Renault's fiction argues that this transition was in part responsible for the cultural flowering known as the Golden Age of Athens—though she also gives credit to Hipparchus, Tyrant of Athens, who attracted talented artists like Simonides to live in his city.

As a boy, silent and lacking confidence due to his extreme ugliness, he is brought up with strict discipline by his father, Leoprepes.

Simonides travels back to Keos to enter a music contest, leaving Kleobis behind in Samos nursing a slight illness.

He becomes a successful musician in that city, and after Peisistratos' death, his sons Hippias and Hipparchus continue the family's patronage.

Here Renault draws on the tale of Harmodius and Aristogeiton, also known as the Tyrannicides (τυραννοκτόνοι), whose attack against the Peisistratid tyranny made them iconic personages of Athenian democracy.