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anything I could browse on along the way. Like every bard who will not let his repertoire go rusty, he would go over it quietly as we walked; and by the time he was ready to give me line by line, I had much of it in my head. I did not know, till he told me, that I had a better memory than other people; I thought one would naturally remember what one had liked to hear. To this day, there are pieces of Homer, or Sappho, or Stesichoros, which I can’t recall without some bit of road, or courtyard, or stone fountain-rim coming to mind along with them.
    This cornel-wood staff of mine-the old man’s third leg, as the Sphinx said in her riddle-when Kleobis owned it, I felt it many a time. If I spoke to him when he was composing, he didn’t interrupt himself, just gave me a rap. If I was fool enough to start begging his pardon, he hit me again, to teach me the virtue of silence. I would then mind my own business, of which I had quite enough. You don’t master the Iliad in a month, or in a year; but every day I added my few lines, like a bee bringing wax to the hive.
    I soon learned I have a certain gift of nature: that what I have learned by heart, I can call back all at once, just as one does a prospect seen with one’s eyes, not one stone or tree after another. Some philosopher, it must have been Herakleitos, once tried to explain to me the nature of this whole, which my memory hears in a moment though it would take an hour to speak it aloud. But Herakleitos would make a mystery of anything.
    Of course, a man like Kleobis did not live like some wandering minstrel, singing in markets for a supper. We never even slept at inns, unless ben?ighted between towns. In any city, some house was always open to us, often two or three in rivalry; he had guest-friends everywhere. If he sang at a sacred festival, we might be lodged in the temple precinct. Besides all this, Kleobis had a home.
    His patrimony was at Ephesos; a farm let to a tenant, and a city house kept ready for his return by an old Karian slave-woman. She doted on him, but scolded him so freely that it was clear they’d been bedmates once. She was not yet past jealousy, though not of me; me she favored, because I was too ugly to be a rival. Getting me in a corner she would give me a fig or apricot, and try to make me tell tales. I thanked her prettily, and kept my tales to myself.
    Kleobis had a moving little song, about an old man bidding farewell to Aphrodite. I have known it make wrestlers cry. But if they thought he spoke for himself they were much mistaken. From time to time he would tell me that this evening, to reward my progress, I could play upon the kithara instead of my practice lyre; he was going to visit friends and I need not wait up for him. It did not take me long to observe that this happened in cities polite enough to have some clean amusing hetairas. He was a fastidious man. I can’t recall his ever visiting a common stews. Happy to get my hands upon the kithara and sing to its seven-stringed voice, I wished him a pleasant evening, with no thought that such things would ever be my concern.
    In those years, I hardly knew that I was made like other men. I had married my art, and kept all my love for my master. I daresay I had Bouselos’ little daughter to thank, for keeping me out of the street of the women. As I grew from boy to youth, of course I was importuned as all travelers are. But each of them in turn I thought would endure me for the pay, mocking me after with some fellow whore; she must indeed be the lowest of her calling, to seek my custom at all. I had no need to master desire, while I had such thoughts to quench it, and felt only shame at these solicitations. Returning to my lyre, I would sing of royal maidens, chosen by gods to bring forth heroes. One of my lays pleased Kleobis so well that he let me sing it at an Ephesian supper-party. I got a ring of worked bronze from the host. My first fee. I have it still.
    Nowadays, friends and fellow