The Praise Singer (5 page)

I peered down from my roof, to see if I could find Kleobis in the crowd, but it was too thick. I saw Hipponax, however. Everyone knew him, especially the servants of Apollo. He was a poet; and he was so well known because he never left the city. When first I knew of him, I pitied him and felt moved to take his part, for he was much uglier than I was. There is not much wrong with my body, except that I have no height; but he limped in one leg, which he had broken as a child, so that it was shorter than the other. The foot turned in, and his rocking gait had twisted his whole body, making his shoulders tilted. I thought it no wonder he should be bitter, for princes would not want to see him about their courts, where even I had been made welcome. Knowing he was poor, I asked Kleobis if we might not offer him supper. He looked startled for a moment; then thought, and said, “Ask him, my son. He is a man you ought to meet.”

I did my errand respectfully. (I was then only fifteen.) Hipponax replied that Kleobis was suddenly very civil, and he hoped our house would not need to be purified, after a Poet of the Agora had passed the threshold.

That his clothes were dirty, I put down to his having no wife; but I thought that in a city not short of water, he could have washed himself. He ate noisily, and was helped twice; leaving off only to say that men were fortunate who had the art of pleasing princes, “but Truth has Want for a steward.” Poor old Metriche, who had been cooking half the day to honor a guest-we lived plainly enough ourselves-was not out of hearing before he mocked at her fat buttocks. This started him on women, his favorite theme. He treated us, unasked, to one of his songs against a hetaira who had said him nay, and whose trade he was trying to ruin in revenge. Not that one had to offend him, for him to cut one up; he only needed to hear anyone praised. Before supper was over, he had accused the city’s best sculptor of stealing bronze; the least greedy of the nobles, of being too cowardly to risk a quarrel; and a gentle old priest, gifted with prophecy, of vices I’d never heard of till that night. Such was my first meeting with Hipponax; and Kleobis was right, it had done me good. It showed me that the face of envy is uglier than a birthmark on the cheek.

So, when his name was shouted in the crowd, I wondered what Kleobis was thinking. On the one hand, the man was detestable; on the other, he was one of us. That he had sung against the lords showed courage, which one should honor, even though his spleen was like one of those burning mountains which cannot contain their fires. They were doused now, however. He grinned with terror like a Gorgon mask on a shield. The wretched swindler chosen by the priests (he had cheated even the temple) stood up in his bonds, refreshed with hope.

It caught Hipponax’s eye and showed him his salvation.

As all poets know, one can stand or fall by one’s impromptus. Hipponax stood. He lived some five years more on the strength of it. As soon as he saw it was a choice between the two of them, he offered no defense; he denounced his rival. After it was all over, no one remembered very clearly what the first man had been accused of, or on what evidence. Hipponax was more memorable.

The man was in Persian pay. He had poisoned a well, near which some people had lately died of fever. His wife was a backdoor bawd who undid good men’s homes. He had bargained with Harpagos, for a talent of silver, to open a postern that very night. So that all this could be heard, our Poet of the Agora scrambled up a statue plinth. The statue was of an Isthmian victor; but Hipponax was the victor now. One thing he taught me: that whomever you blacken, there will always be someon?e glad of it. All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.

When he’d done, the crowd turned on the swindler, hating him because they feared the Medes; and it was agreed he had been chosen justly.

They stripped him, and put the ritual offering-cakes in his hands, having to tie them there because he shook so, and led him out to the gate. There they beat him as the rite prescribes, on his tenderest parts till he screamed aloud. Then everyone fell on him as they chose, to purge their offenses which he carried for them, and drove him along with sticks and cudgels till he fell. I don’t know if he was dead when they came to throw him on the bonfire. I know I saw Hipponax dancing round it.

I climbed down and went home. Kleobis was sitting with a face of stone. He said, “And now they will surrender.” Only the day before, I would have proposed making them a battle song. As it was, I just poured some wine.

Whether or not the goddess liked her offering, when Harpagos’ siege-mound was ten cubits up the wall, the lords of Ephesos took counsel. They gave out that the city would ask for terms, and all the people acclaimed them.

