Glory and the Lightning (64 page)

There was a deep peace in the garden. Pericles stood and looked up at the acropolis, his hands on his hips, his strong legs apart, his helmeted head raised. There were shadows of silver in his hair now, but his face was still gravely beautiful and dignified though his eyes dreamed.

Aspasia knew that he had momentarily forgotten her. He was seeing his visions wrought of stone on the tall hill, and a faintly exultant smile lay on his lips. He was not thinking of wars or affairs of state. What he saw was more splendid than any victory, more exalted than treasures. It was as if he gazed on the works of gods. Still, thought Aspasia, men have created this and soon, one day, the acropolis would shine in white and gilt, peopled with temples, crowded with pillared colonnades like a marble forest, alive with statues, and winged figures on columns soaring skyward. The innate glory of mankind was emerging and lifting from its murky and villainous flesh, like a bird rising from the stinking morass of a swamp in which evil things flourished. Man was a demon; he was also like the gods, as glorious as he was vile.

As if he had heard her thoughts Pericles said, “Athens is joyous now that a dream is becoming a reality, and is proud of what is being created there. But she forgets that there are few Socrateses, very few men like Pheidias and Zeno and Anaxagoras, and not many like Sophocles. However, in these men the common man believes he sees himself and that he has a share in their glory. He says, ‘We are great,’ and not ‘He is great.’ He takes upon himself, to cover his drab flesh, the raiment of the immortals, and struts and cries, ‘How glorious are we?’ He does not understand that Socrates and Protagoras and Pheidias and Zeno and Anaxagoras and Herodotus and Sophocles, to name but a shining few, are like stars that briefly and rarely flash through the black skies of the world, and are not of this world at all.”

“Still,” said Aspasia, “the few are an inspiration to the rest of mankind, and a hope that man can become perfect and heroic. Without a dream we are only animals, so, lord, let us dream,” and she smiled.

Pericles returned her smile indulgently. His white tunic paled as the night advanced and the crescent moon lifted more brilliantly, like the bow of Artemis reflecting the fallen sun. The temples of the acropolis became ghostly and unsubstantial.

Aspasia leaned against the breast of Pericles and he put his warm arms about her and kissed the top of her head. But her thoughts were troubled. Pericles was now being called the man on horseback, the dictator, and the comic poets were becoming more ribald and bold in their attacks on him on the stage. She cared nothing for calumny directed against her, but she deeply feared for Pericles. As she had fled for her own sake from Al Taliph so she often considered fleeing from Pericles for his sake.

She was hated, derided, accused of unspeakable things, and she knew this was because of Pericles’ association with her, and his passion for her.

“Why do you sigh, my love?” asked Pericles, lifting aside a lock of her hair and peering down, in the growing darkness, to see her face.

“Did I sigh?” she said. “It is the nature of women to sigh, for do we not love men even though you do not deserve it?” They laughed together, for Aspasia had never forgotten that Thargelia had said that a melancholy woman was disliked by men and left to her miserable sorrows, and that a woman must always pretend that her sighs were pleasure or teasing or trivial and meant nothing. Even though she knew that Pericles loved her and would defend her with his life and often comforted her, Aspasia also knew that she must not be melancholy too long. Men might be moved by a woman’s tears, but not if they were chronic, and Pericles was a man after all.

They went into the house together, hand in hand, to dine and then to go to Aspasia’s chamber to love and sleep under the moon. When Pericles slept beside her, surfeited, Aspasia pondered again on the fate of women, and felt, again, the old rebelliousness. Her new fears returned and she stared, sleepless, into the dark. Whether a woman’s destiny was due to custom or innate nature was impossible to know.

CHAPTER 5

“The true purpose of education,” Aspasia would explain patiently to inquirers, “is not to enable a man or a woman to make money or attain high position and self-aggrandisement. It is to enlarge the soul, to widen the mind, to stimulate wonder, to give a new vision and understanding of the world, to excite the intellect, to awaken dormant faculties for the exultation of the possessor. In short, to reveal new vistas of thought and comprehension so that enjoyment of life is enhanced. An ignorant man or woman is half-blind, and does not truly hear, and so existence is narrow and limited.”

