Glory and the Lightning (38 page)

Sometimes his acrid tongue and his loathing for meek fraud and cruel expediency made him impatient and he lost his caution, and partially trusted friends with whom he had philosophic discussions. This came about when he attended dinners with considerable wine. Then his subtle character led him to imprudent dissertations, in which he only partially believed, himself. He would mock the gods, who were in the service of the priests, and he would mock the government which was only in its own service. He had a love for dialectics and paradoxes and he found humanity risible and was hilarious over its tendency to take itself seriously. This offended many, who pretended to be concerned men, with principles and virtues. They felt that his hard blue eyes, fixed on them, taunted them with their hidden knaveries and their hypocrisy, though in truth Xanthippus was often laughing only at himself.

He would say, “Solon’s dream of a republic is the most glorious and godlike of all dreams, when good and intelligent men shall establish just law which will not distinguish between the man of riches and the man of no riches, and bestow liberty and the franchise on all those capable of exercising it. But alas, we have seen for ourselves that the dream of the republic has degenerated into the realities of a chaotic democracy, which oppresses all those who cannot buy it with gold, or with influence. What, then, should replace them? I have heard that benevolent despotisms are the best of all—but where shall we find a benevolent despot who will not succumb to his human nature and become an evil dictator?”

“We must change human nature,” the most perverted of his companions would say with a pious expression. “Man is capable of becoming more than man.”

At this Xanthippus would laugh without restraint.

His dearest friends wrote discreetly to priests and government that Xanthippus was an impious man who mocked both gods and priests, and despised orderly government. His profane remarks were exaggerated; his tendency to cynic laughter was condemned as the mark of sacrilegiousness, and it was hinted, by reprobates, that he was the most licentious of men. The government began to take an inordinate interest not only in his “convictions” but in his taxes.

No one knew of his despairs except his delightful concubine who would cradle him in her fragrant arms and listen and console him. He would kiss her breast and say, “At the last, my divine one, only love is truth and delight and fulfillment—but even love can be perverted to lust and a desire for rewards. Kiss me. I will delude myself you love me, and that is the saddest delusion of all.”

He was a very lonely man. But even at this he would laugh.

As a rich man he incited envy. As a patrician and soldier who had helped to save Greece he was resented by the inferior who had no aristocratic traditions but only pretensions. But as a confident man he dangerously underestimated his enemies and the malice of his friends, for, as he was later to say, “We cynics are the most naive of men. In our hearts we hope men are better than they are and that we, ourselves, will be refuted.”

He mistrusted his own Athenians. Though they honored the memory of Solon, and though the tyrants like Pisistratus and Cleisthenes had sometimes actually enforced the Laws of Solon, the Athenians were too capricious and inconstant a people to demand that their rulers obey an unchangeable Constitution, for they suspected what they considered inflexibility even in perfect laws. Still, they cherished the dream of a perfect and noble republic, wherein an impersonal Constitution, immune to the attacks of vicious and greedy men, could be established like marble above the nature of mankind. Xanthippus did not find this a paradox or an inconsistency, as some of his more earnest friends did. “Dreams,” he would say, “are often the matrix of the future, and who knows what coming generations may make them a shining reality?

“Considering the heroic laws of a republic which Solon established—and which our people honor but cannot obey—it is strange that Solon ever became an Archon of Athens and was not assassinated,” he said to his wife, Agariste, when in a benevolent mood towards her.

But Agariste, whose ancestors had helped to depose the Tyrants, and who actually believed that an Athenian republic existed, was vexed. “What then, lord, do you believe our government is?”

“I should hate to lacerate your tender ears with my opinion, Agariste. But in spite of our boasts that we are a free people—which we are not—we are a slave civilization, though Solon desired to free the slaves. Our slaves and those who do not have the franchise compose the majority of our city-state. We honor Solon by revering him, but we ignore him.”

