It caught Hipponax’s eye and showed him his salvation.
As all poets know, one can stand or fall by one’s impromptus. Hipponax stood. He lived some five years more on the strength of it. As soon as he saw it was a choice between the two of them, he offered no defense; he denounced his rival. After it was all over, no one remembered very clearly what the first man had been accused of, or on what evidence. Hipponax was more memorable.
The man was in Persian pay. He had poisoned a well, near which some people had lately died of fever. His wife was a backdoor bawd who undid good men’s homes. He had bargained with Harpagos, for a talent of silver, to open a postern that very night. So that all this could be heard, our Poet of the Agora scrambled up a statue plinth. The statue was of an Isthmian victor; but Hipponax was the victor now. One thing he taught me: that whomever you blacken, there will always be someone glad of it. All men seek esteem; the best by lifting themselves, which is hard to do, the rest by shoving others down, which is much easier.
When he’d done, the crowd turned on the swindler, hating him because they feared the Medes; and it was agreed he had been chosen justly.
They stripped him, and put the ritual offering-cakes in his hands, having to tie them there because he shook so, and led him out to the gate. There they beat him as the rite prescribes, on his tenderest parts till he screamed aloud. Then everyone fell on him as they chose, to purge their offenses which he carried for them, and drove him along with sticks and cudgels till he fell. I don’t know if he was dead when they came to throw him on the bonfire. I know I saw Hipponax dancing round it.
I climbed down and went home. Kleobis was sitting with a face of stone. He said, “And now they will surrender.” Only the day before, I would have proposed making them a battle song. As it was, I just poured some wine.
Whether or not the goddess liked her offering, when Harpagos’ siege-mound was ten cubits up the wall, the lords of Ephesos took counsel. They gave out that the city would ask for terms, and all the people acclaimed them.
The envoys rode out, and in due course Harpagos rode in at the head of his cavalry: a tall Mede with a curled grey beard and a gold-thread scarf around his helmet. He shone like a carp in a corselet of gilded fish-scales. The Ephesian lords, unarmed, escorted him to the council chamber. He sat there till they had dismounted first, and one of them held his horse for him. Peace was agreed; in a few days the Medes rode off again. They had done as Kyros had ordered in his wisdom, and spared a city which had given no more trouble than a couple of slaves shot down as they dug the mound. Three of the lords were to rule it as his deputies. It was said they had been treating with Harpagos long before.
Their first act was to get rid of Hipponax. They did not kill him, lest it should be said they feared something he knew; he was banished, which angered nobody, and warned not to come back.
He did not go far, just north across the headland to Klazomenai. Now and then we would get news of him, or someone would bring back one of his poems, in the trip-foot meter he always used, which went with his limping gait. They grew more savage; we heard rumors of someone he’d caused to hang himself. He did not live very well, however, and came down to cadging from strangers in the harbor, or begging alms from people whose enemies he had reviled. He died, they say, lying in rags in the marketplace, and was put underground like a dog that begins to stink. One or two citizens, I’ve heard, poured oblations upon his grave, thinking his spirit would do mischief if not appeased.
He would have had plenty to sing about, while Ephesos was settling to Persian rule. The new governors soon got even with enemies of their own, who had been too powerful to touch before. That came to be an old story, as the Ionian cities fell. It was a time of hate and treachery, and feuds began which have lasted ever since. They have lasted my lifetime, which spans three generations, and I daresay they are good for another three. If ever a Greek as good as Kyros comes to undo his work, he will need all his wits about him when he gets to Ephesos with its knot of snakes.
All this disgusted me; but for Kleobis, a citizen, it was a shame and grief. He went to see his friends and kindred; my weapon-drills were over, and I was a good deal alone. I did not seek out my former comrades. I had been considering the scapegoats, winner and loser both. They were evil men, but not the worst in a town as big as Ephesos. No; they were the worst men who were ugly too. How did I offend the gods before my birth, I thought, that I should be born halfway to being hated, before I do anything to deserve it? Song would have healed me, but it would not come; and being young, I thought that present trouble would last forever. I said nothing to Kleobis, who had enough troubles of his own.
One morning I thought, as I lay in bed, This can be the last day when I wake to sorrow. The choice is mine. I walked towards the temple, and mounted its inner stair which goes up to the roof, and stood on the little walk within the parapet. The agora lay below me like a dish crawling with wasps. It will be unjust, I thought, if I fall on a man who never did me harm; from this height it would kill him. But fate has never been just to me. It was making me giddy to look down, and I was not yet ready to jump; so I looked up instead.
Suddenly there was a great space of blue; the whole world seemed to open for me alone. The early sun stood in the east behind me, and touched the sea and the isles. A faint mist was on the water, half veiling it here and there, so that the ships seemed to float rather than swim; and out of it, beyond the strait, stood the tall hills of Samos.
I looked down at the city walls, and could not think why they should have enclosed me. Above me, on the roof-ridge, crouched a bronze sphinx, with the sun glittering on her crown. The work was exquisite, every upcurved feather of her wings shaped perfectly. Whoever made this, I thought, knew that it would not be often seen. He made it for whoever should come, and for the gods.
I went down by the steep stair, finding myself quite careful not to fall. At least the surrender had saved some things of beauty from fire and sack. Yet Ephesos seemed to me now like a dry brittle husk, the shell a moth sloughs off when the summer hatches it. Kleobis was visiting somewhere; I walked the city like a stranger, seeing it as if I had been long away. In the evening, I passed the house of the hetaira who had shut her door to Hipponax. A crack of lamplight showed; I thought, Why not? Let us see. She let me in, cheerful and easy, bolted the door behind me, and poured me Chian wine to drink while she undressed beside the lamp; a true Ephesian, heavy-breasted, with a skin like thickened cream. There was a picture painted inside the wine-cup, of what we would soon be about. Of course all good hetairas pretend that you have pleased them; but at least I don’t think she guessed I had never done it before.
When I got home, Kleobis was back, and taking his bedtime posset. He pricked up the lamp to peer at me; I’d forgotten the Ephesian’s scented oil. “Well, well. Here’s a cat that’s been in the dairy.” Kindly, he did not add that I’d been a long time getting there.
“I’ve been thinking, sir,” I said. “Isn’t it time we went to Samos?” He drained the posset-cup and wiped his beard. “Why don’t you get to bed? I can see you’re half asleep. Where else should we be going?”
2
IT’S A SHORT CROSSING from Miletos; but I’ve never been so frightened in all my life. If we’d had bad weather, I would not be here today. We were two hundred souls, aboard a little Phoenician trader built to carry fifty full-laden. These people, leaving their homes forever, had brought all they could carry aboard: mattresses, goats, bride-chests, working-tools, vine-slips, wine-jars, cooking-pots and dogs. There were cocks and hens in wattled coops, piglets swaddled like babies to keep them quiet, and babies no one could quieten. The faint breeze did not fill the sail; the wretched black slaves, whom the Phoenicians buy for old ships like this, sweated at the oars, hardly able to work for the crowd pressed almost against their oar-butts. The stink was enough to stifle you; and as the passengers could not be made to trim the ship, it had a list almost to the waterline. I am a pretty well-traveled man; I’ve had longer and rougher voyages; but never one when I felt so sure that the ship would sink.