The envoys rode out, and in due course Harpagos rode in at the head of his cavalry: a tall Mede with a curled grey beard and a gold-thread scarf around his helmet. He shone like a carp in a corselet of gilded fish-scales. The Ephesian lords, unarmed, escorted him to the council chamber. He sat there till they had dismounted first, and one of them held his horse for him. Peace was agreed; in a few days the Medes rode off again. They had done as Kyros had ordered in his wisdom, and spared a city which had given no more trouble than a couple of slaves shot down as they dug the mound. Three of the lords were to rule it as his deputies. It was said they had been treating with Harpagos long before.

Their first act was to get rid of Hipponax. They did not kill him, lest it should be said they feared something he knew; he was banished, which angered nobody, and warned not to come back.

He did not go far, just north across the headland to Klazomenai. Now and then we would get news of him, or someone would bring back one of his poems, in the trip-foot meter he always used, which went with his limping gait. They grew more savage; we heard rumors of someone he’d caused to hang himself. He did not live very well, however, and came down to cadging from strangers in the harbor, or begging alms from people whose enemies he had reviled. He died, they say, lying in rags in the marketplace, and was put underground like a dog that begins to stink. One or two citizens, I’ve heard, poured oblations upon his grave, thinking his spirit would do mischief if not appeased.

He would have had plenty to sing about, while Ephesos was settling to Persian rule. The new governors soon got even with enemies of their own, who had been too powerful to touch before. That came to be an old story, as the Ionian cities fell. It was a time of hate and treachery, and feuds began which have lasted ever since. They have lasted my lifetime, which spans three generations, and I daresay they are good for another three. If ever a Greek as good as Kyros comes to undo his work, he will need all his wits about him when he gets to Ephesos with its knot of snakes.

All this disgusted me; but for Kleobis, a citizen, it was a shame and grief. He went to see his friends and kindred; my weapon-drills were over, and I was a good deal alone. I did not seek out my former comrades. I had been considering the scapegoats, winner and loser both. They were evil men, but not the worst in a town as big as Ephesos. No; they were the worst men who were ugly too. How did I offend the gods before my birth, I thought, that I should be born halfway to being hated, before I do anything to deserve it? Song would have healed me, but it would not come; and being young, I thought that present trouble would last forever. I said nothing to Kleobis, who had enough troubles of? his own.

One morning I thought, as I lay in bed, This can be the last day when I wake to sorrow. The choice is mine. I walked towards the temple, and mounted its inner stair which goes up to the roof, and stood on the little walk within the parapet. The agora lay below me like a dish crawling with wasps. It will be unjust, I thought, if I fall on a man who never did me harm; from this height it would kill him. But fate has never been just to me. It was making me giddy to look down, and I was not yet ready to jump; so I looked up instead.

Suddenly there was a great space of blue; the whole world seemed to open for me alone. The early sun stood in the east behind me, and touched the sea and the isles. A faint mist was on the water, half veiling it here and there, so that the ships seemed to float rather than swim; and out of it, beyond the strait, stood the tall hills of Samos.

I looked down at the city walls, and could not think why they should have enclosed me. Above me, on the roof-ridge, crouched a bronze sphinx, with the sun glittering on her crown. The work was exquisite, every upcurved feather of her wings shaped perfectly. Whoever made this, I thought, knew that it would not be often seen. He made it for whoever should come, and for the gods.

I went down by the steep stair, finding myself quite careful not to fall. At least the surrender had saved some things of beauty from fire and sack. Yet Ephesos seemed to me now like a dry brittle husk, the shell a moth sloughs off when the summer hatches it. Kleobis was visiting somewhere; I walked the city like a stranger, seeing it as if I had been long away. In the evening, I passed the house of the hetaira who had shut her door to Hipponax. A crack of lamplight showed; I thought, Why not? Let us see. She let me in, cheerful and easy, bolted the door behind me, and poured me Chian wine to drink while she undressed beside the lamp; a true Ephesian, heavy-breasted, with a skin like thickened cream. There was a picture painted inside the wine-cup, of what we would soon be about. Of course all good hetairas pretend that you have pleased them; but at least I don’t think she guessed I had never done it before.

When I got home, Kleobis was back, and taking his bedtime posset. He pricked up the lamp to peer at me; I’d forgotten the Ephesian’s scented oil. “Well, well. Here’s a cat that’s been in the dairy.” Kindly, he did not add that I’d been a long time getting there.

