The Praise Singer

Simonides of Ceos remembers a childhood in which physical appearance and family discipline made music his clearest route to independence. Apprenticed to the travelling singer Kleobis, he learns oral composition and the compromises required to earn patronage at courts such as that of Polycrates on Samos.

Simonides eventually prospers in Athens under Peisistratus and his sons, especially the cultivated Hipparchus. His position as a court poet gives him close access to the personal conflict that ends in Hipparchus's assassination and the collapse of a political order that had also supported a major flowering of performance and written poetry.