The Walled Orchard (13 page)

If the house made Philodemus’ establishment look like a hovel, the company was enough to make me feel as if I had lived my life among grooms and fishmongers. Not only had all the guests that I had been told about turned up; there was also Phionides, the best Chorus trainer in Athens, and Moschus the flute-player (specially hired, would you believe, just to entertain the guests), and, reclining next to the host and looking thoroughly bored, the most notorious man in Athens, Alcibiades.

Imagine what effect this had on me, already petrified and hardly able to speak. But my soul inside me told me to be strong, as if I were facing a squadron of cavalry or a ravenous bear, and I stepped forward, presenting the food I had brought with a modest smile. Cleisthenes the Pervert must have heard the words ‘roast thrush’, for without turning his head he leaned back, grabbed one of the birds from the tray, popped it into his mouth, crunched it up, and spat out the bones, and never once interrupted the highly dramatic story he was telling. Obviously the art of being a gentleman didn’t just consist of being able to recite Archilochus.

Aristophanes rose languidly to his feet and embraced me, whispering in my ear as he did so, ‘Say one word about that damned goat and I’ll kill you., Then he banged on the table with a jug for silence and introduced me, declaring, ‘This is Eupolis son of Euchorus of Pallene’, which seemed to be all he could find to say about me.

There was a mortifying silence, as all the guests looked at me. I did my best to smile, and Alcibiades sniggered.

‘And this is Euripides the poet,’ Aristophanes went on, ‘and Theorus the politician, and here we have Socrates son of Cleverness,’ naming each guest to me in turn as if I were an idiot or a foreigner, who had never been in the City before and thought the Acropolis was a public granary. Not for the first or the last time, I could cheerfully have murdered Aristophanes.

I took my place on the end couch and hid behind my neighbour, Theorus, whom I knew very slightly. He had been made to look a fool in
The Acharnians,
and was ever so faintly resentful, so I decided he might be an ally. As he passed the cup to me, therefore, I whispered to him, ‘Noble Theorus, why in God’s name have I been invited to this? All these exotic people … I’ve never been in company like this in all my life.’

Theorus laughed; he was a fat man, and seemed to tremble all over. ‘In a way it’s a compliment,’ he said, taking back the cup and spilling wine over his gown. ‘Our host has heard of you.’

‘Me?’ I said, astonished.

‘What do you expect,’ Theorus yawned, ‘if you go about reciting your choruses and dialogue to anyone who’ll listen? The son of Philip has heard most of your
General
from one source or another, and I believe you have him worried. So for God’s sake, whatever you do; get drunk, smash up the tables, set fire to Socrates’ beard, anything you like; but don’t go reciting any speeches, or you’ll find that when your
General
is brought on, the audience will have heard that speech before, only slightly modified.’

I was stunned. ‘You think he’d steal it?’ I said.

‘If you’re lucky, yes,’ said Theorus, ‘and then let it be known that you stole it from him at this very party, abusing his hospitality like a Theban. If you’re unlucky, of course, he’ll write a parody of it. Then you’ll get laughs all right, but not the sort you want. I think he’s already nobbled your joke about the eels.’

I was uncertain whether to be furiously angry or deeply flattered, but my soul within me advised being flattered, so I laughed. It was obviously the right thing to do, for Theorus drew a little closer to me and went on:

‘If you want to get your own back on the son of Philip, see if you can’t find some excuse to tell the story about the goats on Hymettus, which we’re all simply dying to hear.’ Then a thought seemed to strike him, and he said quickly, ‘No, don’t do that. Just tell me now, quietly.’

I told him, and he laughed again, and by then all the food was finished. Little Zeus and Callicrates (who was pretending to be my servant so that he could stay and watch the party) rescued my plates and trays, and the flute-girls came out and started playing. The party was about to begin.

I don’t know if you go to that sort of party very often; if you do, you’ll know what the talk is like before the wine starts to take hold. At first, it’s all very aristocratic stuff— ‘When I was on an embassy to Mytilene’, and ‘The largest boar we ever bagged when I hunted in Crete’, or ‘That was the year Alexicacus won the chariot-race at Delphi; I shall never forget.’ This was where Theorus and Cleisthenes the Pervert were in their element, although of course Alcibiades had the last word on everything. Then Aristophanes made a sign to the houseboy to increase the ratio of wine to water in the mixing-bowl, and after a while everyone was talking frantically about the Gods and the nature of Justice. Socrates the scientist and Euripides started a private two-handed battle here, and gradually everyone else stopped talking and listened. As for me, I had both my ears open, since this was the sort of thing I so urgently needed for my play. For a while, the issue hung in the balance, for Euripides was able to speak very quickly. Eventually, however, he began to tire, and Socrates managed to seize the reins.

