The Praise Singer: A Novel

1

YES, I OWED ENDIOS a tomb. In death he was my benefactor.

By Keos reckoning, Kleobis must always have been an easy master. But no one can travel without some hardship; being used to it himself, he had naturally supposed that what he could bear at sixty could not hurt a strong lad of fifteen. He took the death hard, the son of a friend and benefactor. On our voyage out, he kept going over the boy’s last days; his getting wet on the ship coming from Ephesos; his climbing up from Koressia in maybe too hot a sun, carrying a bag which was maybe too heavy; his sitting outdoors at the wedding when the fever must have been on him. The upshot of all this was that now when he had got a Kean shepherd lad, tough as a goat, he took all the care he wished he had taken before. I never once slept in an outhouse, unless by mishap he had to shake down there himself; when offered hospitality, he had me received as a guest as well. His own son could have lived no better; and my father’s son had never lived half so well.

People think the bond between poet and pupil is forged by the holy Muse. Quite true; but nothing forges it tighter than traveling among strangers. Friends met by the way will soon pass on; on the whole, there are just the two of you. If you are out of tune, it can’t last long. But if it wears well, it will be like father and son. Closer, for me. My bloodfather saw that at the start. Well, I could not help it.

My tasks were a game to me, compared with what I had done at home. Kleobis, sensible man, always traveled as light as his purse, only gathering stuff when he could afford to hire a donkey. We never went without clothing for heat or cold, and best clothes for a performance; but it did not weigh so heavy as a three-month lamb on the mountain.

Had I been serving only a craftsman or a merchant, I would have found things to enjoy: steep islands, still and dark in a laughing sea; white harbors full of strange ships; a road creeping small into dark blue mountains; a pleasant inn in a poplar grove by a river; the terrible filthy inn where they tried to rob us, and I pulled out Theas’ knife. After that, Kleobis treated me like a man.

I only missed one thing from my former life: for a long time I hated to sleep alone. My mother took against me from the moment the midwife held me up to her; once I was weaned, if I cried in the night her remedy was a slap. But Theas, who was no more than six or seven, would creep up softly and take me into bed, as he might have done a squeaking pup. Soon I would climb in of my own accord, and like a soft-hearted child with a growing pup, he let me be. So there I stayed, feeling safe with him like a dog. For months I felt restless and strange without him, and would wake in the darkness wondering where he was.

All this was the daily bread of my life. The meat and wine were the songs.

Excellent men, concerned with the training of youth to virtue, have begged me to declare that art is the child of labor. Well, labor must bring it forth, like everything else that lives. As I tell these people, there are women one can’t get without taking pains, or boys if you prefer them; but first you must fall in love. After that, the pains take care of themselves. So don’t bring me, I say to these worthy men, some youth who wants to know what kind of song is likely to win the crown this year; or what everyone else is singing, lest he should feel lonely. If that is all he wants, I’ve no time left to waste on him. Take him away, and apprentice him to a lyre-maker, where he may even be of use. But if you come upon someone who grabs at song like a child at a bright stone on the shore, who shapes and reshapes like a child building a sand-castle, deep in his act and lost to all around—then, never mind if his sand-castle leans sideways, just give him time. Don’t tell him that this year people are doing, or not doing, or no longer doing, this or that. Send him to me, who will protect him from fools like you, will show him the great shell-beaches and watch him at his play.

Oh yes, I worked. Yes indeed. Looking back on my father’s last instruction, not to do things the easy way, I used to laugh aloud. In our calling, once you know where you’re going, there is no easy way; you get there, or not. Even if you aim to go no further than four lines on a dog’s tomb. Well, for that matter, I have gone a good way in four lines, and further still in two.

However, at that age it still took me ten lines at least to say “Good dog.” All I was fit for was to learn, but at least I knew it. I gorged like a calf in a spring meadow; not only Kleobis’ lessons, but anything I could browse on along the way. Like every bard who will not let his repertoire go rusty, he would go over it quietly as we walked; and by the time he was ready to give me line by line, I had much of it in my head. I did not know, till he told me, that I had a better memory than other people; I thought one would naturally remember what one had liked to hear. To this day, there are pieces of Homer, or Sappho, or Stesichoros, which I can’t recall without some bit of road, or courtyard, or stone fountain-rim coming to mind along with them.

