The Praise Singer: A Novel

1

THE YEARS SAILED ON, swiftly with fair winds; the wine-dark sea lapped softly on the reef ahead, as if on a raft of spindrift, which the prow will cleave easily upon its way.

The sons of Pisistratos still kept the goodwill their father won. Sometimes it seemed he had devided himself in two, Hippias having his public gravity, Hipparchos his private wit. They were not emulous; each was content to be valued for what he was. Hippias was praised for keeping up his father’s traveling court of justice. There were long memories of the days when all causes had to go to the local lord. If good, he was excellent, from knowing all parties well. If not so good, he might have taken you in dislike or your enemy in favor; or your case might be against him, himself, which was as good as no case, before Solon made the laws and Pisistratos got them obeyed.

No peasant or small farmer wanted to see those days again; nor did the city craftsmen and merchants; nor, even, did most of the lesser gentry. But the great lords and their factions still felt the anger of the dispossessed; and not all of them were in exile.

With all this we lived by custom, as one lives with weather. I had my own concerns. I was singing well and often; I was in my prime of vigor, wiry and strong; long journeys were pastime to me, not fatigue. I went to all the festivals, at Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, Corinth, Delos, and sang at their victors’ feasts; at Athens, there were the sacred rites of the gods, and the great festivals of Athene and Dionysos. With all this, I still found time to visit my kin on Keos; and it was there that I found my son.

I found him and he found me. I took him in peace, doing no wrong to anyone. Each time I saw him again, he had become more mine, and everyone knew it, he himself most of all.

Philomache’s third boy had fulfilled his infant promise. Solid and strong, he looked a pankratiast already; if old Bacchylides did not live to see him crowned, at least he could die assured of it. But my boy favored me; it was as if some friendly god had thought better of my face, and made it over to what it should have looked like. He was small like me; like me, dark-haired and dark-eyed; but his features were neat as a girl’s, though with much more firmness. His eyebrows were already thick, and joined in the middle; in that we are still alike.

He was never shy of me, as I’d first been of my teacher, a stranger I held in awe. Me he had known since he could remember, crowing to my songs while still in arms. His nurse would hush him, but he came in on the beat. By the time he was six, he was making songs of his own, and would sing me them with no more ado than a bird. When I began to teach him, he did not know it, thinking we were still at play. At bedtime he’d ask a song from me, as a prize for being good; and twice heard he’d have it all.

He left them no peace, his mother used to tell me, asking when Uncle Sim would be coming to stay again. Best of all, he loved me more for the music’s sake than he loved the music for mine. By that I knew which god had given him to me. So, when he was old enough to travel, I asked his father’s leave, and took him to Delos, to present him to Apollo.

He was entranced with the island, and cried out that the rocks were full of silver stars. (I didn’t steal that, I knew he would use it later.) When in the porch of Pisistratos’ temple he offered his little votive of a gilded dolphin, and the young priest bent smiling down to take it, he said, “This is for Apollo’s birthday. Will you wish him long life from me?” Yet, as he told me long after, he had a sense of what we were both about.

So far, so good. But when I was away he was learning nothing, and his faults would be settling in. Most songs he heard would be from the peasants and the women; well enough, like bread, but not as one’s only food. He went to school in Iulis to learn the lyre, but had a dull fool for a teacher, fit only to teach other fools by rote. He would soon have come to dislike it; no wonder, for he knew better himself. From being forever held back he had grown troublesome, and was always in hot water. All this I watched, fretting, till he was nearly nine; and then I talked to his parents.

His mother said, “But who will make him change his clothes when he gets wet?”

His father said, “You only see him when he’s showing off to you. I warn you, Sim, he can be as mischievous as an ape. I’m telling you for your good. He’ll plague you.”

“If he does I’ll send him back. I can afford him a steady pedagogue; I won’t let him run wild.”

“Why not wait a few years, till he’s steadier himself?”

“No. I can’t afford that, and nor can he.”

“But you are so much away!” cried Philomache.

“Oh, I shall take him with me. He’s tough as a nut. The road’s a great place for poets to learn the trade.”

She looked at her husband pleadingly. What she was pleading for, as I guessed, was his consent. The boy had been a handful at home, and getting worse.

Midylos said, “He’ll surely be in your way. You’re guest-friend to high-ranking men, these days.”

“He’s quick. He’ll take to the life faster than I did, and I was quick myself. Don’t be afraid, he’s ready.”

The end of it was, he came; on trial, they said, to see how it would answer.

