Glory and the Lightning (62 page)

The old King Archon said aloud, “Ah, Virtue! What virtues have been done to death in your name!”

Privately, the King Archon thought that it would have been wiser of Pericles merely to have had Callias murdered and buried far out at sea or in some isolated spot. Then there would have been no public scandal—something no politician can afford. But, he had chosen the honorable way. The King Archon sighed. Sometimes honor could well be confused with folly, and was often less excusable. It was also very dangerous.

Pheidias sat in the cool atrium of Pericles’ house, where the center fountain made a plangent sound against the night silence, which was broken only occasionally by the rippling and poignant music of nightingales. Even the trees were still and the moonlight seemed to come from an unmoving orb of alabaster. The dried brown grass of summer exhaled an odor of aromatic dust, pervasive as smoke. The hour was late; even the vociferous Athenians were now in bed and, to Pericles, blessedly quiet.

The two men sat at a table over which hung a lamp, and they were leaning forward to study the scrolls Pheidias had spread before them. The shy sculptor’s gentle face glowed with eagerness. Pericles had removed his helmet, and his towering skull and mane of light tawny hair were damp with the sweat of excitement. Yet he did not betray that excitement, not even to Pheidias, for years of conscious control had become an involuntary habit. Occasionally he refilled the sculptor’s goblet with excellent wine, while he, himself, drank chilled beer. He did not wear his toga of dignity, but a short tunic of brown linen, and his feet were bare. He had long forgotten he was weary. In less than two hours the city would be roaring again as the dawn flared over the eastern hills. The house slept; there was not even a slave on duty, and only the soldiers moved about the house and its grounds, their helmets and swords and belts glittering in the stagnant moonlight.

“It is fortunate, Pericles,” said Pheidias, “that the vast superstructure for the Parthenon was completed long ago, though for another temple.

Our repairs and the completing of the buttresses required but little effort. Now, these are my architects’ plans for the Parthenon—Ictinus and Callicrates.” He smiled softly. “At the moment they are not speaking to each other. Such are artists! Ictinus insists that the temple to Athene be considerably shorter in length and considerably wider than Callicrates as determinedly insists. There is much argument about proportion, vistas, aspects, the casting of shadows. I have told them, in an effort at pacification, that the temple must not be built solely to exalt the spirit of man but to please the eyes of the gods from their loftier abode, as they look down on the world. For a while, at least, they were so active in scorning my opinions and deriding my mysticism, as they called it, that they became brothers in arms against a perfidious foe—me.”

Pericles marvelled, as always, at the genuine humility of genius. It was not that a gifted man considered his creative power of no consequence, but he himself as the unworthy priest at the altar of that sacred gift. He served his genius with a profound objectivity while he brought to it all his attributes of subjectivity. It was only the mediocre man, of small talent, who was pompous and overweening, and demanded that he be honored as adorning what meagre endowment he possessed. Yet, how often, reflected Pericles, did the world of men not give honor to the possessor of mighty genius—because that possessor had a holy humility which convinced others that he was intrinsically worthless, and his genius an incredible accident of nature. But the arrogant and conceited man of little aptitude, who noisily called attention to himself with eccentricities and pride, was usually honored. He had such a tremendous appreciation of himself I So on this night Pericles became for a time engrossed more with Pheidias’ shining face, his joyous descriptions, his passionate ardor, than with his plans, and Pericles’ cold and judicious heart was deeply moved as rarely it was moved.

Pheidias sighed with exhausted delight. “It will be perfect, a most glorious example of the Doric order.” He hesitated. “I remember, lord, that you said you preferred Corinthian columns.”

“I do not—now,” said Pericles. “It could be nothing but Doric.” Then he, too, hesitated. “The cella—There is the base in these plans for the gigantic statue of Athene Parthenos. You still believe that the statue should be of ivory and gold?”

Some of the light went from the face of Pheidias. “I am not successful, at least to myself, when I work in marble. It has a rigidity which demands a certain ruthlessness and power. A man must have rule over his materials; he must command them. Marble intimidates me. It has a monumental challenge which only the strongest can answer with a greater challenge. But the gentler materials, the more fluid and compliant, the kinder, are to my hands living, and our souls are in sympathy. However, lord, I have students who are greatly gifted, and will work in marble under my direction, including the statue of Athene Parthenos.”

He could not understand Pericles’ slight smile. “No,” said Pericles, “it will be as you desire, a gold and ivory statue.”

Pheidias was joyous again. Then he was suddenly dejected. “It will cost far more than a marble statue, for it will be a towering work, and gold is very precious. The treasury may refuse it.”

“They will not refuse me,” said Pericles, with some of that haughty and overbearing manner which his enemies detested.

They went on to discuss each metope in detail, and the chariot of the goddess and the painted friezes. Sometimes Pericles winced, thinking of the cost, and the miserable little men of the treasury who would bay like wolves to the moon of the public’s avarice. But as the light of the false dawn made the east dim as a pearl he was overpowered by the massive dream of Pheidias. He could see the terraces and fountains and gardens which would adorn the grounds of the rising acropolis to the huge temple of Athene Parthenos, and the lesser temples scattered about and below it. It would resemble a fortressed mountainous city of marble and color and flowers and dark cypresses, soaring and gleaming and blazing, not only over Athens but over all the world. The climbing white stairways, broad and polished, would know the feat of great men who would come to see and remain to adore, and to walk dazed among all those golden sun-struck colonnades and stand refreshed at the profusion of fountains, and look down upon the silver city on the violet sea. They, and all others after them, the multitudes who would come here through the centuries, would know the glory that was Greece. The vision overcame Pericles, for it was as though he had heard a solemn prophecy.

