The Praise Singer: A Novel

1

I LIVED THREE OR four years in Euboia, before my father died.

Every month or so, I used to cross over to show him the farm accounts: so many horses sold in Attica, the yield of olives or oil or barley. The steward told me, and I wrote it down; my memory is for words, not numbers. I would bring my father his half-share, and give him the mainland news; and, if he asked me, would tell him where I had performed.

I came, if I could, to the chief Kean festivals, and the games. One year I had my wish, and made Theas a victory song when he won the wrestling. At first I was still just Leoprepes’ son, home on a visit. Later, things began to change. He let it be seen that I no longer disgraced the family; but I don’t remember his ever praising a song.

The farm had had a wing thrown out, for Theas and his wife and their two handsome children, boy and girl. Philomache and her Midylos were still childless. His father Bacchylides, who had been a great athlete in his day, fretted about it more than he did. “We’re both young yet,” he said. “I don’t believe she’s barren.” He had too much courtesy to tell her brother that he’d sired healthy bastards himself. “And even if she were, I’d sooner have a woman who pleases me than a fool farrowing fools.” She had a bloom on her, and it seemed he suited her too.

Each year I traveled to the greater festivals as they fell due, the Isthmia, or the Olympics, the Nemea, the Panathenaia; sang in the contests, and sometimes hymned the victors. I have always enjoyed the challenge of a victory hymn. One can’t know beforehand who the victor will be of any event, nor which victor is going to hire one. Besides which, only one bard can win a singing contest, and one may have one’s work for nothing but applause; but a victory ode means money.

The rest of the year I shared between Euboia, where I had my house, and Athens, where I had my hopes.

In these first years, it was Euboia mostly. It is a god-frequented land, with woody gorges and chestnut-shaded hills. In the mountain villages, or along the shore away from the big harbors, old men will tell you tales which Achilles may well have heard at Cheiron’s knee. They have that smell of great age one can’t mistake, like old green bronze. I made my Lament of Danae there, because of a song I heard a woman sing as she turned the quern.

The land had been in our family time out of mind. We had been Euboians, till two generations back, when my great-grandfather was on the losing side in the Lelantine War. He’d been a great landowner down in the plain; when that was gone he retired to Keos, and lived on the place which had been his Kean wife’s dowry, and where I was born. My father used to say the Euboian land I farmed was just a smallholding, compared with the ancient glories. But I wanted a living, not a fortune, which I hoped to find for myself; and I lived there very well.

The farm is in the hills near Dystos, east of Swallow Lake, on a slope that faces Attica. It’s a short ride down to the coast, where any boatman will run you across to Rhamnos. From there it’s an easy journey to Athens, between the heights of Parnes and Hymettos. I used to keep a mule stabled with a Rhamnos farmer; starting early, I could be in Athens by noon.

Old Phileas, the steward, was worth his weight in gold. He set me free. When I first came, he made me about as welcome as a conquering Mede. He was a square, slow-moving countryman, full of grumbles, straight out of Hesiod. I soon saw his sullenness did not come from fear of having petty misdeeds found out; he was afraid I’d spoil his good work with ignorant meddling. The land was tended, the slaves were well trained and fed, the horses sleek. I saw what this would mean to me, and took more trouble to sweeten him than I’ve done with many a prince; rode round the estate with him, praised this or that (it was wonderful how my boyhood lore came back to me) and told him my father had advised me to lean on his experience. He softened; though he grumbled still that the master would have nothing changed from his own father’s day, and if the horse-pasture was put under corn it would bring in as much again. However, I was now his audience and not his theme.

He found me a good maid to cook for me and keep house, a free-woman, cheerful, black-haired and ruddy, who, when she sang about the place, did it in tune. One day, when he came with his morning business, he looked about at the room, remarked on the well-kept furniture, and, gazing at the sideboard, said, “That Dorothea, she’s a rare admiration for you.”

I pricked an ear. Noting he had a kindness for her, I took it they were bedmates, and had not presumed on bright smiles and dainty cooking.

“She’s a good girl; whose daughter is she?”

He scratched his ear. “Well, sir, that’s a question. She’s known as Smikros the pilot’s daughter, but he claimed he’d been a two-month at sea when she was got. Then he drowned in a squall off Rhenaia, so it was all one to him. But it’s stood in her way, and the offers she’s had weren’t fit for her. She reckons she’s well placed where she is.”