She would add, “Alas, it is true that the gods endow few men with extraordinary minds and talents and genius, for they are frugal with their gifts, and the gifts cannot be bestowed on offspring. It is a great mystery. The majority of men are born with constricted understanding and circumscribed intellect. So intensive education would not only be useless in their case but would only confuse and frustrate them, and incite them to anger and resentment. In education, as in everything, we must be merciful and acknowledge that men are not born equally endowed with intelligence and health and character. However, all men are born with their own potential and a certain power to become better than they are, within their own limits of aptitudes, and so education, like cloth, should be measured to fit the individual. I do this in my own school, though I will not accept a student of definitely meagre mind and small capacity to learn. She is better with her mother who can train her simply.”

She would conclude, “But let us not despise that vast majority which is not gifted and has closed borders of intellect. They, too, have their own hierarchy in nature and it is not a mean one. It is more valuable than we know, and the humble and industrious should be respected and honored. Without them the intellectuals could not exist; they would starve or die for lack of shelter or raiment. They would stifle for insufficiency of time to develop themselves.” She would smile. “The humble worker can well and comfortably live without our art and science and philosophies and books. But we cannot exist without them!”

A number of her students became the pupils of Helena and were trained in her infirmia under the tutelage of the new school of Hippocrates. They became physicians but the majority of them had to leave for Egypt on graduation, where they became priestesses, for only priests and priestesses could practice medicine there. However a few remained with Helena, to teach others, both men and women. The balance became instructors in mathematics and science and literature in other schools now rapidly opening under the influence of Aspasia, who, in this matter at least, was influential with Pericles.

Hence her infamous name with the outraged women of Athens, who claimed that the emancipated hetairai were corrupting their daughters, whether or not those daughters were educated or kept illiterate as custom decreed. Custom, to them, was almost as sacred as religion, and in this delusion they were encouraged by the priests, who, above all things, detested ferment. They desired only a stable society which did not question anything at all. They desired serenity alone. Understanding this, Aspasia would say with scorn, “It is the serenity and order of the tomb.”

The enemies of Pericles were divided. Many insisted that they were secretly ruled, not by Pericles, but by a disgraceful woman. Others declared that Aspasia was only the weapon of Pericles against the people.

Pericles believed that through the Delian League of city-states he could bring about a united Greece, invincible against enemies. He sent out many cleruchs to the city-states, and he candidly admitted that he also had for his purpose the consolidating of strategic points for Athens and securing land for the industrious workers of the cities. The latter was done by the remitting of tribute and taxes. The more numerous of the cleruchs went to Naxos, Imbros, Brea in Thrace, Lemnos, Andros, Oreus and Eretria.

Had the enemies of Pericles thought of these things themselves they would have demanded public gratitude and honors as patriots and thoughtful statesmen. But in the affair of Pericles these enemies had sudden attacks of what they declared was world-conscience and a proper regard for the autonomy of other states. No matter that Athens was herself strengthened and that benefits to the members of the League were tremendous. Pericles, they shouted, not only desired to rule Athens in an absolute despotism and dictatorship but wished to extend his lusted empire. He was the worst tyrant ever to afflict Athens. In his ambitions he would destroy his country; he was mad at the very least. His concern for free workers and the rising new middle class was only hypocrisy. He sought votes and public approval, and wished to delude and confuse. He not only was bankrupting the treasury in his absurd and exorbitant plans for the acropolis, but had as his real intention the glorification of himself. He would elevate himself as a god, they shouted, for the blasphemous worship of the people. In these denunciations they were joined by the priests who feared, above all things, the enlightenment of the populace, for that would threaten their own positions. They feared expansion of benign power. Pericles’ own military establishment and naval officers came under the attack of his enemies. Peace would not ensue from alliances and mutual assistance to other city-states, no matter what Pericles said. He wished military and naval force to advance his secret ambitions and make subjects of his allies under his imperial command. His egotism must enrage the gods, who were too patient respecting him. They quoted the ancient proverb to the effect that they whom the gods would destroy they first made mad.

