The Praise Singer: A Novel

10

KIMON’S MURDERERS WERE NEVER found. His son, who had come with him to the games, soon made it clear that he did not suspect the Archons. I was there when he accepted their sympathy as that of friends, and said that he blamed himself more than anyone. Like me, he had spent the night on the women’s side. Not that his father had opposed it; he had laughed and wished him joy; but if they had been together, he might be still alive. This young Miltiades was no fool, as he proved, when the Medes came, to everyone’s satisfaction; he knew the court and both the Archons well, and what satisfied him has always been good enough for me. But even he could think of no enemies his father could have had. He wondered if one of the losers could have killed him out of envy. Such things are rare, but not quite unknown.

However, if Kimon had no enemies, the Pisistratids had them. Olympia buzzed with Alkmaionids, like a wasp-nest poked with a stick.

If an exile meets a man from his former city, what is more natural than a talk to ask for news? Olympia seemed quite full of Alkmaionids and friends, always just out of earshot.

Next day was Full Moon, when the contests are only for boys, because the great procession, and the Hundred-Ox Sacrifice, take up all the morning. All the Hellene cities send their embassies to carry offerings; and all Hellas had come to expect that the one from Athens would be the finest. I had made the song for the choir to sing. I had not, of course, been asked to walk in the procession. People on show for their city have to be well-favored. I felt some remorse towards Anakreon, who I was sure would have been invited, had Hipparchos not feared it would seem like a slight to me.

Athens excelled all other cities. Yet it was surpassed; and by the Alkmaionids.

They were men without a city; but anyone who thought they’d be stopped by that never knew the family. When, sounding with flutes and lyres and sweet trained voices, heralded by trumpets, and carrying precious spices, the sacred theoria from Delphi came pacing in, it was Alkmaionid in all but name.

Nobody was surprised, who’d been at the last Pythian Games. It was in my father’s day that Apollo’s temple at Delphi was burned down. When I first saw it as a boy, there was just a makeshift shelter over the sanctuary; nothing had been left but the Pythia’s cave below. That comes of thatch and timber; for decades all Hellas had been sending offerings to house the god decently in stone. Then the splendid Alkmaionids offered to complete the building at their own cost. When they had finished the work in stone, they faced it all with marble. Apollo, it is true, had always been the patron god of their house. At any rate, thenceforth they were as welcome to him—at least, to his priests and prophetess—as the swallows in the temple eaves. I never yet heard of an Alkmaionid getting a bad oracle at Delphi.

They were richer even than the Pisistratids. Everyone knows how old Alkmaion founded their fortunes. Kroisos, that golden king, befriended him, and, like a generous host, offered him as much gold as he could carry by himself out of the treasury, thinking he’d come out with both hands full. Alkmaion bound his girdle tight round his hips, and put on wide-topped boots; filled everything he wore with gold, and came out like a waddling moneybag. Kroisos, they say, when he’d got his breath back enjoyed the joke; he had plenty more, as Kyros discovered later, when he took it all. For the Alkmaionids, that was just the beginning. They had married into money far and wide, they owned the best land in the Attic plains; and Pisistratos, when he told them there was not room in Attica both for him and them, never took away their estates. The income still reached them; they still entered chariots at the games; and Hippias, from policy or discretion, had let them and their money be. They had too many offshoots and fellow clansmen still in Attica; their power in exile was a less evil than war or stasis. It was to be reckoned with, however. A great lord in exile will not be content with owning land that he cannot tread, even though he can live on it like a prince elsewhere. He wants the house of his fathers; their tombs, where he should offer sacrifice; and, above all, their former rank there, in the days when their word was law. Even those born in exile sucked in all this with their mothers’ milk. They were bitter; and Kimon’s murder was meat and drink to them. They put it about all over Hellas that the Archons did it, and thousands believe it still. I never have, though I could have profited by saying so in later years.

When the games were over, the two noble Elians who were that year’s judges decreed that Kimon should be given a public funeral, and a tomb at the city’s cost by the Valley Road. Thus they honored his triple victory, appeased his ghost, and denounced his murderers, whoever they might be.

