“What I should like would be to be at his party tonight. That should be a good one. But I daresay that might not do either … Look, my dear, at that boy. The curly-haired one. Do you know, he is entered for the boxing? How can he do it? He will be ruined in five years.”
“He’s an Alkmaionid, so if you want to sing about him, leave out his name … Anakreon, do you ever wish yourself back in the days when you were an unknown name and a passing face, and could come and go like the breeze?”
“Of course, my dear. As both of us are doing now. But not if I had to pay for it.”
I thought of my shepherd days; of my master dead in his poor Samian room, without help from me; of the girls I had feared to speak to. “No,” I said. “Not if I had to pay.”
We agreed together, therefore, that it had better not get about Olympia, however good Kimon’s party might be, that it had been graced with the presence of Anakreon and Simonides. Meantime we paid our respects at our own Archons’ pavilion. We had delayed long enough already.
It stood up among the lesser tents like a trireme among fishing-boats. Even the Sicilians had brought nothing finer; it must have needed a train of ox-carts to heave it up from the harbor. The canvas was stitched in stripes of yellow and blue. It was far more splendid than in the Old Archon’s day; the hand of Hipparchos showed all over it. From a gilded mast heading the tent-pole flew the trident banner of Poseidon, the crest of their god-born ancestor, Neleus of Pylos.
The Archons were in their chairs of state, receiving guests. We joined in compliments on the good run of their chariot. Of course, nobody mentioned Kimon’s. It is all very well for the friends of boxers and wrestlers to taunt the losers; but among the chariotry, politer customs rule.
As we went away, I said, “They’ve got over it, it seems. The odds were too heavy against that victory; it’s with things looked forward to that disappointment bites. They were just as usual, Hippias dignified and Hipparchos charming.”
“Oh, indeed … But did you notice, with the sun coming through the canvas stripes, that Hippias looked blue and Hipparchos yellow?”
We laughed, and went our separate ways; Anakreon had a host of friends awaiting him, and I had not a few myself. For a while I looked at the stream of Alpheus, and across at the women’s side. She would be there, she had told me so; she had even told me the colors of her tent, rose and light blue. But she knew I would not be coming, unless at the end of the games to exchange our gossip. She would be entertaining victors, strong young boxers and wrestlers and hurlers of the disk and javelin, who had said to themselves for months, “If I win, and my city makes me the victory gift, it would buy me a night with Lyra.” Perhaps Kimon would visit her. Not tonight; he had his feast to see to, and could not ask her across the river to the Altis shore, sacred to men from the beginning.
I was shouldering off through the crowds, when a little dark hand grabbed my arm; and there was Neko, her Egyptian slave-boy, wearing new gold earrings. She spoiled him dreadfully; he was a saucy brat, but at least he was devoted to her. Naturally she had brought him to Olympia, where a girl could run her no errands across the stream.
“Big trouble find you, sir!” he said in his lilting Greek. “My madam she say, nice party tonight, special for friends, you come? Madam say, if you don’t come, party no good. I tell her you come, yes?”
“Yes,” I said, noting how gay and cheerful was the scene around me, and wondering why I’d been thinking it a tiresome crowd. “Take this to spend at the fair; and don’t forget to tell her.”
For me, this was the first Olympic since I’d known her; for her, it was only the second in her career. Already she knew what was due to her, and began her reign there in style, by holding court
I think, if there had been room, her rose and blue tent would have held as many men of rank as the Archons’. However, it held fifteen at most, packed in right up to the flaps. She had hand-picked us, and let us know it. Little Neko, who served the wine, could hardly find room to put down his slender feet. It was a splendid party; the night was warm, the tent pegged open, and chosen latecomers were allowed to overflow outside. When it grew late, one or two people came on from Kimon’s victory feast, still in the mood for singing. I had something in my head about his gallant mares, and, discreet or not, when the lyre came my way I sang it. The thought of those beautiful creatures, pouring all their virtue into victory, aroused my love of heroes. Surely swift Boreas, from whom all great horses are descended, swept to them in the race and bore them on. As I sang, I saw Lyra look at me under her lashes; but I only threw her a smile. A man must do what he was born to do; and not only when he is hired to do it.
A little later, she said it was unbecoming for a woman to put on contests at Olympia; but Neko should take the omens for her. She bandaged his eyes, not very tightly, and spun him round, and left him to turn again. He came to rest pointing at me, and pulled off the blindfold grinning. I thought it was because of the present I’d given him, till I saw her smile when everyone had gone.
It was the first Olympic night I’d ever spent on the women’s side. The Alpheus, low that year, tinkled and gurgled among its pebbles; owls hooted in the sacred oak wood; from the men’s side came distant singing, the whinny of a restless horse. A nightjar called. All around us, set to this music, were the voices of Aphrodite, murmurs and laughter and little grunts and squeals. Presently, quite near, came the soft sound of an Egyptian harp. She whispered, “The boy has a great deal of feeling.” I don’t know if it was he or we who first fell asleep.
The sun was up when we woke; when we had breakfasted, I was already late to get a good place for the pentathlon. Crowds had closed around the Archons’ party; I made do near the top of the slope, among a press of Corinthians. None of them knew me, and they talked on among themselves. The Corinthian chariot was one that had not finished the course; it had crashed at the turn in the fifth lap, and they argued about it hotly, Corinthians being great racing men, even if they don’t own as much as a donkey. “He should have kept out of the press; that’s how Kimon won.”
“He won because no one else was trying it. Well, it seems he was too lucky to please some god or other.”
“God?” said a sharp dark young man who had not spoken before. “I hope some god is after the men who did it.”
I was all ears now, but did not want to be noticed, and waited for someone else to ask the questions. But I had overslept; they had been asked already.
“In the very precinct!” said an older man. “What times we live in. Cutpurses, sneak-thieves round the tents, cheats in the market, that one expects, with riffraff coming in from everywhere. But to strike down a crowned victor, in the Sacred Truce! I live here in Elis, I’ve seen the Games since I was six, and in all my years I’ve known nothing like it.”
A Corinthian said, “To give a great feast like that in a foreign city, he’d need to be carrying gold, with something to spare. It’s a dark corner, round by the Council Hall; and he’ll hardly have been sober, after the party. Well, you can be sure that by now they’re far away.”
The dark man said, “That’s a thing I should like to be sure of.”
People looked round, some questioning, some knowingly. The old Elian asked roundly what he meant. He had got as far as, “From what I hear …” when the trumpet sounded, and the athletes came marching in.
It was a middling pentathlon that year, the only notable feat a mighty discus-throw by a man from Argos. The first I knew of it was the cheering, and the umpire running out to peg the throw.