by Mary Renault
At least, if Anakreon said no, he could be trusted to do it prettily, and it would be good to see him. Next morning I went down to Piraeus to find a ship. I was getting knowledgeable, for Theas put in every few months and sometimes oftener; Athens was coming to rival Corinth as a city of good craftsmen. Its painted pottery was wanted everywhere, as well as its olive oil. So I saw a good deal of him and of his friends, knew several good shipmasters, and had been warned against the bad ones.
While asking about, I picked up what news I could from Samos. Polykrates was richer and foxier than ever. He had broken off his old alliance with the Pharaoh Amasis; as to the reason, accounts were various and you could take your pick. Kyros the Great was dead, succeeded by that son of his, that vicious mad dog Kambyses. His father should have put him down; but the call of the blood is strong. He was planning to conquer Egypt; and Polykrates got word of it. He compared the opposing forces, and decided he’d backed the wrong side. So before Amasis had time to ask his help, he declared the treaty broken. His tale, which I’ll believe when I see iron floating, was that his long good fortune had made Amasis fear some great reversal, which might make their friendship unlucky. As things fell out, half the world has come to believe this story. It is the hand of Nemesis, you might say.
The truth was that Polykrates had hastened to court Kambyses. He even offered him forty war-triremes, with soldiers to man them. But he was more cunning even than this, for the soldiers he sent off all came from the old houses whose loyalty he mistrusted. Many who’d been boys when he seized power were now grown men, and ready to avenge their fathers. As it turned out, he undervalued their wits. At the fleet’s first port of call, they all put their heads together, added up the score and got it right. Polykrates had sent word to Kambyses, kindly to see that none of them came back.
So they put about ship next day, and invaded Samos instead of Egypt. How many Samians might have rallied to them, it’s hard to say, because old Polykrates was too quick for them. He sent out his mercenaries through the city to round up the women and children, and lock them in the great boathouses of the naval dockyard. These he promised to set alight, if the menfolk gave any trouble. It seems he was believed. Well, he was a pirate; who knows what he’d done in his time. So the rebellion failed, and those who could get away sailed off into exile.
I hoped all this might further my mission to Anakreon. Kind as he’d been, it would have been presumptuous to call myself his friend; but he would have heard something of me by now, as he’d foretold. We would meet on more equal terms, and I thought I knew him a little. There is a certain threshold between a courtier and a sycophant; nobody tells one when one crosses it, but one feels it in oneself. I only feared to reach Samos and find him already gone.
The first thing I saw there was that the great new harbor mole was finished, shining with new-dressed stone and gleaming bollards. We had trouble to find a mooring, the port was so full of ships: Egyptian, Tyrian, Kypriot, Sicilian; several from Rhodes, which Polykrates had conquered, putting his son there as governor. The galley-slips before the boathouses held a small fleet of snub-nosed, boar-headed Samian triremes and pentekonters. The whole waterfront bustled and chattered with trade, every house a shop; and the merchantmen tied up there had their wares spread out on the quayside, shouting for custom with lungs of bronze.
I’d have liked to go shopping and sightseeing, after so long; but nothing is secret on a busy trade-road, and it seemed that my name had run before me. All kinds of people were on the quay to meet me, some of whom I had barely heard of; but there were old friends too from the Victory, and I was swept in there to give my news. The same host was still there, and gave me a beautiful Lakonian cup to drink his health in. I looked again, and said, “What’s this? What will Theodoros say?”
“Why, Simonides, to think of your knowing it again after all these years. He would say he liked to see a good piece treated with respect. I do that in his memory. I keep it for the masters.”
“His memory?” I said, looking up from the painted owl.
“Had you not heard, then? He died one day in the foundry. They were running the melted bronze into the mold; he felt the heat, they say, and got short of breath. But he kept on his feet till the mold was filled, shouting at them all, you know his way; then he caught at his breast and fell down, and was dead before the doctor came. His prentices said that right till the last, while he could catch his breath he was telling them how to finish the statue when the mold was broken. Sophilos had no use in his right hand for a week, from Theodoros gripping it at the end.”
