Glory and the Lightning (8 page)

After this class came dancing and music and instructions on the lyre and flute. Here, too, Aspasia excelled, though she considered dancing of no particular importance. But music enchanted her. She could, even now, manipulate the musical instruments so that they appeared to have an extra dimension and depth, and struck the heart with emotion.

Her lessons in theology were no felicitous occasions. But she held her tongue, knowing the punishments inflicted by the Ecclesia on anyone suspected of heresy or dissent against the prevailing religion. Her face would flash, however, and her eyes become scornful at some pious pedantry. The teacher would reduce the grandeur of the gods to mere mortality, he believing that degrading the inexplicable and the majesty to low human understanding and status and familiarity made them more comprehensible.

He made Olympus, the abode of the gods, a suburb of Athens, or even of Miletus.

Aspasia always felt embattled when she went to her class in politics and history, and her teacher detested her for her arguments and controversies. “Who writes history?” she had asked him once. “Mere mortals, who make their own interpretations, according to their whims and subjective opinions, of what has transpired. History is easily distorted. As for politics, it is an exercise in hysteria.” But the subjects engrossed her as well as angered her. It was said that if Helen of Troy’s nose had been longer or her eyes less luminous Troy would never have been burned, nor would her husband have desired her to the death, nor would Paris have abducted her. On such trivialities did the affairs of men founder! She found both politics and history endlessly amusing, for the light they shone on the vagaries of human nature. “They should be the province of comedians,” she once remarked, “but certainly should not be regarded as objective and immutable truth.” At one time she had even said that history was made by madmen, and wars were the ultimate madness, a remark that did not endear her to her teacher.

“Is not everything made by man and the result of man?” he had asked her, to which Aspasia said, “No. There are imponderables beyond the knowledge and the understanding of man.” The teacher complained she was a mere chit, and a woman, and so therefore of no importance, and her opinions of no consequence. The maidens, who did not love Aspasia for her beauty and superiority to them, would titter. At least Aspasia dispensed with the ennui of teaching with her arguments, and for that they were grateful.

The teacher, Aeneas, was a Greek. Therefore he expounded frequently on the defeat of the Persians at Thermopylae. “I am not superstitious,” he would say, “but I believe in the Fates. Athens, and all of Greece, was preserved by some mysterious intervention. It seemed impossible that Xerxes could be defeated by us, we contentious Greeks, who suspected and even hated each other and were constantly quarreling and envious—men from the sallow mountains, the hot cliffs and passes, the fishing villages, the small towns even smaller than Athens, which is itself small and insignificant. Outnumbered by at least a score or more to one—and the immediate invaders but the first wave of a sea of soldiers and sailors—the Greeks had met the foe on their sacred land and waters and had driven him ignominiously away. This little land, all burning silver dust and mountains, all furious green torrents and crags and small green valleys and brilliant purple seas and miserable villages and stony roads and powdery fields and ardent blue skies, had stubbornly refused to be conquered and held slave to the mighty Xerxes and preferred, in all truth, liberty or death.”

Aspasia admired the poetry of his words, but she had said, “Solon declared that all men should be free. But we have slaves. Is not a slave a man?”

The teacher had glared at her. “We believe a slave to be a thing, not a man. The gods ordained his fate. The gods ordained freedom for men. If a man is not born free, then he is not truly human.”

“There is something wrong with your syllogism,” Aspasia said.

“Enlighten me!” said the teacher with wrath.

“Solon was a great and wise man,” said Aspasia. “He desired to establish a republic, but Athens has declined into a democracy. Therein is a great tragedy in government. But no matter. When Solon declared that all men should be free, and free from inquisitive and interfering government, he did not divide mankind into those born free and those who were born slave. Again, he demanded that slavery be abolished, so he did not consider a slave a mere thing, but a man.”

The teacher had then ignored this chit, had drawn another breath and continued with his history lesson.

“Certainly the Spartans—whom I usually deplore for their austerity—were the most disciplined and were a community of soldiers and lived only for war, but they were nothing to the armies and navies of Xerxes. As for us Athenians,” and he smiled fondly, “we are volatile and pride ourselves on our wit and our energy and our love for beauty, and we practice roguery in the market place, and it is alleged we cannot be trusted by our fellow Greeks. But less can be said of the men of Thebes, whom everyone agrees are uncivilized.

