The Praise Singer: A Novel

2

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 waterline. 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 by 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 bollards—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.

After only one evening, I was initiate enough to burst in on Kleobis with, “Sir! Theodoros bought me a drink!”

Even the free sights of Samos had told him who Theodoros was. He ran his hands through his hair. “Drink from a marble-carver! A pupil of mine!”

“I’ve not told them that, sir; I knew you didn’t wish it. Theodoros said he could tell I’d studied with a fine master, but I never said a word.” I could see him brighten a little. He’d been out of sorts lately, from the change of air, and want of use for his skill. I could not tell him that this man’s praise had healed my bruises, left by Polykrates’ minions.

Theodoros must have been all of sixty; but his great arm and shoulder muscles were still hard, and his broad hands calloused. He could behave like a lord, but he always looked like a craftsman. “There’s always something one has to take from a prentice and do oneself.” The taverner kept for him his favorite cup, black on white figured Lakonian, smooth as an egg. When he picked it up, you saw the delicate touch of those big fingers. Besides marble, he carved gems. The Tyrant’s emerald was his masterwork. He worked too in bronze. Nowadays he had his marbles roughed out by his pupils, and only did the finishing; but he tinted them all himself. I know no sculptor today who does not use a painter; but he used to say he had the whole in his mind’s eye and did not want it spoiled. Besides all this, he was part architect of the grand new Hera temple, going up on the western shore.

“Yes, yes,” said Kleobis, fidgeting on his pillow. “A great man of his hands, no doubt. But don’t make yourself common among such people.”

“Court people come to the tavern too, sir. I don’t think it would do you harm to be seen there. It would pass the time.” I was disturbed by the tedium of his days, and his loss of spirits. For twenty years, before this, he had stayed in no city except as an honored guest-friend. Now that I can say the same of myself for twice as long, I understand his feelings.

At least he no longer had my keep to find; which was as well, since no summons came from Polykrates. Soon after, on a day of sun and rain, he made a new song about Apollo weeping for dead Hyakinthos, drawing a cloak of cloud over his shining head. It was one of his best; polishing it kept him happy for two days, after which I could see him starving for an audience. A cruel waste; for it would be a great success at the Victory. When Polykrates’ friends honored the house, they often brought along their favorite boys, who no doubt looked to them as lovely as Hyakinthos, even if not to me.

Life is hard on Keos, and its springtime short. The beauty of our youths is that of first-flowering manhood. I, born without beauty, had looked at it with longing—to inhabit it, not to embrace it. The images of desire change with each new love; but the image in the soul will keep its shape. Beauty to me was my tall brother at seventeen, stripped on the wrestling-ground, his oiled muscles gleaming like bronze.

I could picture him at the Victory, wrinkling his nose at the courtiers’ Ganymedes. Several had fathers of some consequence, who you would have thought would be bringing them up like gentlemen; but they were all new men, and had settled for favor at court. If your son was in fashion, sour looks would do you no good; nor, if you wanted to get on, would you prevent him from scenting himself with Persian rose-attar, slitting his tunic up the thigh, or swaying along like a lily drenched with rain.

Nonetheless, here was this splendid song, there was its audience; between stood my master’s dignity. I thought, and saw an answer.

“Sir, it’s wicked for this not to be heard. Listen: come tonight to the Victory, just as a guest. Sit there with your wine. I’ll sing the song. It won’t be what you would make it; but it will make a hit, for sure. When they applaud, I shall bow to your table, and say, ‘There sits the poet.’ Depend on it, word will get to the court.”

I had half expected him to start up like a pheasant from the dogs, and was ready to talk him round. But he drew his brows together, and pulled his beard. The truth was, we were getting desperate; it was just that he would have liked to sing it himself.

That evening, I borrowed the kithara, which they had never heard me play. But I laid it by, arousing their expectation, and played some slight thing on the lyre, keeping one eye on the door. I was pleased to see the Ganymedes and their devotees in force that night. Presently, in came Kleobis in his second-best robe (the best of course was for recitals). I looked, started, and bowed, as if overwhelmed by the sight of this famous man. Seeing the server take note and bustle up to him, I felt my heart move with love. He looked more worn, hollower round the eyes, thinner and greyer than when he sailed from Ephesos. At least I might pay him a little of what I owed. I picked up the kithara and tuned the strings.

When he was settled and served, I sang the song, turning his way as one does to the guest of honor. By now, I was getting into a style that was my own; but this was his, and I fell into his style as if it were two years back. When I saw from his face that I had got it true, it was hard not to smile back at him; but that might have cheapened my tribute afterwards.

I ended with a dying fall, and a showy cadenza on the kithara; my own, for he had not yet worked up his concert version. There was a burst of applause. I saw his eyes filled with tears, and not of grief. That moment was like a laurel crown to me. But man’s joy is fleeting.

“Expect the unexpected.” Everyone quotes me on that; it has become a proverb. Well, that was the day on which I began to learn.

I waited through the hammering of wine-cups on the tables; most of them were of bronze, and a fine din they made. I gestured to catch their eyes. They were already falling silent; Kleobis had disposed himself with a touch more dignity; I had even begun to speak. Then, in the twinkling of an eye, I had lost them. All eyes were upon the door.

For a moment I thought, Can it be Polykrates? This may be our chance. Then I saw who it was.

Three years had passed since last I’d seen him, though only across a hall. Then he had been awaited, now he was a god-sent surprise; but the chorus of delight burst out in a paean. “Anakreon! Anakreon!”

He stood in the doorway, making an entrance from mere habit; style sat on him like his clothes. A small man, with hair so bright, his head might have been on fire; a face pale as new ivory, elegantly carved; light eyes like changing water. And young; not thirty. Nobody now remembers him young, but I.

Quietly I caught my master’s eye. He lifted his brows and smiled; he had weathered much change of fortune in his day. His hand moved slightly, beckoning. I picked up the kithara and came to sit at his table, joining the audience. Nobody noticed me.

