The Praise Singer (31 page)

I said to the boy, as his sobs quietened, “The anger of Achilles. Many brave men’s souls it flung to the house of Hades, and left the flesh of heroes to feast dogs and kites.”

“That the will of Zeus might be fulfilled?” But I had no answer. Nor have I now.

Great things came after; but the city I knew was already great. In all men is evil sleeping; the good man is he who will not awaken it, in himself or in other men. In Hippias that day there had been a great awakening. So Aristogeiton found in his hard dying. So the few men of his following found, down in the Kerameikos, when the guards had found they had had daggers as well as spears.

Courage and love; it is well that they should be honored, even by men who have forgotten the truth, or never known it, or have lied about it to serve a cause. Those proud young oligarchs of my vanished city stand in the new one, cast in immortal bronze, and the democrats do them honor. Already people say that they set Athens free, though they threw her into a reign of fear, and only the Spartans and Alkmaionids broke it. They are even starting to say that Hipparchos was First Archon and Pisist?ratos’ heir; though it seems to me like yesterday that Hippias, all else failing him, crawled to the Medes to put him back in Athens as their governor, and was flung back from the gallant shore of Marathon, and crept off with the Medes to die.

I sat by the boy, as he wiped away his tears and begged my pardon for them; I thought of the face of Hippias; and suddenly my roots were loosened from Athens’ walls. As at Keos, as at Ephesos, as at Samos, it was time to go. We are wanderers all.

I said, “We must stay awhile, or the Archon will think we have some reason to run away. Let us go home now and sit in quiet. It’s no time to be running about the city.”

I stood up. Bacchylides slung the kithara on his shoulder, giving it a long look. It was just coming home to him that the wrath of Achilles had sent us both into exile. Yes; but before Achilles’ anger had come the hubris of Agamemnon, King of Men. It is grief to see a hero go down to the house of Hades. It is bitter to lose a friend to evil, before one loses him to death.

But I had the boy to think of just now. I said, “We shall come back again. All that I know of Athens tells me so. A city is not as great as its rulers only. It is as great as its gods. I have served them most; and I think the city knows it.”

“And its heroes,” said the boy. “You have sung them too. Perhaps it was because of you that he died so bravely.” He was feeling better now, and wanted to give some comfort back to me, in return for mine to him. “You sang it, and he did it. Have you thought of that?”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

If the lives of Greek poets in the latter half of the sixth century are to be understood, we must be aware more of contrasts than of parallels with the condition of writers today.

It was only on the very lowest level, that of the marketplace entertainer, that the singer or reciter made his living from a public audience. Circulation of the written word was still unknown, and compositions were committed to writing only for personal reference, if at all. Many surviving fragments of the century’s great lyric poets may have been recorded only after a long circulation by word of mouth. It is certain that the whole of Homer was so transmitted for some two centuries, and may incorporate material centuries older still, over a stretch of time during which the art of writing had entirely perished; Pisistratos’ collation came just in time to rescue him for a literate society. During the Dark Age, and into the dawn of the archaic renaissance, the libraries of the bards were contained entirely within their heads.

Before the passing of the powerful aristocratic oligarchies, private means would assure both the poet’s independence and an audience of his peers: Sappho, Alkaios, Solon, had no need of patronage. This situation was changed by the advent of the “tyrants.”

It is little understood today that nearly all the Greek tyrants were well to the left of the oligarchies they superseded, and, though invariably of aristocratic birth themselves, emerged as champions of underprivileged majorities. The term itself had originally a neutral connotation, like the word “dictator” in Rome. Its later meaning derived from the excesses of some tyrants, once all restraints on their exercise of power had been removed. The blanket generalization that “absolute power corrupts absolutely” is a historical absurdity (compare, for instance, Nero with Marcus Aurelius); and tyrants came in all shades of personality from benign father-figures to sadistic monsters. What they had in common was that they were all heads of state, in whom resided the poet’s only hope of public performance and recognition, even though he might be a man of property. Thus his situation was quite different from that of writers in other ages of patronage, such as Shakespeare or Samuel Johnson, who could pick up a living in time of need through the theater or the printing press.

