Read Online The Praise Singer by Mary Renault - Free Book Online Page B

seed-grain, bred from the few cattle they had managed to bring; all the time fighting off the Thracian tribesmen, who thought it unmanly to grow what they could steal. In time, they found that pickings were easier elsewhere; and the Abderans, though they lost some fine men in battle, still held on. The young heroes’ names were known to us already. Their elegies had reached us in Ephesos, along with some charming love songs. No traveling minstrel wasted anything of Anakreon’s.
    He told us that this was his second visit to Samos; before the war, he had crossed over for the Hera festival. Now he was here to stay.
    I had guessed it. Something about his entrance had told me.
    “My kin are established,” he said. “The Abderans can eat and sleep and rear their children in safety, and not many of them want more. I’ve given them two years of my life; and, believe me, two years in Thrace are longer than ten in Ionia.”
    Kleobis said smiling, “We had thought you were still running after that little mane-tossing Thracian filly you’d vowed to ride.” That song was already famous.
    He laughed and shrugged. “Fillies at fifteen, mares at twenty. Branded ones, too; by now she’s been tattooed into her husband’s clan. Beauty is thin upon the ground in Abdera. This is a banquet after a wayside inn.” Here he looked under his lashes at the most-sought Ganymede. The glance was caught and thrown back before the modest gaze was dropped; certainly, Anakreon knew his Samos. He turned back to us, as easily as if he’d merely beckoned the server, which he went on to do.
    “So, as you can suppose, my summons here was welcome. I have just come from the Palace. What a civil-spoken man! And generous, as I have no need to tell you.”
    He always had princely manners. If he had known that we’d come as suppliants where he was an invited guest, not a hint would have escaped him.
    How simple we had been! A king like Polykrates-he was that, whatever they called him-who sent to Tyre for purple, to Persia for sapphires, to Egypt for ebony and emeralds; of course he had sent, too, for the poets of his choice, not waited for chance to bring them.
    “Now that the barbarians have swallowed Ionia for as long as the gods allow”-he turned to me, not to leave me neglected-“Samos is the only place for us artists. For the mathematicians, of course, it’s different. Why should they go? The properties of a circle, the shadow of a staff at the meridian, will not change their laws, whoever is making laws for men.”
    Kleobis nodded. “None have left Ephesos. Well, some of them are impious fellows; but Harpagos won’t care if our gods are mocked, so long as his are left alone.”
    Soon after this we said good night; he would? certainly be wishing to improve his acquaintance here. As we parted, he called that we would be meeting soon at the Palace.
    He meant it, too. In no time at all he was the darling of the court; appointed tutor to young Polykrates, the Tyrant’s heir; a sturdy, curly-haired lad, not bad-looking, and, people said, the image of his father, meaning before his father put on weight. There was a daughter, too, who came to the recitals; Samian women lived with the Ionian freedom. (Graceful and pleasant I always found it, and Athens has lost by its strictness in this later age.) She took after her father too, which in a girl was no great dower; still, she worshipped him, and any artist he admired was great with her.
    It was Anakreon, I am sure, who got Kleobis a recital in the supper-room. Twenty years later he still would not admit to it, from respect for my master’s memory. A mean man would not have done it; a small one would have done it and let us know; but he was Anakreon.
    Of course, it was beyond his power to get me invited. It distressed Kleobis, who in Ionia had taken me everywhere as a matter of course. On the day, however, he picked up his spirits, ran through most of his repertoire, and asked me which songs to choose.