper, it cut through the heart of the Cyclades to the north coast of Ikaria, where foraging parties were sure to rush ahead to secure a supply of the local apricots to supplement the night’s rations.

  From Ikaria it was an easy run to the large, wealthy island of Samos — a place where, until recently, the Athenians could expect a warm welcome and miles of empty shoreline to dry their hulls. But this time there would be no welcome. Instead of sailing east into Persian-controlled waters, the Athenians were bound for Samos herself, with the intention of humbling fellow Greeks.

  On a spring voyage, the oarsmen knew an island was near when the sea’s color, freshened by the flow of stream water from the highlands, changed from a sky-reflecting blue to gray slate. Towers of vapor could be seen rising from the mountains of Naxos and Andros before the summits rose into view. It was not unknown for these plumes to blaze with sunset as the islands, drenched in shadow, floated in their turn above clouds of opalescent green, like sunken constellations. It was said by some that the glow in the water was made by tiny creatures that swarmed there. Others insisted it was the gleam of torches in Hades, as the miserable shades, seeking respite from an eternity in twilight, marched in procession in honor of the Lord of the Dead.

  On this particular evening a fleet of sixty triremes was safe for the night on Keos. Another four had yet to reach shore as the sun washed its lower limb in the sea. The laggards, which were crewed mostly by poor citizens with no experience afloat, churned the blackening waves with triple-banks of oars, their bronze-clad rams plowing the swells. A pair of painted eyes on the bows fixed an impassive stare at the beach; behind, the superstructure ascended in a proud, erect curve, like some defiant gesture at departing Helios.

  On the slowest-running ship of this, the tagging flotilla in the fleet, the deck pitched and twisted as the unstable, narrow-beamed warship settled in the hollows between the crests. To this motion was added the intermittent lurch of the hull as the ship was propelled forward by its oars. A lookout shouted ahead; the officer of the deck slowed the cadence as the ship approached the flotsam of some lost transport. Closer, they entered a stretch of water with horse carcasses scattered like wet, woollen blisters on the sea. Lifting their blades over the gas-swollen bags, the top oarsmen looked down on the drowned things as they floated, legs splayed in a slick becalmed with blood, each attended by writhing schools of silvery maggots. Novice rowers flinched in their benches as the ship’s beak split equine flesh. A putrid cloud rose, sending
the marines scurrying to douse the torches, and turning even the most seaworthy stomachs inside out.

  Watching this from the deck, just ahead of the steering oars, from a chair that was really no more than a puny shelf, was Sophocles son of Sophilos, general of the fleet and erstwhile civilian. And in green-faced Sophocles there was not a scrap of food, for he had vomited his breakfast into the sea hours ago, and only a single thought: how, by some perversity of the Fates, have I come to be here, on my way to war?

  Chapter I

  NOTHING TO DO WITH DIONYSUS

  “He who stands clear of trouble should beware of dangers; and when a man lives at ease, then it is that he should look most closely to his life, lest ruin come on it by stealth.”

  — Philoctetes, Philoctetes, 1. 500

  *

  A few days before the City Dionysia, the archons held a much-anticipated competition. The proagon was staged under the peaked roof of Pericles’ new concert hall. The thousands gathered there, under the eighty stone columns with their capitals clad in theatrical attributes, and woodwork cut from the masts of wrecked Persian ships, sweltering in their winter cloaks as the air stank of lampsmoke and tar still drying on the crossbeams. With the weather fair that early March, the mass of citizens overflowed out the doors, around the Odeon, and down the slope like a linen-drab stain.

  Athenians came because the contest decided the order in which the tragedies would be staged at Dionysus’ festival. Yet few of the spectators, indoors or out, had a decent view of the performance. The stage was built too low, as if begrudging any distinction from the wide, flat expanse of the orchestra in the nearby Theater. The citizen fortunate enough to be a head taller than his neighbor still had to contend with that forest of columns, which doomed nearly every seat in the house to an obstructed view.

  This competition was designed to be heard instead of seen. The three tragedians chosen for the season, matched with their state-sponsored choruses, would each present a foretaste of the songs from their plays. When an entrant’s turn came, he would get a few moments to impress the throng with his virtuosity. Self-appointed loudmouths would go about telling the people to shut up — swatting them if necessary — until they attained a silence long enough for the first few verses to waft through the hall and out the doors. Athenians, who attended many hours of drama every year, could tell in a few moments if the rest was worth hearing. Fine coming-attractions were politely attended and received applause; poor ones were drowned out by chatter and the cries of concessionaires selling cheap fans, water, fruit, or flatbread peppered with road-dust.

  First to lead his chorus to the stage that day was Aristarchus of Tegea. His troupe entered through the side door and processed to the stage in a reverent silence. The poet and his fifteen choristers came garlanded with ivy, dressed in long, pleated stage-chitons, but without masks and without the chitons bustled for dancing. There were a few groans from the crowd as they assembled. In a dozen years, Aristarchus had entered tetralogies for seven festivals, yet had never placed higher than second. Though the judges never favored him, the name-archon for the year, Timocles, had once again honored Aristarchus with a place among the final three. Timocles sat with the other magistrates in their wooden chairs beneath the stage, his arms crossed, his downcast, lidded eyes revealing nothing. The poet presented himself to the people and sang the usual invocation:

  “Aid us, our dear lord Dionysus, as we consecrate this offering, that it may please you, and shed your divine favor upon this city of the Athenians, which above all others honors you by consecrating these fruits at your festival, the greatest in all the lands of the Greeks.”