His eye enlightened me. “Well,” I said, “I daresay she’s not been without a father’s care, whoever he may be. I think she and I will get on well together.”

I was right in this. Of course I was not the first; she took it easily, as something we had both been expecting. Her cheerful friendliness went on much the same; she felt that she was now in her proper place, and could manage things more to my advantage. When I offered to buy a slave for her, she said she liked things done her own way, and would never have the patience to stand over some clumsy slut. She was the best-natured of girls, teaching me her old work songs, but always quiet when I was making a song myself. She bore no bastards—the women of the island have their ways—and it startled me when one night, as she was taking off her gown, she asked me whom I was betrothed to.

“Why, to no one. I would never have lived with you, and kept such a thing to myself.”

“Wouldn’t you, Sim? One never knows with the gentry. Every time you’ve been over to Keos, I’ve wondered if you’d come back with a bride.”

She did not mean it. She well knew I’d have told her; she just liked to hear it said. But, though I could say it, there were other things best said, too.

“My little quail, I’m not only not betrothed, I left home just to avoid it. But …”

“Oh, you will.” She had folded her gown, and stood up with her hands on her firm white hips. “You’ll want a son to leave the place to, and then you’ll do it. Don’t make me promises, or I might not take it so well.” She was smiling; she had her pride.

“Get into bed, or you’ll come out in gooseflesh. I’m not one for promises. Anything can happen to anyone; I saw that in Ionia. Men born in riches have ended up washing a Persian’s floors. But long ago I made my mind up not to marry, and I don’t expect to change it. You’re all I need in a woman, my honeycomb. I wish I were all you need in a man.”

She laughed and reached her hand out; but I took it in mine. “No, wait. Poets are traveling men. And I’ve barely begun my travels.”

“Why, for sure you must travel, Sim. I know that. It’s like seeing the great cities myself, to hear you come back and tell of them. While you’re gone I can get the cheeses made, and the house turned out, and set something up on the loom.”

“Like Penelope,” I said. I wanted her to understand.

“Oh no, Sim. No hangers-on for me. My father would soon see them to rights.”

“Penelope had a long time to wait. That’s what I meant.” Her hand fell quiet. I said, “Once a poet has made a name, he looks for a patron. And a patron wants his favored poet to be his house-guest most of the year.”

“I’ve heard of that.” She was thoughtful, not angry. “But this is good land. You’ll never need to eat another man’s bread.”

“Not from want, no. That’s why this land was given me. But I must go where I’ll be heard.”

“Yes, Sim,” she said, and lay thinking. I blamed myself for not having talked of all this before. Most people I met needed no telling.

“Praise-singing is like love,” I said. “You do it from the heart, or you’re a whore. If a man I despise invites me, I can say no, and wait for someone better. But one day it will come. If you feel it’s no life for you here alone, waiting for me to visit when I can, then I’ll give you a dower, and find some old grannie to keep the house for me.

“You’ll keep the place? You’ll not sell it?” She was her father’s child, both feet firm on the ground.

“No indeed; it’s family land.”

“Why then, what kind of fool do you take me for? I’ve a good home and a good man; and what’s more, I’m respected now. You don’t know how it was sometimes in the village. But now, there’s many women married to sailors, or men who’ve gone off to fight for pay in foreign wars, would be glad to change with me. They’ve the cold bed, and hunger with it; and mostly their man won’t make a name to bring them credit. If you’ve kept from marrying so that no one can blame you for being long away, that’s fair dealing. You’ll get no scolding here, Sim. We’re folk who fill each other’s needs.”

Ah well. I’m glad I can bring back those old Euboian days, and Dorothea when she was young. As for Athens, that comes back like yesterday.

It has all gone, now. Oh yes, they will be making it very fine. By the time they’re done, my Athens will be nothing to it. At one time, they were vowing they’d keep the High City just as the Medes had left it, to witness their impiety. They soon got tired of that, as who would not; but one learns not to talk sense to men at such a time. When they came round, they resolved at least not to mend what the barbarians had defiled with blood and fire. It can all go for rubble, to fill in the new foundations or raise the bastions up. Then they will build their victory ode in marble. Well, they have the right.

Aischylos was in Sicily a few years back—turned fifty, which I can hardly credit yet—and said to me over a jar of Etna wine, “It was you, Simonides, who first opened my ear to song. But it was those days that taught me tragedy.”

