Next day he was laid out in state, and anyone he had ever received as guest came to do him honor. He lay in the hallway with its honeycomb marble floor, his bier draped with an old embroidered pall, maybe an heirloom from King Nestor’s day. They had clothed him in pure white wool, and spread fine linen over him, and laid fringed fillets across him. He was crowned with a wreath of gold, twined with parsley and origan. His three lawful sons stood gravely by to greet us; his daughters and daughters-in-law and granddaughters keened for him, but decently, as Solon’s laws required, without loud outcries or rending their hair and clothes. Nothing was in excess, nothing hubristic; but he looked in death what he had long been in all but name—last of the Athenian kings.
Before dawn next morning they took him to his grave in the Kerameikos, his menfolk walking before, the women behind wailing softly to the sound of a single flute. They needed no slaves to carry him; at every rest-halt there was a little crowd of Athenians waiting, in silence, to take the bier. Silently they did their stint, and silently stood back after, asking no recompense for the pollution; men came forward, even, to lower him into the grave. They laid on the coffin his old panoply, the two-winged helmet, the javelins and the spear, the gold-hilted sword, the shield with its serpent blazon. A wavering torchlight shone down into the vault; the shadows of the helmet-crests flickered like black bats. The kindred came forward with their gifts, pots of spices and scented oil, vases from Egypt, grave-flasks painted by masters of the art. Then the masons closed the slab, and so they left him, till the sculptors set up his stele. The mourners went home to take off their ashen clothes, comb their shorn hair, bathe and break their fast.
He did not stay long alone. Quietly, when the great had gone, the people came with their offerings. They brought what they could, what they might have brought for their own fathers: a basket of figs, a copper cloak-brooch, an ancient vase long in the household, painted with checkers and rings; a fillet stitched in the night; a little warrior pinched out of clay with the colors fading; a dish of honeycakes. They laid them down, and went away with their cloaks pulled over their faces.
Solon, I thought, now are you reconciled?
I turned towards my lodging to sleep. The streets were waking, the stalls set up in the Agora; men met and greeted, and everywhere one heard, “What now?”
On my way, I fell in with a man I knew, a certain Proxenos, one of the first men of the Gephyriot clan. He was as handsome as I am ugly, and pleased with it too; no popinjay, however, but a noted horseman who had raced his own chariot at the Isthmia. We walked on together; he too had watched on the Acropolis. “And I would have brought my son, if he were a few years older, so that he would have had it to remember. Such things should be handed on.”
At his door, he asked me in to breakfast. Over the wheat bread and warmed wine, I asked him what he foresaw for the city now.
“Who knows?” He looked up frowning. “My father supported Solon, because the times were bad and the man was honest. Everyone gave up something; my father said the eupatrids gave up too much. To my mind he was right. But we gave it for law, not tyranny.”
It was the first time I’d heard that word used in Athens, except about other states. His family was a very old one. “I’m a Kean, so it’s not for me to say. But it seems to me there is law here, and justice too.”
“Truly. While the Tyrant consents. He is still a man with a spear while we have none. Pisistratos seldom lifted it, and I give him credit for that. But we are still disarmed; the spear is there; and as for the man who holds it now, I doubt he is better than any one of us whose forefathers played their part in affairs in former days … Forgive me; you are a guest-friend of the family. I have said too much.”
I said smiling, “You would have done in Samos. But here in Athens, we are just two men talking of public business, and your only fear is lest you have offended me. That is something, we can both agree.”
“You are right, although … No, you are right. We have seen the fate of other cities in stasis; we should know when we are well off. Hippias will be made First Archon without dissent. He has been his father’s pupil; for that matter, he must have been governing, in all but name, for some time already. He is steady and past his youth. No doubt we could do worse.”
“And Hipparchos,” I said, thinking it my due to a generous patron, “he has done a good deal to adorn the city.”
“Oh, yes. That is his part; I expect he’ll keep to it and be content. A pleasant lightweight, who will be neither here nor there.”
Just then his young son, of whom he’d spoken, came running into the room, having escaped somehow from the women. He must have been two or three years old. Proxenos picked him up, and pretended to scold him; but I could see, and he too no doubt, that his father was delighted to show him off. No wonder; he was as lovely as infant Apollo in my Delian ode. He clung about Proxenos’ neck, telling of some nursery exploit. It was a pretty sight; I offered the hoped-for tribute, that the family looks had been passed on.
“That’s to be seen,” said Proxenos, proudly rumpling his golden hair. “Handsome is as handsome does—eh, young Harmodios?”
4
PISISTRATOS ON HIS DEATHBED had desired that the power should be shared between his two eldest sons, with precedence for the first Law-abiding in death as in later life, he had willed it should be voted on by the Areopagos, that venerable tribunal. Each member was a former archon. But the old man had been First Archon a long time; of the ex-archons who could still get their old bones up the sacred hill, almost all in their time had been Pisistratos’ men. As for the Alkmaionids, they were still in exile. Hippias became First Archon without a vote against it, with Hipparchos next in rank. As Proxenos had foretold, it all went smoothly.
For some time the Old Archon had been, to most Athenians, part man part legend. Nothing now changed in the life around them. It must have seemed the old order would last forever.
For my part, I would get no work during the time of mourning. It was neither an Olympic nor a Pythian year, so I took myself home to Euboia. Summer was ending in a sweet ripe smell of good harvests. I had friendly neighbors, thanks to my steward’s good sense. When the crops came in, we all took turns to help each other, gathering the vintage, or lending slaves, or sharing an olive-press.
Country festivals delight me, with their ancient work songs as the grapes are trodden, the oxen led round the threshing-floor or the millstone. They are simple, these songs, like the beat of the heart or the breath of life; and their sound mates with their meaning as simply as the beasts mate in spring. They were sung before there were bards or poets, and of them we were all begotten. They are still our kindred, if we know our craft. Pulse and breath set us our bounds, within which is found all mastery. Without pulse and breath the body dies; without their measures the poet. But within their limits are the startled or the tranquil or the eager heart; the breath of ecstasy, or calm, or tears, or terror. What a possession is ours! Eighty years I have wandered through it, and have never reached its furthest frontier yet.
I did not lack company, having many friends in Eretria; I had my songs to make, and Dorothea to warm the house and exchange her gossip for mine.
“That Hipparchos, by your account of him, he’ll be kicking up his heels, now his old father’s hand is off the bridle.”
“Maybe,” I said. “But his father trained him, and I think he knows where to stop.” He and Pisistratos had always used their famous tact on one another. Hipparchos never used to present to his father anyone, however amusing, that he might not care to acknowledge in public; he, in return, never upbraided his son for his loose acquaintance, unless he picked up someone politically dangerous.