The Golden Mean Part 27

"I never please you. Not when I'm polished and not when I'm dull. Yes, I worked on that line. Is that so terrible? We're not so different after all, you and me. We both work for what we want. Nothing comes easy. Does your work come easily to you?"

"No."

"Look at me." He stands up. "I'm short. I fumble when I talk. I blush. I'm afraid of the dark. I black out in the middle of battle and can't remember anything afterwards. They look at me, they say, Great warrior, well-spoken, charming, worthy student of the greatest mind in the world. I'm holding on by my fingertips and so are you."

I nod.

"Maybe you've made me into yourself after all. A fine, fierce surface on the mess underneath. Like you polished up my brother, teaching him to speak, teaching him to ride. That's you, isn't it? That's you, and me, and him?"

I say nothing.

"I'll tell you what I accept, in your theory of happiness," he says. "I accept that the greatest happiness comes to those capable of the highest things. That's where we leave my brother behind. That's where you and I walk away from the rest of the world. You and I can appreciate the glory of things. We walk to the very edge as everyone else knows and understands and experiences it, and then we walk the next step. We go places no one has ever been. That's who we are. That's who you've taught me to be."

"Did I teach you that?"

"I've made you sad."

"Yes." I touch my forehead. "Yes, you have."

"We're so alike. I'm your child."

The boy who knew where to find the head, the heart, the breath, the brain. The boy who smelled so nice. The boy running in from the rain. "Majesty."

He says, "Stay with me. Don't make me go the next step alone."

WE LEAVE ON A SUNNY DAY, when the sunlight sparkles on the marsh and makes the ocean blinding.

Alexander has loaded me down with goods and gear and servants and money until I begged him to stop. Herpyllis rides with the children on a cart lined with furs; she is cheerful and placid, nursing the baby, chatting with Little Pythias, almost four, who's excited and fretful and already looking strained around the eyes, a sign of the headaches that afflict her. I gesture to Herpyllis to remind her about her hat. I know I am seeing in Little Pythias the anxiety her mother would be feeling about such a trip. Herpyllis, in contrast, could be going to the seaside, or back to Mytilene; it's all the same to her. The slaves, Tycho and Simon and the rest, have a cart to themselves. Philes is mounted beside me, my plan for him realized at last. He can't speak. He's terrified.

"Uncle." Callisthenes holds out his hand.

He'll serve Alexander on his expeditions as official historian. Travel, then; with luck, love is still to come. We embrace and bid each other farewell.

I'm about to mount when he says, "There's someone else here who wants to say goodbye."

A tall young man with a familiar loping gait steps out from behind a cart, where he's been hiding with the little groom who is now his companion. Both their grins are enormous.

"Now who is this?" I say, knowing.

"I don't want you to go," Arrhidaeus says.

The young man clings to me, even weeps briefly, while I pat his shoulders and his hair. "I'm very proud of you, Arrhidaeus."

This, then, is what I see as I ride out: my nephew, his heart a Macedonian heart now; and the fool beside him no longer quite a fool, one hand raised in farewell, until they've dwindled, in my sight, almost to specks.

As soon as there's no one to see, I dismount and get onto a cart so I can write. No more doctoring, politicking, teaching children; no more dabbling. Soon I'll be alone in a quiet room where, for the rest of my life, I can float farther and farther out into the world; while my student, charging off the end of every map, falls deeper and deeper into the well of himself. Never be afraid to enter an argument you can't immediately see your way out of Never be afraid to enter an argument you can't immediately see your way out of. Can anyone tell me what a tragedy is?

AFTERWORD.

