The Praise Singer: A Novel

5

THEY SAY THAT THE Arabian phoenix dies in flame, and is reborn from its ashes. This is certainly true of Athens, and I wish only good to that strong and thrusting chick. But now I am old, the un-burned phoenix is the Athens of my heart. It is the city I have carried westward with me, into Greater Greece. When I look back, my years there seem one long summer, with bitter winter coming in a single day. I can scarcely believe that there were fourteen years of it. That it was the core of my life, I know.

Besides the rest, it was there that I first grew rich. I’ve heard that I have a name for liking money, and so I do. Most people do, who have got away from Keos and are allowed to spend it. Men like it still more, who have fled with nothing from a fallen city, and lived hand to mouth, and seen a dear friend and master bleed away his pride. Yes, I like to have money. I have made a great deal, and spent what I needed to live well, but never all of it; so I was no man’s sycophant when the bad times came. In my way, I am still a son of Leoprepes. He liked money too, but he never cheated for it; Theas liked it, but never robbed a peaceful ship for it; I like it, but I have never lied for it. Money buys many things, of which the best is freedom. Samos taught me that.

When I crossed to Attica, I had the Lament for Pisistratos nearly done. An epitaph had been in my head already, before the summons came. I have put it in my book, because the tombstone it was carved on has disappeared. Angry men are unjust, and the dead have no voice to answer. I had hoped that my words would save it, but they are rubble now. I suppose they will fill in the ground under some grand new temple. Well, they will find good company.

I went, then, to court in Athens, just turned thirty, my head steaming with songs. I was in the city of which I’d dreamed since boyhood; I had a patron more like a friend, who expected no servility; I was doing what I had been born to do; and for being so happy I was getting paid. Sometimes I would bend over water to glimpse my face; I reckoned it should keep the gods from getting too jealous.

I found the two brothers ruling in perfect harmony. If Hippias enjoyed it less, that was not because Hipparchos crossed him, or tried to exceed his due share of power. Far otherwise; he found the business of government tedious, and left to his elder all he could. Such public councils as absolutely required him, he would attend, and assent or dissent as Hippias had instructed. On such occasions he would even stand up to speak. He did it well (or he’d never have opened his mouth) and I know his words were his own, for he tried them out on me. But for him it was a performance, nothing more. He did his duty by his kin, as he would have done in attending some dull wedding. When it was over, he went back to his own affairs.

It was another thing with the religious rites and the great processions. For all Hippias’ well-known piety, when the city’s gods were honored, Hipparchos reigned. I have often thought, in later years, that he was born too soon, and too high. If he were living now, a mere knight like Aischylos son of Euphorion, he might be putting tragedies on the stage to delight the people, and making them laugh with satyr-plays, and be kept in balance by the contest with his peers. Who can trace the gods’ ways with men? All tragedy needs a victim. He was a patron of poets, but he never knew of his last and greatest gift to them. He gave them a theme: hubris and nemesis. The tragic poets have lived off it ever since.

In those days, I kept my pity for Hippias. Not that his power was shaky. He was even valued; but only as the hand of his dead father, keeping in trust his heritage of good rule. Any citizen, if asked, would have said that Pisistratos would have made two of him, but there seemed no harm in him, and for that we could all be thankful. Of course he knew it; men feel such a thing through flattery like a stone through a sandal sole. He would have liked to make his own mark and hoped to do it, but was too prudent to make any changes yet. He was no fool; he saw the Spartans getting stronger in the south, the barbarians in the east; he could foresee a time when he’d need be a better man than his father, to keep what his father won. But at Hippias’ age, then, his father had been a bold adventurer. Hippias was a worrier. He had no wish at all to relinquish power, and willingly took the larger share of it; but he was less sure of himself, and put much faith in oracles and omens.

I saw all that for myself; he did not confide in me, it was Onomakritos who shared his counsels. I thought of the Old Archon’s words about strength and sweetness and the fleck of mold on the grape. Where the strength lay now was still untested; where the sweetness was, I had no doubt.

