Part 19 (1/2)

”And he is wise?”

”Yes, indeed; there is no one like him; and so the G.o.d thought, for the Pythia declared him to be the wisest of men.”

”I should dearly like to see him. Do you think it likely that he would come here, if I were to invite him? I would make it worth his while.”

”I fear there is no chance of it. He never leaves Athens; never has left it except when he served abroad with the army, and as for money, he is quite careless about it.”

”But he takes a fee for his teaching, I suppose.”

”Not a drachma.”

”Well, that astonishes me. Why, Georgias would not teach anyone for less than half a talent, and has got together, I suppose, a pretty heap of money by this time. But, perhaps, if I could not get the great man himself, I might get one of his disciples. Whom do men reckon to be the first among them?”

”I think that one Plato is the most famous. He was a poet when he was quite young, indeed he is young now, and had a great reputation; but he has given up poetry for philosophy.”

”That seems a pity. I don't see why a man should not be both poet and philosopher. I am a little of both myself. Can you remember anything that he has written?”

”Yes; there was an epigram which everyone was repeating when I left Athens. It was written for the tomb of one of his fellow disciples.”

”Let me hear it.”

Callias repeated,

”In life like Morning star thy s.h.i.+ning head; And now the star of Evening 'mid the dead.”

”Very pretty indeed. I have something very like it of my own. Would you like to hear it?”

Callias of course politely a.s.sented and expressed as much admiration as his conscience permitted, possibly a little more, for the composition was vapid and clumsy.

But though Dionysius was an indifferent composer, he had really a very strong interest in literary matters. Personal vanity had something to do with it, for he was fully convinced of his own abilities in this way; but he had a genuine pleasure in talking on the subject. This was indeed the first of many conversations which the young Athenian had with him. Politics were never mentioned again, but poetry, the drama, indeed every kind of literary work, supplied topics of unfailing interest. The drama was, perhaps, the despot's favorite topic. He had received not long before Callias' arrival, a copy of the play which was described in my first chapter, and was never tired of asking questions about various points of interest in it. It soon became evident that his special ambition lay in this direction.

”So, now that your two great men are gone,” he said to the young Athenian, ”you have no man of really the first rank among your dramatists?”

”I should say not,” replied Callias. ”Some think well of Iophon, who is the son of Sophocles. Others say that he would be nothing without his father. They declare that the old man helped him when he was alive, and that what he has brought out since his father's death is really not his own.”

”Well,” said Dionysius, ”the stock will be exhausted before long. And there is no one, you say, besides him?”

”No one, certainly of any reputation.”

”Then there would be a chance for an outsider? But would a dramatist that was not an Athenian be allowed to exhibit?”

”I know nothing to the contrary. But I do not know that there has ever been a case. Anyhow it would be easy to exhibit in the name of a citizen.”

”An excellent idea! I shall certainly manage it somehow. The first prize at your festival would be almost as well worth having as the tyranny itself.”[66]

It is not surprising that a ruler who cherished such tastes should have reckoned a library among the ornaments which were to make Syracuse the most splendid among Greek cities. In his Athenian guest he believed himself to have found a competent agent for carrying this purpose into effect; and Callias was in truth a well educated person who knew what books were worth buying. He was well acquainted with the literature of his own country and had a fairly competent knowledge of what had been produced elsewhere in Greece. For the next three years it was his employment, and one, on the whole not uncongenial to his tastes, to collect volumes for Dionysius. In Sicily there was little culture, but the Greek cities of Italy furnished a more fertile field. There was not indeed much in the way of _belles-lettres_. Works of this kind had to be imported for the most part, either from Athens, or from Lesbos, where the traditions of the school of Sappho and Alcaeus were not extinct, but books on philosophy and science, could be secured in considerable numbers. At Crotona, for instance, Callias was fortunate enough to secure a valuable scientific library which had been for some years in the family of Democedes, while at Tarentum he purchased a handsome collection of treatises by teachers of the school of Pythagoras.

This occupation was varied in the second year of his residence by an interesting mission to Rome. That city, the rising greatness of which so keen an observer as Dionysius was able to discern, was at this time sorely distressed by a visitation of famine, and had applied far and wide for help. The harvests of Sicily had been remarkably abundant, and Dionysius sent a magnificent present of a hundred thousand bushels of wheat, putting Callias in charge of the mission.