The Praise Singer: A Novel

2

MOST OF THE NEXT year was fortunate. I won a tripod at the Dionysia; my dithyramb had a dialogue between the god and Herakles, telling of their wanderings in turn. All the poets were growing venturesome; and drawing closer to tragedy, though, as Aischylos said to me lately, without knowing it. Never mind, much that we made in those days is living still.

At the year’s end, without warning, Dorothea died. They told me that in the kitchen she dropped an old knife upon her foot, and the wound swelled up, with fever. Though the doctor purged her, she died within four days. She had been so hale and strong, that she and everyone supposed she would recover; and when at last her father sent me word, I was too late to close her eyes. The house was in perfect order. The days were long past when she’d refused a maidservant; she’d had the girls running to her for their orders up to the day before she died; the last she gave them was to make up a bed, to be ready when I came.

It was she, more than anything, who had bound me still to Euboia. From then on, Phileas managed the place till he grew too old, when I bought him a piece of land and got Midylos to find me someone else. Only Athens held me.

A few years turned Bacchylides from a charming son to a gifted pupil. Which was just as it ought to be; for he was not my son, and not in search of a father. If I’d really begotten him, maybe we’d have fallen out; a father’s expectations can fret a boy like a chain. But we had freely chosen one another, each for his own good; our bond was close, but easy. Maybe that’s why he has always cared for me like a son.

He was the best of companions, at home and on the road; lively, sturdy and shrewd. A quick keen learner, he soon had his Anakreon and Sappho and Stesichoros; his Simonides, too; built what he learned into himself, and turned it into his own music. He still composed on the wax; would laugh to me about it, and never failed to have the finished things word-perfect in his head. He has them still … those he learned as a boy. Already, getting into his middle years, his memory is nowhere near so good as mine at fourscore and three. Anything new he does, he’d lose if he didn’t write it. He’s a fine poet nonetheless. If that’s the only way he could come at it, so much the worse; but not so much the worse as if he had never written.

By twelve or thirteen, he’d lost what little boyish prettiness he’d had, and was getting the look of Saturn that draws women: heavy brows, meeting; firm mouth framed between lines. Meantime, he was what passed in Athens as an ugly boy, and would be troubled with no suitors from the court. I was heartily glad of this. He had no feeling for it, thought it absurd, and was likely, if wooed by some man of rank, to laugh out loud instead of showing virtuous modesty. This would have disturbed the harmonies, as Hipparchos liked to hear them. He thought of his fellowship as a singing-grove of Eros.

I had not suffered from this. He was still a discerning patron, who would no more have called on me for a serenade than on Anakreon for a hero ode. All the same, it was good to have no one in my house whom he or his friends might covet. A story was going about of a boy he’d as good as kidnapped, under cover of an evening frolic, and whom he entertained for three nights before his father, a man of no great estate, could get him back. And there had been a Macedonian slave-boy whom his master never got back at all; just a handsome present of gold, which was supposed to close the matter. The master had not cared to make trouble, but was known to be fond of the lad, who was said to be devoted to him. Since then, when Hipparchos was entertained to supper, favorites of the host no longer served the wine.

None of this talk reached the city commoners or country peasants. As always, Hipparchos sought diversion among people of fashion and rank. In public he remained a gracious presence; dignified but never stiff, always with the ready word or smile which shy Hippias could not manage; and, as a rule, if he’d promised someone a good turn, remembering to have it done. This was no false mask; to be liked was pleasant to him; he had learned the knack from his father, and knew just what little kindnesses mean most from a great man to a humble one. Hippias inspired respect, Hipparchos affection. The Pisistratids had come to power as the people’s friends; and they seemed so to the Athenians almost to the end. That’s why it took the Spartans, as well as the Alkmaionids, to get them out at last. Left to themselves, the Athenians would never have done it. The old nobility wished it still; but they had given up hope.

In those days, like most Athenians who could spare the time and still eat bread, I never missed the Isthmian Games. Athens to Corinth is nothing of a journey; the summer heat has not started; Athenians are welcome guests. True, the games have not the Olympic greatness; but one sees athletes of promise working their way to that, and proven victors trying for the climax of a fourfold crown: Pythian, Nemean, Isthmian, Olympic. I was still young enough to enjoy the sideshows, market and fair, and the boy, of course, was entranced with them.

Nowadays I find all the bustle too much, and leave it to young Pindar, who has taken up the victor’s song where I laid it down. That’s well. Some men don’t like to see another excel in their own art; I am only angry if anyone debases it. I can’t take it with me to the grave; but, like a house where I have been happy, I want to leave it well cared for, and to see a good heir coming on. Well, but I suppose in the year I’m thinking of, young Pindar was not born.

The Isthmian race-track is nothing like as gruelling as Olympiad; some owners even race their own chariots there. As for the riding-race, in those days it was all owners up, no jockeys at all.