No one, I am sure, ever made patronage more delightful than Hipparchos did. Here in warm Sicily, King Hieron makes it kind and dignified, and just what an old man needs. But in those years I was young, and my needs were different.

Hippias had moved into Pisistratos’ stately house. There was room in plenty for his growing children, and he could have taken in unmarried Hipparchos, too. But he was well suited as he was, and had no wish to move in. Hippias altered nothing, except to fill a room with shelves and chests for his ancient scrolls of oracles. He was a man for getting early to bed, and liking his household to do the same.

Hipparchos’ house had a fine prospect, looking north towards Mount Parnes. It carried his style as a song carries its maker’s. The things one saw there were always changing, as a poet may make new songs; but the style was always there.

If he had just bought something handsome, he’d give a party to show it off. It might be a small bronze of Dionysos with gilded thyrsos-wand and wreath; or a big wine-bowl painted with Theseus among the Amazons. (It was all red-figure now, and to be noticed a piece must be finer than the rest.) Sometimes he’d bring in a troupe of young girls to play the flute and dance, and show their tinted breasts through fine Kos tissue. Their manners would be charming, they would sit on your couch and chat prettily and pour your wine; but it was understood that if you wished for more, you must arrange for it at home. He never let a party run to riot, unless he was in the mood.

He patronized, too, some beautiful boy acrobats, who performed naked; but it was seldom that one was invited to stay the night. Unless he was entertaining formally, he had a friend to share his supper-couch, and no doubt later his bed. These friends were chosen as carefully as his tableware or his clothes; youths in their later teens, handsome, well born, well bred; amusing too, or they would not be seen twice. The chosen would reign for some months, or even as long as a year. I don’t think false vows of eternal love were ever made to them, and they were always dismissed with grace. Some splendid gift, suited without offense to their rank and station—a horse perhaps, or a gold cup, or an inlaid parade helmet—would give the signal that the time had come to adorn the supper-couch with a new face. Meantime, the youth had been brought into fame and fashion, and had met everyone in Athens who was worth knowing. Those who were ambitious, and used their opportunities, came out of it very well.

Certainly, we poets had no cause to complain. Unlike the favorites, we were not displaced by newcomers. We were like bees in a hive, to which new honey was always coming.

Lasos of Hermione, the same young man who’d been crowned on Keos the day my father died, very soon arrived. We got on well together; each worked in his own way, and each was called upon for different occasions. Hipparchos always made it clear that there was room for both of us; neither of us was quarrelsome or vain enough to make trouble for a courteous patron.

One day, when I had been there about two years, Hipparchos said to me, “Simonides, dear friend; what could we do to get Anakreon here?”

The “we” was like him, telling me I need fear no rival and was above the thought of it. He had never spoken a word about my tavern stint in Samos, though he must have known. I said, “If you like, I will gladly go and ask him. As you know, Polykrates never took me up, and won’t remember me. I could see Anakreon privately, and talk to him as a friend. I know he would be happy here. But Polykrates has done a great deal for him; I should think pretty well anything in Samos is his for the asking. If he says no, I hope you will forgive him.”

“Forgive!” he exclaimed with his easy smile. “What a thing to say. With artists like you two, one does not demand, one petitions. But, surely, he has done that fat old pirate too much honor already. It’s Polykrates should be grateful, not he. Yes, do see him. Tell him how we live in Athens now, and ask him to make one of us. I put my faith in you.”

There was no resisting him when he chose; I said at once I would set out in the next few days. Keos would be on my way, but I thought I would leave it till my homeward journey. In case I failed, which I half expected, I could linger and delay bad news. Hipparchos always inspired an earnest hope that one would not disappoint him.

At least, if Anakreon said no, he could be trusted to do it prettily, and it would be good to see him. Next morning I went down to Piraeus to find a ship. I was getting knowledgeable, for Theas put in every few months and sometimes oftener; Athens was coming to rival Corinth as a city of good craftsmen. Its painted pottery was wanted everywhere, as well as its olive oil. So I saw a good deal of him and of his friends, knew several good shipmasters, and had been warned against the bad ones.