I could not keep from smiling. “If you mean what I think, son of Euphorion, in those days you were ten years old.”

“True, master of memory. And what I saw has mixed with what I’ve heard, most of all from you; and those again with what my mind’s eye has made of them. It’s all one cloth now, I shall never tease out the threads. But it taught me tragedy, all the same.”

“Yes. I can understand it. You grew up knowing the end, as your audience knows when the play begins that it will end with Agamemnon dead. But when you were ten I was forty; when I first saw Athens, your father was hardly born. The end came to us from a bright noon sky.”

He sat staring out through the porch towards the harbor, knitting his fair thick brows above his beaky nose; a strong man still, whose greatest pride is that he fought at Marathon. I could see him setting the ancient tale to his own sonorous music. No, he never knew the lyric years.

There was building then, too. I suppose it is all forgotten now. The new High City is to be for the gods alone; no human ruler shall have a stronghold there any more. It will be a dedication of the people, a pledge of freedom from Medes and tyrants. A great conception. I shan’t live to see even the first stones laid. It’s half ruin still, half builders’ yard.

The Medes burned the gatehouse. By the time they’d cleared the fallen timbers, it was just as I remembered it when I first set foot there; a gap in the oldest wall, that the old men called King Theseus’ Gate. Like enough he would have had one there. The stones were dark with time, mottled with lichen, and with ancient stains which they used to call the blood of the Amazons. The threshold was sunny, and lizards lived there.

From this dark entry, you came out into gleaming light. (The Mysteries teach us the power of that.) Much was brand-new, but everything seemed to be, it was kept so bright, the bronzes shining like gold, the paint on the marble never left to fade. Yet in all the splendor there was something welcoming, homelike; nothing on the great hubristic Samos scale. There were the comings and goings of a great house, not a palace; though the Athenians always said that the Palace of Erechtheus used to stand on that very site where the Archon built.

He was always called The Archon. Polykrates, who lived close to Asia, never made any bones about being Tyrant. But Pisistratos was all Athenian; he respected custom and the form of law. There were still nine Archons, even though most were his kin and all of them his supporters. His big old house next the Erechthid shrine, though very handsome inside, made no outward show of opulence. It took me two years to get through the door.

They were pleasant years, though, visiting other cities, or staying with Athenian guest-friends such as Prokles and people I’d met through him. When the lyre went round with the wine, I would have some little thing ready, a lyric, or a skolion on events. Those lyres! Never in tune, passed on by some man whose hands were calloused with the bridle or the disk. Not that anyone cared, it was the song they wanted, and it would have been conceited in a young foreign guest to bring his own instrument along. After a while, though, the lyres improved, because I began to be handed them first, before they had been ill-treated.

Then at the Feast of Athene—the yearly one, not the Great—I entered the contest for the choral odes.

In Keos, men do not sing at supper; it is better to choose one’s choir from boys who can still be taught. But in Athens, men sing from their youth and keep it up. I used men that first time, and have done there ever since.

We put on our fresh white robes and our wreaths of wool and olive-sprays, and went up to the High City in the late summer heat to wait in the temple forecourt. Before our turn came, I looked at the seats of honor. In the midst sat the Priestess of Athene on the highest throne, between the priests of Zeus and of Apollo. Then came the priests of the other gods, and next to them the Archons.

Pisistratos had the right-hand place, with a small respectful space around his chair; but one could have picked him out without it. He was already past seventy, and Theodoros could have carved him for a Zeus. Tall and still straight, fresh-faced, with hair and beard of a pure shining silver, and bright unfaded blue eyes, he was handsome even now, and must have been remarkable when he was young. He had a festal wreath on, of gold leaves with a few real ones stuck in for modesty; and his white robe had a gold border, but not too much. I compared this regal dignity with Polykrates’ new-rich showiness, and could see why the Archon had never been without a following, whether he was in or out. He was listening, I noticed, to the present singers, like a man who knows what he is hearing.

Our turn came. I stepped up between the spotted lions by the terrace steps. My choir knew their order and moved into it neatly. One expects that nowadays; then, one often saw choirs jostling about, even arguing aloud about where to stand. I bowed to the High Priestess—here was no Polykrates who’d expect to be noticed first—took in the other hierophants with a general reverence, and made the Archon my homage. He responded gravely; I was reminded of Zeus in the Iliad, shaking his ambrosial locks to a slight sound of thunder. Yet it never quite lost a human courtesy. I lifted my wand to the flautist (one must always praise Athene with the flute, which was her own invention) and began to sing.

