Mary Renault - Greece 3 - Praise Singer

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Mary Renault - Praise Singer
So I shall never waste my life-span in a vain useless hope, seeking what cannot be, a flawless man among
us all who feed on the fruits of the broad earth. If I find him, I will bring you news.
But I praise and love every man who does nothing base from free will. Against necessity, even gods do
not fight.
simonides
SICILY
A good song, I think. The end's good-that came to me in one piece-and the rest will do. The boy will
need to write it, I suppose, as well as hear it. Trusting to the pen; a disgrace, and he with his own name
made. But write he will, never keep it in the place between his ears. And even then he won't get it right
alone. I still do better after one hearing of something new than he can after three. I doubt he'd keep even
his own songs for long, if he didn't write them. So what can I do, unless I'm to be remembered only by
what's carved in marble? Tell them in Lakedaimon, passer-by, that here, obedient to their word, we lie.
They'll remember that.
That was the year Anakreon died. He had all his songs safe in his head. He proved us that at the city
feast after Marathon; anything we asked for, there it was. Aischylos... no, he wasn't there, he was in
mourning for his brother. I had sung first, of course. And Anakreon finished with something new to all of
us, fifty years old. You could hear him too, short of teeth as he was by then. We Ionian poets are a
long-lived breed.
Well, his songs are sung, and will be unless the barbarians come back again; and the ships at Salamis
have settled that. They sing him; but the young men don't get him right. Just a word here and there; but it
would have grated his fine ear. Men forget how to write upon the mind. To hear, and keep: that is our
heritage from the Sons of Homer. Sometimes I think I shall die their only heir. Themistokles asked if I
had a secret art of memory; which I can forgive in a man with no education to speak of. Practice,
practice, that's all; but who wants to hear nowadays about hard work? Ah, they say, Simonides will take
his secret to the grave with him. At eighty-three he can't have much more use for it; but old men get
miserly.
Well, I bow to the times. Only last year I recited for some scrivener of King Hieron's my whole stock of
Anakreon's songs, for fear some should disappear with me. And having done that, I thought I'd best turn
to and make a book of my own, lest book-taught slovens should garble me when I'm dead. I've not yet
come down to scratching on wax myself; the boy does that, and I don't let him demean himself with
fair-copying. He must learn young what is due to us. (Yes, well, I must try to keep in mind that he's
turned forty.)
King Hieron will send us a clerk, as he would a physician or a cook. Yes, I'm well-found here, and
winter warmth pays for the hot summers. I have not troubled the physician much. Best of good things,
sweet health. That, every wanderer knows. Now I've done with wandering, give me one day at a time,
on a vine-shaded Sicilian porch with a lyre beside me, and memory in my head.
Memory, that's the thing. I've met few men who reached my years, and they were peasants, or else in
second childhood. Who knows what each day may bring? Sometimes when all's quiet at night I take my
lamp to the book-chest. Once or twice I've even taken a pen in hand, when I've thought of a happier
word. If the boy sees my marks, he keeps quiet about it. What a deal of reed-paper poems do take up,
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that will lie in a man's head as small as a bee-grub in the comb. A dozen rolls. I have had to number the
outsides, to know what's in them.
I shall leave my scrolls, like the potter's cup and the sculptor's marble, for what they're worth. Marble
can break; the cup is a crock thrown in the well; paper burns warm on a winter night. I have seen too
much pass away. So when they come to me, as they do from King Hieron down, asking about the days
before they were begotten, I tell them what deserves remembrance, even if it keeps me up when I crave
for bed. The true songs are still in the minds of men.
KEOS
1
keos is stern. You'd not suppose so from the proverb, that it knows not the horse nor ox, but is rich in
the gladdening vine-fruit, and brings forth poets. That last had not been added, when I was born. On the
other hand, it is a lie that on Keos a man has to take hemlock when he reaches sixty. That was only in the
old siege when the warriors had to be kept alive. Nowadays, it is just considered good manners.