He had been noisy enough on Keos; on the ship, the mate gave him a clip for climbing up the rigging; but once landed at Piraeus, he was as silent as a sponge. He had no time even to ask questions, lest he should be missing something. Riding on the pack-ass towards the city, he found his voice; by the time I’d told him all he wanted to know, I was in danger of losing mine. He had been nowhere, except that once to Delos in the quiet season. When we met some Nubians he was alarmed; he had never heard that men can be born black, and thought they were from the realm of Hades. I showed him they were carrying elephants’ teeth, which lasted him some time, until he saw his first horse. Horses are forbidden under Kean law; but he knew what it was, and shared it with me in one enraptured glance.

I lost no time in buying him a pedagogue; a man of Illyrian race, slave-born in a good house, and speaking very fair Greek. Brought up in Athens, he knew where the boy could safely go, and where not; he had done the same work before, and had been sold when his charge outgrew him. He took the boy to school and back, and taught him to look after himself. I would not have him waited on, for I seldom travel with servants; a good mule and pack-ass are less trouble and of more use. This man, Philemon, was honest and kindly, and I took care to treat him well. It made him too easygoing, as we found when his charge slipped off to Piraeus, and was nearly stolen by a Tyrian slaver. He would have walked on board—“to be shown the ship”—but for the luck of an acquaintance knowing who he was. He would never have been seen again, and for his good I beat him; but even so, he begged me not to beat Philemon, to whom he’d lied when asked where he was going. I rejoiced that he had justice in his soul, but this was no time to praise it.

As a rule, to keep him well behaved one had only to threaten him with missing the next procession or choral sacrifice, or his next piece of Homer. He never ailed, except once from eating green figs; though he had not lived as hard as I’d done at his age, on Keos no one is pampered. I knew he would be a good boy for the road.

By the time he was ten, he was traveling with me. Even then he was not a burden; over the years, he’s done far more for me than ever I did for him. Where we were guests, he would shake down among the family boys, or lay his pallet by mine. Like me, he could drink the water in most places without getting a flux. Once a scorpion bit him; he was weeping with pain, but would let no one touch it, only asking for me. He was right, in that ignorant village; I nicked the wound and sucked it, and bound it with a cloth wrung out in hot water mixed with myrrh, as a Euboian herb-wife had taught me. When the pain was gone, he said it was a pity Philoktetes had not had me there to heal his wounded foot; I might even have cured Achilles. To this day, he has the white scar of my knife upon his ankle-bone.

On the road he’d make his songs, as I used to do; I had to remind myself that I’d been five years older. I got on with my thoughts, and asked no questions; sometimes he’d read one in my eye, and say, “It’s not finished yet.” Sometimes it never was; he would say, “It didn’t come out right.” I hoped he’d not thrown away something better than he knew; though it is my faith that such things return to one, when their time has come to be born. So I let him alone, unless he was short of a word and came to me for it.

I had a great shock to come, though. I suppose I’m hardly yet over it. Coming in from the city, and by chance entering quietly, I heard his voice, and looked around the door. He was cross-legged on a stool, bent over a wax writing-tablet, chanting softly to himself; so taken up with his task that he did not hear me. I was surprised; as a rule he’d had enough of school when lessons were over. He gazed at the wax with his stylos poised, and hummed the same phrase two or three times over; then again with a different word. On that he rubbed at the wax, and wrote something. It was only then that I knew what he was doing. It shook me to my roots.

“Bacchylides!” I said. “What are you writing there?”

He jumped nearly out of his skin. He could not have looked more guilty if he had been caught robbing my money-chest.

And so he should, I thought. I could hardly believe what I’d heard and seen. I took a deep breath, to prepare my words. How could he ever become a bard, if he rotted his memory with writing, instead of printing his songs inside his skull? It was an offense to the Muse; if it took on, it would be the death of poetry. If he could not remember his Homer or his Sappho or his Anakreon, he must come to his teacher, as it was a pupil’s duty to do.

I had it ready, but I never said it. I saw in his eye that, before I started, he could have given me every word. He looked back at me, full of his answers, hopeless. It took me back. I could remember how it felt. After all I just quoted Achilles: “Come, tell me, then we shall both know.”

He smiled, but anxiously still. He had folded his diptych together, and was hugging it in his arms. After swallowing hard, and gazing at me in something near desperation, he said, “I’m not remembering, Uncle Sim. I’m making it.”

“I don’t know,” I said, “whether that is better or worse.”

