by Mary Renault
For some time the Old Archon had been, to most Athenians, part man part legend. Nothing now changed in the life around them. It must have seemed the old order would last forever.
For my part, I would get no work during the time of mourning. It was neither an Olympic nor a Pythian year, so I took myself home to Euboia. Summer was ending in a sweet ripe smell of good harvests. I had friendly neighbors, thanks to my steward’s good sense. When the crops came in, we all took turns to help each other, gathering the vintage, or lending slaves, or sharing an olive-press.
Country festivals delight me, with their ancient work songs as the grapes are trodden, the oxen led round the threshing-floor or the millstone. They are simple, these songs, like the beat of the heart or the breath of life; and their sound mates with their meaning as simply as the beasts mate in spring. They were sung before there were bards or poets, and of them we were all begotten. They are still our kindred, if we know our craft. Pulse and breath set us our bounds, within which is found all mastery. Without pulse and breath the body dies; without their measures the poet. But within their limits are the startled or the tranquil or the eager heart; the breath of ecstasy, or calm, or tears, or terror. What a possession is ours! Eighty years I have wandered through it, and have never reached its furthest frontier yet.
I did not lack company, having many friends in Eretria; I had my songs to make, and Dorothea to warm the house and exchange her gossip for mine.
“That Hipparchos, by your account of him, he’ll be kicking up his heels, now his old father’s hand is off the bridle.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But his father trained him, and I think he knows where to stop.” He and Pisistratos had always used their famous tact on one another. Hipparchos never used to present to his father anyone, however amusing, that he might not care to acknowledge in public; he, in return, never upbraided his son for his loose acquaintance, unless he picked up someone politically dangerous.
“That’s often the way,” she said over her shoulder, as she stirred the pot with our supper. There was a hare in it, and some cunning spices. “But it’s wonderful the changes you see when the strong hand’s gone. Look at your own brother. Not that he’s changed for the worse, but he’s changed, that’s sure. Would you ever have looked for that?”
“No, but I should have done.” He had visited here both before and after our father’s death; each time treating her with as much respect as if she had been my wife. But the first time, in his plain clothes with his simple barbering he had looked every inch a Kean. Last time, he’d looked every inch a gentleman-adventurer, as we knew them then. To save trouble at sea he had grown his beard again, but now it had a rakish point to it; he had cut off his long plaits, and wore his hair short to the nape. He had a gold earring, and sandals with silver studs. In his fighting panoply, which he put on to show us, he looked good enough for a vase-painter; his helmet’s tall crest was inlaid with blue enamel, and his leather corselet embossed with stampwork.
“This is heavy,” I said. “What if you have to swim for it?”
“No laces, all clasps. I can be out of this before a ship can settle, even if she’s rammed. As for falling overboard, we make the other fellows do that.” Theas, it seemed, was enjoying every day of his youth; all the more, no doubt, because he’d had to wait for it till he had turned thirty.
“Yes,” I said to Dorothea, “he’s changed, but all he is now was there already. It’s truer to say that he’s become himself.”
She took the spoon from the simmering pot, blew on it, licked it, nodded. “It’ll be the same with Hipparchos, I daresay.”
Of course she had never set eyes on him, or even heard of him from anyone but me. If her voice had an edge, I well knew why. Some women can read things in their men, like a diviner in a goat’s liver. She knew what I was waiting for. She knew why I kept quiet about it: not from deceit, but from fear that counting on it would bring bad luck. That did not make her like him any better.
I expected nothing yet. When a Pisistratos dies, his sons don’t start to make merry after the bare month of mourning; especially when the heir is a man like Hippias. I was content to wait.
