Besides the rest, it was there that I first grew rich. I’ve heard that I have a name for liking money, and so I do. Most people do, who have got away from Keos and are allowed to spend it. Men like it still more, who have fled with nothing from a fallen city, and lived hand to mouth, and seen a dear friend and master bleed away his pride. Yes, I like to have money. I have made a great deal, and spent what I needed to live well, but never all of it; so I was no man’s sycophant when the bad times came. In my way, I am still a son of Leoprepes. He liked money too, but he never cheated for it; Theas liked it, but never robbed a peaceful ship for it; I like it, but I have never lied for it. Money buys many things, of which the best is freedom. Samos taught me that.
When I crossed to Attica, I had the Lament for Pisistratos nearly done. An epitaph had been in my head already, before the summons came. I have put it in my book, because the tombstone it was carved on has disappeared. Angry men are unjust, and the dead have no voice to answer. I had hoped that my words would save it, but they are rubble now. I suppose they will fill in the ground under some grand new temple. Well, they will find good company.
I went, then, to court in Athens, just turned thirty, my head steaming with songs. I was in the city of which I’d dreamed since boyhood; I had a patron more like a friend, who expected no servility; I was doing what I had been born to do; and for being so happy I was getting paid. Sometimes I would bend over water to glimpse my face; I reckoned it should keep the gods from getting too jealous.
I found the two brothers ruling in perfect harmony. If Hippias enjoyed it less, that was not because Hipparchos crossed him, or tried to exceed his due share of power. Far otherwise; he found the business of government tedious, and left to his elder all he could. Such public councils as absolutely required him, he would attend, and assent or dissent as Hippias had instructed. On such occasions he would even stand up to speak. He did it well (or he’d never have opened his mouth) and I know his words were his own, for he tried them out on me. But for him it was a performance, nothing more. He did his duty by his kin, as he would have done in attending some dull wedding. When it was over, he went back to his own affairs.
It was another thing with the religious rites and the great processions. For all Hippias’ well-known piety, when the city’s gods were honored, Hipparchos reigned. I have often thought, in later years, that he was born too soon, and too high. If he were living now, a mere knight like Aischylos son of Euphorion, he might be putting tragedies on the stage to delight the people, and making them laugh with satyr-plays, and be kept in balance by the contest with his peers. Who can trace the gods’ ways with men? All tragedy needs a victim. He was a patron of poets, but he never knew of his last and greatest gift to them. He gave them a theme: hubris and nemesis. The tragic poets have lived off it ever since.
In those days, I kept my pity for Hippias. Not that his power was shaky. He was even valued; but only as the hand of his dead father, keeping in trust his heritage of good rule. Any citizen, if asked, would have said that Pisistratos would have made two of him, but there seemed no harm in him, and for that we could all be thankful. Of course he knew it; men feel such a thing through flattery like a stone through a sandal sole. He would have liked to make his own mark and hoped to do it, but was too prudent to make any changes yet. He was no fool; he saw the Spartans getting stronger in the south, the barbarians in the east; he could foresee a time when he’d need be a better man than his father, to keep what his father won. But at Hippias’ age, then, his father had been a bold adventurer. Hippias was a worrier. He had no wish at all to relinquish power, and willingly took the larger share of it; but he was less sure of himself, and put much faith in oracles and omens.
I saw all that for myself; he did not confide in me, it was Onomakritos who shared his counsels. I thought of the Old Archon’s words about strength and sweetness and the fleck of mold on the grape. Where the strength lay now was still untested; where the sweetness was, I had no doubt.
No one, I am sure, ever made patronage more delightful than Hipparchos did. Here in warm Sicily, King Hieron makes it kind and dignified, and just what an old man needs. But in those years I was young, and my needs were different.
Hippias had moved into Pisistratos’ stately house. There was room in plenty for his growing children, and he could have taken in unmarried Hipparchos, too. But he was well suited as he was, and had no wish to move in. Hippias altered nothing, except to fill a room with shelves and chests for his ancient scrolls of oracles. He was a man for getting early to bed, and liking his household to do the same.
Hipparchos’ house had a fine prospect, looking north towards Mount Parnes. It carried his style as a song carries its maker’s. The things one saw there were always changing, as a poet may make new songs; but the style was always there.
If he had just bought something handsome, he’d give a party to show it off. It might be a small bronze of Dionysos with gilded thyrsos-wand and wreath; or a big wine-bowl painted with Theseus among the Amazons. (It was all red-figure now, and to be noticed a piece must be finer than the rest.) Sometimes he’d bring in a troupe of young girls to play the flute and dance, and show their tinted breasts through fine Kos tissue. Their manners would be charming, they would sit on your couch and chat prettily and pour your wine; but it was understood that if you wished for more, you must arrange for it at home. He never let a party run to riot, unless he was in the mood.
He patronized, too, some beautiful boy acrobats, who performed naked; but it was seldom that one was invited to stay the night. Unless he was entertaining formally, he had a friend to share his supper-couch, and no doubt later his bed. These friends were chosen as carefully as his tableware or his clothes; youths in their later teens, handsome, well born, well bred; amusing too, or they would not be seen twice. The chosen would reign for some months, or even as long as a year. I don’t think false vows of eternal love were ever made to them, and they were always dismissed with grace. Some splendid gift, suited without offense to their rank and station—a horse perhaps, or a gold cup, or an inlaid parade helmet—would give the signal that the time had come to adorn the supper-couch with a new face. Meantime, the youth had been brought into fame and fashion, and had met everyone in Athens who was worth knowing. Those who were ambitious, and used their opportunities, came out of it very well.
Certainly, we poets had no cause to complain. Unlike the favorites, we were not displaced by newcomers. We were like bees in a hive, to which new honey was always coming.
Lasos of Hermione, the same young man who’d been crowned on Keos the day my father died, very soon arrived. We got on well together; each worked in his own way, and each was called upon for different occasions. Hipparchos always made it clear that there was room for both of us; neither of us was quarrelsome or vain enough to make trouble for a courteous patron.
One day, when I had been there about two years, Hipparchos said to me, “Simonides, dear friend; what could we do to get Anakreon here?”
The “we” was like him, telling me I need fear no rival and was above the thought of it. He had never spoken a word about my tavern stint in Samos, though he must have known. I said, “If you like, I will gladly go and ask him. As you know, Polykrates never took me up, and won’t remember me. I could see Anakreon privately, and talk to him as a friend. I know he would be happy here. But Polykrates has done a great deal for him; I should think pretty well anything in Samos is his for the asking. If he says no, I hope you will forgive him.”