Next evening I went to the funeral, from respect. Proxenos had had some of the old nobles’ faults, but rather more of their virtues. Had he had their power, he would have used it justly; though you might not always have thought so, to hear him talk.
The cortege was a long one, mostly made up of the dead man’s fellow Gephyriots. The tribe came to Attica long ago from Tanagra, and will tell you they were Phoenicians once. They don’t look Phoenician; I daresay they were Greek colonists whom the Phoenicians drove out. Not more of them are dark today than you find among Ionians anywhere. Six of them carried Proxenos on his bier. The friends walked before, the hired mourners keened behind to the sound of flutes. Close round the bier walked the near kindred, and then you saw how small the family really was. The old granddad had stayed at home; a man nearly as old, doubtless his brother, walked in the place of honor, the only adult male, alongside Proxenos’ young son.
When I had called at the house, he had not been in the room; I saw him now for the first time in seven or eight years. As I approached I thought, Is that the little Harmodios? Can he really have grown so tall? How our lives fly past!
He must then have been about fifteen, the awkward age between boyhood’s grace and the ephebe’s firmer beauty. He had achieved the best of both. With close-cropped hair, black-clad, his face drawn with grief, even so he shone.
Fair as his father, with the same straight carriage, and, yes, already, his father’s pride but deeper, bred in bone, the calm pride that thinks insolence beneath it, as calm courage need not stoop to bragging. It was graven into him, while he thought only of his loss and his new load of care; a part of his beauty, though such a face would have lent beauty to all its changes, laughter, or grief, or anger. His grandfather had spoken truly; Proxenos had left his monument on earth.
At the burial-place, we left our offerings to sustain his journey. The boy got into the grave, to set them about the corpse. When the slab was closed and the earth thrown over, he took up the family grave-wreath. The mourning locks of hair hung from it: white, grey or grizzled, but for two strands of gold shining among the bay leaves. Two? Then I remembered the girl, weeping beside the widow. She had drawn her dark veil, and I could not see her face.
The boy stooped with the wreath, gravely concerned to set it upright against the post which would serve until the masons brought the stone. I don’t know what prompted me to look, just then, at the people standing by. Something in the air, a note of silent music.
I seldom forget the face of a victor. There stood the dark-haired runner, Aristogeiton, whom Anakreon had pointed out at Olympia. He had stepped out from the crowd, to watch the rite.
All the others were watching too, and I suppose it made him careless. His eyes told a tale that could have been no clearer if he’d sung it out to the lyre. He would have poured out his own blood as a libation, if that could have given comfort to the wreath-layer. Henceforth, he would be ready at a word.
The boy straightened up from his task. As he lifted his head, he glanced that way, as though someone had called his name. The blue and the dark eyes met. It was not for long; but something was offered, something accepted, something understood.
To this day, I do not know if that was their first avowal.
2
MOST OF THE NEXT year was fortunate. I won a tripod at the Dionysia; my dithyramb had a dialogue between the god and Herakles, telling of their wanderings in turn. All the poets were growing venturesome; and drawing closer to tragedy, though, as Aischylos said to me lately, without knowing it. Never mind, much that we made in those days is living still.
At the year’s end, without warning, Dorothea died. They told me that in the kitchen she dropped an old knife upon her foot, and the wound swelled up, with fever. Though the doctor purged her, she died within four days. She had been so hale and strong, that she and everyone supposed she would recover; and when at last her father sent me word, I was too late to close her eyes. The house was in perfect order. The days were long past when she’d refused a maidservant; she’d had the girls running to her for their orders up to the day before she died; the last she gave them was to make up a bed, to be ready when I came.
It was she, more than anything, who had bound me still to Euboia. From then on, Phileas managed the place till he grew too old, when I bought him a piece of land and got Midylos to find me someone else. Only Athens held me.
A few years turned Bacchylides from a charming son to a gifted pupil. Which was just as it ought to be; for he was not my son, and not in search of a father. If I’d really begotten him, maybe we’d have fallen out; a father’s expectations can fret a boy like a chain. But we had freely chosen one another, each for his own good; our bond was close, but easy. Maybe that’s why he has always cared for me like a son.
He was the best of companions, at home and on the road; lively, sturdy and shrewd. A quick keen learner, he soon had his Anakreon and Sappho and Stesichoros; his Simonides, too; built what he learned into himself, and turned it into his own music. He still composed on the wax; would laugh to me about it, and never failed to have the finished things word-perfect in his head. He has them still … those he learned as a boy. Already, getting into his middle years, his memory is nowhere near so good as mine at fourscore and three. Anything new he does, he’d lose if he didn’t write it. He’s a fine poet nonetheless. If that’s the only way he could come at it, so much the worse; but not so much the worse as if he had never written.
By twelve or thirteen, he’d lost what little boyish prettiness he’d had, and was getting the look of Saturn that draws women: heavy brows, meeting; firm mouth framed between lines. Meantime, he was what passed in Athens as an ugly boy, and would be troubled with no suitors from the court. I was heartily glad of this. He had no feeling for it, thought it absurd, and was likely, if wooed by some man of rank, to laugh out loud instead of showing virtuous modesty. This would have disturbed the harmonies, as Hipparchos liked to hear them. He thought of his fellowship as a singing-grove of Eros.
I had not suffered from this. He was still a discerning patron, who would no more have called on me for a serenade than on Anakreon for a hero ode. All the same, it was good to have no one in my house whom he or his friends might covet. A story was going about of a boy he’d as good as kidnapped, under cover of an evening frolic, and whom he entertained for three nights before his father, a man of no great estate, could get him back. And there had been a Macedonian slave-boy whom his master never got back at all; just a handsome present of gold, which was supposed to close the matter. The master had not cared to make trouble, but was known to be fond of the lad, who was said to be devoted to him. Since then, when Hipparchos was entertained to supper, favorites of the host no longer served the wine.
None of this talk reached the city commoners or country peasants. As always, Hipparchos sought diversion among people of fashion and rank. In public he remained a gracious presence; dignified but never stiff, always with the ready word or smile which shy Hippias could not manage; and, as a rule, if he’d promised someone a good turn, remembering to have it done. This was no false mask; to be liked was pleasant to him; he had learned the knack from his father, and knew just what little kindnesses mean most from a great man to a humble one. Hippias inspired respect, Hipparchos affection. The Pisistratids had come to power as the people’s friends; and they seemed so to the Athenians almost to the end. That’s why it took the Spartans, as well as the Alkmaionids, to get them out at last. Left to themselves, the Athenians would never have done it. The old nobility wished it still; but they had given up hope.