I remembered his great fingers, so light on this very cup.
“It’s Anakreon now,” said the host, “who has his own.” He took it from the shelf to show me. “A love-gift you can be sure, though he never tells. You remember his song about the girl with the colored slippers.”
There she was, in elegant red-figure touched up with purple, tossing her ball. Round the outer curve of the bowl was a whole frieze of girls, playing with a ball, or with one another; the painter had made it plain that they came, like the girl in the song, from the well-built city of Lesbos. I admired the work, and asked where I would find the poet.
“Why, here. Just let me fill your cup. He’ll have heard by now of your coming.”
This was taking too much for granted, and I told him so. But the words were hardly out of my mouth, when heads turned to the doorway, and Anakreon came in with outstretched hands. The crowd parted for him with as much respect as if he’d been Polykrates, but more cheerfully. His red hair was fading, but he had kept his thin fine-boned grace; he felt as light as a fawn when he ran up and clasped me.
In life as in song, he never used an unneeded word. He had claimed me as a brother, after which all other compliments would have fallen short. He just talked, as though we’d met only a few months back instead of years, and as if I had had a name as long as he had. Since the Old Archon died, I’d thought him the only man on earth who could really awe me; but now, in his presence, I felt only delight at being here. I had even forgotten my errand, when he said that of course I must put up at his house.
It was close by the Palace, in the best Samian style, with a carved doorframe, and a columned porch of rose-red Samian marble. Inside it was as handsome as Hipparchos’s; smaller, but with everything in scale, as delicate as his songs: chairs inlaid with ivory, a carpet from Egypt, silver cups with gold insets, upon an ebony sideboard; a big wine-cooler painted with Meleager’s boar-hunt. He had sent orders ahead to have bath-water warmed for me; and I was waited on by a beautiful young slave, whose polished manner I doubt the presence of a king could have discomposed. He must have been as costly as the inlaid wine-cups; Persians nowadays were hard to come by. One thing was certain: not even Hipparchos could offer Anakreon more than he already had.
Still, I had to try. Soon after an excellent supper of sturgeon cooked with herbs, the youth was kindly dismissed to eat his share, leaving the wine between us. When I complimented him on so excellent a servant, he said he had been a real pleasure to train, having been bought from some vulgar fool on whom he had been quite wasted. “Now that I’ve taught him to think well of himself, he is so proud that he can afford to be gracious.”
“Like to like. It’s not every man to whom good fortune gives good grace.” And I led round the talk to the pleasures of life in Athens, the good company, the Archons’ open hands, and so on. Before I’d half done, his green eyes slanted round at me, and he began to laugh.
“Stop, dear man!” He leaned from his supper-couch to grasp my shoulder. “Enough! I can take the next verse myself. I was to have come to Athens, and said all this to you. Anakreon, my dear fellow, can’t you persuade Simonides?’ What collectors these autarchs are.”
“Me!” I said, too startled to join the laughter. “But I thought—”
“Oh, that. I don’t think he even knows you’ve been here before. No one has liked to tell him what he missed. A good deal was happening in those days, you
know, a host of people passing through. He first learned of you from Athens. Now you’re a treasure he’s panting to acquire. You’d have heard from him by now, but as it happens he’s in Naxos, visiting his old friend Lygdamis. Only just before he left, he urged me to go and bid for you.”
This time I laughed too; then I said, “But you didn’t come.”
“No.” He pushed his hair back, tilting his rose-wreath drunkenly. He was sober enough, though. “I put him off; I’m not sure why. Mostly from a feel in my skin, that all this”—he waved his hand towards the window and the spread of the town below—“can’t last much longer. No reasons; or too many. When the fruit is sweetest, it falls. One can’t tell the day.”
I looked round the beautiful room, and at the window above the teeming harbor, the shops full of foreign luxuries, the well-dressed crowds. Just across the strait were the hills of Persian-held Ionia, so near it seemed one could shout across and be heard. But that had been so for many years.