“I’ll remember it afterwards, I promise I will.” His face got quite red, not with shame but effort. “I can do it in my head, the first piece of it. That always comes.”

“Always, yes. It’s the finishing is the work.”

“Yes, I know. And when I’m doing that, and I’m stuck, I want to see the shape of the sound. Then I get it, like I did just now.”

“Ah. But just on that piece of wax. Not in your head.”

He laid the folded tablet down, and gave it me word for word. “That’s as far as I’ve got,” he said. “Look if you like.”

Without doubt, it was the best thing he’d done. Boy’s stuff still, of course, and full of echoes; but echoes are the heritage of us all, and he was learning how to make new music with them. He knew it, and if I denied it he’d lose trust in me; or in himself, which would be worse. So I praised ungrudgingly, and saw his face lighten as if reprieved from prison. “I do learn it,” he said. “I go over and over it. I learn it better this way.”

“Well,” I said, giving it weight, “take care it is your staff and not your crutch.” He nodded gravely. Then my mind went back and I could not keep from laughing. “Did they ever tell you at home that when my master and I had to leave Ephesos, I sang in a tavern for my keep?” I saw they’d cautioned him never to breathe a word. “My master was distraught and thought it would be my ruin. But I found it an education. There are plenty of paths to Helikon. Just don’t lose sight of the top.”

After that, I took him out to the Agora and bought him a pet quail, which I knew he longed for, and he went happy to bed. Though he never let me see him writing if he could help, it was understood there would be no more questions. He was getting his Homer well enough; already he had the Departure of Hektor word for word.

“Why,” he asked me once, “did Andromache say their little boy would starve, if his father died? He was King Priam’s grandson.”

“I have often wondered. My guess is that Homer had learned that piece from his master or some great bard, and liked it so well that he had to work on it, and keep it. So he put it there, although it doesn’t fit.”

“It’s so sad. What really happened to the little boy?”

“He was the heir of Troy. So the Greeks threw him off the walls.”

“Poor little boy … It’s much sadder in Homer. Where the orphan comes to the feast and the other boys chase him away, that’s really sad.”

I remembered—though I doubt if he did—the naming-feast of his young brother. He was happy enough at school, his quick wit being admired there, even though he did not go much to the gymnasium. He thought it wasted his time, and I had to agree.

Although I told everyone the truth, that he was my nephew, it soon got rumored that he was my bastard son; as he could have been, from his looks. I denied the charge, but not with too much heat; partly because I felt it almost true, but mostly because I was not sorry to have it believed at court. The boy was no great beauty; you would never see his name inscribed in wine-cups; yet he was comely and bright enough to catch a roving eye. I wanted it known that I took a father’s care of him, and would not have him meddled with till he was old enough to decide such things for himself.

In the last few years, Hipparchos had grown less choice in his pleasures than when I knew him first. There were parties now that I was not asked to, and I guessed why. Anakreon was invited for some time longer, but began to be dropped as well. He told me this with relief.

“I had been wondering, my dear, how it could be managed. After all, Athens is my home now, body and mind, as well as my living. Even so, one has one’s pride. However, it was just a matter of choosing the right moment, when one was seen, and looking round here and there, and raising an eyebrow. It made its mark; more from me, of course, than you. He’s thought you proper for some time. Well, he does know now that I like my company to have a little more style. That kind of hint gets home to him, you know.”

Though the next commission for a choral ode was given to Lasos (“So unfair, my dear; he is never asked because he’s a deadweight at any party”) Anakreon was soon back in favor, and invited with more discretion. One thing did not change at Hipparchos’ court: there was always the reigning favorite, from a good house and quite presentable. Anakreon, whose task it was to celebrate each in song, confided that one could usually do so without disgust. This indeed was true, and the rewards were generous. All the same, I was not sorry to have made my name by treating of other themes. Like every poet, I have sold my praises, in the sense that I’ve been paid for them; but, like Lyra with her lovers, I want freedom to pick and choose. Praising excellence, one serves the god within it; and false praise insults him, it has always seemed to me. The only worse thing is detraction of the good.

So I got on with my own work, which at that time of year was a song for the young virgins, when they came to Athene’s temple with their offerings. It was a year of the lesser festival; but still, it meant a great deal to the girls, and it was a pleasure to train them. Some of them would be chosen later for the Great Year, the Panathenaia. One year in four, it meant as much to the wellborn maids of Athens as Olympia to the boys. Their chorus leader would have the right to dedicate her statue in the precinct, in memory of her triumph. For none of them would there be a Great Year again. Last time, they had been children; next time they would be married. There was always a glow and bloom on them in the Great Year. They could have been young goddesses, and sometimes the sculptors caught it. I don’t know what has become of those marble maidens, since the place was cleared after the Medes. It will all be very grand and new; they will not keep anything that is in their way. Yet I remember those quiet smiles, as if the girls had been lifted to Olympos, where trouble and grief could never touch them more.

