Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine. Vol. 50, No. 1 & 2, January/February 2005

I looked at the skene. On the wooden stage building, the skene, men had unrolled a canvas. On it was painted the scene of an army camp and behind it great towers. Already Sophocles had managed to transport us to that great walled city the warriors of the Greek army had destroyed: Troy. Sophocles intended today to stage three plays about the warriors of that great Greek army that had leveled that city.

From the middle double doorway of the skene, a group of fifteen men, dressed in long blue chitons with black stripes running from the shoulders to the hems of the flowing robes, emerged, swaying and walking slowly to the great circle below us. The chorus.

The double doorway opened again, and a figure emerged, on his mask a look of stoic concentration, his red chiton unsleeved and checked with gold at the chest, as if he wore armor. From the top of the skene, a second figure emerged, a gold chiton fluttering. It was Athena. The actor spoke, his voice booming through his mask:

You, Odysseus, you are always searching for

opportunities against your enemies. Now, you look

for Ajax.

The play had begun.

We watched mesmerized, all of us. Sophocles had our minds and hearts. We watched Tidius, in a black chiton, his mask a twisted face of madness and tragedy. He took us back to that long ago war at Troy, with its tragic aftermaths, and to Ajax, the great warrior, mad with dishonor, killing sheep he thought were his enemies.

As Tidius spoke, the audience leaned forward to catch the aging actor’s once-great voice, a little weaker now, intoning Ajax’s despair:

The years bring everything from darkness,

then send them back to darkness in the earth.

No one coughed.

We watched Ajax come to realize that all things change and pass: enemies become friends and friends become enemies. His fellow warriors had not given him honor. Even the gods had turned against him, making him mad. We watched, our eyes big, as Sophocles showed us something seldom seen on our Athenian stage, violence: Ajax committing suicide, falling on his sword before our eyes, the glory of his days gone. We watched, wondering, as Sophocles showed us Odysseus refusing to laugh at his old enemy Ajax, and giving him, like a friend, an honorable burial.

When the chorus spoke the last words of the play, “No human can know his future,” we did not move. No one left to relieve themselves; no one reached for a piece of bread or fruit. We sat, pity and fear filling our hearts. We were all Ajax. None of us knew our future. None of us knew then that a murder awaited us.

As the day wore on, we put on our hats for protection against the sun, the azure sky now holding a warm spring sun, ate our honeyed bread and goat cheese, our olives and radishes, and roared at the satyr play, a drunken Heracles persuading an angry Amazon. But when the day was over, we all walked home, talking only about Ajax. Even Phidias was solemn. In front of us, Sophides walked, his head bowed in thought.

I took my father and half brother home with me, and before they fell asleep on their pallets, my father cried.

“The old days are gone,” he said. “Our glorious victories against the Persians. Now we do not act as one. We argue and discuss. We disparage and mock. Then we come to a compromise.”

“It is the way of democracy,” I told him. “It is better than old rigid codes of honor and hatred. They were murderous.”

But I don’t think he was convinced.

The next day Nicias gave a surprisingly good performance in Ion’s play, and the day after, Euripides shocked us all with biting irony. It was the fifth day of the festival that we learned about the murder. We had all gathered in the theatre again, most of us arguing that Sophocles would win first prize easily. He did. A thunderous cheer rose from the theatre as the ivy crown was placed on Sophocles’ head. The prize ram was led out to him. We cheered too when Tidius took first prize for acting.

It was only when the second prize for acting was announced that we all realized that Nicias was not in the theatre to receive his reward.

The judges consulted with each other; the priests looked annoyed.

“Well, he was here late last night,” Phidias said.

“You saw him?” I asked. “Where? And when?”

Phidias nodded. “I was out very late. I’ve already studied the effects of the sun on the angles of the new pediments on the Parthenon, so I wanted to see exactly how the moonlight would touch the front pediment. I saw Nicias going into the theatre.”

“Alone?”

Phidias looked back at the center circle of the theatre where the playwrights, judges, and actors were standing. He shrugged. “Alone? Who’s to say if he was or wasn’t? What I can say is that I saw Nicias going into the theatre.”

Phidias was no sophist or politician. He was an artist. His attempt at dissembling was weak. I knew he was lying.