Glory and the Lightning by Taylor Caldwell
Pericles laughed lightly. “I know he is living in luxury in Cyprus. He is flattered there and fawned upon. He is no wandering vagabond. His house is magnificent, and full of slaves. He entertains lavishly. Many an Athenian maiden of a great house would be permitted to marry him and with alacrity. He does not desire marriage. He has concubines. I have sent emissaries to Cyprus to hint that if he desires he may be recalled to Athens. He has repudiated them. He can commit licence in Cyprus which he could not commit here. What! You did not know this?”
“I do not believe it!” cried Daedalus. “We receive mournful letters from him, stained with his tears, for he longs for his family.”
“You believe I am lying?” asked Pericles in a dangerous voice. Daedalus flinched, and retreated a step before that face.
“Perhaps he is exaggerating,” he said. “But what man does not want to return to his loving family?”
“Callias,” said Pericles.
Daedalus cast down his eyes and he trembled. Then he looked up to see the mingled derision and sympathy in Pericles’ eyes.
Pericles said, “I have told you. He could marry—if he wished.” He paused. “He could return soon—if he wished. He does not wish.”
Daedalus was distracted. He flung out his arms, despairingly. “You have called my daughter, Dejanira, stupid and ugly. She is virtuous and faithful. Are these not gracious attributes?”
Pericles closed his eyes for a moment, wearied. “I grant you that Dejanira has virtues. They do not appeal to me. I am grateful to her for my sons. I respect her name. We had no quarrels. But all that is past. I have given you time, and it is precious to me. I must ask you to leave.”
Daedalus started away, then swung around, his garments flurried. “I will not forget!” he exclaimed, raising his hand in an oath. “I will not forget! I implore the vengeance of the gods—in whom you and that woman do not believe! They will not be mocked.”
He trotted from the atrium and into the outdoor portico, where his litter awaited him. Once behind the curtains he burst into tears, and his mouth moved with imprecations. He was not without power, and Pericles had many enemies. He began to plot. His old face twisted and contorted with hatred.
Aspasia took Pericles by the hand at sunset and led him into the cool tranquility of her gardens. There, near the altar to the Unknown God, stood the huge marble statue of a wasp, which Pheidias had personally designed two years ago. Seeing this, Pericles was again disturbed, remembering what Aspasia had escaped. He held her in his arms and said, “I will defend you, my beloved, against all evils.”
“Do you expect evils?” she asked, looking up into his eyes.
He hesitated. “Man is intrinsically evil—all men. I have heard it said, by the Jews, that man is evil from his birth and wicked from his youth. It was asserted by their fabulous Solomon. I believe it. A man who is not alert to the innate viciousness of his brothers is a fool. Men are iniquitous by nature. They do wrong not because they have been wronged, but because it gives them pleasure and satisfaction. If they do not have enemies they invent them. This is true of nations as well as mankind.”
Aspasia looked at the myrtle trees whose leaves were plated gold in the sunset. “It is a beautiful world,” she murmured. “Why is it that only man is unregenerate?”
“It is his nature,” said Pericles. He paused. “The Jews say that God will be born to this world in a near century.” He laughed a little. “Be sure that men will murder Him, as they murdered Osiris, for virtue is the one crime that men cannot endure.”
Aspasia saddened. “You have no faith in your fellow man, beloved.”
“That is because I know him, only too well. Enough. The plans for the acropolis have all been completed. The marble is ready. I have given orders that only free men must build the temples, for temples raised by slaves are abhorrent to me. God did not intend that men be slaves. Solon deplored slavery. So do I. But it has come to me that multitudes of men crave that they be slaves of government, in order that they may not be forced to think and act with responsibility and order their own lives. It is easier to crouch on your knees and be fed by government than it is to stand on your feet and find your own sustenance. Was it not Anaxagoras who said that nature takes the path of least resistance? So do men. To resist government is arduous and perilous. To obey is to eat in slavish peace, and be forgotten by bureaucrats. That is no mean advantage in itself!”
Aspasia said, as she had said many times before, “Why is it, then, that you remain as Head of State?”