Hipparchos sat with a party, in the seats the Corinthians set aside for their ancient allies. I could have joined them, but had made some excuse because of the boy. Hippias was not there. He scarcely ever went to the Isthmia, which he thought frivolous and vulgar, and not what its founder Theseus would ever have approved.

The riders entered, and paced round before the stands. I was greeting someone I knew, when the boy touched my arm. “Look there, Uncle Sim. How do you think it must feel to look like that?”

I saw the approaching rider, on a big sorrel with blond mane and tail. He must be sixteen, now.

The boy was saying, “They all do in the songs, but you never really see it. He must be famous. Who is he?”

“Harmodios, son of Proxenos. A Gephyriot.”

“Isn’t he famous? He looks as if he were.”

I knew what he meant. That serene pride had grown unaware of itself. I said, “His father’s dead. I daresay he’s more on the estate than in the city. That family never cared to be much at court.”

“I know now what he’s like. Achilles at Aulis, before the war began. That’s it.” I agreed that the hero would have been just about that age.

Each generation has its own dream of beauty. I have lived long enough to watch it change. Just then, he was what all sculptors were reaching after, and only the great achieved. Naked he sat his barebacked horse, brown gold, his hair plaited up for the race and bound about his head. His skin was like brown marble, his horse’s like polished bronze. Into its braided mane, ribbons had been worked as finely as embroidery, with small blue beads. A woman’s work; I remembered the sister, covered with her veil.

The parade went by. Till now, each Athenian had saluted Hipparchos in his seat of honor; two had even made their horses caracole. I watched to see what Proxenos’ son would do. He raised his right hand and turned his head. No courtesy could have been more formal: precise, not slovenly, the salute of a gentleman who, in a foreign town, will not discredit his city by uncouthness. All the others had smiled, in the spirit of Isthmian gaiety, and had their smiles returned. Harmodios’ face was cool smooth marble.

He passed. The eyes of Hipparchos followed, till his face turned away from me and I could not read it. That boy has done his fortunes no good, I thought. But, after all, with the games ahead and all the Isthmian parties, I daresay it will be forgotten.

The riders paced their circuit before the stands, and came round towards the starting-gates. As Harmodios drew near, I saw him lift his arm high, greeting someone in the crowd. The marble warmed and glowed; the blue eyes shone, kindled by eyes I could not see. When he rode on the smile still lingered, as a single cloud can give back the light of Helios, after he has sunk beneath the sea.

Bacchylides said, “He must have seen his lover.” He spoke quite respectfully; as a rule he would have grinned.

The race was won, as happens four times out of five, by one of those young Thessalian lords who ride before they can walk. Harmodios rode a well-judged course, however, and came in among the first four.

After the finish, the crowd broke up around me, letting me see him stroking the nose of his white-blazed sorrel, while the groom put its blanket on. He looked truly in his element as bird in air or fish in stream: an Athenian knight with his horse, the ancient companion, his forebears’ sign of conquest and mark of rank, each of them tracing his line back to the Trojan War. Maybe he was dreaming of the day when he would race a chariot here; it would have pleased his father.

He looked round from the muzzle he was fondling, as someone shouldered over to him through the press. Dark-haired Aristogeiton stroked the horse’s neck; they smiled; spoke a few words, as it seemed about the race; Harmodios gave the groom his orders and handed over the bridle. The two walked off together, greeting friends. It was clear they were established lovers, long past the stage of declarations.

Later that day, the victor’s father asked me to supper at the house he had hired in Corinth. He was Skopas of Thessaly, whose breed of horses was famous everywhere, crossed with both Persian and Arabian blood-lines. He and his son were true Thessalians, big and swaggering, but without the insolence some of those houses have, and fond of laughter; their long legs bowed from riding all day before their bones had hardened. They invited me to their estate to make the young man a victory song and train a chorus.

I said I would make the song at home (some hosts will never leave a man alone to work) and then would come with pleasure. When I got there, I improved on it a little; it’s the one where Perseus invites Bellerophon to a feast, and while they drink, winged Pegasos covers Perseus’ mare. It is still sung in Thessaly, where, I’m told, a dozen horse-breeders claim it was made for them.

I spent ten pleasant days there, ending with the feast; they kept nearly sober till I had sung, high respect in Thessaly. Some of them had ridden for miles over the hills to hear me. I gave them Homer, in whose world they were almost living still. At parting they made me princely guest-gifts, and told me that henceforward I must count their house as a second home.

I thanked them and rode away, never thinking that before long it would be my refuge; still less that I would live to sing a funeral dirge for all of them, father and sons and kin, all lost in one angry stamp of earth-shaking Poseidon. I lived when the house fell down, because two tall young men with a horse to sell came asking for me by name. I had no need of a horse; I had never seen them before; when all was over, they and their horse had gone. They were very tall, even for Thessalians. It is said that the Great Twin Brethren, Sons of the Swan, Leda’s immortal children, will befriend wayfarers and ride away. At any rate, ever since then I have offered at their shrine.

Swift is the dragon-fly’s darting; swifter is fortune’s change. I never spoke a truer word than that.