His friend toasted him in it, very tastefully; he was not merely presentable but exceedingly well-bred.
“And, after that, nothing would content me but to set something of the kind before all my friends. If you care for them, pay me the compliment of accepting them and taking them home.”
Of course nothing else was talked of, as men showed their cups to one another. Thessalos’s, which was lewd but witty, was passed right round the room. I am sure not a guest but was at a potter’s next morning; in no time at all the young Psiax, whose fortune had been made in that one evening, had set up his own shop. My cup had Apollo on his tripod, playing the lyre; I kept it forty years, till some fool of a porter broke it.
Hipparchos was a host whom guests were eager to please. But he neither asked, nor got, the crude sycophancy of Samos. He had much more to confer than gold. Polykrates’ courtiers grew rich, but were held in contempt and envy; Hipparchos could bestow esteem. His patronage was a prize to any artist, not just a living. Fashions he set were not seen later to have been foolish; when they came to be denounced, it was long after, for other reasons. Accepted by him, you were acceptable anywhere in Athens, as I quickly learned. When the wine-cups had been admired, he called on me to sing, making it seem that those trifles had been just an appetizer, this was the banquet.
I had never sung better than on that night, and knew it. The very images of the tale shone brighter in my head. The god-wrought armor of Achilles burned; the river-god he wrestled with was a great sinuous giant with transparent blue limbs and hair of stiff green rushes whose lice were silver fish. Much of it I improvised as my mind was quickened. Luckily I remembered it after.
Above all other talents, Hipparchos had the bright and perilous gift of making others shine. It was his paternal heritage, the only share he had been endowed with. For, of course, he could have possessed the graces of a god without getting where he was, if his father had not made his way secure.
It was my luck to be just in time for Pisistratos. I have always been glad not to have missed a man so remarkable and, as I still think, great. Soon after, as old age crept on him, he began to fail a little; but at that time, he was still what he had been, and one could understand how he had done what he had. It was no lie when I sang of him that he was a Perseus who had buried the Gorgon’s head.
The first time he sent for me was soon after Hipparchos’ party. He did not keep late hours; as I went up, the ornaments on the temple roofs still caught a gleam of sun. The stone house with its marble portico had an unforced dignity, and some parts looked very old. Maybe it was true that bits of King Theseus’ palace had been taken into it.
There were no guards outside; he no longer needed them as in his early days. The tale was that he got them by trickery then, showing himself and his mule-team bleeding from an ambush no one else saw, and asking the Council for the right to protect himself. They only had clubs at first, till his private army was ready and the spears came out. I daresay it was true.
The house was spacious inside, and gravely rich, the anteroom floored with yellow marble laid like a honeycomb. There was a big Persian wall-hanging, and on a green marble stand an old bronze lion, solid-cast, masterly. The chamberlain who placed us in the guest-room was well polished; so were the couches and tables and sideboards, mellow with beeswax and good slaves. It all looked, like its master, to have been there a long time without getting frowsty. From the way he greeted me, I could have been among the highest-ranking of his guests. I thought of Samos. I suppose from that moment he had my love.
The eight double couches made a big party, for him; he liked to have each guest in talking reach. Dancers and flute-girls and jugglers he never used, saying they were for men without conversation. But he was a lover of the Muses and good above all to poets. As I learned later, it was for my sake he had filled up his room that night, to get me known and make me feel myself valued. As a mark of honor, he had put me on the couch of Hippias, his eldest son.
He was a grave and civil person, but the only one of the family without ease of manner; when he ran out of talk, he would include us in his father’s, so that I heard a good deal of it. I should think, if he’d chosen, the old man could have been a poet. He had always the right word for everyone; and the poet who can improvise is always halfway to fortune. He could meet men on their own ground too, where they felt at home. I can even see him as one of those newfangled actors who go off masked as Hektor, to come back as sweet-voiced Helen. (The skill of those young men Aischylos brought along here!)
The gods, in kindness to mankind, have put in most men’s hearts the wish to be loved and honored, even when they greatly wish for power. Power is the test. Some, once they have it, are content to buy the show of liking, and punish those who withhold it; then you have a despot. But some keep a true eye for how they seem to others, and care about it, which holds them back from much mischief. He was such a one. He had commanded men, and been admired by them; he had won the city’s wars with them, and been admired by the Athenians. Long before that, it was said he’d been admired by Solon the Good himself, who in fact had been his lover. In a song I made later for his birthday, I likened him to a siren. He took it very well, though, as everyone knows, not every seaman who heard the sirens sing went safe home after.
That night, however, I gave him my Lament of Danae. I had been working a long time on it, but no one had heard it yet, except Dorothea. She was not given to easy tears, but it had made her cry; and, indeed, over the years I have seen that those who weep have not been always women. The sound works with the feeling, and seemed to come of itself, I don’t know how. She sings it at sea, drifting in the chest with her god-got child. I have often wondered why it should be a chest; but I always respect tradition. My child, in my grief you sleep, a gleam in the night …
From respect to their host, they would have had to listen in silence. All the same, I soon knew that it was I who held them.
When we were leaving and paying our respects, the Archon said to me, “Simonides, you have painted the walls of my memory; I shall gaze often at your Danae. I should like to hear it again in a little while … A man like you, I expect, knows all of Homer?”
“Yes, sir. Since I was eighteen years old. I had a good teacher.”
“Good. You shall help us rescue him. We will talk about it later.”
Tall cressets lighted us down the steps, and each had his own linkboy to see him home. Not a word had been said about money; that came next morning, with a courteous message, and bettered my expectations. Whatever politicians say nowadays, that house was eupatrid as far as you could trace it back. They claimed to come down from Melanthos King of Athens, and through him from Nestor, and no one thought it absurd.