The dark-skinned slaves were virtually naked in the heat, and each man glistened with sweat. Most had the olive skin of the Mediterranean region, but others were North African or sunburned white men. Old battle scars were commonplace, and one of the white men, with fiery red hair like a Viking warrior, had lost an ear and most of the left side of his face from a blow from an axe or sword. The air was hot and humid, and a thin, viscous liquid seeped from the cave and ran down the walls in multiple streams of what looked like watery blood somewhere high in the roof. On reaching the ground, the fluid coagulated briefly in small pools before draining away into the cracked surface of the densely packed soil.
A voice sounded in my head.
It is not blood but sweat—human sweat, the sweat of a thousand lifetimes, wasted sweat.
The voice was barely audible, but there was bitterness in the tone, and I sensed the weary resignation of one who had lost all hope. My hands trembled, and I shook with fear in an instinctive reaction to the supernatural, but I forced myself to stay calm.
In front of the fire was a stone bridge with sides as high as a man, and to the right of it was a roadway leading out of a tunnel. I stood transfixed as men in white robes emerged from the entrance holding statues of gods and other sacred relics aloft.
Priests whispered the voice.
I was witnessing a restaging of Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
Most art in ancient Greece had religious associations, and I strained forward in my chair, trying to identify the individual objects as they appeared. The first was the Sun Cross, an equilateral cross inside a circle. This ancient symbol, dating from before the Bronze Age, and the dark wood cast a well-defined shadow. More emblems followed, and a tall, muscular man swathed in a crimson cloak emerged from the ranks of the procession. Two attendants ceremoniously removed his robe and left him standing in the centre of the stage, naked, except for a tail-like length of black cord hanging from the base of his spine.
The actor crouched down on both knees while two of the priests placed the hollowed head of a bull over his head and slid the lifelike rendition down his neck until it was sitting firmly on his shoulders. He stood up with the attendants holding the robe in front of him, and at a sign from the senior priest, dramatically drew it aside.
The light from the blazing fire threw his shadow onto the far wall, and the silhouette of the Minotaur appeared in sharp relief. Musicians and dancers in flowing white robes encircled the actor in a linked chain, with the right arm of the following dancer hooked to the left arm of the leading dancer. The shadows of the individual dancers on the wall and the shape and sinuous movement of the line imitate the story of Theseus searching through the Labyrinth to destroy the Minotaur.
Loud cheering erupted from the other side of the cave, and I was now able to see the audience, for it was them, not the actors on the stage, who were the subject of Plato's allegory.
"Do you understand, Peregrine? The rowers are alive, yet they exist only to illustrate an idea. They feel no joy or sorrow; their purpose is to row, blind to the greater reality beyond the cave. It is a cruel irony—they live only to make known what they cannot comprehend."
In the original version, the captive audience was composed of prisoners chained together on the cave floor, but here, they were shackled to seats in rowing boats. There were eight men in each crew, and all the boats possessed inboard-mounted oarlocks, allowing the men to face forward and observe the flickering shadows on the wall as they rowed.
The designers of the set had removed the surface rock from the cavern floor with great precision and created two parallel banks for the subterranean river that ran half the length of the cavern. The water flowed at great speed down the length of the exposed section of the river before dipping under a horizontal backstop and disappearing underground.
The men were rowing with great vigour but made little headway against a strong current, and the boats hardly moved. Unlike the slaves tending the fire, the rowers were virtually indistinguishable from each other. All were dark-skinned, lean, and muscular, with long black hair that was permanently wet from the water thrown up by the oars. Dressed only in loincloths, their bodies were well sculpted, but their faces were curiously ill-defined, like unfinished portraits abandoned by the artist.
I heard a voice inside my head, a different voice from before, and one I recognised.
"We know where you are now, Peregrine, and help is on the way."
Uncle Albert.
His presence in my mind was hugely comforting, and after he had finally managed to subdue my excited chatter, Albert explained what was happening.
"Do you understand what you see, Peregrine? The rowers are alive in a way and can speak and think, but their creator meant them to illustrate an idea, nothing more. They are neither happy nor unhappy but play out their part and live in the moment, knowing nothing about the greater reality; it is their life purpose to make known—a cruel irony."
I watched as each man urged ever greater efforts from his fellows and shouted out in excitement if his boat edged in front of another. Competitors to a man, their eyes darted restlessly from galley to galley, forever comparing positions as they strained to gain the advantage in a never-ending battle for supremacy.
Sometimes, through a burst of extra power or a chance eddy, the prow of one boat moved slightly in front of the others, and the faces of the rowers filled with exultation at their fleeting triumph, but their effort was all for nothing; the boats never gained more than half a length on each other, and any change in order was only temporary.
But the men were blind to the futility of their task and talked excitedly of great victories; legends were born, heroes arose, and the stench of wasted sweat permeated the atmosphere as they planned new campaigns.
Albert spoke again.
"The shadows are their only source of knowledge, and these imperfect reflections shape their opinions and beliefs. In their collective deception, every rower imagines the others more able to interpret the meaning of the shadows and secretly curses himself for his perceived inadequacy. Lacking the moral courage to confess his supposed ignorance and desperate to conform to the group perspective, each rower becomes ever more vocal in his acclamation of the shadow images, and so the delusion grows ever stronger."
His voice faded, casting my eyes away from the rowers. I saw diffused sunlight filtering down a steep road that led to the surface. All the crews must have seen it too, and I heard a commotion on the water. One of the rowers had managed to free himself from his shackles and pulled himself to his feet, swaying from side to side with the roll of the boat.
His fellow rowers looked at him with pity.
"What was he doing?"
The man scrambled the length of the boat and jumped headlong into the water. The fierce current carried him backwards and dumped him unceremoniously onto the cave floor. The rowers shouted out in laughter and derision, but all the time they were rowing, always rowing. The crews soon forgot the lunatic; there was no time to waste on foolishness.
They had the real world to contend with—the world of the boat race.