“That’s often the way,” she said over her shoulder, as she stirred the pot with our supper. There was a hare in it, and some cunning spices. “But it’s wonderful the changes you see when the strong hand’s gone. Look at your own brother. Not that he’s changed for the worse, but he’s changed, that’s sure. Would you ever have looked for that?”
“No, but I should have done.” He had visited here both before and after our father’s death; each time treating her with as much respect as if she had been my wife. But the first time, in his plain clothes with his simple barbering he had looked every inch a Kean. Last time, he’d looked every inch a gentleman-adventurer, as we knew them then. To save trouble at sea he had grown his beard again, but now it had a rakish point to it; he had cut off his long plaits, and wore his hair short to the nape. He had a gold earring, and sandals with silver studs. In his fighting panoply, which he put on to show us, he looked good enough for a vase-painter; his helmet’s tall crest was inlaid with blue enamel, and his leather corselet embossed with stampwork.
“This is heavy,” I said. “What if you have to swim for it?”
“No laces, all clasps. I can be out of this before a ship can settle, even if she’s rammed. As for falling overboard, we make the other fellows do that.” Theas, it seemed, was enjoying every day of his youth; all the more, no doubt, because he’d had to wait for it till he had turned thirty.
“Yes,” I said to Dorothea, “he’s changed, but all he is now was there already. It’s truer to say that he’s become himself.”
She took the spoon from the simmering pot, blew on it, licked it, nodded. “It’ll be the same with Hipparchos, I daresay.”
Of course she had never set eyes on him, or even heard of him from anyone but me. If her voice had an edge, I well knew why. Some women can read things in their men, like a diviner in a goat’s liver. She knew what I was waiting for. She knew why I kept quiet about it: not from deceit, but from fear that counting on it would bring bad luck. That did not make her like him any better.
I expected nothing yet. When a Pisistratos dies, his sons don’t start to make merry after the bare month of mourning; especially when the heir is a man like Hippias. I was content to wait.
Meantime, I crossed to Keos, mostly to see Philomache. The year before, she had borne a healthy boy; Midylos, and his father the ancient athlete, had been near dancing with delight. But it was a hot dry summer; many babies died of the flux, and she lost him at two months old. When I saw her soon after, she looked to have aged ten years. Now she had been brought to bed again; I found her blooming, and doting on the new one, for all that it was a girl. Midylos was one of those men who like a daughter, and was only sorry for old Bacchylides, grumbling that he would die before he saw a grandson. “Though,” said Midylos to me, “he’s not much past sixty, and as tough as an old vinestock. If he’d give over watching the pot, it might boil sooner. But he craves an Olympic victor. I sorely disappointed him. Even here on Keos, Theas always beat me in the games.” He laughed. He was a well-liked man with a good farm, and well content.
As for Theas, no doubt his wife did not see enough of him; but the house was prosperous, and his two young sons adored him. “When Daddy’s ship comes” was their day of festival; their dream of manhood was to sail with him. Sometimes I felt regret that I had no children, to whom I could be the father I wished I’d had. But I would never be such a father, the head of a house, the stay of a home. One can bargain with one’s concubine, one cannot with one’s child. With Dorothea at least I had dealt as fairly as I knew how; and now came the time when I was glad of it.
I had not been a month back in Euboia, when I had a visitor from Athens: Onomakritos of the oracles, no less. He announced himself by a groom riding ahead. Even for a man so pompous, it looked rather like an embassy.
With equal ceremony, I set food and wine before him, and made solemn small-talk till the last replenishment had been declined. Having meantime satisfied his courteous interest in my health, my land, my harvest and my relatives, I was free to ask how things were going in Athens.
The aspect of the planets, he said, was most benign, and Athene’s sacred olive had borne abundantly, sure omen of prosperous times; it was plain the gods remained well disposed to the city. There was much more like this, letting me know that all went splendidly in Athens, without slight to the illustrious dead.
Just as I was thinking he meant to leave his business till next day, he came to it. He had been sent by both the Archons (there were still nine, but we let that pass as usual) to tell me that the sculptor had almost finished Pisistratos’ grave-stele; they awaited only the epitaph to carve on it, and a threnody to sing at its dedication. The Archons were sure it would have been their father’s wish, as it was their own, that I should make them. After that, they hoped I would stay on as their guest in Athens, and make the city my home; a source of pride to the Athenians, and of delight to them.
Nothing could have been more graceful. I perceived the mark of Hipparchos’ hand. It was of a piece with his usual tact, getting me invited by Hippias’ cherished diviner, to prove that he too would welcome me. I accepted gratefully, adding that I was honored in the messenger.
He bowed, like a man with more to say, and got down from his supper-couch to open his traveling bundle. I’d wondered why he’d not let the slave take it upstairs. He dug about in it, but spilled out the wrong bag, sending a handful of divining-pebbles rolling about the floor. The boy serving the wine—a well-mannered young Karian, whom Theas had bought for me in Halikarnassos—put down his jug and went to pick them up; but Onomakritos checked him with a solemn hand, and stood over them brooding. After considering each, he gathered them himself. “Sir,” said the boy in his halting Greek, “is two there by door.” The sage bustled over, gazed at them deeply, and said, “So far!”
He had dropped his pomp as a man does a fine cloak when he has work to do. For the first time, he did not look like a charlatan. When he had pouched the pebbles, I asked if it was for me he had read the signs.
“Certainly it was. How not, when it was on your account I came to spill them? An unsought omen is never to be neglected.”
“You said, ‘So far!’ Am I to travel, then?”
“Yes, on the earth, and further than you have yet. And through the years of mankind, also. And the furthest of both will meet.”
I thanked him for his divination. Poor man, I am persuaded he had the Sight, but not often enough to sustain his pride. If he had kept from hubris and its follies, he would not have ended as he did, in exile, the lying sycophant of a barbarian king.
His pebble-bag stowed away, he now got out what he had first been looking for. The Archons knew well, he said, that to give them the pleasure of my company this time of year would certainly cause me loss. They were happy to send me something in recompense, and to promise that I would not lose by coming to Athens, now or in time to come.
The bag that came out this time was big as the first and looked as heavy. But this one chinked when he put it on the table. Half of it was full of good white silver drachmas, stamped with the Attic owl. The rest of the weight was gold.
5
THEY SAY THAT THE Arabian phoenix dies in flame, and is reborn from its ashes. This is certainly true of Athens, and I wish only good to that strong and thrusting chick. But now I am old, the un-burned phoenix is the Athens of my heart. It is the city I have carried westward with me, into Greater Greece. When I look back, my years there seem one long summer, with bitter winter coming in a single day. I can scarcely believe that there were fourteen years of it. That it was the core of my life, I know.