CLEOPATRA AND HER BABY DAUGHTER were murdered shortly after Philip's death, supposedly by Olympias. Leonidas once rebuked the boy Alexander for wasting incense on the altar, saying he should not be extravagant until he had conquered the countries that produced such spices. Years later, from Gaza, according to Plutarch, Alexander sent Leonidas "five hundred talents' weight of frankincense and an hundred of myrrh." Alexander conquered Persia and Egypt, and led his army as far as India and Afghanistan. At the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, he is supposed to have asked whether any of Philip's murderers had gone unpunished, and whether Philip was really his father. He strove to synthesize Eastern and Western cultures, adopting Persian dress and manners. His behaviour during his long campaigns became increasingly erratic: he drank heavily, suffered fits of violent rage followed by crippling depression and guilt, and refused to go home. He took two wives, and died in Babylon of a stomach ailment at the age of thirty-two. Ptolemy became one of Alexander's greatest generals and later ruled Egypt, where he established the Ptolemaic line of rulers that ended, in Roman times, with the death of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter from the bite of an asp. Hephaestion remained Alexander's constant companion and died in battle scant weeks before Alexander himself. Callisthenes accompanied Alexander on his campaigns as a historian, but lost favour after criticizing Alexander for accepting obeisance from his soldiers in the Eastern fas.h.i.+on. The ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius says Callisthenes was "confined in an iron cage and carried about until he became infested with vermin through lack of proper attention; and finally he was thrown to a lion and so met his end." Arrhidaeus became regent of Macedonia during Alexander's long absence in Asia, and king after his death. He was a.s.sisted by the aging general Antipater. Olympias quarrelled frequently with Antipater and eventually had Arrhidaeus murdered so she herself could serve as regent. were murdered shortly after Philip's death, supposedly by Olympias. Leonidas once rebuked the boy Alexander for wasting incense on the altar, saying he should not be extravagant until he had conquered the countries that produced such spices. Years later, from Gaza, according to Plutarch, Alexander sent Leonidas "five hundred talents' weight of frankincense and an hundred of myrrh." Alexander conquered Persia and Egypt, and led his army as far as India and Afghanistan. At the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, he is supposed to have asked whether any of Philip's murderers had gone unpunished, and whether Philip was really his father. He strove to synthesize Eastern and Western cultures, adopting Persian dress and manners. His behaviour during his long campaigns became increasingly erratic: he drank heavily, suffered fits of violent rage followed by crippling depression and guilt, and refused to go home. He took two wives, and died in Babylon of a stomach ailment at the age of thirty-two. Ptolemy became one of Alexander's greatest generals and later ruled Egypt, where he established the Ptolemaic line of rulers that ended, in Roman times, with the death of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter from the bite of an asp. Hephaestion remained Alexander's constant companion and died in battle scant weeks before Alexander himself. Callisthenes accompanied Alexander on his campaigns as a historian, but lost favour after criticizing Alexander for accepting obeisance from his soldiers in the Eastern fas.h.i.+on. The ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius says Callisthenes was "confined in an iron cage and carried about until he became infested with vermin through lack of proper attention; and finally he was thrown to a lion and so met his end." Arrhidaeus became regent of Macedonia during Alexander's long absence in Asia, and king after his death. He was a.s.sisted by the aging general Antipater. Olympias quarrelled frequently with Antipater and eventually had Arrhidaeus murdered so she herself could serve as regent.

Aristotle returned to Athens to direct his own school, the Lyceum, until a rise in anti-Macedonian sentiment following Alexander's death forced him to leave that city a second time. He spent his final year at the Macedonian garrison at Chalcis in Euboea, where he died at the age of sixty-one.

Aristotle's will survives: All will be well; but, in case anything should happen, Aristotle has made these dispositions. Antipater is to be executor in all matters and in general; but, until Nicanor shall arrive, Aristomenes, Timarchus, Hipparchus, Dioteles and (if he consent and if circ.u.mstances permit him) Theophrastus shall take charge as well of Herpyllis and the children as of the property. And when the girl [his daughter Pythias] shall be grown up she shall be given in marriage to Nicanor; but if anything happen to the girl (which heaven forbid and no such thing will happen) before her marriage, or when she is married but before there are children, Nicanor shall have full powers, both with regard to the child and with regard to everything else, to administer in a manner worthy both of himself and of us. Nicanor shall take charge of the girl and of the boy Nicomachus as he shall think fit in all that concerns them as if he were father and brother. And if anything should happen to Nicanor (which heaven forbid!) either before he marries the girl, or when he has married her but before there are children, any arrangements that he may make shall be valid. And if Theophrastus is willing to live with her, he shall have the same rights as Nicanor. Otherwise the executors in consultation with Antipater shall administer as regards the daughter and the boy as seems to them to be best. The executors and Nicanor, in memory of me and of the steady affection which Herpyllis has borne towards me, shall take care of her in every other respect and, if she desires to be married, shall see that she be given to one not unworthy; and besides what she has already received they shall give her a talent of silver out of the estate and three handmaids whomsoever she shall choose besides the maid she has at present and the man-servant Pyrrhaeus; and if she chooses to remain at Chalcis, the lodge by the garden, if in Stageira, my father's house. Whichever of these two houses she chooses, the executors shall furnish with such furniture as they think proper and as Herpyllis herself may approve. Nicanor shall take charge of the boy Myrmex, that he be taken to his own friends in a manner worthy of me with the property of his which we received. Ambracis shall be given her freedom, and on my daughter's marriage shall receive 500 drachmas and the maid whom she now has. And to Thale shall be given, in addition to the maid whom she has and who was bought, a thousand drachmas and a maid. And Simon, in addition to the money before paid to him towards another servant, shall either have a servant purchased for him or receive a further sum of money. And Tycho, Philo, Olympias, and his child shall have their freedom when my daughter is married. None of the servants who waited upon me shall be sold but they shall continue to be employed; and when they arrive at the proper age they shall have their freedom if they deserve it. My executors shall see to it when the images which Gryllion has been commissioned to execute are finished, that they be set up, namely that of Nicanor, that of Proxenus, which it was my intention to have executed, and that of Nicanor's mother; also they shall set up the bust which has been executed of Arimnestus, to be a memorial of him seeing that he died childless, and shall dedicate my mother's statue to Demeter at Nemea or wherever they think best. And wherever they bury me, there the bones of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her own instructions. And to commemorate Nicanor's safe return, as I vowed on his behalf, they shall set up in Stageira stone statues of life size to Zeus and Athena the Saviours.