While asking about, I picked up what news I could from Samos. Polykrates was richer and foxier than ever. He had broken off his old alliance with the Pharaoh Amasis; as to the reason, accounts were various and you could take your pick. Kyros the Great was dead, succeeded by that son of his, that vicious mad dog Kambyses. His father should have put him down; but the call of the blood is strong. He was planning to conquer Egypt; and Polykrates got word of it. He compared the opposing forces, and decided he’d backed the wrong side. So before Amasis had time to ask his help, he declared the treaty broken. His tale, which I’ll believe when I see iron floating, was that his long good fortune had made Amasis fear some great reversal, which might make their friendship unlucky. As things fell out, half the world has come to believe this story. It is the hand of Nemesis, you might say.

The truth was that Polykrates had hastened to court Kambyses. He even offered him forty war-triremes, with soldiers to man them. But he was more cunning even than this, for the soldiers he sent off all came from the old houses whose loyalty he mistrusted. Many who’d been boys when he seized power were now grown men, and ready to avenge their fathers. As it turned out, he undervalued their wits. At the fleet’s first port of call, they all put their heads together, added up the score and got it right. Polykrates had sent word to Kambyses, kindly to see that none of them came back.

So they put about ship next day, and invaded Samos instead of Egypt. How many Samians might have rallied to them, it’s hard to say, because old Polykrates was too quick for them. He sent out his mercenaries through the city to round up the women and children, and lock them in the great boathouses of the naval dockyard. These he promised to set alight, if the menfolk gave any trouble. It seems he was believed. Well, he was a pirate; who knows what he’d done in his time. So the rebellion failed, and those who could get away sailed off into exile.

I hoped all this might further my mission to Anakreon. Kind as he’d been, it would have been presumptuous to call myself his friend; but he would have heard something of me by now, as he’d foretold. We would meet on more equal terms, and I thought I knew him a little. There is a certain threshold between a courtier and a sycophant; nobody tells one when one crosses it, but one feels it in oneself. I only feared to reach Samos and find him already gone.

The first thing I saw there was that the great new harbor mole was finished, shining with new-dressed stone and gleaming bollards. We had trouble to find a mooring, the port was so full of ships: Egyptian, Tyrian, Kypriot, Sicilian; several from Rhodes, which Polykrates had conquered, putting his son there as governor. The galley-slips before the boathouses held a small fleet of snub-nosed, boar-headed Samian triremes and pentekonters. The whole waterfront bustled and chattered with trade, every house a shop; and the merchantmen tied up there had their wares spread out on the quayside, shouting for custom with lungs of bronze.

I’d have liked to go shopping and sightseeing, after so long; but nothing is secret on a busy trade-road, and it seemed that my name had run before me. All kinds of people were on the quay to meet me, some of whom I had barely heard of; but there were old friends too from the Victory, and I was swept in there to give my news. The same host was still there, and gave me a beautiful Lakonian cup to drink his health in. I looked again, and said, “What’s this? What will Theodoros say?”

“Why, Simonides, to think of your knowing it again after all these years. He would say he liked to see a good piece treated with respect. I do that in his memory. I keep it for the masters.”

“His memory?” I said, looking up from the painted owl.

“Had you not heard, then? He died one day in the foundry. They were running the melted bronze into the mold; he felt the heat, they say, and got short of breath. But he kept on his feet till the mold was filled, shouting at them all, you know his way; then he caught at his breast and fell down, and was dead before the doctor came. His prentices said that right till the last, while he could catch his breath he was telling them how to finish the statue when the mold was broken. Sophilos had no use in his right hand for a week, from Theodoros gripping it at the end.”

I remembered his great fingers, so light on this very cup.

“It’s Anakreon now,” said the host, “who has his own.” He took it from the shelf to show me. “A love-gift you can be sure, though he never tells. You remember his song about the girl with the colored slippers.”

There she was, in elegant red-figure touched up with purple, tossing her ball. Round the outer curve of the bowl was a whole frieze of girls, playing with a ball, or with one another; the painter had made it plain that they came, like the girl in the song, from the well-built city of Lesbos. I admired the work, and asked where I would find the poet.