Iulis, my native city, is high up the mountain, above Koressia harbor. I used to sit on a rock with my
father's sheep around me, looking at the foreign sails and wondering where they came from; they thread
the Kyklades from all four corners of the world. I could seldom go down to see. My father was not a
man to leave his land to a steward while he sat at ease, nor let his sons go sightseeing. My elder brother,
Theasides, got leave from work much oftener than I; not because he was the heir, which would have
made it heavier, but because he was good with the disk and javelin and a fine pankratiast, and had to
train for the games to do the family credit. He was handsome too. My parents never told me in so many
words that they preferred me out of sight, but they had no need. I seemed to have known it from my
birth.
Keeping out of sight, one is a good deal alone. But if one is short of company, one can always make it. I
kept, you might say, the very best company in Keos.
If a fine ship with a painted sail passed proudly by the port, keeping its mystery, for me it was the Argo
with its talking prow and its crew of heroes, going north to the bewitched Kolchian shore. If a hawk
hovered, I saw winged Perseus poised for his flashing swoop; grasping, like the hawk its prey, the
Gorgon's deadly head to freeze the dragon. The boulder I sat on had been flung by Herakles, playing ball
as a boy. When I drove my flock to pasture, I was with Achilles on some great cattle-raid, bringing the
spoils of a plundered city back to camp.
As I dreamed I sang, as far back as I can remember. I needed only to be alone, among the creatures of
my thought, and the songs would come. Childish, at first; tunes picked up from the work songs of my
father's thralls, or the women weaving. They satisfied me, till I was old enough to be taken to the Apollo
festival, and heard a rhapsodist chanting his bit of Homer, and some local poet taking his choir through a
choral ode. I suppose I was nine or ten.
For the first time, I knew that my secret joy was a thing grown men could make a life of, even a living. I
did not yet hope that for myself. I only dreamed of it, as I'd dreamed of fighting at Troy; but on the
mountain I dreamed aloud. When some old ewes pushed up to see what all the noise was about, I felt
like Orpheus, and wished that Keos had lions to be enchanted. Then I would go home at night, and be
silent in a corner. No wonder my father thought me a sullen boy. But what could I have said to him?
Time passed; I was twelve, thirteen; I heard the singing at the festivals; I understood that these men,
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happy beyond imagining, had all once been boys like me, and somehow achieved their bliss. My dreams
turned to wishes; but they could find no voice, except in secret on the mountain. Soon I would be a man,
just one of my father's farm-hands. A poet? I could as soon have told him I wanted to be a Scythian
king. I would be lucky if he did no worse than laugh. I began to know bitterness, and despair.
Then came the wedding from which my life was born.
The bridegroom was Laertes, our neighbor Milon's eldest son. He was a sea-captain, his rich father
having bought him a ship when he came of age. He had grown rich in his turn, by boldness, shrewdness
and luck, trading about Ionia and as far as Egypt, and had stayed unmarried till thirty, mostly for lack of
time. There was always a stir when he put in with his foreign goods, his outlandish men and his tales.
Theas, who was taken to call with our father, used to save the tales for me.
I had never thought they would take me to the wedding. Any treats I had as a child came always from
Theasides. This time they could hardly leave me behind, because my five-year-old sister was going. She
was pretty, though, with hair as soft as cobweb and red as fire. Once she had asked me gravely how I
came to be so ugly, not believing such a thing could happen without a reason her elders would
understand. I told her I had been cursed by a raven from whom I had taken a lamb, which left her
satisfied. Hearing her crying as her hair was combed, I wondered they should be troubled with either of
us at a feast, forgetting that weddings beget weddings and are times for looking ahead.
At all events, my best tunic came out of the chest; a cast-off of Theasides's though there were five years
between us; quite good, but I was outgrowing it in my turn. I looked dismayed at my lean thighs with their
dark pelt of hair. But I would have to show enough to frighten the women, before I would get a new one.