For some time the noise went on. Then Kleobis said, “We must greet him,” and got up.

Of course he was right; to show my bitterness would disgrace us both. But before we could move, Anakreon’s flaming head was swooping through the crowd like a hawk through sparrows.

“Kleobis! Dear old friend! What a joy to see you! When did you get away, how long have you been in Samos?”

Too long for him not to have had news of us, if we’d had success here. Well, he was Anakreon. At once he recalled the last time they’d met, when Kleobis had given a much-praised Ode to Artemis. It was smooth; it was also kind. Even I got a charming smile and a graceful compliment, just as if he’d not scanned all the Ganymedes on his way across, like a vintner choosing grapes. We exchanged our news, to the pleasure of all the guests. There was a knot too in the doorway, of refugee Ionians without the price of a drink.

Everyone was amazed to see him. His native city was Teos, north along the coast from Ephesos; one of those whose people had fled by sea with all their shipping, and anyone else’s which was in port just then, and found empty land to start again; on the Thracian coast, in a place called Abdera. Here they had hewed timber, made mud-bricks, planted their vine-slips and their seed-grain, bred from the few cattle they had managed to bring; all the time fighting off the Thracian tribesmen, who thought it unmanly to grow what they could steal. In time, they found that pickings were easier elsewhere; and the Abderans, though they lost some fine men in battle, still held on. The young heroes’ names were known to us already. Their elegies had reached us in Ephesos, along with some charming love songs. No traveling minstrel wasted anything of Anakreon’s.

He told us that this was his second visit to Samos; before the war, he had crossed over for the Hera festival. Now he was here to stay.

I had guessed it. Something about his entrance had told me.

“My kin are established,” he said. “The Abderans can eat and sleep and rear their children in safety, and not many of them want more. I’ve given them two years of my life; and, believe me, two years in Thrace are longer than ten in Ionia.”

Kleobis said smiling, “We had thought you were still running after that little mane-tossing Thracian filly you’d vowed to ride.” That song was already famous.

He laughed and shrugged. “Fillies at fifteen, mares at twenty. Branded ones, too; by now she’s been tattooed into her husband’s clan. Beauty is thin upon the ground in Abdera. This is a banquet after a wayside inn.” Here he looked under his lashes at the most-sought Ganymede. The glance was caught and thrown back before the modest gaze was dropped; certainly, Anakreon knew his Samos. He turned back to us, as easily as if he’d merely beckoned the server, which he went on to do.

“So, as you can suppose, my summons here was welcome. I have just come from the Palace. What a civil-spoken man! And generous, as I have no need to tell you.”

He always had princely manners. If he had known that we’d come as suppliants where he was an invited guest, not a hint would have escaped him.

How simple we had been! A king like Polykrates—he was that, whatever they called him—who sent to Tyre for purple, to Persia for sapphires, to Egypt for ebony and emeralds; of course he had sent, too, for the poets of his choice, not waited for chance to bring them.

“Now that the barbarians have swallowed Ionia for as long as the gods allow”—he turned to me, not to leave me neglected—“Samos is the only place for us artists. For the mathematicians, of course, it’s different. Why should they go? The properties of a circle, the shadow of a staff at the meridian, will not change their laws, whoever is making laws for men.”

Kleobis nodded. “None have left Ephesos. Well, some of them are impious fellows; but Harpagos won’t care if our gods are mocked, so long as his are left alone.”

Soon after this we said good night; he would certainly be wishing to improve his acquaintance here. As we parted, he called that we would be meeting soon at the Palace.

He meant it, too. In no time at all he was the darling of the court; appointed tutor to young Polykrates, the Tyrant’s heir; a sturdy, curly-haired lad, not bad-looking, and, people said, the image of his father, meaning before his father put on weight. There was a daughter, too, who came to the recitals; Samian women lived with the Ionian freedom. (Graceful and pleasant I always found it, and Athens has lost by its strictness in this later age.) She took after her father too, which in a girl was no great dower; still, she worshipped him, and any artist he admired was great with her.

It was Anakreon, I am sure, who got Kleobis a recital in the supper-room. Twenty years later he still would not admit to it, from respect for my master’s memory. A mean man would not have done it; a small one would have done it and let us know; but he was Anakreon.

Of course, it was beyond his power to get me invited. It distressed Kleobis, who in Ionia had taken me everywhere as a matter of course. On the day, however, he picked up his spirits, ran through most of his repertoire, and asked me which songs to choose. I said he must certainly sing the Lament for Hyakinthos. We discussed a couple of others, which he could give as encores. Then he spent an hour at the bathhouse, before going on to the barber to have his hair and beard trimmed and curled. I always looked after his recital robe. I had shaken it out the day before, aired it, and tuned the kithara.

I had to leave before him, to go to work, but he was dressed already. Not so richly, it seemed, as when last he’d sung, though the robe was just the same. Bright colors and gold thread were the wear in Samos; I had not known that my eye had got so used to them. But he had aged, as well. I embraced him, wished him every good fortune the gods can give, and went off to the Victory.

It was full that night. I was cheered when I came in, which got the best from me. When I broke off, I was asked to several tables; it was Theodoros’s I went to. He said, “When I have time, I’ll do a bronze of your Perseus, just as you made me see him. The Gorgon’s head, now; the snakes we could work in the forge, and weld on after the casting …” He ran on, while I sat there as mute as a cream-filled cat. “Now Ibykos, last night at the Palace, he’s been cried up enough; he should have worked with the tools he knew. A foolish business.”

I sat up like a cat drenched from a bucket, “Ibykos? But he lives in Sicily.”

“Yes, that’s where he’s from. Landed two days back. Samos is the honeypot now, my boy.”

My pleasure in the evening trickled away; it seemed treachery to my master. The great Ibykos, pupil of Stesichoros himself; the singer of heroes. Polykrates had imported another treasure. So tonight’s supper would be for often-invited guests, who had tasted all the treats and must be offered a change of fare, even though the dish was simpler.