“The towns and the villages were in panic, and sent as few as possible of fighting men to confront the enemy in various places, keeping most of their warriors at home to defend their wives and children and the gritty walls of their habitations, and their scabrous domestic animals. But the armies of Xerxes were as locusts, Arabs, Cabalians and Milyans, Tibareni, Colchians with carved wooden helmets, Medes with their thin dark faces and their reputation as valorous soldiers, Negroes in the skins of animals, Pisidians, Moschians, Saspires, Thracians—and rivers of horses and oxen and glittering war chariots. Ninety thousand archers and spearsmen alone, not to mention swordsmen with leather shields and Persians, themselves, who are famous for ferocity, and mercenary Cissians, Assyrians, Scythians in felt trousers and barbaric Caspians in high-heeled boots and varicolored clothing—all these poured onto the burning plains of Greece and the scintillating dust rolled over them in clouds that caught the igniting sun. They also engaged the Greeks in the incandescent waters.

“At Thermopylae the Persian forces confronted but seven thousand Greeks, poorly armed except with courage even in the face of their own cynicism and fear, and prepared to die to defend the pass. It was said that Xerxes, himself, pitied them and admired them.

“His spies had told him that that wretched and quarrelsome army of Spartans, Thebans and some Athenians was being led by Leonidas of Sparta, a fierce captain and a man of fiercer independence. I may note here, as an Athenian, that the Spartans are as mindless as a hill of ants, as well as great warriors—”

“It would follow,” Aspasia interrupted.

The teacher’s face swelled with angry blood. He raised his voice and went on: “How such a society, alien to us free Greeks, could have bred a man like Leonidas is a mystery, and was a mystery to Xerxes also. He was a surly man, but intelligent, unlike his fellow Spartans who are only cruel and valiant. However. The earth at Thermopylae rumbled like a drum and the thunder of the gods under the feet of Xerxes’ armored men of many nations, including his Company of the Immortals, his personal and finest troops. And the Greeks met them in the narrow pass and held them immobile until they were betrayed by one of their own, who had led the Persians behind the pass. Xerxes killed the heroic Spartans to a man and advanced on Athens and burned her to the ground.”

“A man is always betrayed by his own kindred and by those he loves the most,” said Aspasia.

“Hah!” cried the teacher, moved to fresh anger. “You, who are of such a great and venerable age, how do you know this?”

Aspasia answered with her exasperating demureness, “You have taught us history, Aeneas.”

“Hah,” he said, but in a milder voice. “We will continue. The Spartans and the barefoot Thebans, with a number of Athenians, men of no importance, defeated the irresistible Xerxes at Mycale, and, greatest of all, at Salamis and later at Platea. How was it possible? At the last they had, these brave men, only their naked hands and bleeding feet and teeth and nails, when their thin spears and iron swords and weak little ships had splintered and disintegrated. What great secret heart had moved them to fight thus, and made them larger than the average man, if only for a few hours? What had inspired envious little souls and quarrelsome little minds and had given them divinity and incredible courage?”

“They were fighting for their lives,” said Aspasia. “They had nothing to lose but their lives.”

“You deny heroism, and the ability of men to fight for something greater than themselves?” cried the teacher, goaded beyond endurance.

“I do deny that men will fight for something greater than their own selves,” said Aspasia. “It is against human nature.”

“You do not believe in personal nobility?”

“I have not observed it.”

“You are a cynic, my child, and I pity you.”

“I am a student of mankind. A man fights to protect himself and his own cherished rights, and if he fights for anything else he is either a madman or a god.”

The teacher let a portentous silence fall while he regarded Aspasia with hooded eyes. “You equate madness with the gods?” he asked in an ominously soft voice, he who had often hinted he did not believe in the gods.

Aspasia saw the dangerous trap. “Madness, it is often said, is akin to divinity. You have told us that yourself, Aeneas. ‘The divine madness.’”

“I was referring to poetry, and to the divine madness of a man who will fight for something nobler than himself, and the divine madness of artists. War is an art, also, as we Greeks have always said, though you Ionians are slow to discern it.”