The big crowds had left by then; those who stayed for the funeral were mostly Elians, living near, and friends or clansmen of the dead. The Archons and their party had left for Athens the day before, which was wise; and Anakreon went too, saying he’d had enough of mourning. However, I was known by now for a man who would go off on his own affairs; and I stayed, from respect for quality. Kimon was to have a funeral offering in the grand, heroic style. His whole chariot team was to be sacrificed at his tomb, and have its own monument, facing his across the highway.

He was lowered into his grave, handsomely robed and wearing his wreath of victory. Precious offerings, some of them from the Elian treasury, were laid beside him. The slab was closed and the earth thrown over, and incense was burned upon the altar before the sacrifice.

The four mares had stood good as gold, decked in their garlands, tossing their graceful heads now and again, or flicking their tails against the flies. The lean dark charioteer was with them, patting their necks or stroking their noses if they began to fidget. His face was drawn, but grave looks become a burial.

When the libations had been poured, and the sacrificer came for the first of them, she stepped up prettily to the altar, taking him no doubt for a new groom. As the cleaver swung home into the throat, I saw the amazement in the creature’s eyes before she drowned in her blood and foundered.

The other three still stood. The charioteer had turned them sideways from the altar. They had raced three times at Olympia; they did not take fright at the smell of blood or the screams of wounded horses. When the second was led away, the two that were left grew restive; but he gentled them, and they calmed under his hand. The man in the grave was nothing to them; this was their master, who had steered them through the race-track’s clash and fury, always safe to the goal. When the third was fetched, she backed a little, but did not rear. An Olympic charioteer, though he never drugged a horse in his life before, still knows how it is done.

Now only one mare was left; and, drugged or not, she knew that she had smelled death. When they came to her she dragged and reared, and gave a shrill frightened neigh. He pulled down her forelegs, and laid his face a moment against her neck; and I could see the sacrificer asking him to help lead her to the altar; but he shook his head. She knew herself betrayed, and there was nothing he could say to her. He handed over her bridle and turned away, the mare looking after him with terror-whitened eyes; and when the killing was over, he was not to be seen.

Priests, judges, mourners and onlookers departed for the city. It was a fine day, not too hot, and I walked the other way by the murmuring water, following the Valley Road.

The dust lay thick on it and my feet fell quietly. A few stades along, I heard the sound of weeping, fierce and desolate, and saw lying out from a clump of bushes a yellow fold. He had worn his racing colors for the ceremony. I paused; but there was nothing mortal man could do for such grief as that. When Priam was lamenting his fallen sons, if Homer himself had come and promised they should live on in the Iliad, I don’t suppose their father would even have lifted his head. So I did not stay to ask the names of his lost children. For that matter, I have never learned his own.

By the time I came back, people were strolling to take the air by the green waterside. A tall man greeted me; it was the handsome Proxenos, the Attic lord who had given me breakfast after the Old Archon’s death-watch. We were friendly, courteous and careful with one another, found empty and pious things to say of Kimon, and agreed it was sad to see the immolation of so fine a team, but they would soon have been past their best.

There was a rustle in the myrtle grove, and out came his young son, with a green branch in his hand. He had been pretty before, but now seemed almost radiant. If he kept those looks after his bones took form, I thought, he would set the city by the ears; already he would have inspired Anakreon’s lyre.

He ran up and grasped his father’s hand. It seemed he had come to join our conversation. Turning to me, he said, “He won the crown three times.”

“First say, ‘Good evening, sir,’” his father told him. “Where have your manners gone?”

“Good evening, sir. He won the crown three times, and so did the horses.”

“They were brave beasts,” I said. “Let’s hope they have had brave children.”

He planted his beautiful brown feet in the yellow dust, and frowned. His brows were like gilded bronze, and his eyes summer-sea blue. He said, “Those bad men killed him.”

There was no quarreling with such true words. But his father said quickly, “That is enough, Harmodios. You are interrupting your elders. Go back now to your play.”

The boy gave him a quick look; he was used, I could see, to picking up a warning. Watched by his father—partly from love and partly not to meet my eyes—he went off into the myrtle grove.