“Why, here. Just let me fill your cup. He’ll have heard by now of your coming.”

This was taking too much for granted, and I told him so. But the words were hardly out of my mouth, when heads turned to the doorway, and Anakreon came in with outstretched hands. The crowd parted for him with as much respect as if he’d been Polykrates, but more cheerfully. His red hair was fading, but he had kept his thin fine-boned grace; he felt as light as a fawn when he ran up and clasped me.

In life as in song, he never used an unneeded word. He had claimed me as a brother, after which all other compliments would have fallen short. He just talked, as though we’d met only a few months back instead of years, and as if I had had a name as long as he had. Since the Old Archon died, I’d thought him the only man on earth who could really awe me; but now, in his presence, I felt only delight at being here. I had even forgotten my errand, when he said that of course I must put up at his house.

It was close by the Palace, in the best Samian style, with a carved doorframe, and a columned porch of rose-red Samian marble. Inside it was as handsome as Hipparchos’s; smaller, but with everything in scale, as delicate as his songs: chairs inlaid with ivory, a carpet from Egypt, silver cups with gold insets, upon an ebony sideboard; a big wine-cooler painted with Meleager’s boar-hunt. He had sent orders ahead to have bath-water warmed for me; and I was waited on by a beautiful young slave, whose polished manner I doubt the presence of a king could have discomposed. He must have been as costly as the inlaid wine-cups; Persians nowadays were hard to come by. One thing was certain: not even Hipparchos could offer Anakreon more than he already had.

Still, I had to try. Soon after an excellent supper of sturgeon cooked with herbs, the youth was kindly dismissed to eat his share, leaving the wine between us. When I complimented him on so excellent a servant, he said he had been a real pleasure to train, having been bought from some vulgar fool on whom he had been quite wasted. “Now that I’ve taught him to think well of himself, he is so proud that he can afford to be gracious.”

“Like to like. It’s not every man to whom good fortune gives good grace.” And I led round the talk to the pleasures of life in Athens, the good company, the Archons’ open hands, and so on. Before I’d half done, his green eyes slanted round at me, and he began to laugh.

“Stop, dear man!” He leaned from his supper-couch to grasp my shoulder. “Enough! I can take the next verse myself. I was to have come to Athens, and said all this to you. Anakreon, my dear fellow, can’t you persuade Simonides?’ What collectors these autarchs are.”

“Me!” I said, too startled to join the laughter. “But I thought—”

“Oh, that. I don’t think he even knows you’ve been here before. No one has liked to tell him what he missed. A good deal was happening in those days, you know, a host of people passing through. He first learned of you from Athens. Now you’re a treasure he’s panting to acquire. You’d have heard from him by now, but as it happens he’s in Naxos, visiting his old friend Lygdamis. Only just before he left, he urged me to go and bid for you.”

This time I laughed too; then I said, “But you didn’t come.”

“No.” He pushed his hair back, tilting his rose-wreath drunkenly. He was sober enough, though. “I put him off; I’m not sure why. Mostly from a feel in my skin, that all this”—he waved his hand towards the window and the spread of the town below—“can’t last much longer. No reasons; or too many. When the fruit is sweetest, it falls. One can’t tell the day.”

I looked round the beautiful room, and at the window above the teeming harbor, the shops full of foreign luxuries, the well-dressed crowds. Just across the strait were the hills of Persian-held Ionia, so near it seemed one could shout across and be heard. But that had been so for many years.

“He didn’t press me,” Anakreon said. “He thought that I might be jealous.”

“Do not tempt me into hubris, son of Apollo. Or your father will be after me.”

He laughed, and lifted his wine-cup. Then he grew serious. “Hubris. That’s what they are saying about the Tyrant. Well, yes and no. You know, he would never have burned those hostages. He gambled with them, and won. He always wins. The fruit hangs down full of juice, riper and heavier …” He dipped the rhyton into the masterpiece of a wine-cooler, wiped it with a drawn-thread napkin, and filled my cup. “But I ask myself, am I getting some warning from a god, or just feeling my skin too tight, like a sloughing snake? Does it concern any man but me?”

