I trusted Phileas, and he did not betray me. If he kept a few pickings for himself, which would have been only human, he never exceeded. I think he feared Dorothea more than me. She was a personage in the village now, and took a pride in it; even if my ship came early into port, I always found things just so.
All in all I had been living very well; it had been foolish to let my accounting to my father hang over me for a month beforehand. He had a way of fidgeting while I spoke, so that I felt something was coming without knowing what. I had sometimes lied to him, but only about small things for the sake of peace; and to his profit, not his loss. Yet these trifles had oppressed me, almost as if I were a boy who could still be beaten, even when I had just come from Athens with gold in my belt and praise in my ears. I went home after the funeral feeling as if a heavy mortgage had been paid off.
But now in Athens a long day was ending, which had dawned in storm and fitful sun and returning gales, then passed into a fine untroubled afternoon and a mild evening. Now twilight was here and it would soon be dusk.
Not, like my father, with a single stroke, but little by little every day, the strong old master was failing. Often in those days he sent for me, or Hipparchos sent me to him, saying my songs refreshed him when he was tired. He was getting to be like ancient Nestor, who used to dwell on the days before Agamemnon was born, let alone Achilles. I would sing to him from the Sons of Homer, or sometimes make a song for him myself, about his early deeds in the Salaminian War. There, when he had thanked me with his regal courtesy, he would often set me right; he was not silly, just clearest in his memory about the past, as I am getting to be. About the present, he was apt to be forgetful. Sometimes when a man had been acquitted in his own court, he would order his arrest, not from injustice, but because the judgment had slipped his mind. No harm was done; Hippias would always oversee his orders and put things right. He did not even need to conceal it; Pisistratos, when reminded of the mistake, would thank him kindly, and praise the gods for giving him a good son to prop his age.
One night he had a few friends to supper, old men like himself who had been in his party since early days. He asked me too, because he had meant that I should sing. I was well prepared for his forgetting all about it, as in fact he did. It was a kind of compliment, that I should seem to him like any one of his guests. I enjoyed the good food and wine, and did not put myself forward; but I could feel, as the meal went on, that the company had disappointed him. His mind was sharp still, if not his memory; most of the others were maundering on about old men’s trivial concerns, or deploring the manners of the youth—which, I think, had never been so good as they were then, and certainly have not since. He tried to lead the talk, but it would fall away in trifles. He did not, as Polykrates would have done, get up and go to bed; but, when the eldest made his excuses, graciously included all the rest. I, of course, went up last. He made a gesture for me to stay.
When all had been ushered out, he turned to me smiling. “My dear boy, all we old fellows have been rambling on till past our bedtimes. It is their loss, that they have not heard you sing; but I hope it need not be mine. Will it be playing tyrant, if I keep you for a while, to please an audience of one?”
I said what was natural, adding that it would be something to remember; which, indeed, I found was true.
He motioned me to the supper-couch next his own, and beckoned the slave to bring me a clean wine-table. Seeing him pause above his cup to smell the bouquet, I ventured to praise the vintage. He looked up, like a man recalled from his thoughts. “The best year in ten. I am glad it pleases you. It was Solon who taught me to know wine. Will you sing me something of his?”
I was startled speechless. Solon’s fame, as I knew it, was firstly for his laws; then for refusing a tyranny, and choosing exile instead; then, on returning to find Pisistratos in power, for urging the Athenians to resist him. When they would not, Solon left his old panoply outside his door in the street, and gave out that he had retired. I had only snatches of his songs; they were all political, and I pleaded my shortcomings with relief.
“Did you never hear this?” He put out his hand for my lyre—at these small parties I did not use the kithara—and tried the strings; then in his old cracked voice gave the first line of a charming love song. He stopped too soon; just as if he had been some poet met at a festival, I said, “Sir, will you teach it me?”
What is more, he did, and I have it to this day. It is not very long; it likens itself to a flower which will not die while the beloved wears it. When I had sung it back to him, he said smiling, “Yes, it deserves to be worn longer, and you are young. I bequeath it you.”
Even in his age, you could trace the bones of old beauty. He had all his teeth, and his mouth was still finely carved. Faint gold shone in his hair. When he was not looking, I half shut my eyes, and could trace the brave keen face, a sculptor’s delight had the art of those days been good enough; listening to his lover, learning the thoughts of manhood. What other would Solon choose?
He had our cups refilled with the cold pale wine. We drank; I waited. “He loved me to the end. And I him. I loved him when he warned the city of me, and begged them to throw me off before it was too late. He would not have been Solon, if he had not done it. He was the best man of our age. When he did it he loved me still. It was partly for my sake too, for fear of power corrupting me … Do you know, people went to him, after that speech of his (part was in verse; I will teach it you one day when it is not so late); they went to him, and urged him to fly before I killed him. Dear man, he laughed. He said his old age would protect him—he was ten years younger than I am now. Again and again, after all that, I went to him for advice, never in vain. He was like a fine olive tree, which when its roots are checked one way will put them out another. Summer or winter, storm or calm, his soul sought justice and the end of wrong. He worked as he could, with what he had; first with the people, then with me … Kleon, fill up.”
The slaves had gone, the butler was there alone. He shook his head like an old nurse, then lovingly filled the cups.
“There was no one like him. Everyone knew it; or why did they go to him when the state was like a knot of vipers? They begged him to give them laws, because he was in no blood-feud, and was the only man fit to do it. The lords, the knights, the merchants, the commons, all swore before the gods to keep whatever laws he made for them. And so they do. They keep them to this day … I see to that.”
I gazed with fascination at that grim smile. Now I could picture him in his prime, while I was an urchin tending my first sheep, weeping from loneliness on the mountain; and he was lord of Brauron in the north, teaching his hill-men to fight.
“He had promised them justice, and that he gave. He took from every man the right to wrong another. He freed the debt-thralls. He canceled the mortgages, and had the debt-stones broken in the fields. I was with him often, when he was at work on it. I was young then. I saw he had removed oppression, but had not gratified envy or revenge. He seemed to me like a god. I said, ‘If there is any justice in men, they will set you up a hero shrine.’ He brushed that aside; but I think it was what he hoped for. From public office he never made one drachma, though ever since his fool of a father went broke, he’d had to shift for himself with trade. He was a fine soldier; but at home he would never grasp at power, he wanted nothing not given him by free consent. But what man does not covet honor?”