the mask of apollo

1st edition, 1966. Dustjacket has some wear at head of spine. Pencil inscription at front flap. Front flap clipped at bottom corner. Additional images available upon request.


Travelling form city to city with his own company, attending the great festivals (acting was partly a religious rite in the service of a god), Nikeratos comes to know Plato and his friend Dion, kinsman of the tyrant Dionysios of Syracuse, and is invited to Sicily to perform in a play which Dionysios has himself written. Thus begins his vivid eye-witness account of those eventful years: the death of tyrant Dionysios;the ineffectual rule of his son; the attempts by Plato, at Dion's instigation, to reform the tyranny, and the impact of the new philosophy on the brutally decant regime; the banishment of Dion and his return ending in the bloody struggle for the possession of Syracuse- a battle in which Nikeratos narrowly escapes with his life.