The Praise Singer (4 page)

It was a clear morning, just wind enough to fill the sail and spare the rowers. The ship was new, the eyes on the prow fresh-painted; the cargo was clean, mostly pots and figs, and smelled as delicious to me as spices. I shouldered my master’s baggage with as much pride as a knight takes in his horse. It was the first mark of my new calling.

When the sailors had told me w?here to put it, and shoved me out of their way, I stood at the rail and looked back at the harbor. It seemed like a foreign port already. I was amazed to see Theas appear and wave. He jumped aboard, paid his respects to my master, and looked about him with wistful eyes. I saw, hardly believing it, that he envied me.

Getting me in a corner where they had finished lading, he put a hand on my shoulder. “We’ve never talked, not as men. I’m telling you now, never think you can’t come back here, and be somebody at home. When you’ve seen other cities, and how men live there, you’ll think we must be poor folk. Well, we’re not poor, Sim, and we never have been. Sometime I mean to see the world myself, and I’ll not need to work my passage. Nor you. You’ve chosen a calling with plenty of ups and downs, not that I blame you. But one day there’ll be enough for both of us, I promise you that.”

He had had thoughts like mine. Like me, he would not own to them.

“I must go,” he said. “I’ve the thralls to mind in the ten-acre. If the father sees them idling, he’ll be asking them where I am. Here.” He undid a buckle at his belt. “This is for you. You’ll likely need it sooner than I would. Don’t you be the one to start, that’s all.”

He held out his dearest treasure, a good knife with silver studs on its horn handle. It had been a prize at the games, for throwing the disk and javelin; I had never seen him without it, except when without his clothes. He strapped it on my belt, and embraced me. Next moment we were both in tears. We had not much thought till now that we would miss each other: I a protector, a hero in whom to trust, and he a worshipper-what man is displeased with that? But we were young, we would not die of it. We wiped our eyes and parted; and Kleobis gave us the long look of a poet getting a phrase for a song.

SAMOS

YES, I owed Endios a tomb. In death he was my benefactor.

By Keos reckoning, Kleobis must always have been an easy master. But no one can travel without some hardship; being used to it himself, he had naturally supposed that what he could bear at sixty could not hurt a strong lad of fifteen. He took the death hard, the son of a friend and benefactor. On our voyage out, he kept going over the boy’s last days; his getting wet on the ship coming from Ephesos; his climbing up from Koressia in maybe too hot a sun, carrying a bag which was maybe too heavy; his sitting outdoors at the wedding when the fever must have been on him. The upshot of all this was that now when he had got a Kean shepherd lad, tough as a goat, he took all the care he wished he had taken before. I never once slept in an outhouse, unless by mishap he had to shake down there himself; when offered hospitality, he had me received as a guest as well. His own son could have lived no better; and my father’s son had never lived half so well.

People think the bond between poet and pupil is forged by the holy Muse. Quite true; but nothing forges it tighter than traveling among strangers. Friends met by the way will soon pass on; on the whole, there are just the two of you. If you are out of tune, it can’t last long. But if it wears well, it will be like father and son. Closer, for me. My blood-father saw that at the start. Well, I could not help it.

My tasks were a game to me, compared with what I had done at home. Kleobis, sensible man, always traveled as light as his purse, only gathering stuff when he could afford to hire a donkey. We never went without clothing for heat or cold, and best clothes for a performance; but it did not weigh so heavy as a three-month lamb on the mountain.

Had I been serving only a craftsman or a merchant, I would have found things to enjoy: steep islands, still and dark in a laughing sea; white harbors full of strange ships; a road creeping small into dark blue mountains; a pleasant inn in a poplar grove by a river; the terrible filthy inn where they tried to rob us, and I pulled out Theas’ knife. After that, Kleobis treated me like a man.

I only missed one thing from my former life?: for a long time I hated to sleep alone. My mother took against me from the moment the midwife held me up to her; once I was weaned, if I cried in the night her remedy was a slap. But Theas, who was no more than six or seven, would creep up softly and take me into bed, as he might have done a squeaking pup. Soon I would climb in of my own accord, and like a soft-hearted child with a growing pup, he let me be. So there I stayed, feeling safe with him like a dog. For months I felt restless and strange without him, and would wake in the darkness wondering where he was.

All this was the daily bread of my life. The meat and wine were the songs.

