Chapter Eleven
I made my way to the Theatre of Dionysos as fast as I could. A sundial rebuked me as I paused to buy bread and olives from a street-corner seller. No wonder I was ravenous. I was far later than I’d ever intended to be. I could only hope that Hyanthidas had drawn a potsherd scratched with a letter well down the alphabet in the lottery for the contest’s playing order.
When I arrived at the western entrance, on the upper path that runs between the second and third tiers of wooden benches, I found the theatre was full. I had to stand with everyone else who’d arrived too late to get a seat. That was okay. There weren’t too many people there and from this vantage point on the hillside, we had a decent view of the man playing down below.
The twin pipe contest was well under way. The festival judges for this particular competition sat on folding stools on either side of the small stepped platform that had been set up on the dancing floor by the altar. They were close enough to see every detail of a musician’s technique and to hear the slightest slip or fumble that the wider audience might miss.
The wealthy and well-connected of the city would be sitting in the front rows of marble seats that had been installed as part of Pericles’ theatre refurbishments. They would be comfortable on cushions their dutiful slaves must have brought at dawn to claim these favoured spots. Less exalted Athenian citizens, resident foreigners and countless visitors were crammed onto the wooden benches that reached up the hillside to where I was standing. Away to my left, the ranks of topmost seats accommodated the last to arrive and those slaves whose well-disposed owners had given them permission to be here.
There was nothing like the bustle that surrounded the performance of the Iliad up on the Pnyx. Everyone from highest to lowest was intent on the solitary performer currently standing in the centre of the stage. No one in the audience was talking or eating as the twin pipes’ intricate song floated through the air. Not that the player would have noticed if an entire chorus had pranced out onto the dancing floor. He could have been the only man in the whole vast half-circle of the theatre. Standing on the brightly decorated platform, his heavy-lidded gaze was unseeing as he strove for the perfection of his art.
I know from my own youthful attempts how difficult it is to play the twin pipes even passably well. Remembering the melody is the least of it. You have to continuously pass the tune from one pipe to the other, your fingers fluttering, without ever letting either length of polished deer bone slip in your hands. You have to keep the reeds of the mouthpieces moist without them becoming sodden with spit. All the while you must breathe in through your nose at the same time as holding enough air in your cheeks to sustain a steady and seamless flow of music.
It takes years to perfect that breathing and blowing technique, as young men discover at drinking parties, when a generous offering of silver persuades a hired piper to let them try. If they manage to get more than a few notes through the pipes, they end up choking or gasping as they run out of wind. I’ve long since resigned myself to playing a single, humble reed pipe at family parties.
No one was scrambling up or down the hillside on the narrow paths at the ends of the rows of benches. There would be time enough for anyone who really needed to go to leave in the brief intervals between the successive competitors. Those who had made their escape before this particular piper had taken to the stage were waiting on the path alongside me, as a burly theatre slave was blocking their way. Those slaves are a muscular crew. I’ve seen how easily they can shift heavy baskets of masks and costumes, not to mention operating the stage crane with a dangling actor on the other end.
I got the attention of a man on a nearby bench with a discreet wave of my hand. ‘Do you know if Hyanthidas of Corinth has played yet?’
I kept my voice low, but I still got glares of scorching disapproval from the closest seats. The man shook his head curtly. I wanted to ask if he meant Hyanthidas hadn’t been called to the stage yet or if he simply didn’t know, but his affronted expression warned me off saying anything more.
The theatre slave was watching me, unsmiling, and with his arms decisively folded. I knew he would move as soon as I did if I tried to go any further, so I stayed where I was. There was no point in doing anything else. I had no idea where Zosime, Menkaure and Telesilla might be sitting among the thousands in the audience.
I could wait until all these pipers had played. My beloved, her father and I had adopted my family’s long-standing tradition of gathering at the western entrance to the stage down below if we’d ever arranged to meet up at the theatre. So I slid down to rest on my haunches, leaning back against the close-fitted stones of the retaining wall that bordered the path. Closing my eyes, I let the music wash over me, soothing away the past few days’ frustrations. I had done all I could for Hermaios and Daimachos, and I could swear to it before gods and men.
The competitor’s performance ended, and a few people took advantage of the lull to slip quietly out. I stayed where I was as the slave on watch permitted those he recognised to return to the seats that a friend or relative would be zealously guarding. A murmur of conversation rose, warm with approval for the piper we had just heard. I wondered idly if such approbation ever influenced the judges.
The hum