‘I take your point, Euripides,’ he said, unfairly taking advantage of his opponent’s fit of coughing, ‘but I’m still not sure what you mean by
attending to.’

‘Well…’

‘I presume,’ Socrates continued blithely, ‘that you don’t mean attending to the Gods in the way we use the word… Well, to take an example at random, we say that not everyone knows how to attend to horses, but only the horse-trainer. Correct?’

‘Well, yes, but . .

‘Because horse-training is attending to horses?’

‘Yes, but…’

‘And in the same way, not everyone knows how to tend dogs…’

‘Quite, but…

‘But only,’ Socrates went on, raising his voice ever so slightly, ‘the dog-trainer?’

‘Absolutely, yes, But…’

‘And cattle-farming is attending to cattle?’

‘Undoubtedly. But…’

‘Then piety must be attending to the Gods, mustn’t it, Euripides? Is that what you’re getting at?’

‘Well …’

Socrates grinned and went on, ‘Yes, of course. But isn’t the effect of attendance always the same?’

A pause, for Euripides has lost his train of thought entirely. ‘Yes,’ he says lamely. ‘But…’

‘What I mean is, it’s for the good of the thing attended to, so that, to use your example, horses are benefited by horse-training.’

‘Actually, it was your…

‘And so (I presume) are dogs by dog-training, and cattle by cattle-farming, and so on.’

‘But…’

‘Or do you think,’ said Socrates, narrowing his formidable brows, ‘that attendance aims to hurt the thing attended?’

‘Obviously not,’ replied Euripides. ‘But…’

‘It aims at the benefit of it?’

‘Yes, yes, of course. What…

‘Then if piety is
attending on
the Gods, as you said, is it a benefit to the Gods?’ A little gesture here; a shrug of the shoulders and a raising of one eyebrow. ‘Does it help them in some way to become better Gods, or somehow more Godlike?’

‘No, of course not. But…’

‘I didn’t think you meant that, Euripides,’ replied Socrates, sitting back in his couch. ‘Now, what were you saying?’

Of course, by this stage Euripides had entirely forgotten what he had been trying to say, and just sat there with his mouth open. Before he could marshal his thoughts, Socrates started off again, and soon had him tied up in little knots over the meaning of the word ‘service’, until Aristophanes restored order by banging on the table again.

Then the mix of wine and water was strengthened again, and we began to talk about Poetry. Especially Comic Poetry, with particular regard to the excellence of
The Acharnians. This
went on for quite some time, as you can imagine, what with Euripides trying to be ever so polite about the extended personal attack on him in the play, and Philonides the Chorus-trainer telling a long and pointless anecdote about a Chorus-member who always kicked left when he should have kicked right. All this talk — even the boring anecdote — was extremely exciting for me, and I think Aristophanes must have noticed how enthralled I was, for he sent his boy over to me with the wine, and said, ‘Friend Eupolis here is going to be a Comic poet.’ He didn’t add ‘when he grows up’, but he certainly implied it. ‘I think we should hear a little of this
Colonel
of his, don’t you?’

Theorus dug me in the ribs with his elbow, and I had an inspiration.

‘Surely not,’ I replied, mumbling slightly. ‘I’d be ashamed to repeat my rubbish under the roof of a master. Can’t we have the big speech from
The Acharnians
instead? I know that by heart.’

‘Later perhaps,’ Aristophanes said. ‘But now we’d like something by the immortal Eupolis. Wouldn’t we?’

‘Well, if you insist,’ I replied modestly. ‘Let me see,’ I mused, ‘I could give you the Goatherds’ dialogue from
The Steading of Pisistratus.’

Aristophanes turned bright red. ‘Not a dialogue scene,’ he said. ‘They’re so hard for one speaker to do properly. Let’s have something from this
Brigadier
of yours.’

‘There’s a good scene at the end,’ I replied. ‘A drunken party, with a Thessalian witch in it.’