Keos is stern.
Before the house of the bride was a gently sloping meadow, where the bridesmaids stood with their
garlands, waiting to sing. The thrones of the bride and groom were decked with flowers. My parents
greeted their hosts, and sought out their friends among the guests, taking Theasides with them. He was
plainly dressed (there are laws in Keos against extravagance), but the cloth was fine, and if he had been
in rags his beauty would have graced them. I, knowing what my parents would have wished of me, lost
myself in the crowd. There was more in this than filial duty. I had marked down the slab of rock where
the bard would stand to sing, and the clump of brush near by where I could listen undisturbed. I meant
not to miss a word.
Bride and groom took their thrones. Though weathered, he had kept his looks, and his purple fillet from
Tyre became him. They made a good pair, for all she was half his age. The girls stood in their circle,
hand-linked ready to dance, bright on the grass as another wedding garland. And now came the bard, in
his festal robe, its border embroidered in Miletos, his seven-stringed kithara in his hand. He walked to
the singing place, and drew his plectrum across the strings.
Happy groom, the favored of Aphrodite,
Now at last you have her, your matchless maiden,
Girdled with violets.
The garland began to turn, like windblown petals.
He was a smallish man past his middle years; his beard, and the hair under his festal garland, were
ash-grey. At that time he can't yet have been sixty; but to my youth he seemed as old as Zeus, and I was
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amazed he could sing so well. I knew nothing of training, except that it was given to good-looking boys
who were chosen for Apollo's choir, and went to Delos, the holy island, for his birthday feast. All I had
was a voice to which the sheep would answer; and perfect pitch, which I was half aware of, enough to
recognize it in the bard. I knew too that his inlaid kithara was a masterpiece.
There it hangs on my wall. The embroidered neck-sling wore ragged, and I had a new one worked in
Athens. That's wearing too, but never mind.
He had been costly to hire, by Keos reckoning, where most things are paid in kind. You can't offer a
sheep or heifer to us wandering men. I once accepted a mule, which I had need of at the time; but that's
long ago. From kings, maintenance and gold; from lords, either or both according to their rank; from
others, weighed-out silver. Or one makes a gift, for the honor of gods or heroes. Nothing between.
He had been ten days on Keos, a guest in the bride's household, teaching the girls the wedding song and
the dance. Sometimes from up the hill I had seen them dancing, but too far to hear. It would have been as
much as my hide was worth, to leave my flock.
From my lair in the brush, a yard or two from the dais, I saw only the backs of the bride-maidens, as
they faced the seats of honor. But, as I had planned, I could hear each note and each word.
The dancers had on their best thinnest dresses, of fine linen beaten soft upon the river-stones and
squeezed, still damp, into clinging folds. As they passed the bride's throne, one or another would toss a
flower from the wreath she wore; the lap of the saffron-veiled girl was full of roses. It was too late for the
violets of the song. Their clear voices rose like birds' at dawn. The bridegroom's friends, bold young rips
for the most part, stood by his throne as quiet as well-beaten schoolboys, saving their bawdries for the
bridal ride. At most weddings, they'd have been clapping time and calling out to the girls.
The song was the dance; the bard was its perfect instrument. He sang it lightly but with reverence; none
of those little variations thrown in to flatter the hosts, though they are sometimes good enough to keep.
This piece was sacred, this he handled like a phoenix egg. When already a singer, he had heard the Tenth
Muse sing her own song herself. Such things are the heirlooms of the bards. This time it was a family
heirloom too; the bride's mother in her trailing Ionian gown was smiling and wiping her eyes. She came
from Lesbos, and it had been a gift for her own wedding.
I gathered my childish thoughts as best I could, to make all this my possession. But I was aware, too, that
near by on the rock sat the harper's boy.