He answered as he had answered before, “I must do my best for my dream of a united Greece. City-states are always in danger, especially from each other. They can also be divided, too, by exterior enemies, who are lustful for treasure. A united nation is strong. I do not admire Sparta, nor Macedonia. But wise men can compromise and come to terms, whatever their differences. Did we not once in our near past cleave together to fight off the Persian? If we can do that in emergency we can do that again as reasonable men. Athenians stood with Leonidas, the Spartan, and we despise Spartans for their rigorous discipline and their iron determination to order the lives of all their people, men and women, male and female children. Who among us has not laughed at Spartan maidens, who compete with their brothers in athletics and work? They wear male tunics. They have muscles, and their skins are brown with the sun, and coarsened. They have grim faces. Laugh though we do, we must remember that we are not empowered by the gods to order the affairs of other nations. That is preening assumption. Let each nation live in peace with the government it desires. That does not negate union against enemies, or commerce.”
There are always wars, thought Aspasia. The Greek city-states were always in dispute with their sister states. It is wearisome to remember all the petty but cruel wars. Let Homer glorify them, and speak of the arts of war. They are only tragedies. However, only women with sons and husbands realize this. She thought of Lysistrata and her women who had refused their beds to their husbands unless they concluded peace. She thought of the barbarian Roman women, who, captured by the Sabines, and who had had children by them, threw their infants before the horses of the Romans and the Sabines and defied them to trample on the childish flesh. What had restrained their men, fevered and exalted by the hope of battle? Was it the power of women, after all? Aspasia pondered. Thargelia had said that the hope of the world was in women’s hands. Aspasia did not entirely believe this, except that men could be seduced in the beds of women, if the women were artful enough. Certainly men were not merciful enough to spare children. Aspasia sighed. She loved Pericles with a passion and a devotion she had not known for Al Taliph. Still, as he was a man, she did not entirely trust him to know the urges of a woman’s heart. Then she smiled.
The father of gods and men, Zeus, was afraid of his wife, Hera, who ruled him as he ruled the world.
“Why do you smile, my golden one?” asked Pericles.
“I am thinking of our son,” she replied.
He was astonished, and seized her arm. “Our son?” he exclaimed.
She bent her head.
“I have waited to tell you, lord. I am with child. I am certain it will be a son—your son and mine.”
When he did not speak but only gazed at her with enlarged pale eyes, she said, “We will call him Pericles, after his illustrious father.”
He frowned, released her arm, and removed himself a pace. “He will not be legitimate.”
Aspasia touched his arm. “You can adopt him, sire. Then he will be truly yours.” She felt some anxiety. Was he not pleased? Was he angered that she had been careless during one heated night?
Then he turned to her, his face lighted, and he took her in his arms. “I am thinking of your danger, my sweetest. After all, you are in your thirties now. Have you consulted Helena?”
“Yes.” Aspasia was moved. She had misjudged him, as the sexes always misjudged each other. Had Pandora released this confusion as well as other confusions and distractions? “Despite my age, she ha
“I must see this Hippocrates,” said Pericles, but he was frowning again, alarmed for Aspasia.
“Do not disturb yourself, lord. It will be well. But, tell me. Are you pleased that I am to bear your son?”
“It may be a daughter,” and Pericles laughed. “If she resembles her mother I will adore her.”
“And—if it is a son?”
“I will discipline him. He will be a worthy son of Athens.”
What did a man mean when he said “worthy”? Worth, too, was subjective.
“A woman in her thirties, old enough to be a grandmother, should not have young children. Do not sigh, my Pericles. Our son will be like a god.”
They held each other, breast against breast. But, we are not truly one, thought Aspasia. A woman’s thoughts are far from the thoughts of men. Who had ordained this in mischief, or perhaps with wisdom?
They looked at the top of the acropolis. The great Doric pillars of the Parthenon were flushed with the rose of the dying sun. They stood like pylons, unroofed as yet, against the scarlet sky. On the lower reaches of the acropolis were smaller groups of columns. Walls were rising like ramparts. White wide steps led nowhere but upwards, awaiting a completed building. The sides of the acropolis were heavily buttressed and terraced, and cypresses were already planted and earth placed for gardens and fountains. Long thin pipes of lead, for water, writhed over bare spots on the hill like tormented serpents, still uncovered. On the other hills olive trees were bright with silver in the clear and translucent light. The theatre below was filled with purple shadows, the circling seats empty, the stage—once an altar—soundless and untenanted. Nightingales began to sing, and a flock of gulls, from the sea, caught the last radiance in gold on their wings. The myrtles and sycamores and cypresses of Aspasia’s gardens had become dark and were starting to whisper in a new breeze. The temple to the Unknown God shimmered dimly in its shadows. A curved crescent of the new moon was like a fingernail of pearl glimmering slowly up the sky in the east.
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 o
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.