Some of the others had got an idea what was going on by now. ‘That sounds good,’ they said. ‘Let’s have the Thessalian witch.’

‘Dreadfully
passé,
those witch scenes,’ Aristophanes muttered, ‘don’t you think? What about your
parabasis?
That would be worth hearing, wouldn’t it?’

It was, a nasty moment, but I kept my head. You may remember that I told you that my mother used to say that I spoke verse before I spoke prose. Well, when really pushed, I can extemporise verse — not very good verse, granted, but verse that scans. I took a deep breath, cleared my throat, and began to recite anapaests.

It took several lines before Aristophanes realised what I was doing, and then, of course, it was too late to stop me. The theme of this extempore
parabasis
of mine was that hardy perennial, scurrilous abuse of one’s rival competitors. I started off with the hackneyed attack on Cratinus — his drinking and repellent habits and so on —then did a couple of lines on Pherecrates before launching into my main target Aristophanes, basing myself on his own attacks on Cleon for the more virulent compound epithets.

Not only (I said) does the son of Philip steal goats; he also lifts jokes and scenes and whole choruses from better and cleverer poets, which he overhears in wine shops and the public baths and copies down in the little pocket tablet he carries inside the sleeve of his gown. Of course he writes so quickly that he often gets a word wrong here or there, and since he’s too thick to understand really clever writing, he doesn’t notice the mistakes and reproduces them in the text he gives up to the Committee. His motive for this wholesale plagiarism is not, as you might suppose, envy; rather, it’s partly to eke out his own bald and unimaginative texts, and partly because he doesn’t have much time for writing, what with all his little trips to Sparta to tell his friend Brasidas about our naval tactics — what, didn’t you know about that? Why else do you suppose he’s always urging the City to accept the peace offers from Sparta, when it’s obvious that they’re woefully inadequate. You ask for proof? Well, you know how the Spartans don’t use coins for money like normal people, but instead use great big iron bars, like spits. If you’d ever been to Aristophanes’ house, you’d see a brand new iron spit in his hearth, with
‘Made in Sparta’
stamped on it in Doric letters.

At which, everyone’s eyes turn to the hearth, and see a beautiful iron spit inscribed in Doric letters
(‘Made in Plataea’,
actually, but I was the only person close enough to read it), and a great shout of laughter goes up from the company. Euripides in particular seems highly amused.

‘Encore!’ he shouts. ‘And
now
let’s have the Thessalian witch.’

‘No, really,’ I said, holding up my hand for silence, ‘off with the flute-players and on with the actors, as I believe you poets say. Let’s have the big speech from
The Acharnians,
like you promised.’

Of course, the big speech from
The Acharnians
is a plea for peace with Sparta, saying that the outbreak of the war was as much our fault as theirs — which was exactly why I’d made him promise to recite it. In short, I did to him what Theorus said he intended to do to me, and although the audience laughed at his great speech, they laughed for quite the wrong reason.

After that, we sang Harmodius and played riddles, and Moschus played the Orthian; but I was too exhausted to take much of a part in the proceedings. I ended up sitting next to Philonides the Chorus-trainer; and while Theorus (who by now was completely drunk) was singing a Hymn to Dionysus, he leant over to me and said, ‘When you’re old enough to bring on your
General,
you’ll need a Chorus-trainer.’

‘Certainly,’ I replied.

‘I like to see a play as soon as it’s written, so that I can start blocking out the moves. My house is near the Temple of Hephaestus — anyone round there will point it out to you.’

I thanked him as best I could, but he grinned and turned away. In those days, for a Chorus-trainer like Philonides to approach a poet was almost unheard of; rather like a captain of a warship asking the crew’s advice on when to start rowing.

Not wishing to push my luck, I left the party shortly afterwards. This, of course, was a mistake — you should never leave a party until either all your enemies have gone or everyone is too drunk to be dangerous. I later heard that after I had left my name was linked with a number of very unsavoury characters. For some reason, when someone spreads a rumour at a party, people always believe him; and one of the guests who heard that rumour was Alcibiades.

But I was so full of myself for days afterwards that there was no living with me, and even Philodemus and my dear Callicrates began to regard me as insufferable. I naturally put this down to jealousy; but it started me thinking that when quite soon I came of age, I would be leaving Philodemus’ house and becoming a householder in my own right. In which case, obviously, I would need a wife.