He was a comely lad, well fed and clothed and washed. His blue eyes were narrowed under his drawn
fair brows, as he tried to listen. I knew, from my visits to the festivals, that this was no slave but a pupil,
working to learn his art. This was part of his training and reward: a wedding song of Sappho's, a treasure
to store in memory. I think I noticed he was shivering, though the breeze hardly stirred the flowers; but
my mind was on other matters. Once he looked my way. Poor lad, he was far from home; I daresay he
would gladly have changed places, even with me. I eyed him with envy, as a beggar might a prince.
I drank down the song as a thirsty plant does water, freshening and growing, feeling in folded
flower-buds the core of fruit. Some of the words I'd seized, and would keep tomorrow sitting among the
sheep; some would escape me, and I must patch as best I could. The tune I would remember, but I had
no lyre, only my shepherd's pipe; one cannot both pipe and sing. Already the song was done, the dance
was over, the girls blew the bride kisses and ran back for their parents' praise. For a little while the rain
would nourish me; then would be drought again. Tomorrow the bard would leave; and my parents were
looking about to see what had become of me.
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I crossed the grass, humming as I went, to fix the song. Theasides was with them; six feet high and hardly
done growing yet; wide shoulders and strong thighs; his golden hair cut short across his forehead and
hanging down his back, neatly crimped from overnight plaiting in honor of the feast, and crowned with
fresh flowers. He was smiling still from the pleasure of the dance. I could not think why our father should
have missed me.
Beside my parents stood neighbor Bouselos and his wife, whose small vineyard was near our land. With
them was their six-year daughter, picking her nose with a fat finger. As I came up her mother slapped
down her hand. She tugged Theasides' mantle, and he turned to give her a smile.
My parents did not scold me for my absence. My father even remarked to Bouselos how I had grown.
Bouselos eyed my bare lanky legs, nodded and winked.
People forget their own childhood, or they'd remember a child's long ears. The moment she saw that
wink, the child jumped at her father's arm. "Daddy!" she piped. "I don't want to marry Sim! I want to
marry Theas!"
There was the pause that you might expect; then the fathers laughed, my mother looked down her nose,
Bouselos' wife said, "Hush, naughty girl!" But being a spoiled only child, she stamped and said it again. It
distressed my brother, who, though himself a favorite, was sweetened by all the gods had given him.
"You can't marry me," he said, reasoning with her kindly. "You know I'm promised to Hegesilla. You
don't have to marry Sim yet, not till you're big; and then you'll like him. He's very clever."
All the parents gazed at him, admiring his good heart, in which indeed they were not deceived. My
betrothed looked from him to me; it was, you might say, an epigram. Going fiery red-with temper, not
maiden shame-she shouted, "I won't marry him ever! When I'm old I still won't marry him! He's ugly, he's
all black, he's got a dirty face."
I had scrubbed it well for the wedding, but had not lightened my swarthy skin nor taken off my birthmark.
Like all Ionians who have gone east and mixed their blood, we Keans set store by Hellene looks. It is
said that before the war in Troy, King Minos' Cretans had a city where Koressia stands, and sometimes
we throw back to them. One thing's for sure, on Keos it is not admired. I had black hair, before it
whitened; also, though my beard covers it now, a dark mole on my cheek, as big as a double drachma. If
I had been a girl, no doubt they would have exposed me on the mountain. But my father was never one
to waste a pair of hands.
He looked put about by the words of his chosen daughter-in-law; but it was Theas who darkened with
his rare anger. I think he'd even have given the girl a clip; but her mother, from civility to mine, was first
with a box on the ear. She was led off bawling. Little Philomache screamed out after her, "You're uglier
than our Sim! You're dirtier too! You smell!"