This cornel-wood staff of mine—the old man’s third leg, as the Sphinx said in her riddle—when Kleobis owned it, I felt it many a time. If I spoke to him when he was composing, he didn’t interrupt himself, just gave me a rap. If I was fool enough to start begging his pardon, he hit me again, to teach me the virtue of silence. I would then mind my own business, of which I had quite enough. You don’t master the Iliad in a month, or in a year; but every day I added my few lines, like a bee bringing wax to the hive.

I soon learned I have a certain gift of nature: that what I have learned by heart, I can call back all at once, just as one does a prospect seen with one’s eyes, not one stone or tree after another. Some philosopher, it must have been Herakleitos, once tried to explain to me the nature of this whole, which my memory hears in a moment though it would take an hour to speak it aloud. But Herakleitos would make a mystery of anything.

Of course, a man like Kleobis did not live like some wandering minstrel, singing in markets for a supper. We never even slept at inns, unless benighted between towns. In any city, some house was always open to us, often two or three in rivalry; he had guest-friends everywhere. If he sang at a sacred festival, we might be lodged in the temple precinct. Besides all this, Kleobis had a home.

His patrimony was at Ephesos; a farm let to a tenant, and a city house kept ready for his return by an old Karian slave-woman. She doted on him, but scolded him so freely that it was clear they’d been bedmates once. She was not yet past jealousy, though not of me; me she favored, because I was too ugly to be a rival. Getting me in a corner she would give me a fig or apricot, and try to make me tell tales. I thanked her prettily, and kept my tales to myself.

Kleobis had a moving little song, about an old man bidding farewell to Aphrodite. I have known it make wrestlers cry. But if they thought he spoke for himself they were much mistaken. From time to time he would tell me that this evening, to reward my progress, I could play upon the kithara instead of my practice lyre; he was going to visit friends and I need not wait up for him. It did not take me long to observe that this happened in cities polite enough to have some clean amusing hetairas. He was a fastidious man. I can’t recall his ever visiting a common stews. Happy to get my hands upon the kithara and sing to its seven-stringed voice, I wished him a pleasant evening, with no thought that such things would ever be my concern.

In those years, I hardly knew that I was made like other men. I had married my art, and kept all my love for my master. I daresay I had Bouselos’ little daughter to thank, for keeping me out of the street of the women. As I grew from boy to youth, of course I was importuned as all travelers are. But each of them in turn I thought would endure me for the pay, mocking me after with some fellow whore; she must indeed be the lowest of her calling, to seek my custom at all. I had no need to master desire, while I had such thoughts to quench it, and felt only shame at these solicitations. Returning to my lyre, I would sing of royal maidens, chosen by gods to bring forth heroes. One of my lays pleased Kleobis so well that he let me sing it at an Ephesian supper-party. I got a ring of worked bronze from the host. My first fee. I have it still.

Nowadays, friends and fellow poets will talk of my ugliness as easily as of my clothes. Mostly it is done as a kind of courtesy, meaning that I can afford it; and I take it so. Sometimes malice creeps in, but envy does not hurt a man like scorn.

When I had been about two years with Kleobis, he urged me to visit Keos, compete at the Apollo festival, and show them what I could do. By this time I had sung several times in public, and even my own songs had been well received. My voice was well over breaking, settled into a middle tone with a good range; I performed with a growing courage. But still, at the very thought of singing before my father, the soul of a ragged shepherd boy possessed me. I said I was sure to lose, and be shamed before my kindred; and besides, if I went back too soon I might find myself betrothed again. He did not press me. The world was wider in those days. We scarcely knew how fast it was closing in.

Already, though, not all our travels through Ionia were in search of wealth or fame. Sometimes it was for safety we took the road. These were the days of Kyros, King of the Persians.

