However, as we neared Samos there was enough shipping to have picked us up; so I looked at the city, which we were somehow creeping to. It gleamed with new marble; the slopes of the mountains were clad with woods and orchards, or, lower, terraced for vines. Round the harbor the strait was teeming: once we were passed by a blunt-nosed Samian war-pentekonter, which seemed to flash by with its fifty oars, making a wash that nearly finished us; once I ran to Kleobis—or, rather, struggled to him through the crowd—to show him what was then a wonder, the first trireme either of us had seen. Oh, yes, I can remember when triremes were something new. The tall ships, we called them, and were amazed they did not capsize.
We limped into harbor; the passengers crowded to be first off; water came over the side; the crew beat them back with belaying-pins. We got in at last with an inch of freeboard to spare.
Young men today don’t know what the fame of Samos was, in the days of Polykrates. Oh yes, they say, the Tyrant; and think they need say no more. Well, today I can understand it.
I, who have lived four times their span, have seen “tyrant” shift its meaning, and now it has only one. Kleobis, whose memory went back forty years before mine, said it came first from the Lydians, who needed the word before the Greeks did. But in my youth, it was not yet the name for an oppressor. Indeed, most people thought it better than “king” and very much better than “lord.” True, it always meant a man who ruled alone. Power may not change but always reveals the man, and there are cities now who hate with good cause that Lydian word. But it was hated at first only by the great lords. It was nemesis to their hubris, and the better of them suffered with the worst.
The Landsharers, they had called themselves in Samos; the people had given them other names. To own land is one thing, to own your tenants another. Polykrates and his faction promised to see them right. He was a lord himself, like every tyrant I ever heard of. Some use the citizens as a tool while others really care for them; but I never met one yet who was without ambition. Even so, some of them did carry out their pledges; Polykrates did, on the whole. He gave the people more justice than they’d had before; he gave them work, and paid them for it, and brought in slaves to save them from rough labor. He had not pledged that he would not grow rich, or make war, or live like a king, or seize the neighboring islands, or spend his money on boys. That was his side of the bargain. He did a great deal in his life, both of good and evil; but as he did good mostly to the commons, and evil mostly to Landsharers and Persians, most of the Samians were pretty well content with him.
True, soon after he seized power he got rid of his two brothers who’d helped him there, one by exile and one by death; but the people thought it none of their business while he made the city beautiful and great. The barbarians, on the other hand, called him a common pirate. It is true that the glories of Samos were mostly built from loot.
Piracy had always been a Samian trade, and they made no bones about it. They had stolen treasures sent by kings to kings, needing only to hear that such things were on the sea. Polykrates own noble father had set up a votive statue to Hera, out of his plunder, a boast he had carved on the base. The son had only to seize the nobles’ ships to get himself a navy. Nowadays he dignified his forays with the name of war. He was famous all over Hellas for his wealth, for the works of his artists and architects and engineers, for his hundred warships and his thousand archers; and, more than all, for helping himself to tribute from Persian ships, instead of paying any.
No wonder the Samians all looked pleased with themselves, when a beggarly boatload of foreign fugitives stood gazing at the beauties of their city.
It was a very fine place; it was also a very full one. We were not the first beggarly boatload by a good long way.
Because of the wars, Kleobis had not been here since before the tyranny started, and said he would not have known the place. I was happy to gaze about, but could see this made him uneasy. He had written of our coming to two Samian guest-friends of former days; but there was no knowing if the letters had got through.
As we stepped off the mole—only half built then, but already grand with its cut ashlar and bronze bollards—we met the first of these old friends; only by chance, for it was a Samian pastime to see the ships come in and get their news. He was a stout anxious man, who looked as if he expected bad news only. He deplored the troubles of Ionia; rejoiced at our safety; did not ask our plans, and told us, as soon as he could with decency, that his widowed sister and her three daughters, escaped from Sardis, were living in his house. His brother’s family was now expected from Ephesos, and he was at his wits’ end to know how he would shelter them. Kleobis in turn condoled, and asked after his other old Samian guest-friend. He, it turned out, had been dead a year. Plainly, we would have to look after ourselves.
In Ephesos, Kleobis had comfortable means; but all locked up in land, which just now was finding no buyers. He had left the town house with Metriche, his old Karian girl. She was in no danger; nor indeed would we have been, had we cared to stay. But we would be now, if we went back there from hostile Samos. We had exiled ourselves, and would have to make the best of it. What money Kleobis had, he had brought along; better, he had his name, and Polykrates was a known patron of the Muses. We kept up our hopes.
Every inn within our means seemed full. After much trudging about, we found lodgings with a lyre-maker, who turned out someone else because he thought we would be good for business.
Next morning, Kleobis got out his tablets, and drafted a letter of compliment to Polykrates, sending respects, and hoping for the honor of praising his name in song.
I did the fair copy from wax to reed-paper. It was Kleobis who had had me taught to write. My father had never thought it worth while, and Theasides had never thought about it at all. He could write the farm accounts, and, at a pinch, a letter to a trader; why give the little brother more troubles than he had? Kleobis, however, had found it tiresome that I could do no written business, and sent me to a scribe for lessons. He taught me a fine square even hand; left to right, or plow-ways, or straight down, I can do them all. As a kind of craft, it even gives me pleasure. When I compose a letter, my mind sees the written words. As for my songs, I could no more sing in writing than make love. It belongs to another part of me.
Since it would never have done for Kleobis to be seen running his own errands, I took the letter, glad of a chance to see the famous palace.
It stands on a mountain spur, a little above the bay. A massive earthwork and ditch were being dug by a horde of slaves. Some passer-by, seeing I was a stranger, stopped to tell me that they were men of Lesbos, which the Tyrant had lately conquered; a great stroke against the Persians, that island being so near the Ionian shore. I could not see that the slaves looked very grateful.
I found my way through to a terrace, with a fine prospect of the city. Before a columned portico stood two soldiers in high-crested helmets, holding shields blazoned with hawks. One thumped his spear-butt; a chamberlain came and took my letter. I waited, seeing across the bay the purple hills of Ionia, and wondering if I should ever tread them more. They seemed more my home, now, than my birthplace had ever been.
The high oaken doors had bronze trims of lion-heads and roses, gleaming like gold. They opened, and I was led inside. The entry hall was patterned with colored marbles; beyond were more doors, of Egyptian ebony. Beyond one of these was Polykrates.