I did not wait to see how they made the best of it. I slipped through the crowd, not roughly lest anyone
else should stare at me, and ran into the olive grove. There I could have wept unseen; but I went on
dry-eyed through the vineyards to the mountain. Before sunset I was up above the sheep-grass. I sat on
a boulder while somewhere below me a goat-boy piped to his herd, out of tune, and the goats replied,
fading away downhill. In clear golden air I looked west over shimmering sea; first the little islet of Helena,
then beyond that the purple Attic hills.
I had never been out of Keos; so though all Hymettos stood between, I could believe I gazed on the
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Rock of the ancient kings: Theseus who redeemed the land from Crete and killed the Minotaur, Akamas
his son who fought at Troy, Kodros who went disguised to be killed in battle, when the oracle
proclaimed that the King must die.
Till now I had been angry only with the present; at being reminded I was ugly, though I was used to that;
much more at having the song put out of my mind, for nearly all had gone. But now I seemed to feel my
fate close in on me. This island, twenty miles by ten, was to be my prison; here I would plod the circle of
sour Hesiod's seasons, works and days, works and days, tied to a fool and to her fools of kindred;
tasting the food of the god once in five years, maybe, when some bard might chance to call at the harbor,
held up by rough winds or the need to sing for his passage-fee. Like Homer's orphan child, I would get
the sip that wets the mouth and leaves the belly empty. I looked at Attica, and thought of her kings and
heroes, of whom I had sung in solitude.
They had come to me in snatches of Homer, or peasant songs, or old wives' tales; but they had faces and
ways of speech for me; I knew their armor, and if they used sword or spear. Child as I was, I thought
they asked me for something. I had no blood-libation to give their shades body and voice; yet they
seemed to say to me, "We die twice when men forget."
There is nothing like despair to make one throw oneself upon the gods. Helios Apollo was going down
over the Attic hills, to plunge his chariot in some distant sea; and as he passed from sight, suddenly a
great wing of cloud, which had been grey, flamed like rose fire against a sky as green as kingfishers and
deeper than the sea. Come then, he said. Then he folded his bright wing in the mist, yielding to night.
Down the mountain I went, possessed by a daimon that made me run, so that I might have broken my
neck had not a bright moon lit me. In the farms and hovels, all folk who had lain down with the dusk
were sleeping, and the last of the lamps were going out. I would not be back before our door was
barred, and our father would beat me. Why not? Tomorrow was the day for mulching the vines; and
there was never a night when he had not earned his sleep.
I was still on the sheep-track when our lamp was quenched. Only one was left shining now. It was in the
house of Hagias, father of the bride. It seemed strange, seeing she and her groom were long since
bedded at his own fine place, new built from his gains at sea; I had seen the bridal torches threading there
from up the mountain. Then I thought, It's the bard who is still awake.
If a mouse had crossed my path, I was ready to see an omen. I took the next fork in the track.
As I came to Hagias' vineyard, his two watchdogs bayed at me. They were running loose, which meant
their bite was worse than their bark. Wandering men grow either to hate dogs or to know them; but there
are no two ways for a shepherd. I sat on a stone, to let them nose me at leisure; after a while they let me
tickle their jaws, and we walked on together. I did not go too close to the house, which, good sentinels
that they were, they would not have approved; there was a little plowshed, whose roof faced the lighted
window.
I've been a fool, I thought. All I saw was a pallet bed, with a boy upon it. But no one on thrifty Keos
sleeps with a lighted lamp, and I looked again. He was fair-haired, with a flush upon him, pushing the
clothes about and tossing. This explained the lamp, but was no affair of mine. I was about to start
climbing down, when a shadow crossed the window, and a man came into the light, holding a cup, which
he lifted the boy to drink from. He was a stiff grizzled man, looking old and anxious, with a blanket
caught around him as if just risen from bed. Hagias had many servants, and again I would have gone, but
something bright caught my eye; craning, I saw on the clothes-stool an embroidered robe. Against the
wall was the kithara.
