Before long he sent for me again, in the morning this time. He was sitting at a table of dark polished wood, set out with tablets and scrolls. Hipparchos was beside him; the first time I’d ever seen them together. There was a clerk at another table, with writing things.
Father and son smiled at me, and waved me to a chair. I felt at once that this was the son whose company was enjoyed the most, with whom the father felt easiest; yet with whom he was watchful, from a habit of ruling men.
“Hipparchos tells me,” he said, “that your good memory is famous. I hope that you can help us. Next year is the Great Panathenaia, and we shall be holding the Rhetors’ Contest. It always takes time to choose which to invite, and find out where they are traveling, and get word to them to come.”
I bowed gravely; or so I thought. Sometime later, Hipparchos told me that I looked down my nose. No poet has much time for rhetors; mere learners by rote, marketplace reciters, who have their Hektor’s Farewell, or Cave of Polyphemos, or Arming of Achilles, which they give each time, or sometimes two bits that they stitch together with lame frayed lines of their own devising.
“I should like you,” he said, “to join my son as one of the judges.”
“I am honored, sir.” Which was true, as far as it went. “Are they to be judged for their declamation?”
“Well, we must take that into account, of course. But the reason we are offering a talent of silver as the prize is … but let Hipparchos tell you, since I can see him fidgeting to talk.”
“It all began,” he said, “when we were living in Thrace, after the Alkmaionids had broken with us and joined the enemy party, and we had to leave in a hurry.” He lifted an eyebrow at me, to see if I knew the story, which he could hardly retail just now. Of course I did, old though it was; Pisistratos had sealed an alliance with this powerful clan by marrying the chief’s daughter, had been polite in bed, but taken care not to get her pregnant. He’d wanted no rival heirs to his elder sons, especially from a family accursed for killing suppliants in sanctuary. In time the girl’s mother asked her questions, the virgin bride was snatched back in outrage, and the feud began. I returned Hipparchos’ glance discreetly, to tell him I’d heard all this.
“We were digging for gold,” he said, “which Mount Pangaios is full of, and recruiting warriors, which Thrace is full of, and biding our time. Since none of us were digging with our own hands—the Thracians would always sell us their tribal enemies—Father was often short of pastime, and when a rhapsodist came our way he was glad to hear of it. In Thrace, I can tell you, a dancing ape is an event. The rhetors spread the news that we paid well, and soon we were getting more of them … Well, you will guess what is coming.”
“Bad stitching,” I said.
“Just so. Not only between the patches, but in them too. They left out, and even put in; one would find all sorts of things coming in from Macedon and Epiros and who knows where. And these were the better sort, not strolling mountebanks. They had one great scene each, first garbled, then ruined with their ranting, instead of letting the music tell the tale. Then one day came an old, old man, who knew the Iliad whole. My dear, it was like tasting wine after grape-skin pressings. The exquisite treasures those swine had passed over, or broken in their rooting …! We feasted the old man, clothed him and shod him like a lord, plied him with gold, begged him to live as our honored guest; but no. His pupil had been killed in a brawl, or gone off with a woman, or some such calamity; he must travel to get another, and teach him all he knew. He did not look fit to stand another winter. At last, in our extremity, I cried out, ‘Let us get it written! I have a good scribe; I can even write myself. Just stay here till it is done. Then it will live, even if your next pupil fails you.’ I can only say, Simonides, that old man looked at me like some high priestess of noble birth, offered well-paid work in a brothel. Can you understand it?”
I could; I was still under thirty. “Surely,” I said, “it is impossible Homer should perish. I myself have every word of him.”
“Long may you live, my friend; but no man lives forever. Believe me, Homer is in more danger than you know. Nowadays, one can manage less and less without writing, one is always getting some call for it. Onomakritos has his nose forever in his scrolls of oracles, and an oracle’s brief enough. Hippias, who deals with Father’s private letters, writes something nearly every day. And he keeps all his drafts upon the wax; left to himself, he couldn’t quote you half of it. I’ve given it thought, and I tell you this: what men have written down, they have no need to remember. And soon they will feel no need to try. Then what’s still unwritten will fade away.”
Pisistratos gave his grave Zeus-like nod. “I believe that my son is right.” He opened a coffer inlaid with ivory that stood by him on the table. “This is what we have so far.”
The roll he took out was much joined and pasted together, but written clearly. He began to read me a passage; I think it was the Deeds of Diomedes. He must have had the tail of his eye on me, for he stopped and said, “Yes?”
“There are two lines missing there,” I said, and gave them him. Hipparchos signed to the clerk to note them down on the wax. Pisistratos read on. He read very well, not performing at all, but giving each sound and stress its value. I wondered how much of it he had picked up from Solon. And then, with a shock, I heard a line quite new to me. Pure gold; it must be Homer; and I’d never been taught it, which meant that Kleobis had not known it either. If they saw me look up, they were both too polite to mention it. At all events, that reconciled me to the Rhapsodia. They don’t hold it nowadays; but no matter, the work is done.
The Great Panathenaia is pretty well fixed by now. The Athenians would think it impious to put in anything new. But in those years, though it was very old already (they say King Theseus started it when he united the kingdom) the Archon was always thinking of something grander. That year I was leading a choir; four years before, I had been a sightseer, when the many-colored mass down in the Kerameikos uncoiled, like a bright serpent, into the procession: the knights in their crested helms and shining corselets (all fighting men wore their gear, the Archon had no fear of them); the hoplites marching with their blazoned shields; the garlanded beasts of sacrifice led by handsome athletes; and the Ship of the Goddess, drawn by its snow-white oxen, with her new robe hung from its mast and held out like a sail by two of the maidens who had embroidered it. The rest walked before it and behind, singing their hymn. The chorus leader had the right to dedicate her statue in the sanctuary, to stand there forever; or so she thought, before the Persians came. Never mind, it made them all happy then.
The Rhapsodia was held on the day after. Word of rich prizes had reached the artists—let us call them that—and they came in from near and far. We did find one who got a great deal of the Iliad right, and chanted it well, and gave him the first prize. Nobody went away without a gift. That year we added two new lines to the canon, and found sense in two more which till then had been incomprehensible; and the Archon was well content.
It would have been a time to stay on in Athens, and improve upon my success. But half a year before, I had promised the Keans that I would make them a dithyramb for the Delia, and I could not fail them. I would sooner have stayed; I thought about chances I might be missing; but my honor was engaged, and I said to myself that such things are arranged by fate.
I found time to visit Euboia, with some gifts for Dorothea: an Athenian gown with worked borders, a pair of gold earrings shaped like roses, and a bronze mirror engraved on the back with Aphrodite. I had seen her lean over the water-tub when she combed her hair.