His eyes had fixed in his head, the white gleaming round the iris; bright eyes, not blind, and yet unseeing. With any other man, I should have thought it was a fit, and called for help. As it was, I would have gone away quietly, but had not been given the urn. I waited, wondering how long these turns might last with him, and whether I should tell the slave, so that he could be looked after. I was afraid to wake him myself. However, the shadows on the floor had hardly moved, before he came calmly to himself, and smiled at me.
“Forgive me. The Sight chooses its own time. When the door opens, even on the same day of the same life, there is always something new. Just now I tasted the food he shared with me.”
He paused, and I was afraid he would go off again. “Yes?” I said.
“I mean Zamolxis. That is one of my strongest bonds. I was an Egyptian, a child—I know Egypt in this life, and much came back to me. My father took me on his ship to trade in Tyre. We were seized by pirates; Zamolxis was the captain. My father fought and was killed, escaping slavery; they threw him dying overboard. I ran to the one man I saw taking no part in this, not knowing that only his rank prevented him. I clasped his knees and begged him to save me. He was pitiful, and chose me for part of his spoils; for his pleasure, the others thought, but he did no harm to me. Once, in a calm, I taught him the common writing, and once in a storm he comforted me. In the end he put me ashore, in a place that is now unknown to me, where I had kindred. Someday I may come upon it.
“Well, that is the cause of his present life. For the blood he had shed and the people he had enslaved, he had to make reparation; he was enslaved as a boy, to a hard master in these parts. I passed by—not by chance, you can be sure, although it seemed so—and heard him crying under the whip; and the Sight came to me, and I knew my debt. For ten years he has shared my studies; I took him to Egypt with me, when I went to the temple schools. He knows the motions of the stars, and the properties of plants. In all these years, he has not shed the blood of a living creature; he knows they are souls which have been men, or will be. Now he shall go to the Getai, from whom he came, in the country north of the Ister. As in his former life he brought death and darkness, in this he will bring life and light.”
I thought to myself that he talked like a poet, and wondered what he sang. As to his tale, I could tell that he believed in it; but it seemed a waste of a good slave. He’ll just be one more cattle-raiding tribesman, I thought, within half a year.
However, I replied as I thought he’d wish; and shortly after, he gave me the funeral urn; a beautiful piece, Corinthian, painted with lions and flowers. Later, I made a tomb for it in Euboia, carved with this epitaph: I was Kleobis of Ephesos, till my city was possessed by the long-haired Mede. But my songs remain, and will abide his going.
From time to time, I heard news of Pythagoras and his school in Italy. Lately, when I was traveling to Syracuse, my ship put in at Kroton. He was dead by then, but I talked to some citizens, who honor him next the gods and keep all his laws. They live more plainly even than Keans, but from devotion rather than harshness; to me they were very courteous, and brought me to some old men who had known the founder well. I asked whether they’d ever heard anything of a freed slave called Zamolxis. Yes indeed, they said; he was still alive, and honored by the Getai as their greatest sage. Two kings in turn had appointed him prophet and counselor to the people. He lived in a cave, keeping his master’s laws and preaching his philosophy. The Getai, who had been great hunters, now killed no living thing, and were known to the tribes around as Milk-Eaters.
ATHENS
1
I LIVED THREE OR four years in Euboia, before my father died.
Every month or so, I used to cross over to show him the farm accounts: so many horses sold in Attica, the yield of olives or oil or barley. The steward told me, and I wrote it down; my memory is for words, not numbers. I would bring my father his half-share, and give him the mainland news; and, if he asked me, would tell him where I had performed.
I came, if I could, to the chief Kean festivals, and the games. One year I had my wish, and made Theas a victory song when he won the wrestling. At first I was still just Leoprepes’ son, home on a visit. Later, things began to change. He let it be seen that I no longer disgraced the family; but I don’t remember his ever praising a song.
The farm had had a wing thrown out, for Theas and his wife and their two handsome children, boy and girl. Philomache and her Midylos were still childless. His father Bacchylides, who had been a great athlete in his day, fretted about it more than he did. “We’re both young yet,” he said. “I don’t believe she’s barren.” He had too much courtesy to tell her brother that he’d sired healthy bastards himself. “And even if she were, I’d sooner have a woman who pleases me than a fool farrowing fools.” She had a bloom on her, and it seemed he suited her too.
Each year I traveled to the greater festivals as they fell due, the Isthmia, or the Olympics, the Nemea, the Panathenaia; sang in the contests, and sometimes hymned the victors. I have always enjoyed the challenge of a victory hymn. One can’t know beforehand who the victor will be of any event, nor which victor is going to hire one. Besides which, only one bard can win a singing contest, and one may have one’s work for nothing but applause; but a victory ode means money.
The rest of the year I shared between Euboia, where I had my house, and Athens, where I had my hopes.
In these first years, it was Euboia mostly. It is a god-frequented land, with woody gorges and chestnut-shaded hills. In the mountain villages, or along the shore away from the big harbors, old men will tell you tales which Achilles may well have heard at Cheiron’s knee. They have that smell of great age one can’t mistake, like old green bronze. I made my Lament of Danae there, because of a song I heard a woman sing as she turned the quern.
The land had been in our family time out of mind. We had been Euboians, till two generations back, when my great-grandfather was on the losing side in the Lelantine War. He’d been a great landowner down in the plain; when that was gone he retired to Keos, and lived on the place which had been his Kean wife’s dowry, and where I was born. My father used to say the Euboian land I farmed was just a smallholding, compared with the ancient glories. But I wanted a living, not a fortune, which I hoped to find for myself; and I lived there very well.
The farm is in the hills near Dystos, east of Swallow Lake, on a slope that faces Attica. It’s a short ride down to the coast, where any boatman will run you across to Rhamnos. From there it’s an easy journey to Athens, between the heights of Parnes and Hymettos. I used to keep a mule stabled with a Rhamnos farmer; starting early, I could be in Athens by noon.
Old Phileas, the steward, was worth his weight in gold. He set me free. When I first came, he made me about as welcome as a conquering Mede. He was a square, slow-moving countryman, full of grumbles, straight out of Hesiod. I soon saw his sullenness did not come from fear of having petty misdeeds found out; he was afraid I’d spoil his good work with ignorant meddling. The land was tended, the slaves were well trained and fed, the horses sleek. I saw what this would mean to me, and took more trouble to sweeten him than I’ve done with many a prince; rode round the estate with him, praised this or that (it was wonderful how my boyhood lore came back to me) and told him my father had advised me to lean on his experience. He softened; though he grumbled still that the master would have nothing changed from his own father’s day, and if the horse-pasture was put under corn it would bring in as much again. However, I was now his audience and not his theme.