“I’ve been thinking, sir,” I said. “Isn’t it time we went to Samos?”

He drained the posset-cup and wiped his beard. “Why don’t you get to bed? I can see you’re half asleep. Where else should we be going?”

IT’S A SHORT CROSSING from Miletos; but I’ve never been so frightened in all my life. If we’d had bad weather, I would not be here today. We were two hundred souls, aboard a little Phoenician trader built to carry fifty full-laden. These people, leaving their homes forever, had brought all they could carry aboard: mattresses, goats, bride-chests, working-tools, vine-slips, wine-jars, cooking-pots and dogs. There were cocks and hens in wattled coops, piglets swaddled like babies to keep them quiet, and babies no one could quieten. The faint breeze did not fill the sail; the wretched black slaves, whom the Phoenicians buy for old ships like this, sweated at the oars, hardly able to work for the crowd pressed almost against their oar-butts. The stink was enough to stifle you; and as the passengers could not be made to trim the ship, it had a list almost to the water-line. I am a pretty well-traveled man; I’ve had longer and rougher voyages; but never one when I felt so sure that the ship would sink.

However, as we neared Samos there was enough shipping to have picked us up; so I looked at the city, which we were somehow creeping to. It gleamed with new marble; the slopes of the mountains were clad with woods and orchards, or, lower, terraced for vines. Round the harbor the strait was teeming: once we were passed by a blunt-nosed Samian war-pentekonter, which seemed to flash b?y with its fifty oars, making a wash that nearly finished us; once I ran to Kleobis-or, rather, struggled to him through the crowd-to show him what was then a wonder, the first trireme either of us had seen. Oh, yes, I can remember when triremes were something new. The tall ships, we called them, and were amazed they did not capsize.

We limped into harbor; the passengers crowded to be first off; water came over the side; the crew beat them back with belaying-pins. We got in at last with an inch of freeboard to spare.

Young men today don’t know what the fame of Samos was, in the days of Polykrates. Oh yes, they say, the Tyrant; and think they need say no more. Well, today I can understand it.

I, who have lived four times their span, have seen “tyrant” shift its meaning, and now it has only one. Kleobis, whose memory went back forty years before mine, said it came first from the Lydians, who needed the word before the Greeks did. But in my youth, it was not yet the name for an oppressor. Indeed, most people thought it better than “king” and very much better than “lord.” True, it always meant a man who ruled alone. Power may not change but always reveals the man, and there are cities now who hate with good cause that Lydian word. But it was hated at first only by the great lords. It was nemesis to their hubris, and the better of them suffered with the worst.

The Landsharers, they had called themselves in Samos; the people had given them other names. To own land is one thing, to own your tenants another. Polykrates and his faction promised to see them right. He was a lord himself, like every tyrant I ever heard of. Some use the citizens as a tool while others really care for them; but I never met one yet who was without ambition. Even so, some of them did carry out their pledges; Polykrates did, on the whole. He gave the people more justice than they’d had before; he gave them work, and paid them for it, and brought in slaves to save them from rough labor. He had not pledged that he would not grow rich, or make war, or live like a king, or seize the neighboring islands, or spend his money on boys. That was his side of the bargain. He did a great deal in his life, both of good and evil; but as he did good mostly to the commons, and evil mostly to Landsharers and Persians, most of the Samians were pretty well content with him.

True, soon after he seized power he got rid of his two brothers who’d helped him there, one by exile and one by death; but the people thought it none of their business while he made the city beautiful and great. The barbarians, on the other hand, called him a common pirate. It is true that the glories of Samos were mostly built from loot.

Piracy had always been a Samian trade, and they made no bones about it. They had stolen treasures sent by kings to kings, needing only to hear that such things were on the sea. Polykrates’ own noble father had set up a votive statue to Hera, out of his plunder, a boast he had carved on the base. The son had only to seize the nobles’ ships to get himself a navy. Nowadays he dignified his forays with the name of war. He was famous all over Hellas for his wealth, for the works of his artists and architects and engineers, for his hundred warships and his thousand archers; and, more than all, for helping himself to tribute from Persian ships, instead of paying any.