  Aristarchus turned to his chorus. The self-styled soldiers of Dionysus in the crowd squelched all chatter, and Timocles unfolded his arms.

  Though the poet had not named his play or described its subject, everyone recognized what followed as a tragedy set on the shores of Ilion. The chorus sang of the fair matron of Menelaus’ house, borne from Laconian purple over plum-wine seas to Alexandras’ scented bower. They sang of Priam’s turrets piercing the heavens above Sigeum, as the tenth-part of the cargoes of a hundred nations passed in tribute beneath his walls. They sang of Troy’s blooming manhood, playing at youthful games as the tide of death swept toward them from the prows of the easting Achaeans. And though they were forbidden to dance during the proagon, the choristers moved in time to the verses, the crimps of their gowns swaying, the sweat-smeared Aristarchus laboring before them, pumping his arms, as if inflating some kind of iambic bellows. The crowd gave their attention to the poet who had chiseled this ode from the mass of his inert talent, allowing him to evoke, like the sweet memory of a dream, that distant beach, that patch of ground waiting for the ashes of great, broken Achilles — but only for a moment. When the Tegean turned back to face the people, he found they had returned to their roasted walnuts.

  It was, on the whole, a typical performance for Aristarchus. The chorus, furnished him by the state, had done its level best with the mere competence of his verse. The producer assigned to him, an aristocrat named Theodoras, seemed duly committed to spending a patriotic abundance of his money on scenery and costumes. He even had a fine protagonist in Hegelochus, who had distinguished himself last year in the role of Darius in Achaeus’ Persians. Yet all this splendid support just inspired everyone to dread the final production even more; it was, after all, doomed to nothing more than a second-place finish. Athenians never had much time for worthy runners-up.

  The glumness vanished when the crowd saw the next troupe mount the stage. A wave of relief swept through the Odeon — a spontaneous, collective exhalation — as a tall, familiar figure led his chorus before the people. The shudder of anticipation swept through the doors, into the crowd listening outside, and seemed to radiate into the city. The trees in the temple groves nodded, unfolding limbs laden with spring buds. In Dionysus’ sacred grotto under the Acropolis, the priests saw the lamps gutter, then burn with fresh vigor, and with that sign knew that a really good show was at hand, and that the god was beckoning them to run down the slope to glimpse the new work by Dexion, the city’s pride.

  *

  Sophocles of Colonus, son of Sophilos, father of Iophon, was a handsome man of fifty-five. Renowned since youth for his beauty, he had been kindly handled by age: his physique, which had graced the choral dances so often when he was a boy, had retained the balanced proportions of a champion pentathlete. His head was neither too squat like Socrates’, nor too high-crowned like Pericles’, but sat square on his tanned shoulders. The features on it were sculptural in their balance, with eyes finely spaced but not too far, lips appealingly plump but not sensuous, nose ascending straight and true from the untrammeled plain of his brow. Those who had not seen him since his last proagon noted that his beard was grayer, more deeply piled, and the lines on his face were deeper. Yet these badges of maturity only seemed to frame the ideality of what remained. When his fellow citizens passed him in the street, they would stare and point, and say “There goes Dexion, inspired by the gods and beautiful to look upon.”

  Though he was nothing other than a man, his fame had given him an almost feminine comfort with being leered at. Over the years he had learned how to turn these instances into opportunities: as people watched, they would grow so immersed in their admiration they wouldn’t notice Sophocles scrutinizing them back. In this way he learned much about the character of his city’s people. One of the pleasures of his plays was the economical ways he captured these qualities, communicating them in his choice of words and the small gestures of his actors, so that other Greeks in the audience, visiting from other cities, were sometimes at a loss to understand the hoots of recognition from the Athenians.

  Years before he had been frequently seen on the orchestra. From boyhood he was noted for his skill with the lyre, and was heavily sought by other poets as an accompanist for their choral songs. It was young Sophocles who played the harp for the premiere performances of all three plays in Aeschylus’
Oresteia. When he began to write his own tragedies, he took the protagonist’s role himself. His performances came to be as finely wrought as his verse, so that again he was courted by other tragedians. For this versatility of his talent — writing, acting and musicianship — he soon earned the epithet of “Dexion,” the Entertainer.

  He pursued this hyphenated career as long he was able — until the day he was acting the title role in Neophron’s Medea, and at a particularly fraught moment, when the heroine was obliged to confront the bodies of the children she had murdered, his voice broke. With fifty lines left to speak, he was obliged to continue in a whisper. The audience was so transported by the show that they leaned forward in a body to hear Medea’s barely-audible rant. The producer, Cimon son of Miltiades, won the ivy crown for his work; Sophocles, despite his mishap, also won the prize for his acting. Neophron, however, was forced to take second place among the tragedians. For failing his patron, Sophocles never forgave himself — and never trusted his voice on stage again.

  And so he confined himself to writing, and did so with such success that the appearance of a new program by Dexion was something of a civic event. When he took the stage and commenced the invocation, there was no need to call for silence — curiosity stilled every tongue in the room. The chorus behind him was dressed much like Aristarchus’, but with a special touch typical of their master: all of them, in addition to the wreaths and chitons, were wearing the special kid-skin bootlets of the type Sophocles had designed himself. Once, when pressed, he explained that they were supposed to prevent slips during the dances. “When,” his rivals asked, “had a chorister ever slipped on the dusty floor of the orchestra?” “Never,” agreed the people, who ordinarily resisted any innovation. Yet, so good did the fancy things look on the feet of the dancers, for Sophocles alone they swallowed the conceit, and accepted the boots.