Scene I
Downstage, left: King HIERON is seated upon a throne. At his feet is seated his grandson HIERONYMOUS. Upstage: A screen behind which is seen the silhouette of an executioner's block. As the curtain rises, a man is being dragged, struggling, upstage to the block by two GUARDS. He is forced to kneel, an axe is raised. As it falls, the screen is blacked out and a light opens on the apron, stage right.
Enter ARCHIMEDES. He is absolutely naked, dripping wet. He holds a golden wreath in his hand and stares at it for a long time.
ARCHIMEDES:
HIERON: Ach, Archimedes, shake off those glistening shards of doubt
that adorn your moistened pate.
Your bathtime discovery shall remain to outshine all other
diadems on your crown.
ARCHIMEDES: On yours, Sire, not mine.
(He wraps a towel around his waist, takes crown to
HIERON and attempts to put it on his head.)
HIERON (refusing):
No, a votive offering to Zeus,
That fradulent goldsmith defiled it.
I'll order another cast, pure gold,
Whose warmth will melt the stern god's heart.
ARCHIMEDES: Why bother? The sacrifice's been made.
HIERON (laughing): Your mood is testy, my kinsman of the lofty brow.
ARCHIMEDES: Had I but known, Hieron, that the smith's fondness for gold
would cause him to lose his head so quickly--
HIERON: --You would not have devised a method to expose his larceny?
Strange.
The spider, victim of instinct, spins her web blindly,
not knowing come the morn' whether she will have trapped
a meal or starve.
Archimedes, with powers of reason said more divine than
mortal, spins blinding tales.
Unravel the thread from your dazzled eyes with godlike
reason--and listen.
I suspect a fraud, silver mixed with gold.
I seek your counsel; more than counsel you give:
A new weapon against crime, with applications broad.
Did you expect it to gather dust, lie inert?
ARCHIMEDES: I...
HIERON: Your web was spun and the culprit snagged. Do you deny the punishment was just?
ARCHIMEDES: No, upon reflection I see that you are right. Not so noble
as Jason's, this smith's fleece of gold.
Yet, if silver resulted in a beheading, would brass have
seen him drawn and quartered?
HIERON: Certainly. And tin would have fed him to the birds....
But let us turn to important matters.
The defenses
of
She is easy
prey to the beast of
I would like you, Archimedes, to strengthen her.
Fortify the ramparts, invent new engines of war.
Surround her by the shield of Achilles.
ARCHIMEDES: You wish to make her invulnerable to attack?
HIERON: Simply put.
ARCHIMEDES: Achilles' shield, as I recall, did not protect his heel.
HIERON: Nor his tongue.
ARCHIMEDES: I misspoke, Sire. Mathematicians are not skilled at
diplomacy, being raised in the habit of truth.
But allow me to voice my puzzlement.
These forty
years past, you've been allied with
What better
shield against Punis than
HIERON: My old friend, too many hours have you stirred the ashes
of your hearth.
worth the plucking--or the trampling.
Would you savor that wine?
ARCHIMEDES: I am old because I have avoided drinking bouts.
HIERON (angrily):
Prudence dictates defense.
(Coughs and sits.)
ARCHIMEDES: Sire?
HIERON: It is nothing.
But you have not answered my question.
ARCHIMEDES: So, I am to poison the Syracusan grape. Strange labor for a
vintner, stranger for a mathematician.
Is this task a command from God or King, Hieron?
HIERON: I would neither; for now it is merely the request of a
friend.
ARCHIMEDES: Then as a friend I'll think on it.
(Exit.)
HIERON: Ingenuous soul, scratching diagrams in ashes or sand,
Your geometry rules the heavens but not the world of men.
With compass and straightedge you divide circles
...into infinitesimals.
And by this dissection you predict an eclipse...
reducing the gods to orreries.[1]
Thereby is Phoebus reined; no longer does his chariot
charge willful across the sky.
Sunset of Apollo,
I weigh the wonder lost against the knowledge gained,
and find them closely balanced.
But Archimedes, master of levers and scales,
shifts the old equilibrium.
"We
shall displace
Yes, his disciples will heed the cry and grind the mount
into atoms,
each to be measured by calipers of the mind.
But discontented still, they shall reforge these atoms into
gods,
and in so doing, become as gods themselves.
Yet, for all the wonders wrought, what do these new
Olympians know of men?
While the Mamertines plundered
dither? torn between the entreaties of slavery and death.
rabbits all, eyes stunned wide by the invader's torch.
The moment begged to be seized.
And I, young, the army's commander, nodded to Mars and
snatched the throne...with an iron fist.
"Tyrant!" they cried after my first defeat.
"Savior!" when victory was at hand.
Savior it was. Prosperity I restored with skillful alliance.
Trade increased, territory augmented.
And now citizens proclaim me master of the governing art.
Archimedes knows not the value of his doodles.
That is why I, and not he, am King.
CHORUS: King Hieron!
A tyrant bred, you have insolence forsworn and rule with
a measured hand.
A golden
summer has punctuated
You honor the gods, observe their feasts.
Yet they, not we, remain dissatisfied.
The unscalable
snow and frost merely toughen his skin.
Only the city eternal opposes his everlasting scorn.
a paradox not quickly resolved.
Yet on that day, when the world is dissolved into
ashes, and hell has turned to ice, should Destiny favor
men will turn their eyes toward pagan gods as their hearts
are plucked for sacrifice.
But should
Fate choose
Your great empire shall be erased from the surface of this
earth.
And your only gravestone shall be a farblown ash that
irritates the blindman's eye.
Hieron, who sees with clearer vision than other men, the
choice is yours.
Through Scylla and Charybdis you must chart a course.
STROPHE: What choice? We stay with the Romans. Our pacts with them
are our strongest bulwarks. Their legions our feet and arms,
their fleets our caravans.
If you cross
them,
ANTISTROPHE: But Heiron is
right.
onslaught. Her
protecting wing is broken.
CHORUS: Wise Hieron knows there is only one: the science of
Archimedes.
It pays no heed to the follies of men,
neither, would it seem, to the waywardness of gods.
It is logos pure, universal law.
How can it fail, the shield of Achilles?
Take it, take it swiftly,
and do not look back.
(Exit all but HIERONYMOUS.)