Meantime, I crossed to Keos, mostly to see Philomache. The year before, she had borne a healthy boy; Midylos, and his father the ancient athlete, had been near dancing with delight. But it was a hot dry summer; many babies died of the flux, and she lost him at two months old. When I saw her soon after, she looked to have aged ten years. Now she had been brought to bed again; I found her blooming, and doting on the new one, for all that it was a girl. Midylos was one of those men who like a daughter, and was only sorry for old Bacchylides, grumbling that he would die before he saw a grandson. “Though,” said Midylos to me, “he’s not much past sixty, and as tough as an old vinestock. If he’d give over watching the pot, it might boil sooner. But he craves an Olympic victor. I sorely disappointed him. Even here on Keos, Theas always beat me in the games.” He laughed. He was a well-liked man with a good farm, and well content.
As for Theas, no doubt his wife did not see enough of him; but the house was prosperous, and his two young sons adored him. “When Daddy’s ship comes” was their day of festival; their dream of manhood was to sail with him. Sometimes I felt regret that I had no children, to whom I could be the father I wished I’d had. But I would never be such a father, the head of a house, the stay of a home. One can bargain with one’s concubine, one cannot with one’s child. With Dorothea at least I had dealt as fairly as I knew how; and now came the time when I was glad of it.
I had not been a month back in Euboia, when I had a visitor from Athens: Onomakritos of the oracles, no less. He announced himself by a groom riding ahead. Even for a man so pompous, it looked rather like an embassy.
With equal ceremony, I set food and wine before him, and made solemn small-talk till the last replenishment had been declined. Having meantime satisfied his courteous interest in my health, my land, my harvest and my relatives, I was free to ask how things were going in Athens.
The aspect of the planets, he said, was most benign, and Athene’s sacred olive had borne abundantly, sure omen of prosperous times; it was plain the gods remained well disposed to the city. There was much more like this, letting me know that all went splendidly in Athens, without slight to the illustrious dead.
Just as I was thinking he meant to leave his business till next day, he came to it. He had been sent by both the Archons (there were still nine, but we let that pass as usual) to tell me that the sculptor had almost finished Pisistratos’ grave-stele; they awaited only the epitaph to carve on it, and a threnody to sing at its dedication. The Archons were sure it would have been their father’s wish, as it was their own, that I should make them. After that, they hoped I would stay on as their guest in Athens, and make the city my home; a source of pride to the Athenians, and of delight to them.
Nothing could have been more graceful. I perceived the mark of Hipparchos’ hand. It was of a piece with his usual tact, getting me invited by Hippias’ cherished diviner, to prove that he too would welcome me. I accepted gratefully, adding that I was honored in the messenger.
He bowed, like a man with more to say, and got down from his supper-couch to open his traveling bundle. I’d wondered why he’d not let the slave take it upstairs. He dug about in it, but spilled out the wrong bag, sending a handful of divining-pebbles rolling about the floor. The boy serving the wine—a well-mannered young Karian, whom Theas had bought for me in Halikarnassos—put down his jug and went to pick them up; but Onomakritos checked him with a solemn hand, and stood over them brooding. After considering each, he gathered them himself. “Sir,” said the boy in his halting Greek, “is two there by door.” The sage bustled over, gazed at them deeply, and said, “So far!”
He had dropped his pomp as a man does a fine cloak when he has work to do. For the first time, he did not look like a charlatan. When he had pouched the pebbles, I asked if it was for me he had read the signs.
�
�Certainly it was. How not, when it was on your account I came to spill them? An unsought omen is never to be neglected.”
“You said, ‘So far!’ Am I to travel, then?”
“Yes, on the earth, and further than you have yet. And through the years of mankind, also. And the furthest of both will meet.”
I thanked him for his divination. Poor man, I am persuaded he had the Sight, but not often enough to sustain his pride. If he had kept from hubris and its follies, he would not have ended as he did, in exile, the lying sycophant of a barbarian king.
His pebble-bag stowed away, he now got out what he had first been looking for. The Archons knew well, he said, that to give them the pleasure of my company this time of year would certainly cause me loss. They were happy to send me something in recompense, and to promise that I would not lose by coming to Athens, now or in time to come.