The ode was about Athene’s help to Perseus when he killed the Gorgon; how she borrowed for him Hermes’ winged sandals and his sword, and Hades’ hood of invisibility, and set him on his way. For all this I praised her; but I ended praising Perseus, because when he became a king, still owning Medusa’s deadly head, he hid it underground, making a dedication of his power to justice.

No doubt the Archon had had plenty of such tributes; in his long career it was agreed he had deserved them. One look had told me he had too much dignity to let compliments decide a contest for him; on the other hand, my choir had sung clearly and in tune, and I thought my ode was better than the others. As it turned out, he and the other judges thought so too. I was awarded a fine bronze tripod with gilded rings for handles, and a white bull with gilded horns. The Priestess of Athene declared me winner; the victory chariot was led up, and the men of my choir, as they pulled me around the precinct, sang me a paean.

Later, I got to know that painted chariot like my own chair at home. I have stood in it some fifty times. The Medes burned it, of course. I have a ring from its yoke-pole, bent with heat, which someone picked up among the ruins and gave me for a memento, saying I had ridden it oftener than anyone else. Yet I can still recall the wonder of that first time, and how I said to myself, not that I had pleased the Archon—I had forgotten even that—but that I was at last a victor in Athens.

After my sacred ride, I was led back to Pisistratos, who said what he had doubtless said a hundred times before with equal graciousness. He added that he hoped it would not be long before he and his friends had the pleasure of hearing me again.

The man next him said a few words of assent, which surprised me till I saw the likeness. This must be Hippias, the eldest son. He was then a little over forty. Beside his father, he put one in mind of a famous statue, copied by a sculptor not quite so good. I said what one ought, wondering, as I went, whether the words about hearing me again were spoken every time, or whether they were worth something.

My prize beast was duly sacrificed at the altar before the porch, the priestesses’ portion delivered to the temple servants, the rest of the meat carried to my host’s house for the victory feast. For the first time I saw the trophy head of a victory bull, mine, hung in its garlands above the door.

My host was Prokles; he had asked everyone he knew. After having found me in Keos when nobody had heard of me, he was naturally pleased that he had backed a winner. The supper-couches went all around the wall; he had borrowed from half his guests.

All the Athenian poets had been invited. No doubt they said to each other what losers say of winners, some of which is sometimes true; but they were far more civil than I had hoped for, and, indeed, we had some very good talk about our craft. After the wine and the garlands had come in, guests wandered from couch to couch, greeting friends or getting acquainted with strangers. To me it was all delight; the first time in my life, I think, when I forgot that I was ugly.

The hour came when people drift in after leaving other parties, and a well-trained doorkeeper will tell unwanted ones that the drinking is over. Once or twice I heard the discordant singing going off down the street. Then suddenly there were laughing voices, the doorman was all civility, and my host got so swiftly to the door, one wondered how he did it without running.

Four or five men came in. The leader was a little over thirty, of middle height, graceful and slender, dressed with the greatest elegance in a robe of fine-combed wool dyed light green, and scarlet sandals buckled with gold. His hair was dressed in the latest style, bound round his head in two plaits, with a curled fringe combed down in front over the ends, as neat as if done in gold wire. His face, though it would not have inspired a sculptor, was comely, and seemed from liveliness handsomer than it was. He was clean-shaved, which you don’t see today. Then, many young men of rank kept it up well into their thirties; it’s a fashion which has disappeared, like others now thought to smack of aristocracy. His friends, though outshone by him, were very much in his style. Since my host, whose couch I had been sharing, had gone to greet him, I turned to my neighbor to ask who he might be.

He, and the next man, both fixed their eyes on me in wonder. It was as if I had pointed to the moon, and asked what was that light. “Why,” said the nearer one, “that is Hipparchos”; and the other, seeing me still no wiser, added, “The Archon’s second son.”

He swept into the room with his little troop behind him, waving a greeting here and there. Unlike his elder brother, he had not their father’s face; no doubt he took after the mother’s side. Of course I had heard of him; no one could have been entertained in Athens even once without that. If my mind had not been on other things, I should not have been so slow. As it was, I had barely time to collect myself before he reached me.

“Ah!” he cried, embracing Prokles and me in a single smile, “we are still in time! I have been urging these fellows through the streets as though we were on a training run, to be here before the victor picks up the lyre.”