“He didn’t press me,” Anakreon said. “He thought that I might be jealous.”
“Do not tempt me into hubris, son of Apollo. Or your father will be after me.”
He laughed, and lifted his wine-cup. Then he grew serious. “Hubris. That’s what they are saying about the Tyrant. Well, yes and no. You know, he would never have burned those hostages. He gambled with them, and won. He always wins. The fruit hangs down full of juice, riper and heavier …” He dipped the rhyton into the masterpiece of a wine-cooler, wiped it with a drawn-thread napkin, and filled my cup. “But I ask myself, am I getting some warning from a god, or just feeling my skin too tight, like a sloughing snake? Does it concern any man but me?”
“Indeed. It concerns me, I can promise you.”
“Yes, we have been concerned for one another. Now, as I see it, if you go back and say that Anakreon feels beholden to his patron, but will be honored to visit Athens as your guest, just to pay his respects—that won’t set you back at court, will it? Then we can see.”
“Why, I shall be the happiest of men. Will you really come?”
“How not, when Simonides invites me? I shall come to Athens and say all I’ve been told to say, which you have not yet heard the half of.” He straightened his wreath, making a solemn face.
“But,” I said, “you have heard my piece; and what do you say to me?”
“Oh, once I’m in Athens, I suppose Hipparchos will do his business with me himself. Then my refusal will come from me, not you, and cast no shadow on you. After all, you did persuade me to come.”
“Refusal!” I felt as if I’d seen one of my father’s best sheep fall down a cliff, and I expect I showed it. “I thought you were saying yes.”
“I am sorry,” he said, with a smile that would have softened bronze. “I thought so too, until just this moment. No, it won’t do. He has been very good to me, you know. And in return I have offered praise which I can’t recant without dishonor.”
There is never an answer to that. I tried none. He pushed at his wreath, and it tilted over again.
“And then, of course, I’m in love.”
“Again?” Disappointment had made me cross.
“Come, come, my dear. A furnace is no cooler for last year’s fire … Maiden-faced boy, heedless of my pursuing, And all unknowing my soul’s charioteer. That is no longer quite true. But he would never leave his ancestral home for me, why should he? Yes, well, I’ve a good-healing heart, as soldiers tell you they have good-healing flesh. I could go now, and know I had left my patron at his height of fortune, not waited like a ship-rat to smell the leaky plank. And yet, and yet … Bear with me, my dear. Ionia was my world, and only this is left of it. I think I will see it out.”
There was no answer to that, either. I was not fool enough to spoil the rest of the evening. We drank and talked and drank and sang, and dawn was near when he lit me to my bed, having long since sent off the gracious Persian to get his beauty sleep.
Next day he asked some very pleasant people to meet me. My presence was never explained; it was enough, it seemed, that Simonides was visiting Anakreon. The noble Samian, his soul’s charioteer, was not on view. “Only a fool,” he said to me in private, “will show a purse of gold to a shipload of pirates. I could tell you things …” It was a good party, and next day I took ship for Athens.
Hipparchos was so charmed to hear of Anakreon’s visit that I got anxious, and warned him not to expect too much. One never liked the thought of disappointing him. All I’d managed to do, I said, was tempt Anakreon with the glory and fame of Athens, so that he longed to visit it; and had ventured to promise it would surpass his hopes.
This would ensure him a dazzling fee for his recital, a small return for his help and kindness. Often I wonder that bards will be so silly as to bicker with their peers, and lower themselves with jealousy; when, if we are friends, we can not only learn from one another, but do each other useful good turns like this.