Agariste thought this frivolous. Had not her fathers overcome the Tyrants? Where else in the world did there exist such perfection as the government and the mental climate of Athens? She began to suspect that Xanthippus had no deep respect and love for his city, and that he was no true patriot, and though she knew that men were executed by decree of priests or government for their opinions she was convinced that these were traitors, and that Solon would agree with her if he were alive.

“You are a very intelligent woman,” said Xanthippus, who was still feeling benevolent, “but you have not understood one word of what I have said. Do you not revere Solon? Yet one of his convictions was that the influence of women was eternally pernicious, and though I have some disagreement with this at times I often contemplate what he said.”

“There are many women who think like men!” exclaimed Agariste.

“Alas, then their genitals are dead,” said Xanthippus, and now his benevolence had left him and he also left his wife, and went to his courtesan who received him with smiles of gladness and led him at once to her silken bed and poured wine for him. He looked up into her serene and beautiful face and all at once saw that her hazel eyes were sincere and that she loved him. He held out his hand to her and said, drawing her down beside him and caressing her breast, “Aphrodite was perhaps the wisest of all the gods, for out of love can spring all art and science and poetry and justice, while politics, though engaging the aspirations and philosophies of men, is an exercise in irrelevance in comparison.”

Agariste was filled with bitter if silent rage when her husband left her for the arms of a disgraceful woman. She respected Xanthippus and sometimes admired him and was usually subservient to him, and well understood that he was of a distinguished family and a hero to many in Athens, though lately they seemed to forget. In the earlier years of their marriage he had appeared to delight in her intelligence and would converse for hours with her, while stroking her velvet cheek or her pale masses of hair. Yet now he found her tedious.

It was inevitable that Xanthippus come to the attention of both the priests and the government and that they should be extremely interested, for many envied him. Moreover, there were the letters from his discreet friends sadly denouncing him, and some were men of consequence, and had power and riches. Once he had been more discreet but lately, perhaps because of his son and the conversations with that son, he had clarified his own thoughts and had expanded them.

Xanthippus was politely invited to appear before the priests and the Ecclesia for a “consultation,” for he was too respected a man to be seized and dragged before them, and he was rich and powerful. It was the intention of some of the priests and the judges merely to rebuke him and restrain him, but others wished his death though they feared him. The hero was not a mere chattering philosopher or fervent teacher, whose fatal disposition would cause little comment, yet that fact made him even the more dangerous.

When Xanthippus received the summons he requested the presence of his wife, and she came from the women’s quarters with her two female slaves, joining her husband in the outdoor portico. He held a parchment in his hand and was studying it with an ironical half smile. He glanced up at Agariste and nodded to a chair near him and she sat down with dignity.

Then he said, without looking up, “I have received a summons from the Ecclesia and the Court of Justice, to appear before them tomorrow at noon, to explain certain convictions of mine.” He threw the parchment on the marble floor and exclaimed, “Those accursed old priests! Those ignorant judges, fraudulent fools who know nothing but their prejudices! They are as valorous and understanding as a goat.”

Agariste turned as white as linen, and her mouth opened on a gasp and terror and outrage blazed in her eyes. Seeing this, Xanthippus was surprised and intrigued, for he had never considered that his wife loved him.

Touched, and seeing that she was trembling, Xanthippus leaned towards her and said, “Do not fear, my love, for my safety and person. I am a match for the sons of Sisyphus, who, like their father, endlessly and futilely insist on thrusting a stone uphill only to have it recoil on them and fall to its source. But they persist in their folly and would remake law in their own image.”

Agariste turned even paler, thinking of her slaves who were listening. Xanthippus took her hand with a gentleness she had not known for many years, and for an instant she was moved and tears moistened her haughty eyes. Then she withdrew her hand and folded it with the other on her knee and looked like a marble monument in the hot light of the sun.

“It is incredible, that this should happen to our name!” she said at last.