Acknowledgements

MANY THANKS TO Denise Bukowski and Anne Collins. I gratefully acknowledge the financial a.s.sistance of the Canada Council for the Arts. Denise Bukowski and Anne Collins. I gratefully acknowledge the financial a.s.sistance of the Canada Council for the Arts.

The following books were particularly helpful: for Macedonian history, Plutarch's Life of Alexander Life of Alexander, N.G.L. Hammond and G. T. Griffith's A History of Macedonia Volume II: 550336 BC A History of Macedonia Volume II: 550336 BC and and The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume IV: The Fourth Century BC; The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume IV: The Fourth Century BC; for ancient medicine, for ancient medicine, Hippocratic Writings Hippocratic Writings, G.E.R. Lloyd, editor, translated by J. Chadwick and W. N. Mann; for Aristotle's life and thought, Werner Jaeger's Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development Aristotle: Fundamentals of the History of His Development, translated by Richard Robinson; Jonathan Barnes's Aristotle: A Brief Introduction; Aristotle: A Brief Introduction; W. T. Jones's W. T. Jones's A History of Western Philosophy: The Cla.s.sical Mind; A History of Western Philosophy: The Cla.s.sical Mind; and Martha Nussbaum's and Martha Nussbaum's The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy. For translations of Aristotle's work, I have relied primarily on the Loeb Cla.s.sical Library series and Penguin Cla.s.sics. The translation of Aristotle's will, above, is R. D. Hick's (Loeb Cla.s.sical Library).

For a fictional account of Aristotle's time in Macedon from Alexander's perspective, see Mary Renault's excellent 1969 novel Fire from Heaven Fire from Heaven.

The translations I have quoted directly are Meno Meno by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett; by Plato, translated by Benjamin Jowett; Bacchae Bacchae by Euripides, translated by Kenneth Cavander; and by Euripides, translated by Kenneth Cavander; and Oedipus Rex Oedipus Rex by Sophocles, translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. The epigraph is from by Sophocles, translated by Dudley Fitts and Robert Fitzgerald. The epigraph is from Plutarch's Lives: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume Plutarch's Lives: Complete and Unabridged in One Volume, Dryden translation, revised by Arthur Hugh Clough. Carolus, Philes, Illaeus, Athea, the medics, the horses, and the groom are fictional creations. Scholars will note that I have omitted the philosopher Theophrastus, a follower of Aristotle, who is thought to have accompanied him to Macedonia. Scholars will note, too, that I have delayed Speusippus's death for the sake of narrative convenience. Scholars will turn purple over my sending Aristotle to Chaeronea. There is no evidence, in his or any other writings, of his presence there.

Every effort has been made to contact copyright holders; in the event of an inadvertent omission or error, please contact the publisher.

A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR.

ANNABEL L LYON'S short-story collection, short-story collection, Oxygen Oxygen, and book of novellas, The Best Thing for You The Best Thing for You, were published in Canada to wide acclaim. Her juvenile novel, All-Season Edie All-Season Edie, has been translated into three languages. Her first novel, The Golden Mean The Golden Mean, is a Canadian best seller and is being published in six languages. It won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and was nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Governor General's Award for Fiction, and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize. Lyon's short fiction has appeared in Toronto Life Toronto Life, the Journey Prize anthology, and the Harvard Review Harvard Review. She lives in British Columbia with her husband and two children.