He came to Athens the next month. Everyone had a triumph. He did: he performed at Hipparchos’ house before everyone worthy the privilege, enchanting our ears, melting our hearts, and leading us at will from mirth to tears. I had one: he thanked me publicly for having led him, like a guiding Hermes from Olympos, to the delights of this splendid city. Even Hipparchos had one: Anakreon told him that the graces of his court (with its famous ornament, the great Simonides) made a singer who had failed to visit it seem only half a Greek. After their private interview, my patron came to me in the sweetest of tempers, saying, “Well, you did your part, my dear Simonides. He would come, without a doubt, but for his obligations. He didn’t say that in so many words, but it was plain to me. Wasn’t it charming, the little song he made about Kallias at the hunt?” (Kallias, a dashing horseman, was the current friend, as I’d remembered to tell Anakreon.) “I shan’t repeat all his praise of you, it would make you too proud to live with. Mark my words, we shall see him in Athens yet.”
Besides all this, it was a triumph for Polykrates, when his favorite poet returned to say how they’d tried in vain to steal him away to Athens, but Samos had his heart. I have lived a long time; but in the art of pleasing everyone while betraying no one, I have never met anyone to touch Anakreon.
6
I KEPT MY LAND, and cared for it. It was part of my freedom; and I felt its people my charge. I told Hipparchos at the outset that I had a family estate I should sometimes need to visit; one must start as one means to go on. He said with his easy good manners that of course I must look after my inheritance; hinting, just as politely, that he would rather it was not when he was giving an important party, or entertaining some foreign guest of honor. He gave me good notice of such things; one always knew where one was with him. I in turn would give good notice to Dorothea; now that I came less often, she liked to prepare a feast. It was coming to seem more her house than mine, and I would not spoil her hospitality by taking her unprepared.
Meantime, in Athens, I was a man with a man’s desires. The Archons had installed me in one of their guest-houses on the Acropolis, looking south to Phaleron and the sea. I ran it with my Karian boy and an old woman to cook. I never bought a slave-girl. I do not like the unwilling service of barbarians, with whom one cannot exchange a thought. I have never been a man who needs a woman every second night; I’ve had other things to save my vital spirits for. So when I did feel the need, I walked out to the Kerameikos.
It was a place, then as now, for the women of the middle sort, who liked to call themselves hetairas and not whores. This was a time when the great courtesans of Athens rivaled even the Corinthians, but I never thought of attempting them. They scared the ugly Kean shepherd who still lived on in me; I feared their mockery. Where I went, I was welcome enough. I had money, and was somebody from the court. It was an easygoing way of life; most of the time, at least.
Well, there was one girl … She was working for an old madam who’d been a beauty in her day, and ran a clean friendly house; not one of those where the girl’s name and pr
ice are painted over the door of every room. The girls who were free would treat one like a guest, just catching one’s eye and pulling their dresses tighter. All except this one girl. Thalatta was the youngest, I suppose about fifteen; a small face, triangular, a wide mouth and tilted nose; thin, with the air of having been betrayed by fortune, and taking it very bravely. She never displayed herself as the others did; just gave one a look and half a smile, as if saying, “We two could understand each other, if you did but know it.”
I don’t care for thin girls as a rule; the delight of the sculptor is also mine, I like the living marble. But she was clever, and her fragile body flattered a man’s. “We two,” she could say without a spoken word, “we have our secrets from all those fools.” At first she did not talk much; after a while, she told me she came from Naxos, and that her father had pledged her for a debt. The truth, as I later learned, was that she’d run off from there with a sailor, and was no one’s thrall, but kept a third of her takings. She used to tell me—never whining, she was too clever for that—that she was saving to buy her freedom, but lived in dread that her mistress would sell her first. Two or three men were offering to buy her. She would hint at dreadful things about them, always as if making light of it to spare my feelings. Sometimes she would point one out, if someone gross or drunken should be leaving as I came in.
“Oh,” she would say, “one can put up with them now and then, that’s only the luck of the trade, there are far worse houses than this one. But to be shut up alone with a man like that, always at his bidding, never to see a friend again—never you again, the only one who has understood me …! Oh, I think I should kill myself before long.”
Of course, I would always slip her something extra to save towards her freedom; and, of course, the time duly came when she was to be sold that very month. The buyer (a fat man with scrofula) would have the money soon. True, the mistress would wait till she saw his silver; but it was just a matter of days.