Anakreon greeted him as a friend, and was sad to part with him. He’d long forgiven him for his first, sycophantic song in Samos; as he said to me, “My dear, it was just that it was so bad, and nobody dared to say so.” Since then, he had made a whole garland of fine songs, love songs mostly, to please himself. I buried my private grudge, which he had never known of, and joined the party to see him off at Piraeus. “One can forgive him anything,” said Anakreon going home, “for the sake of that song that likens the lover to an old chariot-horse, trembling when it is yoked for another race.”
I don’t think he had any great wish to stay in Athens. His tall frame was bent under its costly robe, his gold-pinned hair was snow-white; he was at the time of life when many men will crave for familiar things. He went first to Syracuse, where I don’t doubt they made him welcome; but soon crossed to Italy, and ended in Rhegium where he was born. No doubt he did well there; one day when he was crossing the hills, some robbers thought it worth while to kill him. That’s a hazard of our calling; Apollo has no friends among barbarians.
For some time we talked of him, and sang each other the new songs he’d brought; but there was so much talent in the city, even so great a man could pass by and be not long missed. Those years were rich and sweet, and I shall say so still. One must not renege upon the Muses.
Artists and craftsmen prospered; and the countrymen were still safe under Solon’s laws. No man could distrain another for a debt. Hippias did the rounds of Attica to judge causes, just as his father had done. People missed the old man’s presence, but the verdicts were pretty fair, if not quite so wise. Hipparchos supported his brother when required, pursued the joys of life, and furthered the arts. Hippias’ children were growing up; it seemed, in those days, the dynasty might last a century.
Attic potters were famous now from Sicily to the Euxine. The sculptors came closer every year to that marriage of flesh and mind that their sons achieved. Just to walk through the city would lift your heart. For that matter, they are doing great things now and will do greater, if they only know where to stop. Well, if they don’t I shall never see it.
Hippias entertained many foreign rulers and statesmen, and leading Athenians who had supported his father’s faction. Thinking Anakreon too frivolous, he often called on me for a hero song; King Theseus was his favorite theme. These evenings, I thought of as rehearsals. Politicians will always prefer the useful to the true; and beauty will hardly tickle their hairy ears. Most of my best I gave at Hipparchos’ parties; but the best of all, I think, at Lyra’s. Disdaining base lovers, and choosing those who could offer her worthy praise, she had flowed into the images the artists made of her and the poets sang. Whatever graces we assigned to her, she took on; and not skin-deep, either. Though I never got as much of her as I wanted, it was more than enough to spoil my taste for coarser fare. She left you nothing you needed to seek elsewhere, beauty or wit or the crafts of Aphrodite. All one wanted was more; and not to know that next night was another man’s.
However, rare bliss does make for restlessness. There were one or two old companions who made me feel at home and knew my ways. As for Thalatta, for years I never entered the street where her place had been.
One evening, I went with Theas to Piraeus. He had to spend the night on board, for some reason to do with cargo. We ate at his favorite inn, and parted at the door. I was unhitching my mule to go home, when I heard a woman cursing. That’s nothing much in Piraeus. Then I heard my name.
She came from the waterfront into the dim light of a window. Somewhere behind her, the cresset on a moored ship flickered and danced. But for her voice, I would not have known her. She had thickened, and was painted like a Lydian, black round the eyes and a scarlet mouth; her bracelets were of copper and glass beads. She was tousled and dirty; she looked like the lowest of dockside drabs, the kind who will go on board and be passed round among the rowers. I stared at her wordless, my chief disgust for myself. She stood there cursing me in the thieves’ cant of the wharfside, as if I had made her what she was. I took it she must be drunk.
I ought to have mounted and ridden off; but she had revived my anger. “Yes,” I said, “I know I spoiled your game. Was I really the first who was not ashamed to tell? It was just by chance I had a good friend to listen.”
“A friend!” She screamed it; I drew back from her dirty nails. “A friend!” She swung round with her back to me, and dropped her coarse patched robe. I exclaimed with horror. She was ribbed with old whip-scars; her back was like a Phoenician galley-slave’s.
Resentment followed shock. “If you made off with some sailor’s wages,” I said, “what has that to do with me?”
Her look of bitterness pierced me despite myself. I had come from a good meal with good company; she must be living in some wretched kennel, if she had a roof at all. I took a few drachmas from my belt-bag. “Well, we had what we had. Take this for old times’ sake.” She snatched it from me, her eyes still cursing. I rode off quickly, in case she worked with a robber.
It was not a tale to entertain one’s friends with; but then, one evening, I was sitting alone with Hipparchos. I remember, we were planning that year’s theoria to Delos. Winter hanging on late that year, he called for some spiced wine while we broke off business. A brazier in the corner; a pale cold sky; little clouds edged with blue enamel. He wore a robe of cream combed wool with a yellow border, the end trailing beside his deer-footed chair. He pushed the tablets and scrolls aside, to talk, and told me some current joke about a greedy hetaira. It reminded me that I had confided in him before; so I told him how the tale had ended.
He gave a wise, kindly smile. “Well, well. That was her destined fate. She had a mean sense of her calling. True artists, like our Lyra, will take ten times as much, and a man will thank them for the privilege.”
I did not much want to talk about Lyra; so I answered, “Yes. But this girl—whatever possessed her to blame me? She showed me her back as if she were accusing me.”
He put his head on one side, as if thinking better of something he’d meant to say. I looked at him.
“My dear friend. I see I had better tell you. Neither of us is to blame; but I suppose she could not know it. Now it all comes back to me. When first I heard how you had been treated, I told the story—of course, without using names—to a certain man we know, whose name I won’t use either. He was much moved, and begged, almost demanded, the woman’s name. I was willing to tell him so much for his good. He was so enraged that I knew what he would say, before he could get it out. Yes, fooled just like you. I have seldom seen a man so angry. He said that my other friend, whoever he was, had been too forbearing. Now I know what he meant. My dear Simonides, I am sorry you had so ugly an encounter. But even if he paid off your score too, I can assure you she deserved it.”
That was enough. I could picture her pointing me out to this second victim—or the tenth, maybe—as the ugly man who was threatening to buy her, unless she was rescued first. The whole thing hung so well together, that I never questioned it. Indeed, even to this day I have no certainty.
9
NEXT YEAR WAS AN Olympic one. The sixty-fourth, it must have been. Why do the Olympics never stale? The last I went to was the seventy-fifth; but it seemed as fresh as ever.
There is the ancient beauty with its changes: the oaks of Kronos may shade one from heat or shelter one from rain; the Alpheus may chuckle low on its pebbles, or rush down in spate; the women across the water may be sunning themselves with straw hats and fans, or huddled in their scented tents; it may be sweet and balmy or grilling hot, the athletes plastered with dust and sweat like clay.