Euripides Must Die

Before

Twilight had come stealthily, draining the western sky of bronze until the amphitheatre stood in shadowed grey. At its duskiest point, the semicircle of hard-trodden earth where in summer the chorus danced and sang, was a stooped and shuffling figure. Raising his head, the man let his eyes sweep the highest tiers, left to right, right to left. Empty. Dropping his gaze, he looked along the second-highest row. Vacant too. Then he glanced at the seats of honour opposite where he stood. No one was seated there. He was on his own in the enfolding arena.

Closing his eyes, pushing back solitude, he spurred his memory back to the Festival of Dionysus, twenty-five years before. He should have taken the prize then, and the acclaim of the vast crowd in his home, Athens, greatest of the cities of Hellas. Now he stood in a lesser theatre, in a land the spirit of which was so different to that of his home. Yet, alone at end of day, he could conjure still the energy latent in a rapt audience, as once he had magicked words for actors and for chorus. The sound of approval that memory poured gently into his ears now rose in volume. It became a sort of grating, snarling roar. And then going with it were teeth and fangs.

Opening his eyes, the old man saw how the scene before and around him had changed. Bounding down the aisles, and closing in from behind and from right and left, was a pack eager to touch him, acclaim him. It was then that the dusk seemed to be torn open, letting in a strange light.

The first blow came from his left, a wound that raced deep to his ribs. White heat shafted up and down this new-made cavity, and a thick red pulsed out. Then a claw-borne raking followed on the right, and as he raised his arm, his hand was seized and clamped between two razored surfaces.

‘You came, you came!’ he said, the high pitch of his voice encouraging the creatures swirling around him. One tugged his right hand, causing him to totter and fall. Another sprang on his left side and seized an earlobe, ripping it away. A third, eyes gleaming yellow, lunged for the soft belly beneath his simple robe and tore at fabric and skin, coming away with teeth full of both.

‘Dionysus! Apollo!’ he shouted, but it was then that the largest attacker sank long incisors into the exposed white neck.

‘Ah, my Gods,’ he gurgled, choking in his own blood. But, in his last, clear-eyed moments, before the dimming of that eerie light that had flared so suddenly, he saw Sophocles and Aristophanes, and Pericles also, and at the last, Socrates and Plato too.

§§§

Day broke with that selfsame rosy-fingered dawn the shepherd had heard in recitations by the grouchy old man. No sense of humour, that one. Well, he was a foreigner and far from home. And who could be happy when the Gods had forced one to desert one’s city?

Blowing on his hands, the shepherd looked across to the east, his eyes held fast by the shimmering grove where field ran up against mountain slope. The full-veined leaves of summer, so green and young and vital, were less robust now, weakening at their edges, arteries no longer filled to bursting. Autumn wasn’t far off, he reckoned. Best enjoy these last long days. And maybe ask for more verses about Achilles and Hector, Odysseus and Calypso, because in winter the old man hardly set foot outdoors, and he and the shepherd did not see each other until the days were golden and warm once more. What was it that the crosspatch had said of men and leaves?

‘As with the life of leaves, so that of men. The wind strews the leaves on the ground, the vital forest puts forth others, and they grow in the spring. Soon one generation of men comes as another goes.’

He had made sure Eumaios understood that the words and wisdom were not his, but those of the blind poet of ages past, Homer. And old Euripides had made even more certain that Eumaios knew – as if he hadn’t; even a Macedon herdsman wasn’t altogether ignorant – that his famous namesake was Odysseus’ noble swineherd. Ha! How did the old word-peddler imagine the shepherd had been named? Even here in the far north, beyond the fringes of Hellas, men aspired to be civilised, to be cultured. No matter that the Hellenes disdained those of Macedon as babbling ‘bar-bar-bar’, in a language that was alien to them. Macedonians were gathering power, and they would be masters of the divided cities of the south. That, anyway, was the word from Eumaios’ friends at the palace, the servants who were forbidden to listen but heard nonetheless.