Grief comes, though, to human kind, as surely as night comes, or winter rain. Handsome Proxenos had ridden for the last time in the knights’ procession. A ship from Naukratis brought to Piraeus some fever out of Africa; it ran about the city, and overtook other ships after they had sailed. Theas took it, and went down with it at Andros, his next port of call. He was on the mend before I knew he was sick, but it left him weak, and he was a full month picking up. Proxenos, I was told, rode to the port to see off some friend upon a journey. He sickened within two days, and in seven was dead.

I went to the house to condole. He lay in state, crowned with parsley and strewn with sweet herbs; he had died too quickly to lose his looks, and made a stately corpse. His widow and a young girl, with shorn hair and ash-streaked faces, were wailing over him. His father, a bent old man too crippled to leave his chair, was acting host, and I made my call brief so as not to tire him.

When I praised his son for virtue, valor and beauty, he said, “Fate is the master of all things, even the gods. Four sons I had, and only one grew to manhood. Now he is gone in his prime, when I had looked to him to bury me. Well, he has left me a grandson in whom he will live again, his very image at just that age. But he is young to lose a father. He looked to Proxenos for everything, not to a dried old reed like me. What changes I have seen, and never for the better! Now my time comes near, and he will be left head of the family, and he no more than a boy.”

Next evening I went to the funeral, from respect. Proxenos had had some of the old nobles’ faults, but rather more of their virtues. Had he had their power, he would have used it justly; though you might not always have thought so, to hear him talk.

The cortege was a long one, mostly made up of the dead man’s fellow Gephyriots. The tribe came to Attica long ago from Tanagra, and will tell you they were Phoenicians once. They don’t look Phoenician; I daresay they were Greek colonists whom the Phoenicians drove out. Not more of them are dark today than you find among Ionians anywhere. Six of them carried Proxenos on his bier. The friends walked before, the hired mourners keened behind to the sound of flutes. Close round the bier walked the near kindred, and then you saw how small the family really was. The old granddad had stayed at home; a man nearly as old, doubtless his brother, walked in the place of honor, the only adult male, alongside Proxenos’ young son.

When I had called at the house, he had not been in the room; I saw him now for the first time in seven or eight years. As I approached I thought, Is that the little Harmodios? Can he really have grown so tall? How our lives fly past!

He must then have been about fifteen, the awkward age between boyhood’s grace and the ephebe’s firmer beauty. He had achieved the best of both. With close-cropped hair, black-clad, his face drawn with grief, even so he shone.

Fair as his father, with the same straight carriage, and, yes, already, his father’s pride but deeper, bred in bone, the calm pride that thinks insolence beneath it, as calm courage need not stoop to bragging. It was graven into him, while he thought only of his loss and his new load of care; a part of his beauty, though such a face would have lent beauty to all its changes, laughter, or grief, or anger. His grandfather had spoken truly; Proxenos had left his monument on earth.

At the burial-place, we left our offerings to sustain his journey. The boy got into the grave, to set them about the corpse. When the slab was closed and the earth thrown over, he took up the family grave-wreath. The mourning locks of hair hung from it: white, grey or grizzled, but for two strands of gold shining among the bay leaves. Two? Then I remembered the girl, weeping beside the widow. She had drawn her dark veil, and I could not see her face.

The boy stooped with the wreath, gravely concerned to set it upright against the post which would serve until the masons brought the stone. I don’t know what prompted me to look, just then, at the people standing by. Something in the air, a note of silent music.

I seldom forget the face of a victor. There stood the dark-haired runner, Aristogeiton, whom Anakreon had pointed out at Olympia. He had stepped out from the crowd, to watch the rite.

All the others were watching too, and I suppose it made him careless. His eyes told a tale that could have been no clearer if he’d sung it out to the lyre. He would have poured out his own blood as a libation, if that could have given comfort to the wreath-layer. Henceforth, he would be ready at a word.

The boy straightened up from his task. As he lifted his head, he glanced that way, as though someone had called his name. The blue and the dark eyes met. It was not for long; but something was offered, something accepted, something understood.

To this day, I do not know if that was their first avowal.