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I sat, and watched, and thought of the god's bright omen, and of where it had led me now. It shocked
me. There is no one more just than a child. A stranger, a guest of the land, a pleasant-faced lad who had
a look of my brother a few years back; what evil was I wishing him, perched on the shed like a dark kite
waiting to feed? Black Sim, the boys in the village called me.
Often I had wished my father dead, and Theas in the master's chair, but had never dared to know it. This
was the first time I had looked for gain through death, knowing my thought. It is man's nature to pray for
what he much desires; but I had the justice of a child, and I did not pray.
Soon the bard left the window-square, but I knew he was sitting near the bed, because I could see one
of his feet. The boy dozed with half-closed eyes showing the whites. Presently I climbed down, speaking
softly to the dogs, who suffered my hand, but saw me off as far as the olive grove, lest I should deceitfully
take a sheep. They'd have made better soldiers than some men I've met.
When I got home, there was a shutter open. I crept up, and two strong hands hoisted me in. Theas set
me down, signed to me to be quiet-he had no need!-and showed me a dummy of rolled sheepskin, which
he'd laid under my side of the blanket in our bed. In the great bed our parents were fast asleep, and had
never missed me. He took me by the ear and gave me a soft slap on the head. I gave him a soft punch on
the belly, which was flat and firm as a shield. We were used to these silent games. When he had hidden
the skins and we were both in bed, he went straight off to sleep. He had kept awake to save me from my
beating. I warmed myself on his wide shoulders cloaked with long golden hair.
Long after this, when I had made my name, someone from Keos asked how it was I had not come to
hate my brother, to whom it must have seemed the gods had given everything, leaving nothing for me. I
answered that next to having the gods' gifts ourselves, it is best to honor them. If not, one must grow to
hate them; and, Zeus be my witness, I have seen what can come of that.
2
I was up in the dark next day, before even the thralls were stirring. Going to the shed, I found the best of
them just awake. He'd been a smallholder on Kythnos, the next island, who had pledged himself after a
bad harvest, having no surety for a loan. Next harvest had been worse; the landlord had foreclosed on
him, and, having all the hands he needed, sold him away. Even though he was getting a fuller belly from us
than he'd had on Kythnos, I always pity a freeborn thrall. You only find them now in the backward
places; in Athens, the good Solon freed them before I was born. I said, "Tell the master I shan't be
minding the sheep today." The less he knew, the better for us both. I saw him eye my best tunic; he liked
but rather despised me, thinking me poor stuff for a husbandman, and thankful no doubt that I was not
the heir. He thought the world of Theas; whom I'd left sleeping, innocent of my truancy. It was only fair;
even he was not immune from our father's anger.
At sunup I reached the house of Hagias. He was up and about, and greeted me civilly with a cup of
watered wine, boy-strength; though, knowing my father, he was clearly amazed to see me not at work. I
had mother wit enough to thank him for the pleasure of his feast, as if sent with this message, before
asking to speak with Kleobis the bard.
In this I could hardly claim to be my father's envoy; and Hagias, of course, asked me what I wanted:
adding that their guest was sleeping still, having sat up late with his boy, who was sick with fever.
"I know, sir," I said. "So he'll be needing a boy who's well. I want to ask him to hire me."
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By now Hagias' wife had come up; she had been bustling about with the women slaves, clearing up after
the feast. They both stared at me as if I were off my head. Presently Hagias smiled and stroked his
beard; he was a stout good-natured fellow, though rather pompous. "My dear Sim- for so I have heard
your kinfolk call you, and I speak as a family friend-boys will be boys and have their fancies, and you'll
not find me a telltale. Why, at your age my fancy was to travel south, and fight for the King of Egypt. But
my old friend Leoprepes would be grieved, you know, at this prank of yours. Because he trains you on
the farm, so that you'll prosper when you come to manhood, you don't suppose he'd let you work as
servant to another man? That's all this boy is, no more; carries luggage, hires mules, looks after the lyre
and so on." My face must have brightened, for he frowned. "Just a menial, and you are son to one of the
first men in the deme. What nonsense have you taken into your head? Do you want to be a poet?" And
he laughed so heartily that the slaves all turned to stare.