Youthful and hopeful still, I told myself that if Kleobis made his mark tonight, he would be asked again; thanked Theodoros for his wine, and went back to my singing. After my supper-break, I always gave the late guests something; so Kleobis would be home before me.

He was sleeping when I got back. At least, it was clear that he wanted me to think so. I went quietly to bed, and pretended to sleep myself. When the late guests came in, some had come on from the Palace, and told us all about Ibykos’ recital.

His ode had first promised to reject all former themes, and then declared its own: the gifts and graces of the Tyrant’s son, young Polykrates, whose beauty he compared with that of the young Troilos, to the Trojan’s disadvantage. This was his offering, the gift of undying fame.

The promise was kept, as such promises sometimes are. The song is still given sometimes, and people have asked me who this young Polykrates was. Only Ibykos’ name has kept it in the repertoire. Anakreon always said it was the worst thing he’d ever done, notable only for its gross sycophancy. As he said later, “Shameless as a dog, my dear. He must have made it before he’d even seen the boy, who was no fool and knew it. He hardly knew where to look, any more than I did. However, he’s the apple of Father’s eye, and that’s all Ibykos cared for. It’s made his fortune in Samos.”

For Anakreon, this was sharp. But different men as we were and different artists, we had some things in common. I have never come to want in my calling, I am glad to say; but I have gone where my work was liked as I chose to do it. Neither he nor I were like robe-makers to whom anyone can say, “Cut it this size, and trim it so.”

Kleobis did not say much next morning; only that everyone had been very civil, and the fee would be useful till something came our way. Soon he was picking up small engagements at houses of the Landsharers. They would never have been offered to a man in the Tyrant’s favor; nor accepted by a man who had any hope of it. He was an old-fashioned singer, who had no more sense than to take on an ugly pupil, and sing of immortal loves where mortal ones were the mode. The court had already forgotten him.

Perhaps he should have stayed in Ephesos, and cheered the citizens in their servitude. The Medes, after all, only required that poets should not abuse them; they could sing about anything else they chose. Here in Samos, it was not what one must not sing, but what one must. Tell a man what he may not sing, and he is still half free; even all free, if he never wanted to sing it. But tell him what he must sing, take up his time with it so that his true voice cannot sound even in secret—there, I have seen, is slavery.

I suppose this is hardly just to Polykrates. In his way, he loved the Muses. He paid well for what he liked, and if he did not get it he did nothing worse than lose interest. We had been free to come, and were free to go. Now he is dead and I am old, I can see all this. In those days I was young and bitter.

At the tavern I was making enough to keep us both. But man does not live only by bread and olives. Kleobis’ heart was dying in him. His new patrons gave few feasts, so did not invite him twice. Before long, he would depend on my base employment. He blamed himself for it, guessing that if alone I would have moved on by now; but he had lost the will to plan ahead. He talked always about the past, and lived in that.

Where could we go? He was too old to start again in the wild north; Anakreon, young and among his own people, had found he could not bear it. Athens, an old friend to art, was near; but they had had civil wars for years, lords against commons, coast against plain; Pisistratos, the commons’ choice for Tyrant, was now in, now out, now back, and would no doubt be out again. By myself, I might have tried my luck in Thessaly. Though some of its little lords were not much better than bandits, and I did not know the country, I was strong, and used to hardship. My master was used to it too, but it had begun to tell. It was for me, the son of his art, to see that he had no more.

I thought of my father in blood. I was a rich man’s son, and much good it did me.

I had sent no news home since the fall of Ephesos. They did not know I could write, and I’d trusted to word of mouth to tell them I was alive. My occupation was no fault of mine; but I could not see my father thinking so. However, my pride was no longer mine to do as I liked with. I bought reed-paper; when Kleobis was out, I sat down and wrote a letter.

To Theasides son of Leoprepes, his brother wishes joy. Suddenly I started laughing. I could hear him say, “Sim, by the dog! Whatever did the boy pay to this learned fellow? The street-corner scrivener would have done.”

I told him everything. I was not in want, I said, and had no need to beg of our father; but the war had ruined my master’s former patrons. Were any feasts or contests being planned in Keos, where he could come and sing? I did not ask Theas to hide my letter; that would come naturally at home.

It was easy to find a Kean ship. Since Ionia fell, two-thirds of them put in at Samos. It was my luck to see Laertes, whose wedding had changed my fate, walk into the Victory. He had carried landless fugitives from half-a-dozen cities, and found nothing surprising in my present work. Nor, being a neighbor, was he surprised at being asked to give my letter privately to Theas. To my father, I sent respects by word of mouth.

Before I sealed my letter, I added by way of postscript,

A horn-handled knife, my brother,

you won for strength at the games.

Me it won from dark Hades,

saved by your gift though the sea divided us.

That was the first time I wrote a poem down. It felt very strange.

The days passed. I found the uses of memory. What with my own songs, and all those I’d learned (I had the Sons of Homer entire), by the time I ran out, I could start again at the beginning. Meantime I ate and drank and could take home all my pay. Often I could make as much as an extra drachma, if a song was asked for by name. And it might even be one of mine.

Anakreon looked in sometimes, and was always charming. He and Ibykos seemed to have patched things up. Ibykos, having sung his way into royal favor, had sense enough not to make an enemy of a poet whom fame and charm alike had made secure. As for Anakreon, he liked to please and be pleased; the bile Hipponax lived on would have poisoned him. Indeed, he resented Ibykos less than I. In Anakreon I knew a master. I suppose, in my heart, I thought I could better Ibykos myself.

About eight days after I’d sent my letter, Theodoros gave a supper for his apprentices; they had just set a new marble up. He asked me for my Bellerophon, a favorite of his (though I’ve improved it since then) and I was singing to his table, when I was half aware of someone with presence, standing in the doorway till the song was done. I took my applause, and turned. A tall splendid man, gold-bearded like a young Zeus, shouted out, “Sim!” and grasped me in his arms.