But for all these exhortations—and they were shouted in the Assembly and among the Archons and the Ecclesia and the Nine—the Athenians, in the great majority, were infuriatingly complacent with regard to Pericles. They trusted him. When calls were made for his impeachment and the revocation of his office the people remained calm and could not be incited. “Clods!” said the Archons to each other in rage and hatred, though the King Archon made some satirical epigrams concerning the public avowals of their love for their people and their private remarks. He was particularly ironic among the Archons, for Pericles had decreed that the poorer citizens must benefit through the establishment of the theorikon fund, which enabled them to attend the dramas presented by the Dionysia. “Shall culture and beauty be the total province only of those who can afford these things?” he had demanded. “God has surely intended that all men should be aware of the glory of art, and feast at its altars, according to their capacity to enjoy the feast.”

His aristocratic enemies declared that he was blaspheming the whole meaning of the Dionysia by encouraging the masses to invade, “like wild asses,” the purlieus of sanctity. Others insisted that he was at heart an anarchist and desired to create false and voracious appetites in the mob so that they would be incited to seize what was not lawfully theirs, and, in gratitude, raise him to the throne of a king. Had not Sophocles—no favorite of theirs under normal circumstances—asserted, “There lives no greater fiend than Anarchy. She ruins states, turns houses out of doors.” He had even demanded a remuneration of two obols a day for all jurymen, a cynical procedure for the sake of votes, it was sworn, for was it not a privilege to serve on juries and should jurymen be paid? The honor was enough. “Men cannot eat honor,” Pericles had replied. “When you demand the services of jurymen you have removed them from the fields and the shops, where they make their living, and so have deprived them of a certain sustenance.” So he was called a gross materialist.

The Athenians naturally detested Sparta, who was either their ally or their enemy, depending on politics or self-interest. Sparta’s way of life was hilarious to them, for were the Spartans not only dim of wit but demanded of women the toil they demanded of men, and did they not despise culture though they had pretensions to it? They were hardly more than animals, with their militarism and their interest only in the mechanics of living. Yet when Pericles fought against the militancy and encroachment of “barbarians,” the government had another of its periodic attacks of conscience and affirmed that Pericles was only ambitious and that he wished to direct attention of the people away from domestic problems in engagements and wars abroad. He was not truly protecting Athens and her legitimate interests. He was protecting his own power and the enlargement of it by ruthless naval and military involvements in areas not pertinent to the welfare of Athens. He was implacably murdering the “flower of the youth of Athens.”

In short, no matter what he did he was denounced for it by his enemies. “You cannot appease a tiger when it is determined to devour you,” he said to Aspasia. “All governments are tigers; the people are their prey. If populaces once learned that terrible fact they would sleeplessly watch their governments, their natural adversaries.”

His face daily became tighter and leaner with his anger. Despite his self-control he frequently found himself exasperated, not by the denunciations of his government, but because of their malice and stupidity and determination to ruin him, and above all by their hypocrisy. Once Aspasia said to him, “Al Taliph was the governor of his province, and never did his officials dare to dispute with him or denigrate him or defy him, or defame his name among the people. That had its advantages.”

Pericles laughed grimly at this. “But, his was a despotism under a higher despot. We Athenians have a democracy—of sorts. Better this confusion of malevolent and envious voices than despotism. It is a sign of considerable freedom of speech, and that, above all, is the very soul of liberty. God knows our liberties are daily becoming more restricted. But even the few remaining are rubies above price. Therefore, let my enemies shout. Should they halt their imprecations I should be seriously disturbed and would seek to know in what manner I have suppressed their freedom to criticise, curse and censure. I would then reverse it.”

“But they will not permit you the liberty you grant to them,” said Aspasia.