I was presented, and he praised my ode. He was the first to mention the lines that I had liked best myself. (There is praise, after all, which makes one wonder what one did wrong, to have caught the fancy of such a fool.) A handsome laughing young fellow beside him, with dark hair hanging in long crimped lovelocks, said, “Don’t forget Mother’s message.”

“I was coming to it, brother. She said the ode was very fine and made splendid music. I will add for myself, to spare their modesty, that my sisters said just the same. Thessalos expects me to forget everything I’m charged with, I don’t know why.”

Despite their different looks, there was a likeness in their movements and their way of speech, as if they were a good deal together. They and their friends were all found places on the couches; there was a sense of precedence, but without formality, which one could see was the style of their set. Fresh wreaths appeared for all; our host, provident man, must have been prepared for this visitation. The wine went round again. Then the cry began for a song.

I had known enough to be ready for this. At one’s victory feast, one can sing whatever one chooses; and some people always expect something in the style of one’s competition piece. But it is unwise to give it them. The solemn precinct, the great audience, the thought of the famous bards who have stood in that place before one, the men of one’s choir all tuned like one’s lyre to concert pitch: one can offer only a shadow of all this, singing solo in a private room. Part of our craft is a sense of the occasion.

There was a song I had made in Samos, and never had the heart to sing; not even to my master, for whom it would have gone too near the bone. It came from long brooding on the changefulness of human fortune, of fate and chance, and the folly of counting on anything beyond the moment. Now that the wheel had turned again for me and come bright side up, I knew that I could sing it

The heroes too of old,

Sired by the gods our masters,

Knew ere their days were told,

Their perils and disasters.

All things are from the gods, I ended; when they send us joy, let us catch it as it flies, for who would choose life without it? Not even kings, not even the immortals.

The new guests made a very courteous audience. It must have been their second party that night, if not their third, and none of them were sober; but they listened quietly, applauded as if they knew what they had heard, and said some very graceful things. After that the lyre went round, and we all sang skolions. Though Hipparchos made himself lord of the revels and could almost have been the host, he was never insolent, and Prokles seemed flattered, rather than not.

A few places along, a man was sharing his couch with a handsome youth, with whom he had arrived. Between the songs, as people moved here and there, Thessalos went up, and asked the youth to move for a moment, as he had some news to give his friend. He got down, and was beginning to look about, when Hipparchos called, “Oh, my dear Kleinias, my brother wants a lesson. Come here and take his place, and let him find one where he can.” The youth went over with a smile—he could have done nothing else, without looking surly—while Thessalos talked charmingly to the older friend. Hipparchos, laughing at first, grew serious and confiding. Once I saw the brothers catch each other’s eye. It seemed they were loyal allies.

Prokles, returning to our couch from going among the guests, said in my ear, “He has paid you a great compliment, coming like this with the most select of his friends. As a rule, when he looks in at a party, he brings some flute-girls to play.”

“No boys?” I asked, having used my eyes.

“Oh no. That matter he takes seriously.”

I glanced that way. He did not look as if he pledged his soul in the cup; but I guessed what Prokles meant. “A matter between gentlemen?”

“Just so. A matter of pride, I fancy.”

No need for more. The old nobility of Attica, like that of Sparta, looked back to the Sons of Homer. Women were for pastime; but your young friend must be someone you met in the gymnasium, not the whorehouse; someone whose father your father knew, who would lock shields with you or ride at your side in war. And no house went further back than the Pisistratids.

A few songs later, they left in a little breeze of gay goodbyes. Hipparchos took Prokles by both shoulders, and thanked him prettily for putting up with their invasion. “You must blame your own good company, and the gifted friends it brings you. Here’s one whom I hope to share.” He turned to me, with a boyish and modest grace. “I must put in my claim before all Athens gets ahead of me. Will you sup with us three days from now, and let us hear you sing again?”

I expect I accepted civilly as I’d been trained to do; when he had gone, I felt I must have stared at him like an oaf. Prokles rushed back from seeing him off to grasp my hand and cry, “You’re made, my boy! You’re made!”

He called for a toast to my success, and everyone drank, even the rival poets. There was only one silent man: the one whose supper-couch Thessalos had been sharing. He sat alone now; the handsome youth who had come with him was missing. But at any big Athenian party, trifles like that are no more than common form.