After a while, aware of everyone staring, I said, “Gentlemen, this is Theasides, son of Leoprepes of Keos, my brother.” It was my proudest moment in that house.

The house enjoyed it. Ionians are curious and love news. We put off private talk, while Theas told how he’d heard of the fall of Ephesos, feared for my life, and so on. You’d have thought, to hear him, that I was Keos’ most honored citizen, the ornament of my family. Time fell away, as I felt the cloak of his kindness once more drawn over me.

Theodoros had been eating him with his eyes; soon he pulled a chalk out of his pouch and made sketches on the table. He had lately been employed to sculpt Polykrates’ favorite, Bathyllos, the green-eyed flute-player. Like a fish he was all head, and boneless beneath the neck; you could have wound him round a flagpole.

Everyone cried that I must sing something for my brother. I gave them some old favorite with a clapping chorus; then everyone danced. When the party broke up, and we walked into the street, we poured out our news as if we had been meeting every day, except that there was more to tell. Outside my lodging, he said, “I won’t trouble your bard to find a bed for me. I’ve put up at that inn the pilot’s brother keeps, the Vinestock.”

“What?” I cried. “Theas, that’s the dearest place in town. The rich merchants stay there. They’ll seize your baggage if you can’t pay. Come, settle for what you’ve had, and come back here.”

He laughed, and slapped a jingling purse at his belt. “All found. I’m here to do credit to the family.” I looked at him. He grew serious, “Laertes slipped me your letter in the fields. But he had to tell them you were alive; and he never thought to hide what you were doing. He knows Ionia, thought nothing of it, and said you were one of the lucky ones. But you know the father.”

Yes indeed. I should have been singing for the Landsharers, men of decent birth; that would have pleased him, even more than the Tyrant’s patronage. Before disgracing us all at a common wineshop, I should have come home, asked for his favor, and lived decently on the farm. My choice must have spoken for itself; there seemed nothing I could do that did not wound him.

Theas clapped me on the shoulder. “Next time, write a letter we can show off to our friends. No one knows you’ve become a scholar. But what got into you, not to know what to do? Have you been so long away, you’ve forgotten the Apollo festival?”

It was true; I had. The moon was waxing now, and it came at the next new moon.

“Only stand up at the contest,” he said, “and sing as you did tonight, and the rest will be wondering why they troubled to try.”

It had long been out of my thoughts, to sing in Keos. Time and change had touched the boy who had flinched before; the roads of the earth and the ways of men, learning and skill, pride and anger. A man thought now, Yes, I could sing before my father.

I knew it should be now, while the mood and strength were in me. But I knew also that here, at last, was something I had to give. “Another year; not this. Kleobis must compete this time, and I can’t enter against my master. He needs to be crowned again.”

“Why? How could he grudge it you? He’s won a dozen crowns to your one.”

“That is why. He is going down and feels it, and it’s no fault of his. He is losing pride, and with that he will lose everything. I can wait; he can’t.”

He looked at me, in a patch of moonlight. “The old man took good care of you.”

I nodded. I did not say, He has been my father. We never said things like that aloud. “When you meet him, don’t speak about my competing.”

“Very well, Sim. If that’s the way of it, you must pay your debts.”

Next morning at our lodging he kept his word. “Everyone still talks of Laertes’ wedding, sir. Your song must have brought good luck; two boys and a girl, and lively as young goats. It would be a great day if you came again.”

Kleobis smiled, and his eye kindled a little. He sat stroking his beard. Presently he said, “My dear boys, it is part of a poet’s skill to judge occasions. There are times to compete, and times to present a pupil. When the pupil returns to his native city, not having yet been heard there, he will arouse, if he does well, both pride and wonder. In these the teacher has his share.”

Theas looked at me, meaning, “Just what I thought myself.”

I, too, could see the truth in it. It was also true that if he entered, and someone of note should chance to come and win, that would be his death-blow; and I thought he knew it. He had not pushed me when I was afraid, and I owed him the like return.

“Sir, if I can show Keos even half of what I owe you, it will be the best day of my life. But only if you are there to see it.” Never mind if I don’t win, I thought; if they see Black Sim, Leoprepes’ youngest, do anything at all, they’ll believe his teacher can work miracles.

“You’ll honor our house, I hope, sir,” Theas said. I nearly jumped out of my skin; but he spoke with confidence. Clearly, he had come to be a power in the family; Leoprepes’ eldest was already a man to reckon with.

As he left, he said, “If you want me later, Sim, I’ll be at the workshop of your sculptor friend, Theodoros. He wants to sketch my buttocks, or some such thing.” We exchanged mock punches, as we’d done when we were boys.

What Theodoros really wanted of him was to have him pose for a bronze of Perseus. He did it, too, staying for some days as the sculptor’s guest. He always liked, he told me, to see how things were made.

I too enjoyed the making of a bronze, though I’d seen it once already. It had a kind of magic, unlike the slow chipping and smoothing of stone or marble. Theodoros had been to Egypt to learn the art; there, they had been casting life-size time out of mind, when only little votives were being made in Greece.

He had a huge yard down by the harbor, full of sheds and hoists and scaffoldings, all powdered white with marble-dust that got up one’s nose. The noise was dreadful, at least for an ear like mine, what with slaves sawing blocks or chipping them down for columns, grinding and polishing column-drums. There was also a clattering forge where they were making rivets to fasten wall-blocks together. Clang-clang went the great hammers, and tink-tink-tink the little ones, as some skilled apprentice made the trims for a bronze. Hands over ears, I threaded my way to Theodores’ own workroom, which was swept and polished and had a great table full of drawings and plans. On a dais stood my brother, splendid in nakedness, one arm propped up on a wooden stand. He was to be holding up the Gorgon’s head, and the torso muscles had to show the lift. Before him stood Theodoros in his working dress, which was a small apron to keep the grit out of his private parts, and a great deal of clay daubed here and there on the rest of him. He had set up the core and was putting on the first surface, talking with Theas; the touchy part of the work was still to come. Theas used to say he learned enough good stories as Theodoros’ model to dine out on for the rest of his life.