Xanthippus was taken aback for a moment, then he smiled sardonically to himself, and fixed his hard sparkling eyes on his wife in silence. Her fingers began to move slowly over each other and her long white throat was momentarily convulsed. Light shifted as palms and sycamores threw their fronds and leaf shadows over the white stone of the portico floor. Agariste became more agitated by the moment and stared blankly before her, her thoughts milling desperately. Then Xanthippus said, “Our name? My dear Agariste, there is more at stake than our name. There is my life.”

But she continued with her spoken thoughts. “Never has there been a stain on the name of my family! We have lived honorable and noble and blameless lives in the service of our nation. We have been prouder, with reason, than kings. The annals of our history will live forever in the hearts and minds of men. But now there is a stain, an infamy—”

“I am a very infamous man,” said Xanthippus, and poured a goblet of wine for himself on the marble table near him. “I am a scoundrel, a base slave, a criminal. I have cast filth on the name of your family. Of a certainty, I have no family, myself! I am only a worthless soldier, a Helot.”

His tone aroused Agariste and infuriated her. She said, “You have no regard for your own name, my husband!”

He looked at her over the brim of his goblet and she saw, in spite of her perturbation, smiling hatred in his eyes and a bitter amusement. She could not help herself. She cried, “Better death than infamy!”

Xanthippus laughed aloud. He set down his goblet with a thump. “To you, my love, perhaps, yes. To me, no. I love the company of intelligent friends. I love my books, my gardens, my groves of olive trees, my ships. I love feasts and music. I love the morning and the night. I love the warm and scented breasts of desirable women, and I rejoice in their thighs. Their conversation, of course, is tedious, but their bodies are delicious, and for what else was a woman created?”

At this insult Agariste’s white face turned dark red with humiliation.

Xanthippus continued. “For these, therefore, I shall fight for my life.”

Agariste was no fool. She said, “You must not think, my husband, that I am insensible to your danger. Alas, you must have been indiscreet in wine. No doubt your hetaira must have betrayed you.”

“Ah, no,” said Xanthippus. “I have always paid my women well, and they are grateful, and when I discarded them I found them more youthful lovers and more virile, and gave them valuable jewels. You may remember the ruby necklace of my mother? I gave that to my hetaira a week ago, in gratitude for her understanding and affection and her concern for me.”

Agariste had always lusted for that necklace. Her lips shook and her eyelashes quivered. “You torment me, Xanthippus,” she said in a faint voice. “I do not believe much of what you have said, but there is a possibility that I have provoked you to such cruelty. Nevertheless, I think of my name—and your name,” she added. “Is there no man of influence whom you could approach in your behalf, so that this shamefulness can pass from you?”

“No, my love,” her husband replied. “I will confront the priests and the Court of Justice myself and laugh them down.”

Agariste was aghast. “Think of your son, I beg of you, if you do not think of me and our names! A man undefended save by his own voice is lost. You should be too proud to appear before—such.”

“Because they are—such,” said Xanthippus, “I will confront them with detestation, even if it costs me my life, though I do not propose to surrender that. However, as you have said, death is preferable to infamy, and it would be infamous of me to bow to any decree of the Ecclesia or the judges, who have the taint of freedmen about them for all their boasts, base fellows!” He smiled at her with no forgiveness. “You speak of our son. Would he be happy to know his father was a craven and had grovelled like a slave before his inferiors? Would you be happy also?”

“No,” said Agariste, and for the first time he saw her in tears. She covered her face with her long white hands and wept. But he had been too deeply offended and he rose and left her.

He went to his concubine in her beautiful small house which he had given her. Lying in her bed he told her of his predicament. She sat beside him, naked and rosy as Aphrodite newly risen from the sea, her tawny hair thrown back so none of her delights were hidden. Her nipples were like tight rosebuds and her mouth was a warm flame. While she listened gravely her agile mind was busy. Gaia knew a man of formidable influence in Athens, who greatly admired Xanthippus, and for an hour in her bed, unknown to Xanthippus, he would do her bidding and listen to her pleas.

“Tomorrow, at noon?” she murmured. “Then, I must hasten and pray in the temple of Pallas Athene who is all wisdom and protects the wise, and surely you are wise, my Xanthippus.”