The bag that came out this time was big as the first and looked as heavy. But this one chinked when he put it on the table. Half of it was full of good white silver drachmas, stamped with the Attic owl. The rest of the weight was gold.
5
THEY SAY THAT THE Arabian phoenix dies in flame, and is reborn from its ashes. This is certainly true of Athens, and I wish only good to that strong and thrusting chick. But now I am old, the un-burned phoenix is the Athens of my heart. It is the city I have carried westward with me, into Greater Greece. When I look back, my years there seem one long summer, with bitter winter coming in a single day. I can scarcely believe that there were fourteen years of it. That it was the core of my life, I know.
Besides the rest, it was there that I first grew rich. I’ve heard that I have a name for liking money, and so I do. Most people do, who have got away from Keos and are allowed to spend it. Men like it still more, who have fled with nothing from a fallen city, and lived hand to mouth, and seen a dear friend and master bleed away his pride. Yes, I like to have money. I have made a great deal, and spent what I needed to live well, but never all of it; so I was no man’s sycophant when the bad times came. In my way, I am still a son of Leoprepes. He liked money too, but he never cheated for it; Theas liked it, but never robbed a peaceful ship for it; I like it, but I have never lied for it. Money buys many things, of which the best is freedom. Samos taught me that.
When I crossed to Attica, I had the Lament for Pisistratos nearly done. An epitaph had been in my head already, before the summons came. I have put it in my book, because the tombstone it was carved on has disappeared. Angry men are unjust, and the dead have no voice to answer. I had hoped that my words would save it, but they are rubble now. I suppose they will fill in the ground under some grand new temple. Well, they will find good company.
I went, then, to court in Athens, just turned thirty, my head steaming with songs. I was in the city of which I’d dreamed since boyhood; I had a patron more like a friend, who expected no servility; I was doing what I had been born to do; and for being so happy I was getting paid. Sometimes I would bend over water to glimpse my face; I reckoned it should keep the gods from getting too jealous.
I found the two brothers ruling in perfect harmony. If Hippias enjoyed it less, that was not because Hipparchos crossed him, or tried to exceed his due share of power. Far otherwise; he found the business of government tedious, and left to his elder all he could. Such public councils as absolutely required him, he would attend, and assent or dissent as Hippias had instructed. On such occasions he would even stand up to speak. He did it well (or he’d never have opened his mouth) and I know his words were his own, for he tried them out on me. But for him it was a performance, nothing more. He did his duty by his kin, as he would have done in attending some dull wedding. When it was over, he went back to his own affairs.
It was another thing with the religious rites and the great processions. For all Hippias’ well-known piety, when the city’s gods were honored, Hipparchos reigned. I have often thought, in later years, that he was born too soon, and too high. If he were living now, a mere knight like Aischylos son of Euphorion, he might be putting tragedies on the stage to delight the people, and making them laugh with satyr-plays, and be kept in balance by the contest with his peers. Who can trace the gods’ ways with men? All tragedy needs a victim. He was a patron of poets, but he never knew of his last and greatest gift to them. He gave them a theme: hubris and nemesis. The tragic poets have lived off it ever since.
In those days, I kept my pity for Hippias. Not that his power was shaky. He was even valued; but only as the hand of his dead father, keeping in trust his heritage of good rule. Any citizen, if asked, would have said that Pisistratos would have made two of him, but there seemed no harm in him, and for that we could all be thankful. Of course he knew it; men feel such a thing through flattery like a stone through a sandal sole. He would have liked to make his own mark and hoped to do it, but was too prudent to make any changes yet. He was no fool; he saw the Spartans getting stronger in the south, the barbarians in the east; he could foresee a time when he’d need be a better man than his father, to keep what his father won. But at Hippias’ age, then, his father had been a bold adventurer. Hippias was a worrier. He had no wish at all to relinquish power, and willingly took the larger share of it; but he was less sure of himself, and put much faith in oracles and omens.