Two days later, he could hardly open his mouth without being snapped at. I myself had known enough to come in on tiptoe. Theodoros was washed clean from dust and clay. My brother’s face returned me to my boyhood; he had shaved his beard. It was the statue’s skin that was being finished, down to the finest touch; the nipples, the hair of head and groin, the face. Its color had changed from clay-grey to a creamy white like alabaster. Theodoros was working upon the wax.

It had been spread with a hot knife over the clay and left to harden. Now he was smoothing it with a warm tool, or graving it with a cold one. Not to be in the way, I went over to the table. At one end were the set-squares and compasses and plumb lines of the architect; at the other, under the window, the tiny tools of his gem-carving, the vise and the treadle-wheel for the drill. A young man came in, and set down softly a hideous white waxen mask. The chief apprentice had been trusted with the Gorgon’s head.

“Please, Theodoros,” said Theas like a boy at school, “may I go outside?”

“If you must, if you must,” said the master, who must have known he was too well-mannered to ask unless he was bursting. “Yes, take a rest, I can finish the ears without you. Look in that tray, Sim, and you’ll find his eyes.”

It was full of split agates; set on one side was the perfect one, brown at the core with a milky rim, each half curved and smooth. “They don’t come in blue,” he said, “not with the markings right.”

At last the wax was finished; there stood complete a white ghostly man, pierced with rods through body and limbs and head, to tie the form firmly within the mold. Theodoros walked round and round it, making a tiny line with a stylos upon the eyebrow, or stroking a tendon with his broad thumb. Then he turned his back on it, and said to his apprentices, who were watching in dead silence, “Yes. Get on.”

Slaves had dragged in a tub full of wet clay. Into this slip the apprentices dipped their hands, working it with fingers and thumbs to test its fineness. One found a grain of grit, at which they all exclaimed with outrage, and started over again. Theodoros strode over and rubbed some between his palms, and said it would do, but let Sesostris look out next time. On this they scooped up the clay, which was so soft that it almost ran, and began to smooth it over the waxen body. Their touch was tender and delicate, as if they were anointing it; but as they worked, the fine outlines blurred, and in a while it was clay-grey again. Theodoros said to us, “Come back in four days. There’s nothing to see till then.”

As we walked off past the forge, Theas lifted his voice to shout, “I don’t know what the father will say. I should be home by now.”

All the same, he did not look anxious. Sculptors like Theodoros don’t find their models among men who want to be paid. You will see peasants strong enough to take an ass on their shoulders, hardier than soldiers; but they are not built like the athlete who has had the chance to train, and shape from his own body a work of art. Our father would not be sorry to see his heir shining in Samos, in eternal bronze. It was another thing than singing in a tavern. For that he would wait a few days longer, to see what had become of me.

Next day we spent with Kleobis, who had cheered up, and told Theas about our Ionian days. I hoped he would soon be putting on flesh again. He had lost his old healthy tan; his face was almost the color of Theodoros’ wax. He came with us, though, to the workshop to see the bronze broken from the mold. In any great city it’s a common sight today; but when I was young, hollow-cast statues were still a marvel in Samos, and unknown in the rest of Greece. A whole crowd who could not get in to watch the modeling were allowed to enjoy the sight.

Theodoros, I saw, could have done without us all. He enjoyed his fame; but, like most artists, not everything it brought with it. He’d have liked to view the work in peace, complete the finishing, and then show it perfect; and I do not blame him. No one can make me disclose a half-formed song; my mold, my furnace, are safely within my head.

After the smooth slip, the statue had been coated with thick strong clay, turning the waxen man into a clumsy giant with just a head, body and limbs. He was stained with the fire, in which he had been slow-hardened; and pierced with vents, through which his delicate waxen flesh had vanished away. When it had been melted out from him, in its place had been poured the bronze.

Theodoros never had sightseers when that was done. It was an agon, he said, a contest, win or lose all. His chief apprentice, who venerated him, confided to me at the tavern that he went on like a madman, shouting at them all, hitting them over the head, calling them bastard sons of slaves. If the mold was not propped and chain-slung just right above the fire; if a bit of unmelted metal closed a channel within the mold; if a hand or a foot had not been drained of all its wax before the casting, it would be disaster. “It’s like childbirth,” the apprentice said. “You know what went in at the start, but you don’t know what will come out.”

The fire-stained mold, holding its heavy secret, had been hoisted with a crane, and laid down on an oaken frame. Theodoros and his apprentices stood round with mallets and chisels made of hardwood. He stepped up to the mold. I saw him close his eyes a moment, and wondered what god he was appealing to: Hephaistos, I suppose. Then he hit the head a few sharp taps down the face, and it split open like a chestnut shell. There was Theas, in all his beauty and even a little more, noble and calm, each curl on his forehead perfect. He was dark from the furnace, his sockets awaited eyes, the tie-rods still stood out from his crown and nape, there was a nick on his brow from a bit of grit in the clay. All that would be mended before the burnishing. Theodoros swore at the nick, and cursed Sesostris, and set about cleaning the ears. The apprentices started on the body.

At last they craned it up onto its feet, for us to see it whole. Even unfinished, you could see it was one of the artist’s master-works. I looked from this immortal to my brother, gazing at it with his head on one side, the only time I could remember him looking shy. I thought of him as a child, crying when our father had his young dog killed for sheep-chasing; or staring open-mouthed at a thrall’s wife we had discovered bathing in a stream, then grabbing my hand and running away; or exercising with his javelin, creasing his brow to recall his trainer’s instructions. His beard was starting to grow again, and had just reached the untidy state. One day it would be grey, if he lived so long; and here forever would shine this burnished hero. Tears came to my eyes; but everyone was sneezing from the dust of the broken clay, and no one noticed.