No wonder the Samians all looked pleased with themselves, when a beggarly boatload of foreign fugitives stood gazing at the beauties of their city.

It was a very fine place; it was also a very full one. We were not the first beggarly boatload by a good long way.

Because of the wars, Kleobis had not been here since before the tyranny started, and said he would not have known the place. I was happy to gaze about, but could see this made him uneasy. He had written of our coming to two Samian guest-friends of former days; but there was no knowing if the letters had got through.

As we stepped off the mole-only half built then, but already grand with its cut ashlar and bronze bol?lards-we met the first of these old friends; only by chance, for it was a Samian pastime to see the ships come in and get their news. He was a stout anxious man, who looked as if he expected bad news only. He deplored the troubles of Ionia; rejoiced at our safety; did not ask our plans, and told us, as soon as he could with decency, that his widowed sister and her three daughters, escaped from Sardis, were living in his house. His brother’s family was now expected from Ephesos, and he was at his wits’ end to know how he would shelter them. Kleobis in turn condoled, and asked after his other old Samian guest-friend. He, it turned out, had been dead a year. Plainly, we would have to look after ourselves.

In Ephesos, Kleobis had comfortable means; but all locked up in land, which just now was finding no buyers. He had left the town house with Metriche, his old Karian girl. She was in no danger; nor indeed would we have been, had we cared to stay. But we would be now, if we went back there from hostile Samos. We had exiled ourselves, and would have to make the best of it. What money Kleobis had, he had brought along; better, he had his name, and Polykrates was a known patron of the Muses. We kept up our hopes.

Every inn within our means seemed full. After much trudging about, we found lodgings with a lyre-maker, who turned out someone else because he thought we would be good for business.

Next morning, Kleobis got out his tablets, and drafted a letter of compliment to Polykrates, sending respects, and hoping for the honor of praising his name in song.

I did the fair copy from wax to reed-paper. It was Kleobis who had had me taught to write. My father had never thought it worth while, and Theasides had never thought about it at all. He could write the farm accounts, and, at a pinch, a letter to a trader; why give the little brother more troubles than he had? Kleobis, however, had found it tiresome that I could do no written business, and sent me to a scribe for lessons. He taught me a fine square even hand; left to right, or plow-ways, or straight down, I can do them all. As a kind of craft, it even gives me pleasure. When I compose a letter, my mind sees the written words. As for my songs, I could no more sing in writing than make love. It belongs to another part of me.

Since it would never have done for Kleobis to be seen running his own errands, I took the letter, glad of a chance to see the famous palace.

It stands on a mountain spur, a little above the bay. A massive earthwork and ditch were being dug by a horde of slaves. Some passer-by, seeing I was a stranger, stopped to tell me that they were men of Lesbos, which the Tyrant had lately conquered; a great stroke against the Persians, that island being so near the Ionian shore. I could not see that the slaves looked very grateful.

I found my way through to a terrace, with a fine prospect of the city. Before a columned portico stood two soldiers in high-crested helmets, holding shields blazoned with hawks. One thumped his spear-butt; a chamberlain came and took my letter. I waited, seeing across the bay the purple hills of Ionia, and wondering if I should ever tread them more. They seemed more my home, now, than my birthplace had ever been.

The high oaken doors had bronze trims of lion-heads and roses, gleaming like gold. They opened, and I was led inside. The entry hall was patterned with colored marbles; beyond were more doors, of Egyptian ebony. Beyond one of these was Polykrates.

I had not dreamed of getting further than his steward; but this was certainly the man. He had finished his morning’s business, and was taking luncheon to music, sitting in a chair before a table with silver plates and wine-cups. As I entered, his wine-server was leaning over him; a boy of about fourteen, lissome and dark. Across his master’s shoulder he was making a face at the corner of the room, where sat two musicians of about his age, with harp and flute. Their master was rising forty, a big florid man, not yet as heavy as he would be later; his hair ?and beard curly and dark, his eyes light blue in a ruddy face. He had a cheerful look. Why not, indeed?

He waved his hand, which had a great emerald on the forefinger, for the concert to leave off. When the flute-player ceased to blow, one saw a handsome but sullen mouth, and green languid eyes. What the lyre-player was like I had no time to see; as I came forward, this youth clapped a hand across his mouth, to stifle a fit of giggles.