Excellent men, concerned with the training of youth to virtue, have begged me to declare that art is the child of labor. Well, labor must bring it forth, like everything else that lives. As I tell these people, there are women one can’t get without taking pains, or boys if you prefer them; but first you must fall in love. After that, the pains take care of themselves. So don’t bring me, I say to these worthy men, some youth who wants to know what kind of song is likely to win the crown this year; or what everyone else is singing, lest he should feel lonely. If that is all he wants, I’ve no time left to waste on him. Take him away, and apprentice him to a lyre-maker, where he may even be of use. But if you come upon someone who grabs at song like a child at a bright stone on the shore, who shapes and reshapes like a child building a sand-castle, deep in his act and lost to all around-then, never mind if his sand-castle leans sideways, just give him time. Don’t tell him that this year people are doing, or not doing, or no longer doing, this or that. Send him to me, who will protect him from fools like you, will show him the great shell-beaches and watch him at his play.

Oh yes, I worked. Yes indeed. Looking back on my father’s last instruction, not to do things the easy way, I used to laugh aloud. In our calling, once you know where you’re going, there is no easy way; you get there, or not. Even if you aim to go no further than four lines on a dog’s tomb. Well, for that matter, I have gone a good way in four lines, and further still in two.

However, at that age it still took me ten lines at least to say “Good dog.” All I was fit for was to learn, but at least I knew it. I gorged like a calf in a spring meadow; not only Kleobis’ lessons, but anything I could browse on along the way. Like every bard who will not let his repertoire go rusty, he would go over it quietly as we walked; and by the time he was ready to give me line by line, I had much of it in my head. I did not know, till he told me, that I had a better memory than other people; I thought one would naturally remember what one had liked to hear. To this day, there are pieces of Homer, or Sappho, or Stesichoros, which I can’t recall without some bit of road, or courtyard, or stone fountain-rim coming to mind along with them.

This cornel-wood staff of mine-the old man’s third leg, as the Sphinx said in her riddle-when Kleobis owned it, I felt it many a time. If I spoke to him when he was composing, he didn’t interrupt himself, just gave me a rap. If I was fool enough to start begging his pardon, he hit me again, to teach me the virtue of silence. I would then mind my own business, of which I had quite enough. You don’t master the Iliad in a month, or in a year; but every day I added my few lines, like a bee bringing wax to the hive.

I soon learned I have a certain gift of nature: that what I have learned by heart, I can call back all at once, just as one does a prospect seen with one’s eyes, not one stone or tree after another. Some philosopher, it must have been Herakleitos, once tried to explain to me the nature of this whole, which my memory hears in a moment though it would take an hour to speak it aloud. But Herakleitos would make a mystery of anything.

Of course, a man like Kleobis did not live like some wandering minstrel, singing in markets for a supper. We never even slept at inns, unless ben?ighted between towns. In any city, some house was always open to us, often two or three in rivalry; he had guest-friends everywhere. If he sang at a sacred festival, we might be lodged in the temple precinct. Besides all this, Kleobis had a home.

His patrimony was at Ephesos; a farm let to a tenant, and a city house kept ready for his return by an old Karian slave-woman. She doted on him, but scolded him so freely that it was clear they’d been bedmates once. She was not yet past jealousy, though not of me; me she favored, because I was too ugly to be a rival. Getting me in a corner she would give me a fig or apricot, and try to make me tell tales. I thanked her prettily, and kept my tales to myself.

Kleobis had a moving little song, about an old man bidding farewell to Aphrodite. I have known it make wrestlers cry. But if they thought he spoke for himself they were much mistaken. From time to time he would tell me that this evening, to reward my progress, I could play upon the kithara instead of my practice lyre; he was going to visit friends and I need not wait up for him. It did not take me long to observe that this happened in cities polite enough to have some clean amusing hetairas. He was a fastidious man. I can’t recall his ever visiting a common stews. Happy to get my hands upon the kithara and sing to its seven-stringed voice, I wished him a pleasant evening, with no thought that such things would ever be my concern.

In those years, I hardly knew that I was made like other men. I had married my art, and kept all my love for my master. I daresay I had Bouselos’ little daughter to thank, for keeping me out of the street of the women. As I grew from boy to youth, of course I was importuned as all travelers are. But each of them in turn I thought would endure me for the pay, mocking me after with some fellow whore; she must indeed be the lowest of her calling, to seek my custom at all. I had no need to master desire, while I had such thoughts to quench it, and felt only shame at these solicitations. Returning to my lyre, I would sing of royal maidens, chosen by gods to bring forth heroes. One of my lays pleased Kleobis so well that he let me sing it at an Ephesian supper-party. I got a ring of worked bronze from the host. My first fee. I have it still.

Nowadays, friends and fellow poets will talk of my ugliness as easily as of my clothes. Mostly it is done as a kind of courtesy, meaning that I can afford it; and I take it so. Sometimes malice creeps in, but envy does not hurt a man like scorn.