He had two days to wait for a ship, in which time I showed him Samos. As we strolled the waterfront, he asked me what song I meant to sing at the contest.

“A hymn to Apollo. But I’ll have to work on it, to sing it solo. It was meant for a choral ode.”

“Why a solo, then? It’s the choral odes people come to hear.”

“Dear man, because I have no chorus.”

“But you could have one on Keos. How long do you take to teach a song?”

“Seven days; at a pinch I’ve done it in less. When I had a chorus.”

“Then whatever’s troubling you? We’re citizens, aren’t we? Just tell me how many, and if you want men or girls or boys, and I’ll have them for you.”

“But, Theas, how can you? You don’t know anything about music, except what you like to hear.”

“Oh, I know that,” he answered cheerfully. “But I know where to go, to get it done.”

Yes. He was the heir of Leoprepes of Iulis. If he said he could do it, he could. So I agreed; thinking in myself that if once more I was going to take and take and show him no return, I would as soon be dead. Even love cannot cast out pride.

He sailed some days ahead of me, to make smooth my path. Theodoros came with me to see him off, complaining that he had not stayed to see the statue polished and set up. Kleobis had a cold, and stayed indoors.

He was lending me the kithara. It is a costly instrument, which only a master of the craft can make; the money I’d saved for one had gone since Ephesos fell, part of it on a gay Samian robe to do the tavern credit. I could not take that to Keos; even my old one from Ephesos had to have half the border stitched back out of sight.

At the very last, on my sailing day, Kleobis begged off. He said his cold still hung about; would be nothing if he looked after it, but on a ship would most likely fly to his chest. He would stay in Samos, and make an offering for me on the day.

I was sad, but not much astonished. He had lost heart, he felt unlucky; he feared, perhaps, that on Keos he would find himself forgotten. I did not forget how the best doctor in Iulis had tended his sick apprentice; he could hardly fare worse in Samos, which had physicians of some renown. So I embraced him, told him to take good care of himself, and said that if I had any success, all Keos should hear my teacher’s name.

In some ways it was a relief to me. My father was too well-bred to insult a guest; but Kleobis was, after all, the father I had chosen in his stead, and I could not think the visit would have gone off easily.

I packed up the kithara, as I’d done over the years till I could almost do it sleeping, in its leather case, the embroidered sling folded around the soundbox, the spare strings in their pocket outside. “No one but I shall carry it a step,” I said, “till I bring it back.”

“Did you pack the wax and the resin? Don’t forget to warm the wax, don’t use too much, polish alone unless the wood feels dry.” I promised; I had known it all since I was sixteen. “Have you a spare plectrum?” I showed him two, one silver and one bone. “Good, good … I was as near to Sappho once as I am to you. A little dark thing; not much better-favored than you; which in a woman means worse … If now she flies you, soon will she follow; Taking no gifts now, soon be the giver; Wanting no love now, soon be the lover, For all her striving … I tell you, Apollo is a gardener who knows how to prune a vinestock. Go gather your grapes, my son.”

“If Apollo pruned me, I know who has fed and tended me. The grapes are yours.” I felt like weeping, and turned away. “Don’t come to the harbor. It’s a cold sharp wind, for all it’s sunny. Keep warm indoors.”

He laid aside his cloak, allowing that I was right. As I left, he said again that he would make an offering for me.

Among the people come to see me off I found, with astonished joy, Anakreon.

“We shall meet again, dear boy,” he said, putting both hands on my shoulders with his head aslant, and narrowing his green eyes. “But I think not in a tavern, except to drink. Come, you know as well as I do, yes? Keos has a surprise in store. I wish I could be there, but my host requires me. Ibykos hasn’t come. Now I wonder why, when I reminded him …? We shan’t quarrel, my dear. The hatter and the shoemaker don’t spoil each other’s trade. Now remember, let us see you here again, if only for a celebration.”

I was seen off, too, by a young hetaira I had visited once or twice. She had put on her best robe and all her paint; it was plain she really wished to claim my acquaintance in public. I was so touched that I embraced her on the gangplank. Oh yes, I was humble when I was young.

I expected to be met in Koressia by Theas, with a spare mule for me. As we turned the point, I described his bright head; then, as the sail was lowered and we rowed in, I saw the cluster of men about him. It was like an embassy. And one of them was my father.

Left to himself, I doubt if he would have known me. Till Theas hailed me, he was still looking about. I don’t know what he had expected, surely not a shepherd boy in a sheepskin; but whatever it was, he was not seeing it. As for me, it seemed he should have been much taller, and without a bald patch on his crown; he should have made me ill at ease, not causing him to be so. My sins against him would be different now.

He embraced me, which he’d not done when I left home, but which was proper with people watching; and that was just how it felt. I asked after his health and he after my journey. Then he presented me to his friends who had come to meet me. I understood now. Just as Theas had been told to stay at the best inn in Samos, all this had been planned to cloak me in respectability. I found myself thinking, O Zeus, how soon can I escape from all these people and get to work?

I conveyed my master’s regrets. Only my father remembered who he was, and that was not for his singing. Theas was at ease with everyone, a man among the men, and treated so by our father. He did not break the harmony; he was a son of the house, part of its riches, like a fine piece of vineyard. I, such as I was, was my own creation, and that of a foreign bard. What I brought to the house would come only from me. He was not used to it. Never mind, I thought; we are wanderers all, from Homer onward. One sings, and one moves on.

Our ride to the farm was quite a cavalcade; the friends had been invited to celebrate my return. I thought, like a passing traveler, how good the land looked and how small the house. My mother at the door had aged more than my father. She kissed me, and said I should have sent word that I was safe, which I knew was true. As her eyes dwelt on me, I remembered our father saying once that I got my looks from her side of the family. Whoever it was he had reproached her with, dead, I suppose, before my birth, I must have grown more like him.