“Indeed. It concerns me, I can promise you.”

“Yes, we have been concerned for one another. Now, as I see it, if you go back and say that Anakreon feels beholden to his patron, but will be honored to visit Athens as your guest, just to pay his respects—that won’t set you back at court, will it? Then we can see.”

“Why, I shall be the happiest of men. Will you really come?”

“How not, when Simonides invites me? I shall come to Athens and say all I’ve been told to say, which you have not yet heard the half of.” He straightened his wreath, making a solemn face.

“But,” I said, “you have heard my piece; and what do you say to me?”

“Oh, once I’m in Athens, I suppose Hipparchos will do his business with me himself. Then my refusal will come from me, not you, and cast no shadow on you. After all, you did persuade me to come.”

“Refusal!” I felt as if I’d seen one of my father’s best sheep fall down a cliff, and I expect I showed it. “I thought you were saying yes.”

“I am sorry,” he said, with a smile that would have softened bronze. “I thought so too, until just this moment. No, it won’t do. He has been very good to me, you know. And in return I have offered praise which I can’t recant without dishonor.”

There is never an answer to that. I tried none. He pushed at his wreath, and it tilted over again.

“And then, of course, I’m in love.”

“Again?” Disappointment had made me cross.

“Come, come, my dear. A furnace is no cooler for last year’s fire … Maiden-faced boy, heedless of my pursuing, And all unknowing my soul’s charioteer. That is no longer quite true. But he would never leave his ancestral home for me, why should he? Yes, well, I’ve a good-healing heart, as soldiers tell you they have good-healing flesh. I could go now, and know I had left my patron at his height of fortune, not waited like a ship-rat to smell the leaky plank. And yet, and yet … Bear with me, my dear. Ionia was my world, and only this is left of it. I think I will see it out.”

There was no answer to that, either. I was not fool enough to spoil the rest of the evening. We drank and talked and drank and sang, and dawn was near when he lit me to my bed, having long since sent off the gracious Persian to get his beauty sleep.

Next day he asked some very pleasant people to meet me. My presence was never explained; it was enough, it seemed, that Simonides was visiting Anakreon. The noble Samian, his soul’s charioteer, was not on view. “Only a fool,” he said to me in private, “will show a purse of gold to a shipload of pirates. I could tell you things …” It was a good party, and next day I took ship for Athens.

Hipparchos was so charmed to hear of Anakreon’s visit that I got anxious, and warned him not to expect too much. One never liked the thought of disappointing him. All I’d managed to do, I said, was tempt Anakreon with the glory and fame of Athens, so that he longed to visit it; and had ventured to promise it would surpass his hopes.

This would ensure him a dazzling fee for his recital, a small return for his help and kindness. Often I wonder that bards will be so silly as to bicker with their peers, and lower themselves with jealousy; when, if we are friends, we can not only learn from one another, but do each other useful good turns like this.

He came to Athens the next month. Everyone had a triumph. He did: he performed at Hipparchos’ house before everyone worthy the privilege, enchanting our ears, melting our hearts, and leading us at will from mirth to tears. I had one: he thanked me publicly for having led him, like a guiding Hermes from Olympos, to the delights of this splendid city. Even Hipparchos had one: Anakreon told him that the graces of his court (with its famous ornament, the great Simonides) made a singer who had failed to visit it seem only half a Greek. After their private interview, my patron came to me in the sweetest of tempers, saying, “Well, you did your part, my dear Simonides. He would come, without a doubt, but for his obligations. He didn’t say that in so many words, but it was plain to me. Wasn’t it charming, the little song he made about Kallias at the hunt?” (Kallias, a dashing horseman, was the current friend, as I’d remembered to tell Anakreon.) “I shan’t repeat all his praise of you, it would make you too proud to live with. Mark my words, we shall see him in Athens yet.”

Besides all this, it was a triumph for Polykrates, when his favorite poet returned to say how they’d tried in vain to steal him away to Athens, but Samos had his heart. I have lived a long time; but in the art of pleasing everyone while betraying no one, I have never met anyone to touch Anakreon.