Prose composition, dependent wholly on writing, had not yet begun; and neither, therefore, had history or biography. Anyone trying to piece to?gether the lives and characters of the archaic poets must turn to the researches of scholars, among whom the late Sir Maurice Bowra has pride of place, who have collected from all kinds of scattered sources the fragments of their work, and references or quotations by other, often much later, classical authors. Thus the record of their lives is skeletal when it is even that; and their treatment in fiction leaves the novelist with many more lacunae to fill in than when dealing with a much-chronicled figure such as Alexander the Great.

Simonides is known to have been born in Keos (whose severe austerity laws are described by Strabo) and to have been so ugly that when he had composed a satire on the Corinthians, someone asked him how so ill-favored a man dared reproach a beautiful city. Nothing is known of his childhood, and I may have traduced a loving father who fostered his talent; but it seems that, once out of Keos, he felt no disposition to go back. It is not known whether he ever worked in Ionia before the Persian conquest, or in Samos either; but there is some evidence that at one time he lived in Euboia, before being invited to Athens by the Pisistratids.

His father’s name is known; so are the names of his sister and her husband, because they were the parents of Bacchylides, himself a gifted poet, and his uncle’s pupil and companion up to the time of his death in Sicily, at the age of eighty-eight. Theasides son of Leoprepes appears in Herodotos as a man of high repute among both the Spartans and the Aiginetans, who was allowed to arbitrate in a dispute between them, and thus averted a war. Unluckily his native city is not given; but Leoprepes, the name of Simonides’ father, is an unusual one. I have made them brothers by pure guess.

One of the most striking features of Simonides’ career is the respect with which he was welcomed back to Athens after the expulsion of Hippias, despite his long residence at the Pisistratid court. It seems probable that he left it after the murder of Hipparchos; the dates of his sojourn in Thessaly are not exactly known. Anakreon, who also found a refuge there, was also persona grata when he came back. It is probable that the Pisistratids were not so unpopular in Athens before the unforgivable defection of the exiled Hippias to Persia. It is also true that to the Greeks of the great age, good work was good work, and carried its own passport.

In the story of Harmodios and Aristogeiton, I have followed Thukydides’ account in every particular that he gives. The errors he corrects in the received tradition- that the friends were democrats, and that they killed the reigning tyrant-are the first known instance of distortion of history for political ends.

The name of Harmodios’ father is not known; but J. K. Davies, in his indispensable Athenian Propertied Families, 600-300 B.C., gives Proxenos as a family name.

The curious circumstance about Harmodios’ father, as with the dog in the Sherlock Holmes story, is that he did nothing. Whether or not he knew of Hipparchos’ attempts upon his son, the public humiliation of his daughter would have insulted him, as head of the family, more than any of its other menfolk. I have therefore inferred that, in an era when life-expectancy was short, he was already dead, and that this place was held by Harmodios himself.

A bronze statue-group of the “liberators,” set up in the Agora, was taken as a trophy by Xerxes during the Persian invasion, and carried back to Susa. The Athenians commissioned another statue-group to take its place. In the fourth century Susa fell to Alexander, who sent the original statues back to Athens. For some centuries the two groups stood in the Agora side by side.

CHRONOLOGY

SOME HISTORICAL EVENTS DURING THE LIFETIME OF SIMONIDES

B.C.

556

Simonides born. Pisistratos expelled from Athens for second time.

550

Kyros establishes supremacy of Persians over Medes. Pisistratids in exile.

546

Kyros takes Sardis. Pisistratos returns to Athens.

540

Kyros conquers Babylon. P?olykrates reigning in Samos.

530

Death of Kyros. Accession of Kambyses.

527

Death of Pisistratos. Hippias succeeds to the Tyranny.

525

Aischylos born.

522

Murder of Polykrates. Death of Kambyses. Darius succeeds. Pindar born.

514

Murder of Hipparchos by Harmodios and Aristogeiton.

510

Hippias expelled from Athens. Simonides in Thessaly.