"Yes, sir," I said.
Till now, he'd just thought I wanted to run away from home, which could have surprised no one who
knew our family. Now I had put him at a loss for words. He was still in search of them, when from the
room behind him the bard appeared, wishing him good day.
Hagias nodded to his wife to be about her business, and asked after his servant's health. He replied that
his pupil seemed a little easier. Then he looked straight at me, and smiled; a spare slight smile, like that
between men who will talk about business presently.
Did this amaze me? Not so. I had had my sign on the mountain. It is only to the wise that Apollo speaks
with a double tongue.
So I waited while he had a few more words with Hagias; then he said, "Was this lad here asking for me?
I was expecting him."
Hagias' face changed in a moment. He could hardly have been more civil if I had been Theasides. It
amazed me, I don't know why. That barelegged boy in his outgrown tunic seems as strange to me now as
an Ethiop to a Thracian. Yet I was once within him, and his soul has passed into mine. These are
mysteries.
"Let us walk," said Kleobis, and led me over the meadow into the olive grove. The pale green flowers
were falling, the early sun shone in the leaves. Hagias watched us from the house like a true Ionian.
Curiosity is our birthright. What else has made us seek out knowledge and skill?
While I was wondering if he had the gift of prophecy, Kleobis said, "I saw you in the brush, swaying to
the music like Apollo's snake. I knew you would be coming. Who is your father?"
I told him, and he said, "I have heard the name. How long have you wanted to be a poet?"
"I don't know, sir. Before I knew what a poet was."
He plucked a spray of olive flowers and held it up to the light. "Go on. It was the same with me."
I spoke as best I could. Not as if to a friend; I had had no friend but my brother; but as if to a god in
some small mountain shrine, who I could believe would listen. "You know, sir, how little boys sing who
can just run about, and mostly it's like the birds. But I sang in tune, all the songs the women sang at work.
Then when I was older and went to the Apollo festivals, I started to make songs myself. Please, sir, hire
me. I'll work for nothing, just for my keep. If your boy gets better, I'll do the rough work, and sleep in the
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shed with the thralls wherever you're staying. I've a sheepskin for cold weather, I'll only need my food. I'll
not even ask for music lessons. Just let me hear the songs."
We were now well away from the house. He said, "Sing me one of yours."
For this at least I had come prepared. I sang my most ambitious ode. The temple at Koressia is a healing
one, dedicated to Apollo of the Mice. He has his own sacred ones, white with pink ears. After pondering
for some time how to make mice sound dignified, I had addressed them as "Bold plunderers of
Demeter's hoarded store," which I thought pretty well of. Such was the man's magnanimity, he heard me
through without so much as a smile.
"You have grasped the form very well. A good beginning. Now tell me, do you ever sing for yourself
alone?"
"Well, sir," I said after a while, "one always sings keeping sheep."
He looked round. Not knowing Keos, he must have found this occupation surprising in my father's son.
He only said, "Yes, true. Sing me a shepherd's song, then."
I hesitated, now overcome with shyness. "It's not a real poem, sir. It's just a song."
"Good, let me hear it. I've found stuff in those songs that Homer must have heard. They're like agates on
a beach; one picks them up rough, and polishes. Come, sing."
I thought if I warned him I'd made it all up myself, he might think less of it. "It's very long. It's about
Perseus, you see."
"Indeed, many things befell him. Give me some part you like."
I had been most of a year at it; if I had ever finished it, I daresay it would have outstretched the Odyssey.
Shoots have been coming up from it for most of my later life. However, I remembered he had not
breakfasted, and spared him the Killing of the Gorgons. "Well, sir, this is what Perseus sings to himself
when he's working at the nets on Seriphos, and the King won't let him go away."