Time to get the sheep moving out, across the amphitheatre and up into the circling hills where the pasture was nourishing still. Taking up his staff, he whistled to the shaggy black-and-white dog lying close by, and ambled off to gather the sheep. It was as they were rounding the edge of the amphitheatre that the dog growled low, her hackles rising. She stopped, sniffed the air, barked, and then howled. Then she ran towards the stage building, yelping. Looking over, Eumaios saw on the ground a longish, grey-and-red shape. Streaks of reds and browns, spiked here and there by white, circled it. As he got closer, it began to seem human.

The dog was circling the mess that extended from the body. Turning away, Eumaios wondered if he should leave discovery of the body to others. But a strip of clothing fluttered in the slight breeze, enough to spark recognition. Surely this could not be?

Eumaios set his face and strode over to the body. ‘Away! Off to the sheep! Go, girl!’ he said to the dog. Eyes puzzled, face confused, she turned, tail drooping, and sloped away towards the flock.

Her master looked down at the ragged tunic, smeared with blood and viscera. He’d seen enough sheep killed by wolves for the gore to be familiar, even curiously comforting. But he could not move his eyes from the shredded torso to the head. Instead, he turned his gaze towards the feet, or what remained of them. ‘Enough, enough, Eumaios,’ he whispered.

Drawing breath, he glanced swiftly at the head. Enough of the face remained for there to be no doubt. Euripides was dead.

One

I knew Euripides well. Years ago, twenty-five to be exact, I’d been the third actor in his Medea, and it had been my big break in the theatre world. So, I knew him and gratefully was always in his debt. Until now, when it seemed that the old churl had been ripped apart, either by dogs or wolves, the news and the rumours couldn’t say which for certain. There was even some talk that he’d been torn asunder by women, as happens in one of his plays, but that was so fanciful and wild that only those with permanently fevered imaginations gave it any credence.

I was walking through the city with Dion, my old friend and fellow actor, both of us still grappling with Euripides’ strange death.

‘Have you heard?’ said Dion. ‘The old man will appear in public, at the eulogy to Euripides. Yes, at ninety.’

‘Sophocles will be out and about again?’ I said. ‘Who told you so?’

‘It was proclaimed yesterday. I heard it when the town crier passed. Sophocles is to lead the chorus at the service.’

‘You know, Dion, I always worried that Euripides wouldn’t cut it with that rough lot up there. He might have been invited by their King Archelaus but look how long he lasted. It’s just two years since he turned his back on Athens.’

‘Well, whether he rejected this city or not, it is embracing him in death. Thucydides was given the honour of writing the epitaph. It goes, they say, like this:

His bones are laid in Macedon, where he

Ended his life. His tomb? The whole of Hellas.

Athens his motherland. His music gave joy

To many: many give to him their praise.’

It was spare yet rich, somehow encompassing in its brevity the wholeness and roundedness of a rich and remarkable life. I shook my head. ‘Euripides. Dead. All my life he was around, jousting with Sophocles. Came off worse, though, didn’t he? Only four wins, and twenty-four to Sophocles.’

‘Yes, but never forget that he was laureate of the year twenty times,’ said Dion. ‘And if he had been no good, that comic writer Aristophanes wouldn’t have lampooned him so much.’

We were passing the vegetable market, which prompted me into an old joke. ‘You know that Euripides’ mother Cleito sold herbs in the marketplace.’

‘Yes, and Aristophanes has made a living out of that lie. If I had a piece of silver for every time Arisophanes got a laugh from those herbs-and-olives jokes, I’d be able to sponsor a production at the Dionysia, and every year at that.’

‘Lie? Come off it, of course Cleito touted veggies and medicinals. I mean, I don’t know anyone who saw her do that, but Aristophanes – he wouldn’t make fun of someone so famous, now would he?’ I was joking but Dion, affected no doubt by sombreness, suddenly rose to the jibe.