Polykrates raised the emerald once again, in a gesture of rebuke. No one looked much alarmed. The wine-pourer was winking behind the chair. As I went on, I could feel the others pulling straight faces. One had a fit of coughing, to cover a laugh.

I had been about the world by now; but I was still quite young, and my childhood wounds were tender. I felt myself go white, which cannot have improved me. Remembering I was my master’s envoy on whom much depended, I looked straight before me, bowed, and spoke my piece word-perfect. But as I handed the letter, I saw the paper shake.

No one could say the Tyrant was not civil. He took it with a kindly smile, as if to say, “Ah well, we can’t expect old heads on such young shoulders, can we?” He read it nearly all through, and said my master would surely hear from him. He deplored the misfortunes of Ephesos, and said he was glad to offer something which would provide for our comfort here. The emerald waved; the steward, who had waited in the open doorway, ushered me out through the marble hall to his business-room, and gave me a purse of silver. There was a whole coffer of them, each neatly tied and marked with its weight.

Kleobis was waiting at the tavern next the lyre-maker’s. By that time I could come up smiling, plank down the purse with a flourish, and make the most of my message. There was no need to tell him what I thought it was worth.

“Excellent!” he said. “Did he name a day for me to sing?”

“No,” I answered, doing my best. “He has so much business, I don’t expect he knows himself when he will be free, he has to ask his chamberlain. He made himself very pleasant. But I suppose if he goes off on campaign again, everything else will be at a stand. At all events, he was delighted to hear of your coming.”

I knew no way to lessen the wrong I’d done him. Five paces into that room, and I’d known I could have made his fortune with a single glance, if my face had offered those pretty boys some rivalry. Kleobis had made a famous song about the love of Zeus for Ganymede. It was Ganymede who should have walked through that door, not I.

It was something, that by now I had grown my beard. It made an ugly man of me, but a man at least. It would have been far worse, on Samos, to be an ugly boy.

A quarter-month then passed, in which we saw the fine sights of Samos, or as many as were free. We ate at the next-door tavern; for the rest, we thought we should be seen only at the good ones, and these cost money.

There were two of especial consequence. At the Peacock, the Landsharers met to exchange their wrongs and plot. One visit taught us that one went there only if invited. The other, the Victory, was the resort of Polykrates’ new men. I was surprised to find it so lively, till I became aware that most of them were craftsmen, the best artists from Ionia.

Often some man would pick up the tavern lyre to start a song; but it was clear their skill lay elsewhere. This set me thinking. When we had been ten days without word from the Palace, I went out on some excuse, and presented myself to the host, offering to entertain the guests. It being about noon, he let me try my skill on those who were eating there. I got a plate of stewed squid and a drink, and was taken on to start that evening, at a real Samian drachma.

When I broke this news to Kleobis, who could never have done it and held up his head again, he exclaimed with horror that he would rather starve than accept this sacrifice. He was a man of his generation; to sing for pay at a craftsmen’s tavern seemed nearly as bad to him as if I had proposed to hire out? my body, supposing there had been a market for it. Had I not learned by now that since the Age of Heroes ours was a sacred calling, which princes had not disdained? Orpheus! Achilles! Solon the Good, even in our own day! (He meant his, not mine.) How could our praise songs be desired by kings, if we cheapened ourselves like mountebanks? Did I want to ruin my future? “Let us sail, my son, while we have some money left. You cannot do this for me.”

“Truly, sir,” I said, “it’s different here in Samos. It would never do for you, of course, with your reputation; but it won’t hurt me. I still need to learn from an audience, and this is a very good one. If they enjoy it, so shall I.” This was no more than the truth. Much as I loved and honored him, I looked forward to coming before strangers, for once, not as any man’s pupil, but simply as Simonides.

The tavern had been named after Polykrates’ first trireme; and its host thought more of his own dignity than I did of mine. He introduced me as a most distinguished bard, exiled from Ionia; which in those days was the best passport to Samos. I chose my songs to suit my audience; and, when I had done, was asked to so many tables that if I had sat at all of them I would have gone home as drunk as a muleteer.