When I had been about two years with Kleobis, he urged me to visit Keos, compete at the Apollo festival, and show them what I could do. By this time I had sung several times in public, and even my own songs had been well received. My voice was well over breaking, settled into a middle tone with a good range; I performed with a growing courage. But still, at the very thought of singing before my father, the soul of a ragged shepherd boy possessed me. I said I was sure to lose, and be shamed before my kindred; and besides, if I went back too soon I might find myself betrothed again. He did not press me. The world was wider in those days. We scarcely knew how fast it was closing in.

Already, though, not all our travels through Ionia were in search of wealth or fame. Sometimes it was for safety we took the road. These were the days of Kyros, King of the Persians.

Years before, he had risen against his overlord the Median King, whose people hated him, and soon handed him over. Kyros spared his life, the man being his kinsman; treated the Medes as their King rather than as their conqueror, and soon won their goodwill. By the time I came to Asia, Persians and Medes were almost like one people, and fought as such.

Later, I’ve heard Darius called The Great. But to my mind, the barbarians never had a king equal to Kyros. His glory filled the world, when I was young. If he had been a Hellene, what a praise song I could have made him. I have some lines in my head, though they have never passed my tongue.

I wish I had seen him, if only once. But he had gone east to prepare for war with Babylon, leaving his generals to gather the Ionian cities in. Men who did see him, I have talked with: he was one of the fair Persians, with that fine gem-carved face you find among them. He had a great horse, and sat it as if he’d grown there; was distant and godlike to Greeks, but much beloved by soldiers; had his hair and beard curled close and short with the irons; wore embroidered trousers, and a corselet of plaited linen from Egypt, stronger than mail, and dyed with Tyrian purple. He was seen to rebuke one of his lords for spitting in public. That is all I heard first-hand.

When Lydia fell to him, the Greek cities should have read the omens and allied for war. Together, they could have given his generals trouble enough. As it was, they did much brave fighting, here and there; but never all at once, nor all together. Persians and Medes might like to be Kyros’ men; Greeks like to be their own. From time to time at some sacred festival Ionians would meet and talk about their dangers; before long, someone proposed they should choose one general to lead them all; which each city agreed to, provided it should supply him. Then they all went home.

One by one the cities fell; some by storm, some by siege, some just abandoned by the people, if they had a port and ships. Kyros’ chief general was a Mede, called Harpagos, who had joined him because the Median King had killed his son. He was very loyal to his new master, as the Ionians learned to their cost.

After a while, some towns surrendered as soon as his slaves began to dig his siege-mounds; others, as soon as they saw him coming; and some sent envoys to make terms before he came at all. All these were spared, by Kyros’ orders, and given one of their own lords as governor; the fate of the citizens depended on how oppressive these lords already were. Cities that had fought were put under Persian satraps.

When we heard in Ephesos that the Medes were coming, Kleobis offered to send me home; he would pay my passage from Miletos, which had made terms already. He would stay in his own city; but I was a Kean and owed Ephesos nothing. To that I answered that Ephesos had given me the greatest gift of my life. We embraced, and I went off to train with the other young men at spear-fighting and throwing javelins. By then I was nearly eighteen.

On the training-ground I found two or three faces no handsomer than my own, and a good many arms less strong. I had kept my lean shepherd’s muscle, and my eye was straight. My comrades thought well of me for not having run home. Making new friends, I almost forgot I might die before I’d made one song fit to be handed down from bard to bard.

After some days, the barbarian army was descried coming down the Silenos river-plain. On this the priests of Artemis took counsel with the lords, and decreed that a pharmakos be chosen, to purge the city.

The young men I trained with said it was twenty years since a scapegoat had been needed, in time of plague; so none of them remembered it. But they knew all about it; and those who were old enough went to the great square before the city, to take part in the choosing. The younger ones, and foreigners like me, watched from the rooftops.

Artemis of Ephesos is not like Artemis of Athens. She is no virgin; farmers and women pray to her for increase, and she is hung all over with breasts. All her priests are eunuchs, by their own choice; some do it themselves in the frenzy of the rites. Soon they appeared on the terrace before the temple porch, winding out through the many columns that surround the mighty sanctuary, as if they threaded a marble forest. They carried their wands tipped with the sacred crescent; their young boys clashed ringing cymbals, to order silence. They had brought their victim with them.

He was a mean shambling fellow, led by a rope-his hands were tied behind him-and scared out of his life. The people shouted and catcalled, as if they thought him well chosen. In a voice cra?cked with fear, he shouted out that if he had defrauded any citizen, anyone at all, he vowed by the goddess he would make it good to him. Being fairly near, I could see he was crossed-eyed and patched with scrofula. There was jeering; then someone shouted out, “Not him! Choose Hipponax!” And there was applause.