‘Tosh, man. Don’t you know that as a youngster Euripides got one of those important religious ceremonial bits to do? Not once, mind, but twice. No offspring of a fruit-and-veg merchant gets a chance with that highfalutin stuff.’

‘All I know about Euripides and highfalutin, as you say, is the lawsuits he brought against everyone. Crusty old codger, he is. Was. But I’ll be at the eulogy. See you there?’

‘Of course. Till then.’ At which Dion turned towards the part of the city where he lived, and I made for home too.

§§§

Chorus:

‘… For that which we never envisioned the God finds means

To bring about, and so it befell.’

Bearded still, but crook-backed as a shepherd’s staff, Sophocles extended his right hand towards the chorus.

‘Citizens, our city has lost one of its finest sons. I knew Euripides well, and more than that, I loved him for his dramas. But as I have written, words that are recited whenever Oedipus at Colonus is played: Here is the end of tears: / No more lament. At this grave time of our history, when we seem defeated by the league led by Sparta, hmm, hmm …’

He reached out, as if steadying himself. A rattle rose from his throat, and his face darkened. As he fell, I made my way from the edge of the crowd and caught him.

‘Ah, it’s you, Nikeratos,’ Sophocles murmured.

‘Sophocles, what has overcome you? Must we be away and home with you or do you wish to finish your eulogy?’

‘I ... scarce can I breathe. Make my apologies to the Master of the Rites. I cannot continue. Then, then, to my house here, first, please, but then, then I beg you to tell the household that I must be at Colonus. I wish to go to the place where first I drew breath on this earth, outside the city walls to the village of my birth. Ah! Sweet Colonus. And my sons, my sons, where are they? Iophon! Ariston!’

A press of performers, functionaries, mourners, and thespians seemed to crowd out the light. The flute players, who had been right behind Sophocles, hovered nearest still, their instruments clutched in white-knuckled hands that made one of the flutes, a black, gold, and silver piece, particularly striking. I looked up at its musician, an aged man who looked like Euphorion, one of Aeschylus’ sons, but how could that be? Euphorion must have been only a handful of years younger than Sophocles. I waved at the throng, motioning them away. Sophocles was drifting into a stupor and needed as much air as he could get.

There was a sudden volley of screams and shouts from my left, where three men were smashing paving stones against the ground. ‘Damn scorpions!’ one of them shouted just as a bier appeared, lugged by two burly men in dark-brown tunics. ‘Clear out! Clear away! We offer our services to the deceased! Clear off woman! Away, sir! You obstruct us. Off! Geroff! Away!’

‘Body-chasers!’

‘Rat vermin vultures!’

I stood up, leaving the tending of Sophocles to his son Ariston. Middle age had almost stripped me of the lustre that had touched me when I made my debut in Medea but despite the faded glow, my sharp features remained commanding, and my voice was still an instrument of command and persuasion; tragic, comic, winning.

‘Stop! Don’t you know this man? This is Sophocles, our greatest creator of tragedies. Back, body-seekers! Sophocles lives and breathes. Away, hyaenas!’ 

‘Sir, whoever you are and he that’s on the ground, we offer our services to bear him away, alive or dead, and for nothing. That is, if it’s not bad luck or an evil sign to carry the living on a frame meant for the dead.’

‘Father never was superstitious,’ whispered Ariston to me. ‘Remember how he kept the sacred serpent at home until the Temple of Asclepius was completed? We must get away as quickly as can be. I’ve sent the slave to fetch the physician to our home.’

‘All right, all well then,’ I said to Ariston. ‘Here! Stretcher-bearers, please approach. The great man’s son grants you permission to carry Sophocles. And gives you thanks too. Quick, quick, the physick will be at the house.’

To the Master of the Rites, I said nothing, exchanging only a glance that spoke of urgency and emergency. But the Master would not be denied. As the two muscled men lifted Sophocles onto the carrier, he said, ‘Colonus! Are you mad? You would have an ill ninety-year-old man borne on a death’s-bed beyond our city’s walls and into the countryside? Even if it is to his birthplace, this is impossible!’