499-494

Ionian revolt against Persia, ending in defeat.

496

Sophokles born. Herodotos born about this time.

495

Perikles born.

492

Persians invade Thrace. Simonides back in Athens about this time.

490

Darius invades Greece. Battle of Thermopylai. Simonides composes epitaph of the fallen Spartans. Persians (with Hippias) defeated at Marathon.

486

Death of Darius. Accession of Xerxes.

480

Xerxes invades Greece. Athens evacuated. Greek naval victory at Salamis, retreat of Xerxes. Euripides born.

c. 476

Simonides retires to Syracuse, accompanied by Bacchylides.

472

Aischylos’ tragedy The Persians performed in Athens.

468

Death of Simonides.

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Real persons derived from history are shown in Roman type; invented ones in italics. All dates are B.C.

AISCHYLOS

525/4-456. Earliest of the great Athenian tragic poets.

ALKMAIONIDS

Attic aristocratic clan, first allies, then enemies of the Pisistratids.

ANAKREON

570Ð(?)490. Greek lyric poet famous for his erotic verse.

ARISTOGEITON

Athenian aristocrat, lover of Harmodios.

BACCHYLIDES

Greek lyric and heroic poet, nephew and pupil of Simonides.

CHARIAS

A conspirator, recruited by Aristogeiton.

DELIAS

Invented name for Harmodios’ sister, a real person whose name is not recorded.

DOROTHEA

Housekeeper and mistress of Simonides.

ENDIOS

Pupil of Kleobis.

EXEKIAS

Master vase-painter and potter in the black-figure style.

HARMODIOS

Young Athenian aristocrat, beloved by Aristogeiton.

HARPAGOS

Median general under Kyros, King of Persia.

HEIRON

Tyrant of Syracuse, patron of Simonides in his old age.

HIPPARCHOS

Second son of Pisistratos, succeeded him as joint ruler

HIPPIAS

Eldest son of Pisistratos, succeeded him as joint ruler, with precedence over Hipparchos.

HIPPONAX

Abusive satirist, of Ephesos.

IBYKOS

Lyric poet, of Rhegium in Italy.

KAMBYSES

Son and successor of Kyros, King of Persia.

KIMON

Athenian aristocrat, thrice winner of Olympic chariot race.

KLEOBIS

A bard, teacher of Simonides.

KYROS

Founder of the Persian Empire, first Great King.

LAERTES

A sea-captain and merchant venturer.

LASOS

Lyric and dithyrambic poet, of Hermione.

LEOPREPES

Of Iulis in Keos, father of Simonides.

LYRA

An Athenian courtesan.

MAIANDRIOS

Envoy of Polykrates, who succeeded to his tyranny.

METRICHE

Housekeeper to Kleobis.

MIDYLOS

Simonides’ brother-in-law, father of Bacchylides.

ONOMAKRITOS

Poet. Collator and forger of ancient oracles.

OROITES

Satrap of Lydia, murderer of Polykrates.

PHILEAS

Simonides’ steward, father of Dorothea.

PHILOMACHE

Simonides’ sister, mother of Bacchylides.

PISISTRATOS

d. 527. Tyrant of Athens, father of Hippias, Hipparchos and Thessalos.

POLYKRATES

d. circa 522. Tyrant of Samos.

PROKLES

An Athenian poet, patron of the young Simonides.

PROXENOS

Father of Harmodios.

PYTHAGORAS

Philosopher, mathematician and mystic, of Samos.

SIMONIDES

556-468. Heroic, dithyrambic and lyric poet. Author of the epitaph on the Spartans fallen at Thermopylai.

THALATTA

A whore.

THEASIDES

‘Son of Leoprepes.’ A real man of distinguished reputation, who may or may not have been Simonides’ brother, but is so treated in the story.

THEODOROS

Sculptor, architect, gem-cutter, of Samos.

THESSALOS

Younger son of Pisistratos, brother (or step-brother) of Hippias and Hipparchos.

ZAMOLXIS

Slave and di?sciple of Pythagoras, later prophet and counsellor to the Getai, his native tribe.

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