“We once allied ourselves with Sparta,” said Aspasia, “which, I agree, was a madness in itself.”

Today, to the maidens’ fatigue, Aeneas continued his quarrel with Aspasia over the difference between a republic and a democracy. He asserted they were the same, as he had asserted before. But Aspasia said, “Solon desired a free republic. But though the Greeks honor that desire they are only a democracy, and so dangerous. Unfortunately, though Solon conceived the permanent base for a republic he did not frame the establishment of such. So, the rule of Athens fell into the hands of the Tyrants, who introduced democracy. The Athenians are too volatile and too active in insignificant affairs and too full of laughter and change, and too excitable, to extend Solon’s dream of a republic.”

Aeneas said, “As you are so wise, my pupil, define the difference between a democracy, which is Athens, and a republic.”

Aspasia said with patience, “I have done so before, my teacher. But I will do it again. A republic, as Solon has said over a century ago, is government by written and permanent law, instead of government by incalculable and changeable decrees, which is democracy. A republic, he has said, is when the people obey the rulers and the rulers obey the laws. But in a democracy the rulers obey the mass, which is whimsical, violent and greedy. Hence chaos and finally the tyrant.”

The wrangle continued. In Aeneas’ opinion the voice of the people was the voice of the gods, hence democracy. He now fell into the trap. A republic did indeed represent the people, but it believed too firmly in law, and did not take into thought the changing desires of those it governed. To which Aspasia replied, “Is law then—established just law which assures the people of a stable government and the respect of government for law—to become the light plaything, like a ball, in the name of Demos? Is it to be interpreted by whim by the self-serving and the naturally lawless and exigent, and by those who are ruled by their bellies and not by their minds, and have no respect for orderly government?”

“You have but contempt for the people, Aspasia.”

“I only observe, Aeneas.”

Few of the maidens understood the controversy, but all were pleased by Aspasia’s composure and Aeneas’ wild anger. It relieved the monotony of dull lectures.

It was now sunset and the class was dismissed. The western sky was a vivid and burning gold, seething with light, and the sea and the land below it lay in mute purple and shifting shadows. The leaves of the myrtle were plated with gilt, and the cypresses stood pointing in blackness against the sky and the palms were tremulous in the soft evening wind. From the earth there rose a passionate scent of jasmine and roses and cooling stone and water, and the fountains threw up frail arms touched with gold and lilac.

Wandering in the garden before the evening meal Aspasia came on Cleo, who was sitting by a pool trembling with golden reflections. The young girl wore a short tunic the color of silver and her black hair was rolled on her nape. She looked at Aspasia shyly, and rose. Aspasia gazed at the pool in which iridescent fish swam idly, and then at Cleo.

“Tell me,” she said, “what is your heart’s desire, Cleo?”

The girl looked at her with wide eyes. Then she tittered. “I should like to be a hetaira like you, Lady.”

“I have heard that you will be. Will that satisfy you?”

The girl was bewildered. “But it is the most desirable of all things, Lady.”

Aspasia sighed. She, herself, was a fool to expect anything but this reply, for Cleo knew nothing. Why am I always looking for intelligence in mankind, in which it rarely exists? she said to herself.

She was conscious, as she increasingly was, these days, of a restlessness of spirit and a strong rising of something she could not as yet name. There was a loneliness in her, she who had never been lonely before, a longing without a form, an itch, a heat which was both profoundly physical and as profoundly spiritual.

She stood watching the sunset and the wind lifted her hair and when it fell upon her shoulders it was like an embrace, and she sighed. Her yearning grew until it was like a vast hunger in her, but for what she yearned she did not as yet know. She was soon to be enlightened, and disastrously.

CHAPTER 5

The athletic tutor for the maidens suddenly died and Thargelia went to the slave market for a suitable replacement. She came upon a male slave of remarkable beauty, all red pouting lips and smiles and mirthful blue eyes. He also had a mass of auburn curls and muscles beyond description and the body of a young god. He was as sleek as oil and as burnished as bronze and had engaging manners and a felicity of tongue and a gleeful and gladsome countenance.