While she bustled about with the food and wine, I slipped inside to find Philomache. She was waiting, dressed in her best, to appear for the short time proper to a modest maiden. In these years she had bloomed, with the thin delicate skin of red-haired beauty; her only defect was that she was small, like me. She stared amazed at this man who had come pushing through the curtain; then rushed to me crying, “Sim! I never knew you! How much better-looking you are!” She stood back from me, and added, “I mean, you look like someone important, now.”

“Theas says you’re betrothed.” It had been on my mind; I did not think our father would have considered her wishes, if the estate was right. This was so; but by luck she was pleased with the young man, who it seemed had courted her prettily, sending her gifts and garlands as if they had been free to choose. “He’s here now,” she said, lighting up; I could see she was less shy of him already than she was of me. “Midylos, the son of Bacchylides.”

It was the father, I now remembered, to whom mine had presented me first of all at the harbor. He’d not thought to show me the youth with whom she was to spend her life.

“He sent me a dish of apples,” she said, going pink, “with a real poem, written. It said I was like an apple at the very top of the tree.” I did not spoil it by hoping he’d quoted right. Of course, she could not read.

When I sought him among the guests, I found him well-favored and no fool, eager for news about the war. Overhearing our talk, other men came up to learn what was happening in Ionia. Before long I had a good-sized audience. I was used to that in Samos. It was only when I saw my father’s eyes on me, that I remembered I’d never been let in with his guests before.

Theas in his wisdom had found me a flautist living in Koressia, and it was there that I trained my chorus. Even so, my brother was at some trouble to bring my father questions about the farm, lest he should come down to oversee me.

Thanks to this, I was happy enough. The flautist had never seen me before; the chorus boys, though all from Iulis, had been young children when I left home. More than half their lives had passed since they had seen Black Sim, if they ever had. I started clear; they were all proud of being trained by a Iulis man, instead of a Koressian as they had been last time.

Though a poet of no distinction, he had not trained them badly. He had even taken them to Delos, where the song, rather than the singing, had lost the prize. They came in together, and you could hear the words.

I’d used for my ode the old story of Apollo and his little brother Hermes, the newborn rogue who crept from his cradle to go cattle-stealing, and crept back there, all innocent, before his lordly brother could trace the herd. Boldly, I had put in two solo passages: a handsome boy for Apollo, and for Hermes, a little treble, bound to win hearts. In those days, breaks in the unison were thought unorthodox. Not long after, Thespis established them in Athens, taking the chief solo himself, from which we have modern tragedy. But Keos is wary of innovations.

The story ends, of course, with Apollo tracking the little thief by the sound of his lyre, which he has just invented. He gives it his big brother in exchange for the stolen cows. Apollo, entranced, forgives him, and tries the new instrument with his divine hand. This is where one shows what the kithara will do.

We rehearsed in the flautist’s orchard, a pleasant place. I took care to bring him some gift each time, for the fruit was ripe and of course the boys were stealing it. It is a great mistake to rehearse indoors, when you will perform in the open air.

Once I walked down to the Apollo temple, in whose precinct the contest would be held. True to Kean simplicity, or cheeseparing if you like, it was one of those antique places most cities had pulled down by now, to rebuild in stone. A cottage-sized naos, with the image at one end of it; a roof of thatch, everything else of timber. Apollo, too; and Keos does not excel in wood-carving. He stood stiff as a tree, his arms straight down at his sides, his hair in round curls like sausages; you could say that he had a face, but not much more. Bright blue eyes, bright red hair. The columns had red shafts and blue capitals; woody knots showed on the shafts. I thought of the Artemis temple at Ephesos, the new Hera one at Samos. I gazed, and began to laugh. Not that the god would despise the offerings of simple worshippers. I was just remembering how scared I’d been of performing in this little town, before people whom this had satisfied. I too, as a child, had entered this barn with awe.

Behind the image I found the mouse-pit, the only bit of marble in the place; the sides were polished, to keep the tenants in. “Bold plunderers of Demeter’s hoarded store,” I said, invoking them with proper gravity. One or two stood up and twitched pink noses at me, in the hope that it was feeding-time.

The flautist—may his shade drink nectar in Elysium!—invited me to his house the night before the contest, to keep rested and fresh, he said. The night before that, my father spent the first half of suppertime complaining he was short-handed for getting in the barley; thinking, clearly, that I could have shortened rehearsals to give a hand. The second half, he went over my list of boys, which he had got from Theas, telling me which of their fathers were of consequence, and ought to be obliged, and which had done him bad turns, making their sons unworthy of any favors. One of these, as it happened, was singing the solo lines for Apollo. I listened in respectful silence.

My mother glanced at me sidelong. I had always been her changeling; now I was double-changed. I knew, though I could not help it, that I was talking like some distant kinsman on a passing visit. I caught Philomache watching me almost with awe. I must tell Kleobis, I thought; it will make him laugh.

Next day I slipped away without ceremony, bidding only Theas goodbye. “I won’t ride down with you,” he said, “you’ll be wanting to think what you’re about, and we’ll be cutting the barley. He’s only short-handed because it’s cropped well this year. I offered up a kid for you, at the turn of the moon; but don’t tell him, he hasn’t missed it.” He strode off through the silver olives.

The flautist knew Ionia well; we spent the evening in pleasant talk, and turned in with a cup of warm neat wine, to settle us. Almost it could have been Ephesos. I slept quite well.

The morning was fine, already smelling of autumn. The smoke of sacrifice hung in the air, sweetened with a little incense; Keos is sparing of such things. There were three or four other choirs, all Kean but one, which came from neighboring Kythnos. We poets exchanged homely gossip, as people do at country festivals. The Keans were curious about me, most of them not having heard of me before, even from my family; but they were more concerned with their own affairs.