‘Hieron, Master of the Rites, it is the wish of Sophocles himself. We must honour it. But speak to his sons on the way to his house; we have but little time, I fear, whether it is here in Athens or on the road to Colonus. Whether Sophocles at Colonus will be alive or dead is not for me to say, or to tempt the Gods with presumption of our mortal fates.’

§§§

We hurried from the disrupted ceremony to Sophocles’ home in the city, where Chremylus, his physician and friend of many years, awaited. There was no  misreading Chremylus’ worry as he examined Sophocles. He opened the eyelids and stared at the pupils, which looked back unblinking, almost lifeless. Then it was the turn of the tongue, pulled away from mouth and lips, and not healthy pink but deathly white.

Turning to Iophon and Ariston, Chremylus said, ‘I forbid you to move your father an inch more! I will not hold back my words. He’s on the edge of death. Carrying him to Colonus will kill him in any number of ways: the journey, the air, his frailty.’

Iophon inclined his head, scratched a cheek with those long, bony fingers of his, and met Chremylus’ gaze. ‘I understand, Chremylus. But as my father told and asked Nikeratos, we must carry him to his country house in Colonus.’

‘Impossible!’ Chremylus spat out the word so that it became a command as it hung briefly in the air. 

‘No, the last wish of a good man,’ said Iophon. ‘Our father and your best friend. Who are we to deny it? Remember the words that my father put in Antigone’s mouth, from his play about Oedipus’ death at Colonus: To come to a land he loved / To lie in its cool, sheltering bed of earth. I think it right to return him to where he first was, to that first being, even if it might turn out to be in unbeing.’

Chremylus looked down at Sophocles and brushed a lock of hair away from the wrinkled forehead. The quiet grew, and the physician’s chin sank to his chest. At last, he looked up, straight at Iophon. ‘You are a good son and a fine Athenian. You are quite wrong to want to move your father but also quite right. Very well, I agree. But I will go with Sophocles and, Nikeratos, will you come too?’

I said yes with my head, fearing that my voice would not hold in the anguish of the moment.

Iophon said that he would have to remain in the city for a while, to let family, friends, and the authorities know what we intended to do. He asked Ariston to help with some of those tasks, but said his brother would catch up with us on the road. Then I called the carriers and we lifted Sophocles back onto the bier. He was sleeping or unconscious, I could not tell which, but I regretted that he was not conscious to take leave of his home, which he might never enter again. 

I walked behind the bier. That way, I was at Sophocles’ head, which was propped up on a roll of Egyptian cotton that had long been prized by the master himself. Now outside the city walls, our little party coursed on, trying to carry its cargo smoothly while making quick time. Sophocles mumbled every so often but, even leaning my head down almost to his lips, I could make no sense of those snatches of words and sounds. They seemed to be the product of delirium or pain, each a marker on the road to the underworld that Sophocles grew closer to with every second.

‘Ni ... Nike ... Nikerat ...’ called Sophocles, seemingly growing lucid. I bent my head once more, saying, ‘Master, what do you wish? What can I or anyone else do for you?’ 

‘The poetics, the poetics. Euripides and I, poetics, safekeeping, Chremylus, Chremylus – you hear? – Chremylus! Find the scrolls, find ... the shepherd ... named as in The Odyssey ... yes, Eumaios, the keeper and his dog ... poetics ... I wrote of Euripides, he of me and we ... we both of Aeschylus and Pratinas. Phrynichus too ... Find them. Chremylus, Chremylus. Euphorion, even he, worthless son of Aeschylus, aye he too ... poetics, I say: poetics.’

‘Move aside, Nikeratos,’ said a steady, commanding voice. It was Chremylus. ‘I will give him a sleeping draught to ease the jarring of this journey.’

‘He might wake no more, Chremylus,’ I said. ‘Do you think it fitting to take him from these moments, these perhaps last sightings of the surrounds of his birthplace?’

‘Great-hearted friend you are, Nikeratos, but I am the physician. Bearers! Halt!’

