Lindsey Davis - Last Act In Palmyra

The Birds was famous. At rehearsal Tranio, always ready with an anecdote, told us, 'Not bad considering it only won second prize at the festival it was written for.'

'What a show-off! Which archive did you drag that one out of, Tranio?' I scoffed.

'And what play actually won then?' Helena demanded.

'Some trifle called The Revellers, now unknown to man.'

'Sounds fun. One of the people in my tent has been revelling too much lately, though,' Helena commented.

'This play is not half as obscene as some Aristophanes,' grumbled Tranio. 'I saw Peace once – not often performed, as we're always at war of course. It has two female roles for wicked girls with nice arses. One of them has her clothes taken off on-stage, then she's handed down to the man in the centre of the front row. She sits on his lap for starters, then spends the rest of the play going up and down, "comforting" other members of the audience.'

'Filth!' I cried, feigning shock.

Tranio scowled. 'It hardly compares with showing Hercules as a glutton, giving out cookery tips.'

'No, but recipes won't get us run out of town,' said Helena. She was always practical. Offered a prospect of wicked women with nice arses 'comforting' the ticket-holders, her practical nature became even more brisk than usual.

Helena knew The Birds. She had been well educated, partly by her brothers' tutors when her brothers slipped off to the racecourse, and partly through grabbing any written scrolls that she could lay her hands on in private libraries owned by her wealthy family (plus the few tattered fifth-hand items I kept under my own bed). Since she had never been one for the senators' wives' circuit of orgies and admiring gladiators, she had always spent time at home reading. So she told me, anyway.

She had done a good job on the script; Chremes had accepted it without change, remarking that at last I seemed to be getting on top of the job.

'Fast work,' I congratulated her.

'It's nothing.'

'Don't let having your adaptations accepted first time go to your head. I'd hate to think you're becoming an intellectual.'

'Sorry, I forgot. You don't like cultured women.'

'Suits me.' I grinned at her. 'I'm no snob. I'm prepared to put up with brains in an exceptional case.'

'Thank you very much!'

'Don't mention it. Mind you, I never expected to end up in bed with some learned scroll-beetle who's studied Greek and knows that The Birds is a famous play. I suppose it sticks in the mind because of the feathers. Like when you think about the Greek philosophers and can only remember that the first premise of Pythagoras was that nobody should eat beans.'

'Philosophy's a new side to you,' she smiled.

'Oh I can run off philosophers as well as any dinner-party bore. My favourite is Bias, who invented the informers' motto -'

'All Men are Bad!' Helena had read the philosophers as well as the dramatists. 'Everyone has to play a bird in the chorus, Marcus. Which has Chremes given you?'

'Listen, fruit, when I make my acting debut, it will be a moment to memorise for our grandchildren. I will be a Tragic Hero, striding on through the central doorway in a coronet, not hopping from the wings as a bloody bird.'

Helena chortled. 'Oh I think you're wrong! This play was written for a very prosperous festival. There is a full chorus of twenty-four named cheepers, and we all have to participate.'

I shook my head. 'Not me.'

Helena Justina was a bright girl. Besides, as the adaptor she was the only person in our group who had read the entire play. Most people just skimmed through to find their own parts. Helena soon worked out what Chremes must have me down for, and thought it hilarious.

Musa, who had been silent as usual, looked bemused -though not half as bemused as when Helena explained that he would be appearing as the reed warbler.

So what was I playing? They had found me the dross, needless to say.

In our performance the two humans who run away from Athens in disgust at the litigation, the strife and the hefty fines were played by handsome Philocrates and tough Davos. Naturally Philocrates had grabbed the major part, with all the speeches, while Davos took the stooge who puts in the obscene one-line rejoinders. His part was shorter, though more pungent.

Tranio was playing Hercules. In fact he and Grumio were to be a long succession of unwelcome visitors who call at Cloud-cuckoo-land in order to be chased off ignominiously. Phrygia had a hilarious cameo as an elderly Iris whose lightning bolts refused to fulminate, while Byrria appeared as the hoopoe's beautiful wife and as Sovereignty (a symbolic part, made more interesting by a scanty costume). Chremes was chorus leader for the famous twenty-four named birds. These included Congrio hooting, Musa warbling, and Helena disguised as the cutest dabchick who ever hopped on to a stage. I was unsure how I would confess to her noble father and disapproving mother that their elegant daughter with the centuries-old pedigree had now been witnessed by a crowd of raw Scythopolitans acting as a dabchick…

At least from now on I would always be able to call up material to blackmail Helena.

My role was tiresome. I played the informer. In this otherwise witty satire, my character creeps in after the ghastly poet, the twisting fortune-teller, the rebellious youth and the cranky philosopher. Once they have come to Cloud-cuckoo-land and all been seen off by the Athenians, an informer tries his luck. Like mine, his luck is in short supply, to the delight of the audience. He is stirring up court cases on the basis of questionable evidence and wants some wings to help him fly about the Greek islands quicker as he hands out subpoenas. If anyone had been prepared to listen, I could have told them an informer's life is so boring it's positively respectable, while the chances of a lucrative court case are about equal with discovering an emerald in a goose's gizzard. But the company were used to abusing my profession (which is much mocked in drama) so they loved this chance to heap insults on a live victim. I offered to play the sacrificial pig instead, but was overruled. Needless to say, in the play, the informer fails to get his wings.

Chremes deemed me fit to act my role without coaching, even though it was a speaking part. He claimed I could talk well enough without assistance. By the end of rehearsals I was tired of people crying 'Oh just be yourself, Falco!' ever so wittily. And the moment when Philocrates was called upon to whip me off-stage was maddening. He really enjoyed handing out a thrashing. I was now plotting a black revenge.

Everyone else hugely enjoyed putting on this stuff. I decided that perhaps Chremes did know what he was doing. Even though we had always complained about his judgement, the mood lightened. Scythopolis kept us for several performances. The company was calmer, as well as richer, by the time we moved on up the Jordan Valley to Gadara.

Gadara called itself the Athens of the East. From this Eastern outpost had come the cynic satirist Menippos, the philosopher and poet Philodemos, who had had Virgil as his pupil in Italy, and the elegiac epigrammatist Meleager. Helena had read Meleager's poetic anthology The Garland, so before we arrived she enlightened me.

'His themes are love and death – '

'Very nice.'

'And he compares each poet he includes to a different flower.'

I said what I thought, and she smiled gently. Love and death are gritty subjects. Their appropriate handling by poets does not require myrtle petals and violets.

The city commanded a promontory above a rich and vital landscape, with stunning views to both Palestine and Syria, westwards over Lake Tiberias and north to the far snowcapped mountain peak of Mount Hermon. Nearby, thriving villages studded the surrounding slopes, which were lush with pasture-land. Instead of the bare tawny hills we had seen endlessly rolling elsewhere, this area was clothed with green fields and woodlands. Instead of lone nomadic goatherds, we saw chattering groups watching over fatter, fleecier flocks. Even the sunlight seemed brighter, enlivened by the nearby twinkling presence of the great lake. No doubt all the shepherds and swineherds in the desirable pastures were busy composing sunlit, elegantly elegiac odes. If they were kept awake at night struggling with metric imperfections in their verse, they could always put themselves off to sleep by counting their obols and drachmas; people here had no financial worries that I could see.