Years before, he had risen against his overlord the Median King, whose people hated him, and soon handed him over. Kyros spared his life, the man being his kinsman; treated the Medes as their King rather than as their conqueror, and soon won their goodwill. By the time I came to Asia, Persians and Medes were almost like one people, and fought as such.

Later, I’ve heard Darius called The Great. But to my mind, the barbarians never had a king equal to Kyros. His glory filled the world, when I was young. If he had been a Hellene, what a praise song I could have made him. I have some lines in my head, though they have never passed my tongue.

I wish I had seen him, if only once. But he had gone east to prepare for war with Babylon, leaving his generals to gather the Ionian cities in. Men who did see him, I have talked with: he was one of the fair Persians, with that fine gem-carved face you find among them. He had a great horse, and sat it as if he’d grown there; was distant and godlike to Greeks, but much beloved by soldiers; had his hair and beard curled close and short with the irons; wore embroidered trousers, and a corselet of plaited linen from Egypt, stronger than mail, and dyed with Tyrian purple. He was seen to rebuke one of his lords for spitting in public. That is all I heard first-hand.

When Lydia fell to him, the Greek cities should have read the omens and allied for war. Together, they could have given his generals trouble enough. As it was, they did much brave fighting, here and there; but never all at once, nor all together. Persians and Medes might like to be Kyros’ men; Greeks like to be their own. From time to time at some sacred festival Ionians would meet and talk about their dangers; before long, someone proposed they should choose one general to lead them all; which each city agreed to, provided it should supply him. Then they all went home.

One by one the cities fell; some by storm, some by siege, some just abandoned by the people, if they had a port and ships. Kyros’ chief general was a Mede, called Harpagos, who had joined him because the Median King had killed his son. He was very loyal to his new master, as the Ionians learned to their cost.

After a while, some towns surrendered as soon as his slaves began to dig his siege-mounds; others, as soon as they saw him coming; and some sent envoys to make terms before he came at all. All these were spared, by Kyros’ orders, and given one of their own lords as governor; the fate of the citizens depended on how oppressive these lords already were. Cities that had fought were put under Persian satraps.

When we heard in Ephesos that the Medes were coming, Kleobis offered to send me home; he would pay my passage from Miletos, which had made terms already. He would stay in his own city; but I was a Kean and owed Ephesos nothing. To that I answered that Ephesos had given me the greatest gift of my life. We embraced, and I went off to train with the other young men at spear-fighting and throwing javelins. By then I was nearly eighteen.

On the training-ground I found two or three faces no handsomer than my own, and a good many arms less strong. I had kept my lean shepherd’s muscle, and my eye was straight. My comrades thought well of me for not having run home. Making new friends, I almost forgot I might die before I’d made one song fit to be handed down from bard to bard.

After some days, the barbarian army was descried coming down the Silenos river-plain. On this the priests of Artemis took counsel with the lords, and decreed that a pharmakos be chosen, to purge the city.

The young men I trained with said it was twenty years since a scapegoat had been needed, in time of plague; so none of them remembered it. But they knew all about it; and those who were old enough went to the great square before the city, to take part in the choosing. The younger ones, and foreigners like me, watched from the rooftops.

Artemis of Ephesos is not like Artemis of Athens. She is no virgin; farmers and women pray to her for increase, and she is hung all over with breasts. All her priests are eunuchs, by their own choice; some do it themselves in the frenzy of the rites. Soon they appeared on the terrace before the temple porch, winding out through the many columns that surround the mighty sanctuary, as if they threaded a marble forest. They carried their wands tipped with the sacred crescent; their young boys clashed ringing cymbals, to order silence. They had brought their victim with them.

He was a mean shambling fellow, led by a rope—his hands were tied behind him—and scared out of his life. The people shouted and catcalled, as if they thought him well chosen. In a voice cracked with fear, he shouted out that if he had defrauded any citizen, anyone at all, he vowed by the goddess he would make it good to him. Being fairly near, I could see he was cross-eyed and patched with scrofula. There was jeering; then someone shouted out, “Not him! Choose Hipponax!” And there was applause.

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 someone 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?”