The procession stopped, the stretcher-bearers lowering Sophocles to the ground. ‘Saw his Ajax once, something to see,’ said the older of the two.

‘I went to that Electra,’ said his companion. ‘Couldn’t hardly believe a woman’d be that cheeky. Good stuff, mind, as I’ve never forgotten it.’

The praise would have pleased Sophocles had he been able to hear it, but while the men chatted Chremylus poured a long draught of amber liquid into Sophocles’ mouth, making sure that all of it went down. After perhaps a minute, the old man’s eyelids slid shut and his breathing became regular, almost peaceful. Chremylus laid the head back on the smooth, thick white cotton, brushed each side of the moustache, still luxuriant, and told the bearers to resume their task.

‘What is that potion, Chremylus? It brings sleep on so quickly.’

‘Ah, it’s something that the Persians left behind, when we beat them at Plataea and drove them from Hellas. Their surgeons used it when they had to saw off limbs. The draught put their victims to sleep and rendered them insensible to the pain. Sophocles will wake on the morrow, and I feel certain that the rest will have served him well. Come, let us get him home.’

There was something unsettling in the physician’s attitude, maybe a touch of the honey-tongued. I turned my gaze to Sophocles, but he seemed genuinely at ease. At the very least, he was no longer muttering the names of fellow tragedians and babbling about imaginary shepherds, herd dogs, and poetics. Poetics! What a word, I thought.

§§§

Trying to stop worrying about Sophocles, I took to counting my footfalls. Each of my strides was about three feet, and there were 600 Greek feet in a stade. We had gone three stades up a rocky path to a thicket of trees where, a little short of breath, the bearers paused, then went forward a little. Suddenly, fearful, the younger called out: ‘A ghost-rider! Look!’ To their left, in what seemed to be a grotto of dark stone hemmed by laurel bushes, wild vines, and olive trees, a rider and horse stood, motionless and grey.

‘Aiee! Run for it!’ screamed the youth, letting the poles of the bier fall from his hands.

‘Fool!’ shouted the other, grabbing at Sophocles’ mantle to stop him from sliding, head first, on to the ground. At the end of the bier abandoned by the fleeing youngster, I had tried to thrust both hands under the wood-and-cloth contraption. Instead, I found my arms gentling the limp body of Sophocles. He had not woken and his breathing continued steady and easy.

Chremylus helped put Sophocles back on the bier, cursing the callow and superstitious bearer, whose progress away from us was marked by the distinctive snap of breaking twigs and thump of unyielding branches. We turned, first, to the inlet in the rock and to the pale rider and his steed. From the stillness of both, they might be a statue of man and horse rather than any insubstantial and ghastly apparition of the imagination.

First chuckling, then guffawing, Chremylus said to the remaining bearer, ‘The horseman is none other than Colonus himself, after whom this hamlet and surrounding woods and fields are named, and who take him as their lord and master. Until Sophocles’ own play, Oedipus at Colonus, this place claimed no fame in songs or stories. Despite that, these groves and gullies are much loved by all those who live here, or were born here, as was our departing Sophocles.’

‘What? What words evaded the barrier of your teeth?’ barked Ariston, who had just caught up with the party. Overweight, undertrained – how they laughed at the wobbly-bodied Ariston at the gymnasium – he stood, hands on knees, taking in a lungfull of the crisp night air. It was hard to believe so unathletic and unattractive a man was the issue of Sophocles. ‘Say again – what words ...’.

‘Dear Ariston,’ Chremylus cut in. ‘Save your breath, and take in more wind before you expel too much in futile wittering. I acknowledged merely that your dear father is not long for this world. But hush you now, for this is sacred ground, the demesne of Poseidon, lord of the sea, shaker of the earth, and Prometheus, lord of fire. This very spot is the Brazen Threshold, the Rock of Athens. And that stand of trees at its edges often is filled with the sweet voices of nightingales.’

Smiling to myself, I recalled how I had been here many times, sometimes walking with Sophocles