The choral odes opened the day; the games and the fair would follow. Robed and wreathed now, we poets stood in the temple porch behaving ourselves. The maiden choruses sat whispering, in their strict matrons’ charge; the boys dropped beetles down one another’s backs, and so on, and were tapped by us poets with our little staffs.

The judges sat on their wooden thrones, brought out from the temple store. There was one, an oldish man, whom the others seemed to defer to. I asked someone why; he murmured that this was a guest of honor from Athens.

The back of my neck tingled. I was to sing before an Athenian.

Despite her wars, nobles against commons, hills against plain, Pisistratos out or in, which made this seem no place for my old master, the name of Athens rang for me, as it had in my boyhood on the Kean hills, looking towards Hymettos. I forgot the Keans, and my worries about whether they would know what I was doing. An Athenian was here.

His name was Prokles. You never hear of him now. But his Lay of Ajax was good, and at one time you heard it everywhere.

I kept my eye on him while the first two choirs were singing (mine would be third) and at one bad passage I saw him blink. This gave me hope.

So much I remember well. But I’ve given my Apollo ode so many times, that my ear hears Athenians, Thessalians, Andrians, Euboians … At any rate, I was told later that the last choir sang badly because mine had put them out of heart. Well, in my time I have made good music before my betters. Why not? Our art is like a wheatfield, the tallest force up the rest. May I no longer live—not that I shall much longer in any case!—when the shortest want to cut the tallest down.

It was the Athenian judge who crowned me with the laurel. Then the people who’d come up to greet me parted to make way; and I remembered I’d been singing before my father.

I felt for him then, a little. He could not have borne it if his son had failed to win; on the other hand, he’d always hated to be proved wrong. Some of his acquaintances asked him, meaning it quite pleasantly, where he had been hiding me all this time; some said they had not known that he had two sons; and one put so much discretion into it, it was clear he thought me a by-blow. Theas, as usual, sailed in with the right word and got us out of it.

After this, for some days I was taken about to meet people. But one morning, when my father was about his business, Theas fetched me to an outhouse, where his sheep-dog had whelped, to look at the litter and decide which ones to keep. We drowned the runts; the dam seemed glad to be rid of them, and suckled the big ones happily enough. As we flung the bodies on the midden, I said laughing, “That’s where I nearly went, I daresay.” He went quite white, before covering it with some silly joke. I hastened to share it; we laughed like a pair of idiots. I’d guessed the truth from his face: as a child, he’d heard our parents debating whether to keep me. Perhaps for a long time after, in his simplicity, he’d supposed they might change their minds. No wonder he’d thought the ugly baby, whom only he befriended, belonged more to him than them.

“Well,” he said presently, slapping me on the back, “the father wants now to keep you in the family. Don’t say I told you; but he wants you to take over the Euboian land.”

“Me?” I stared at him unbelievingly. “But why? He might as well offer me a ship to pilot. I’ve forgotten everything I knew about farming; and besides, I’ve my life to live.”

“Cool down! He doesn’t want you to farm it. Old Phileas can do it in his sleep; he’s been steward for ten years. The father just thinks that a son who does such credit to us all should have a proper estate. All this has touched him in his pride, you know.”

“I can see,” I said, “that he doesn’t want me singing in taverns for a living. Of course I don’t intend to. But if one of us is to live like a landed gentleman, with a steward to do the work, it should be you, not me. The gods know, you’ve earned it.”

“Oh, it was I put it into his head. You’ve never seen the Euboian farm, have you? Nor had I, before you went away.” I remembered how the air at home had seemed to lighten, when our father went to visit it. “I’ve been over once or twice since then. It’s good land, horse-pasture mostly, though the olives bear well. The plan is that it’s to be your portion, and this place will be mine.”

All this was slowly coming home to me. “If you say it’s good, it is. But meantime, I’d be caretaking, and I need to travel.”

“He knows that. I told him all about it. He’s quite willing you go to the festivals to sing—or anywhere else respectable, is the way he put it! You’re to draw half the yield from the place in his lifetime; and you won’t be skimped on that. Look now, Sim. You’ll be a famous man before you’ve done, that I can see; but even so, you’ll live hand to mouth, unless you’ve something behind you. Only think of all those famous men in Ionia, and yourself for that matter; prospering one day, fugitives the next. If you’d owned some land, would you have hung on in Samos? No slavemaster like an empty belly, the saying goes.”

I saw, at last, all he had done for me; and for my master, to whom I could give a home in his last years. My tongue was loosened, and I thanked him as best I could.

He was pleased, as he’d always been when I looked up to him as a child. Why not? If it was a weakness, I loved him for it and was glad to indulge it; it was a small enough return. “You see,” he said, “I talked to that judge from Athens, who came to your victory feast. I asked him where a poet would do best, now Ionia’s overrun, and he said, ‘In Athens, if all goes well there.’ He says Pisistratos looks to be settled in the tyranny for life. The people want him, most of the lords put up with him, and he’s exiled the few who won’t. He hasn’t spilled much blood, he governs well. This man says he’ll bring back the great days of Theseus.”

“So he said to me. But they said the same about Polykrates.”

“Ah. But now you won’t have to look for bread. Euboia’s so close to Attica, it’s no more than a ferry-crossing. You can live on the estate, and just go over for the festivals to show what you can do. If this is another fellow who’s only for flattery and fancy-boys, never mind; you’ll have seen Athens, which sounds to me worth seeing. I don’t see how you can lose.”

“Prokles asked me to be his guest, and said he’d show me the city. But I thought, then, that to be another tyrant’s suppliant would be too much.”

“Well, you’ll be nobody’s suppliant now. All you need is to be civil to the father. You’ll be no suppliant there; he needs it as much as you do.” He did not add, “but of course he will not say so.” Such things were our inheritance.

We were about to walk home, when I looked back at the midden. One of the pups we had drowned in the tub had come to life again, and was mewling and wriggling. I looked at Theas. He picked it up and put it to the dam, and it nuzzled to the dug, sucking strongly. We laughed, and went away.