I saw all that for myself; he did not confide in me, it was Onomakritos who shared his counsels. I thought of the Old Archon’s words about strength and sweetness and the fleck of mold on the grape. Where the strength lay now was still untested; where the sweetness was, I had no doubt.
No one, I am sure, ever made patronage more delightful than Hipparchos did. Here in warm Sicily, King Hieron makes it kind and dignified, and just what an old man needs. But in those years I was young, and my needs were different.
Hippias had moved into Pisistratos’ stately house. There was room in plenty for his growing children, and he could have taken in unmarried Hipparchos, too. But he was well suited as he was, and had no wish to move in. Hippias altered nothing, except to fill a room with shelves and chests for his ancient scrolls of oracles. He was a man for getting early to bed, and liking his household to do the same.
Hipparchos’ house had a fine prospect, looking north towards Mount Parnes. It carried his style as a song carries its maker’s. The things one saw there were always changing, as a poet may make new songs; but the style was always there.
If he had just bought something handsome, he’d give a party to show it off. It might be a small bronze of Dionysos with gilded thyrsos-wand and wreath; or a big wine-bowl painted with Theseus among the Amazons. (It was all red-figure now, and to be noticed a piece must be finer than the rest.) Sometimes he’d bring in a troupe of young girls to play the flute and dance, and show their tinted breasts through fine Kos tissue. Their manners would be charming, they would sit on your couch and chat prettily and pour your wine; but it was understood that if you wished for more, you must arrange for it at home. He never let a party run to riot, unless he was in the mood.
He patronized, too, some beautiful boy acrobats, who performed naked; but it was seldom that one was invited to stay the night. Unless he was entertaining formally, he had a friend to share his supper-couch, and no doubt later his bed. These friends were chosen as carefully as his tableware or his clothes; youths in their later teens, handsome, well born, well bred; amusing too, or they would not be seen twice. The chosen would reign for some months, or even as long as a year. I don’t think false vows of eternal love were ever made to them, and they were always dismissed with grace. Some splendid gift, suited without offense to their rank and station—a horse perhaps, or a gold cup, or an inlaid parade helmet—would give the signal that the time had come to adorn the supper-couch with a new face. Meantime, the youth had been brought into fame and fashion, and had met everyone in Athens who was worth knowing. Those who were ambitious, and used their opportunities, came out of it very well.
Certainly, we poets had no cause to complain. Unlike the favorites, we wer
e not displaced by newcomers. We were like bees in a hive, to which new honey was always coming.
Lasos of Hermione, the same young man who’d been crowned on Keos the day my father died, very soon arrived. We got on well together; each worked in his own way, and each was called upon for different occasions. Hipparchos always made it clear that there was room for both of us; neither of us was quarrelsome or vain enough to make trouble for a courteous patron.
One day, when I had been there about two years, Hipparchos said to me, “Simonides, dear friend; what could we do to get Anakreon here?”
The “we” was like him, telling me I need fear no rival and was above the thought of it. He had never spoken a word about my tavern stint in Samos, though he must have known. I said, “If you like, I will gladly go and ask him. As you know, Polykrates never took me up, and won’t remember me. I could see Anakreon privately, and talk to him as a friend. I know he would be happy here. But Polykrates has done a great deal for him; I should think pretty well anything in Samos is his for the asking. If he says no, I hope you will forgive him.”
“Forgive!” he exclaimed with his easy smile. “What a thing to say. With artists like you two, one does not demand, one petitions. But, surely, he has done that fat old pirate too much honor already. It’s Polykrates should be grateful, not he. Yes, do see him. Tell him how we live in Athens now, and ask him to make one of us. I put my faith in you.”
There was no resisting him when he chose; I said at once I would set out in the next few days. Keos would be on my way, but I thought I would leave it till my homeward journey. In case I failed, which I half expected, I could linger and delay bad news. Hipparchos always inspired an earnest hope that one would not disappoint him.