The form at least was old; the kind of thing women sing as they twirl the spindle, or tread before the
loom. I had lifted it as best I could, to give it a bolder feel, more by ear than by thought. Perseus is
longing for wings to take him over sea, to the lands of monsters and marvels. When I sang it on the
mountain, I became a fair-haired kouros six feet tall; the sheep had always accepted this transformation.
Now I was Black Sim and must make the best of it. The song felt very naked sung like this. I thought I
should have dressed it up more, like the mice.
At the end he waited awhile, in case I was stuck, not finished. This made me sure I had disgusted him.
Then, seeing it was the end, he nodded two or three times. "Ah. There, now, is a voice."
I felt as women must when told that the babe's a boy. I just stood getting my breath. "Now tell me," he
went on briskly, "when is your father coming along to see me?"
I stared. I must have looked like an idiot yokel.
"Does he not think much of your singing? Never mind, he and I will talk."
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"Sir!" I cried, finding my tongue at last, "he doesn't know that I sing at all. I could never sing before my
father."
He did not ask why; just said, "I see," and stood in thought.
"I've run away, sir. I should be with the sheep; but I did leave them cared for. Please hire me. He only
likes my big brother. He'll never grieve."
"Do you always mind sheep?" he asked after a while.
"No, I help with the vines and the olives. I have to do the work of the season. Like Works and Days."
"Does he tell you so? He is not quite indifferent to the poets, then."
"Indeed he won't miss me, sir. It's not that we're poor. He has the hired men, and five thralls as well. And
the house-slaves, of course."
"Then, even though you Keans live plainly, you cannot have known much hardship. Do you understand
the life of a minstrel's boy?"
"It's different, sir, if it's what you want to do. I never heard a real poet before, I know that now. Now I
have, I can't bear it here any more."
He smiled; I perceived that bards are human. Then he sank into thought again. Presently he said, looking
up suddenly, "I can't be sure I shall need a second boy, if Endios recovers. Perhaps you can tell me,
since you know these hills; they say there is a yellow berry with leaves like spear-blades, which is a cure
for this kind of fever. Is it of any use?"
"Not the one here, sir. Don't you go picking that. One of our thralls had a child that died of eating them."
I'd answered without a second thought; he did not own he had been testing me till five years later, when
he himself had fever and I was nursing him. I remember saying then, "But what would you have done, if
I'd recommended the berries? I would still have made the song."
"I greatly doubt it," he said with his dry smile. "The grape tastes of its vineyard. I daresay I should have
advised your father to let you study somewhere; so much was due to you. But oh no, I'd have had you
nowhere about me. Apollo's serpent has a healing tongue. I am not seduced by the dance of the painted
adder."
At the time, however, he just put his hand upon my shoulder, saying, "Never mind, the doctor is coming
and we will trust in him. Come in, Sim, and let us see if Hagias' good wife will find us a few barley-cakes.
What is the rest of your name, son of Leoprepes?"
He called upon my father the same day.
Seeing he had promised this, you'd have thought that, when I got home, I would have said so to escape a
beating. But I was as tongue-tied as ever in my father's presence, baring my back more readily than my
soul. I had never yet defied him-that would have come with the first stirrings of manhood-but when,
asked where I had been, I could only mumble, "Over to Hagias' house," he thought me a liar, and defiant
along with that. Theas had known what would happen, and, having no help to give, had gone off so as
not to witness it. Afterwards I had to carry my sore back up to the sheep-pasture, resume my duties and
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摘要：

MaryRenault-PraiseSingerSoIshallneverwastemylife-spaninavainuselesshope,seekingwhatcannotbe,aflawlessmanamongusallwhofeedonthefruitsofthebroadearth.IfIfindhim,Iwillbringyounews.ButIpraiseandloveeverymanwhodoesnothingbasefromfreewill.Againstnecessity,evengodsdonotfight.simonidesSICILYAgoodsong,Ithink...

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