“Forgive!” he exclaimed with his easy smile. “What a thing to say. With artists like you two, one does not demand, one petitions. But, surely, he has done that fat old pirate too much honor already. It’s Polykrates should be grateful, not he. Yes, do see him. Tell him how we live in Athens now, and ask him to make one of us. I put my faith in you.”
There was no resisting him when he chose; I said at once I would set out in the next few days. Keos would be on my way, but I thought I would leave it till my homeward journey. In case I failed, which I half expected, I could linger and delay bad news. Hipparchos always inspired an earnest hope that one would not disappoint him.
At least, if Anakreon said no, he could be trusted to do it prettily, and it would be good to see him. Next morning I went down to Piraeus to find a ship. I was getting knowledgeable, for Theas put in every few months and sometimes oftener; Athens was coming to rival Corinth as a city of good craftsmen. Its painted pottery was wanted everywhere, as well as its olive oil. So I saw a good deal of him and of his friends, knew several good shipmasters, and had been warned against the bad ones.
While asking about, I picked up what news I could from Samos. Polykrates was richer and foxier than ever. He had broken off his old alliance with the Pharaoh Amasis; as to the reason, accounts were various and you could take your pick. Kyros the Great was dead, succeeded by that son of his, that vicious mad dog Kambyses. His father should have put him down; but the call of the blood is strong. He was planning to conquer Egypt; and Polykrates got word of it. He compared the opposing forces, and decided he’d backed the wrong side. So before Amasis had time to ask his help, he declared the treaty broken. His tale, which I’ll believe when I see iron floating, was that his long good fortune had made Amasis fear some great reversal, which might make their friendship unlucky. As things fell out, half the world has come to believe this story. It is the hand of Nemesis, you might say.
The truth was that Polykrates had hastened to court Kambyses. He even offered him forty war-triremes, with soldiers to man them. But he was more cunning even than this, for the soldiers he sent off all came from the old houses whose loyalty he mistrusted. Many who’d been boys when he seized power were now grown men, and ready to avenge their fathers. As it turned out, he undervalued their wits. At the fleet’s first port of call, they all put their heads together, added up the score and got it right. Polykrates had sent word to Kambyses, kindly to see that none of them came back.
So they put about ship next day, and invaded Samos instead of Egypt. How many Samians might have rallied to them, it’s hard to say, because old Polykrates was too quick for them. He sent out his mercenaries through the city to round up the women and children, and lock them in the great boathouses of the naval dockyard. These he promised to set alight, if the menfolk gave any trouble. It seems he was believed. Well, he was a pirate; who knows what he’d done in his time. So the rebellion failed, and those who could get away sailed off into exile.
I hoped all this might further my mission to Anakreon. Kind as he’d been, it would have been presumptuous to call myself his friend; but he would have heard something of me by now, as he’d foretold. We would meet on more equal terms, and I thought I knew him a little. There is a certain threshold between a courtier and a sycophant; nobody tells one when one crosses it, but one feels it in oneself. I only feared to reach Samos and find him already gone.
The first thing I saw there was that the great new harbor mole was finished, shining with new-dressed stone and gleaming bollards. We had trouble to find a mooring, the port was so full of ships: Egyptian, Tyrian, Kypriot, Sicilian; several from Rhodes, which Polykrates had conquered, putting his son there as governor. The galley-slips before the boathouses held a small fleet of snub-nosed, boar-headed Samian triremes and pentekonters. The whole waterfront bustled and chattered with trade, every house a shop; and the merchantmen tied up there had their wares spread out on the quayside, shouting for custom with lungs of bronze.
I’d have liked to go shopping and sightseeing, after so long; but nothing is secret on a busy trade-road, and it seemed that my name had run before me. All kinds of people were on the quay to meet me, some of whom I had barely heard of; but there were old friends too from the Victory, and I was swept in there to give my news. The same host was still there, and gave me a beautiful Lakonian cup to drink his health in. I looked again, and said, “What’s this? What will Theodoros say?”
“Why, Simonides, to think of your knowing it again after all these years. He would say he liked to see a good piece treated with respect. I do that in his memory. I keep it for the masters.”
“His memory?” I said, looking up from the painted owl.
“Had you not heard, then? He died one day in the foundry. They were running the melted bronze into the mold; he felt the heat, they say, and got short of breath. But he kept on his feet till the mold was filled, shouting at them all, you know his way; then he caught at his breast and fell down, and was dead before the doctor came. His prentices said that right till the last, while he could catch his breath he was telling them how to finish the statue when the mold was broken. Sophilos had no use in his right hand for a week, from Theodoros gripping it at the end.”
I remembered his great fingers, so light on this very cup.
“It’s Anakreon now,” said the host, “who has his own.” He took it from the shelf to show me. “A love-gift you can be sure, though he never tells. You remember his song about the girl with the colored slippers.”
There she was, in elegant red-figure touched up with purple, tossing her ball. Round the outer curve of the bowl was a whole frieze of girls, playing with a ball, or with one another; the painter had made it plain that they came, like the girl in the song, from the well-built city of Lesbos. I admired the work, and asked where I would find the poet.
“Why, here. Just let me fill your cup. He’ll have heard by now of your coming.”
This was taking too much for granted, and I told him so. But the words were hardly out of my mouth, when heads turned to the doorway, and Anakreon came in with outstretched hands. The crowd parted for him with as much respect as if he’d been Polykrates, but more cheerfully. His red hair was fading, but he had kept his thin fine-boned grace; he felt as light as a fawn when he ran up and clasped me.
In life as in song, he never used an unneeded word. He had claimed me as a brother, after which all other compliments would have fallen short. He just talked, as though we’d met only a few months back instead of years, and as if I had had a name as long as he had. Since the Old Archon died, I’d thought him the only man on earth who could really awe me; but now, in his presence, I felt only delight at being here. I had even forgotten my errand, when he said that of course I must put up at his house.
It was close by the Palace, in the best Samian style, with a carved doorframe, and a columned porch of rose-red Samian marble. Inside it was as handsome as Hipparchos’s; smaller, but with everything in scale, as delicate as his songs: chairs inlaid with ivory, a carpet from Egypt, silver cups with gold insets, upon an ebony sideboard; a big wine-cooler painted with Meleager’s boar-hunt. He had sent orders ahead to have bath-water warmed for me; and I was waited on by a beautiful young slave, whose polished manner I doubt the presence of a king could have discomposed. He must have been as costly as the inlaid wine-cups; Persians nowadays were hard to come by. One thing was certain: not even Hipparchos could offer Anakreon more than he already had.
Still, I had to try. Soon after an excellent supper of sturgeon cooked with herbs, the youth was kindly dismissed to eat his share, leaving the wine between us. When I complimented him on so excellent a servant, he said he had been a real pleasure to train, having been bought from some vulgar fool on whom he had been quite wasted. “Now that I’ve taught him to think well of himself, he is so proud that he can afford to be gracious.”