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.
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.
The man, who had freed himself, swam to the bank of the rushing river and scrambled out, gasping for breath. The road was directly ahead, and he started to crawl upward toward the sunlight.
The rowers had forgotten all about him, and when the puppet masters lofted a new symbol high, they cheered and whooped at the sight of its shadow.
When the prisoner first reached the top of the road, the light blinded him, but when his sight adjusted, he revelled in the newfound glory. The prisoner wanted to share the revealed knowledge with his fellow captives and lead them out of the cave into the sunlight. But once he was back in the darkness of the cave, he found himself blind again. For a moment, he thought it had been a dream, but his subterranean vision soon returned, and he turned his head back to the light.
Once again, differing from the original allegory, he now climbed up the rock face to the stage. The puppeteers were still in procession, and he threw himself in their path, but the priests walked over his prone body without breaking stride. The fugitive scrambled to his feet, confused by the fact that he was able to see and hear the puppeteers while they were unaware of his existence.
In desperation, he turned his attention to the rowers and began running up and down the roadway, waving his hands to gain their attention. The moving shadows that he cast on the wall resembled a chicken with flapping wings scuttling back and forth, and the crews hooted with laughter.
Oblivious to this disturbance, the procession wound its way across the bridge, and the puppeteers disappeared into the tunnel.
Not for the first time, I wondered who they were, these agents of deception, why they were so intent on deceiving their captive audience, and where they were going when they left the stage. The allegory gives us no idea of their identity or motivation.
Suddenly, I felt very afraid of what might lie at the end of the tunnel and wondered whether I would have the courage to follow the procession and discover their destination for myself if I were not a captive.
I hoped so.
On the centre stage below stood the solitary figure of the fugitive, framed by the yellow flames of the great fire that burned behind him. The light accentuated the size of his body, making him appear wider at the hip and shoulder and much taller—a man who exuded authority and power.
With his legs planted wide, his head tucked down, and his arms raised above his head, the image of a cross appeared on the wall. The symbol puzzled the rowers, but intuitively, they sensed that it foretold a future power yet to come. It was a bad omen, and I could hear the frightened muttering among the rival crews.
The fugitive raised his head, and when he dropped his arms to his side, the likeness of a cross disappeared from the wall. The crews erupted in laughter and catcalls as they forgot their fear. The fugitive called out for them to listen to what he had to say, but the level of noise from below drowned out his words until eventually, one of the lead rowers managed to make his voice heard above the tumult.
"Quiet! Let the madman speak for our entertainment!"
Laughter ensued, and there were derisive shouts of "Speech! Speech!"
The fugitive moved forward to address them, but he ventured too far from the edge and slipped on the loose pebbles. Only at the last moment did he manage to regain his balance. The fire behind him once more projected his ungainly antics as shadows on the wall and drew more laughter from the rowers.
"Watch your step, madman—are you blind?"
The fugitive responded.
"We are all blind here."
His voice was unexpectedly loud, and the magnified echoes boomed back and forth across the cavern. This subdued the audience, but one rower, braver than the rest, shouted back:
"You are the blind one; we can all see."
This brought a great roar of approval from his fellows, but the fugitive responded once again.
"You see only shadows; you are prisoners in this world."
The rower shouted back.
"You are the prisoner of your mad fantasies.
"We are free men."
"No! You are living in a shadow world."
"Sense, at last, madman! You see the reality of our world before you. One that we can see and hear. There is no other world except the one that lives in your imagination."
There was another gale of laughter, but the fugitive refused to give in.
"Do you not know that for a shadow to exist, there must first be a real object to throw that shadow?"
"The shadows are real in themselves; they need no other object," shouted back a rower. "It is a fact so obvious that no sane man could doubt it. Use your eyes and ears, madman; the evidence is before you. Cast off your illusions and use your brain. Think, man, for once, use your head, and think!"
The fugitive replied with great emotion.
"Answer me this. When you see Labrys, what is it that you see?"
"A double-headed axe, of course. What do you see, Madman—a chicken?"
More laughter.
The rowers were enjoying the sport, but the fugitive refused to accept defeat.
"I no more see a chicken than you do an axe. You see only the shadow of an axe and know nothing of the real axe."
The fugitive paused, but the rowers had fallen silent.
"You must listen. There is a far greater place than this world, and it is within your reach."
The spokesman for the rowers responded fiercely.
"There is no other world but this one. The one in which we live and breathe. Do you know anything? Educate yourself. Study the wall."
The boat crews took up the chant.
"Study the wall!
"Study the wall!"
The echoes bounced back and forth against the cavern walls, and I could do nothing to protect my ears from the assault. I feared that I might go mad, and I saw the shining eyes of the earthmen looking on in morbid fascination like the demonic beings they surely were. The thought returned that this diabolical place of fire and chains was indeed hell, but the fugitive's voice sounded out like a peal of thunder that plunged the cavern into silence and revived my flagging spirits.
"The wall deceives you. There is another world. There is a better world, and I can show you how to find it."
Suddenly, the fire flared up, and the shadow of his pointing arm became a flaming torch pointing the way. The air in the cavern crackled, and each man felt a surge of power that jolted him out of his apathy. The rowers could only look forward, but in the corner of their eyes, they saw the route to the surface, and under their collective, if only partial, gaze, it acquired a more definite form. A faint, glimmering light shone from the entrance, and the first rays reached downward to strike black rocks that had never before felt the heat of the sun.
Creeping fingers of light, like the white legs of a giant crab, cautiously felt their way down, and the rowers groaned in fear while the earthmen burrowed further into the ground like frightened jackrabbits. It seemed as if the source of the light at the top of the tunnel was feeding on their terror, and it grew ever larger and more brilliant. The voice of the fugitive rang out in command.
"By the light of the sun, cast off your shackles and follow me!"
It seemed the shadow world must fall as the men stood in their craft and began to free themselves of their bonds.
They were so close to freedom, but it was not to be.
A tremendous flash of lightning lit up the cavern, followed by a roar of rushing wind that almost blew the craft off the water, and the men collapsed back on the deck, still shackled.
The Queen of the Underlands, resplendent in her royal robes, suddenly appeared on the road and stood beside the figure of the fugitive.
"Silence, you fool!"
The fire had dimmed, and her shadow formed only an indistinct image on the wall.
"More wood for the fire!" she screamed, and the whips of the overseers cracked obediently in reply.
Line after line of slaves tipped great logs on the fire, and the flames leapt high to the roof of the cave.
"All hail to the Queen of the Underlands!"
Standing with her back to the fire, her image filled the wall, dwarfing the men beneath, who hastily resumed their places and willingly grasped their oars.
"Row!" she commanded. "Row!"
The men bent to their task, and the craft assumed a near-perfect line, battling against a current they would never conquer. One of the craft nosed ahead, and a great cheer went up from the leading crew, who had forgotten all that had gone before. The Queen sent a bolt of lightning crashing into the entrance that led to the bridge, and a procession of priests and puppet holders holding aloft objects of worship appeared yet again, accompanied by music and dancers. A heavy perfume filled the cavern, dulling the senses. The queen had restored order, and I felt drowsy and became increasingly detached from what was happening around me. I finally slumped forward in the wooden chair and lapsed into a deep sleep, held upright by my bonds.