The Praise Singer

by Mary Renault

  He gave me a long look, and sighed. “My dear, I don’t know. I have seen so much evil in my time, there’s little I can’t believe. You’ve known them longer. I was hoping that you’d tell me.”

  “Let’s walk,” I said. We went up into the dusky oak wood. There was an ancient tree split by a thunderbolt, by Zeus in the Titan War as like as not. Half still stood, half was felled, the fire-marks long washed with rain. No one was in earshot, and we sat down.

  I said, “My mind’s been on it all through the pentathlon. I don’t even know who won the foot-race—four years to the next, and by then one may be dead … Well, I’ve thought, and I can’t believe it. If it was done, it must have been by Hippias; he’s sole ruler in all but name. And he’s the most god-fearing man I ever knew; he wakes and sleeps by it. Can you see him violating a sacred precinct and a sacred truce, in one stroke? He’d as soon dance naked through the Kerameikos.”

  “I think so, too.” He pulled a piece of pale lichen off the log, shook out the grubs, and peered at it. His short sight hid from him many imperfections; it gave him, I daresay, as much pleasure as it took away. Close to, he could count the veins on a fly’s wing. “Exquisite. Like Thessalian goldwork … Sometimes I’ve thought there might be more in Hipparchos than meets the eye. Power does not much concern him. But a slight, I’ve noticed, concerns him a good deal.”

  “Hipparchos!” I gazed at him amazed. But then, it was true he had seen much evil. “He’d never be a man for a knife in the dark. I suppose like anyone he’d avenge an insult; but he’s not had one. Kimon was his father’s benefactor, and that’s the end of it. He owed nothing to the sons, and he could have promised nothing. It wasn’t in his power.”

  Anakreon’s face lightened. He had been through bad times, and did not want to think they could come again. I could understand it. I went on, “Kimon and Hipparchos can barely know each other. Kimon’s a real country squire; the arts mean nothing to him. As for Hipparchos, he likes the graces. He takes nothing very seriously, even love.”

  “Fortunate man!” He sighed and lifted his eyes. “My dear, you have lifted a load from me. If you’d known my need of you, you’d have lain less easy last night.”

  I laughed; we brushed the bark from us, and, ready for supper, strolled down among the trees. In the open glade, touched with the yellow light of sunset, people were strolling in twos and threes. “You were saying, my dear, that you missed the winner of the footrace. Look, there he is. An Athenian, too. The Archons made him a present.”

  The young man was dark-haired and dark-eyed, walking lightly, with the springy step of a runner, still wearing the ribbons tied by his friends round his head and arm. “It comes back to me now,” I said. “He ran a good race and used his head; but I missed his name.”

  “I heard it. It will come to me in a moment. Oh, yes. Aristogeiton, son of Theotimos.”

  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 in
to 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.

  THE SACRED WAY

  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 tea
cher, 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.