“It will be almost worthy of God,” he said. “He will know it is the most glorious offering that a race can humbly present to Him, in His honor. He will not despise it.”

“He who loves the blood-red little poppy of the springtime despises nothing,” said Pheidias, and he was touched by the cool passion of the skeptical Pericles. “True, is it not, that the poppy holds all mysteries and has a grandeur beyond marble or gold or ivory or gems or statues? For it contains the Life of God, whereas stone contains only the dreams of men. The poppy renews itself forever, even in the barren places; what we create is, from the moment of its conception, doomed to decay. The splendor, which the poppy possesses, is yet unassuming and eternal, but all that we have wrought with our hands is mortal and drifts into desert silence.”

He looked into space and his eyes enlarged radiantly. “When the Parthenon is only the white dust of marble and its colonnades lie shattered under the indifferent moon, the poppy will resurrect itself on the dead fields of spring and proclaim the Glory of God, making the heart of man glad with its intimations of immortality, its holy and invincible power to endure.”

He waited for Pericles to comment, but when he did not Pheidias continued gently, “But, who can compete with God? Even our noblest dreams are sent by Him. The man who sees the poppy of the field and is not stunned with reverence and awe is a man whose spirit is dead. He may honor us who raise stone and statues and temples, but he honors, therefore, only the passing and the dying.”

He saw the stern shadow of melancholy on Pericles’ face and touched his hand in comfort. “For a little while men will know that Pericles has made visible our small dreams, and never shall he be forgotten.”

“It is Pheidias who shall never be forgotten,” said Pericles. “For never shall there be another like him.”

Pheidias shook his head. “Men can excel only in imitation. God alone creates anew.” He tried to lift the melancholy of his friend. “Rejoice—for God never repeats Himself in man, either. We are all unique. Therefore, we are valuable to Him. We are as loved by Him as He loves the poppy, and so are immortal and as dearly designed.”

CHAPTER 4

The youths, Xanthippus and Paralus, sons of Pericles, were infatuated with Aspasia, and loved her. Pericles was pleased by this, for never, therefore, would his sons marry inferior or stupid women but would demand of a woman not only a pleasing form and countenance but a superior mind also. In truth, the latter was the more desirable, for any young girl, unless deformed or gross of appetite, could present a comely face to the world and an enticing figure, if just for a few brief years. Pericles wished his loved sons to be as happy as it was possible for mortals to be—which was very little. Beauty passed as rapidly as did spring. In the summer or autumn or winter of life the woman of intellect was infinitely protean and variable and fascinating, no matter her age. She retained an eternal youth of the spirit, and humor, and was never petty or hysterical. Pericles had seen women of seventy and even eighty, former hetairai, who entranced men of all ages with their wit and conversation and knowledge and wisdom. They were like gold which had been used and worn through the years, thus gaining a patina of brilliance.

It had been Pericles’ observation that those men who roamed with increasing hunger and dissatisfaction among many women, particularly the very young, had invariably married materialistic women of little intelligence and who were mundane and greedy and petulant. But a man never tired of a superior woman, even if he frequently quarreled with her—as he rarely did with a stupid wife. Flint needed steel to throw off sparks and fire. But it was never ignited by contact with mutton. He, himself, often quarreled with Aspasia and said she was a contentious woman and declared that he found no peace with her. But when parted from her he thought of her helplessly, and though sometimes she was at fault, and not he, he would return with a gift and a bounding of joy. He found in her arms, not only extreme passion, but a renewal of spirit and ambition. He knew that with Aspasia he would never grow old and senile and apathetic, for all he complained that she brought him little tranquility, which, he would angrily declare, was treasured by men.

“Go to the cemeteries, then,” she would say with some asperity. “So long as I live, my beloved, I will not be a corpse.” When he was good-tempered he would laugh and reply, “I come to you in the ashes men have reduced me to, but I rise like the Phoenix in your arms, for all you often have a tongue like an asp. Or when dreary men in the government have gelded me or burdened me like a mule, I become potent again in your bed, to soar like Pegasus in the morning, and confront the sun once more.” The true peace and tranquility he found with Aspasia were not the things of the grave.

Once immovable and even implacable and overly opinionated and intolerant in many ways, he became, under the influence of Aspasia, less inflexible, less coldly impatient, less rude with inferiors. So he gained the reputation of mellowing. Men who had feared and avoided him found him amazingly more congenial, more willing to listen, less sardonic and bitter. Even the despised bureaucrats spoke of him with reluctant appreciation. The Archons, with the exception of Daedalus, were now less afraid of his aristocratic arrogance, and the Assembly, which once had sat like bound and resentful slaves when he addressed them, began to anticipate his speeches and his suggestions with pleasure. However, once he had become an enemy he never deviated from his detestation. Nor would he suffer fools. “They should be castrated,” he would often say, “for they bestow folly on their sons, and are more terrible than Helots, and are like the dragons’ teeth.” Consequently the fools in the government—and they were in the majority, as was inevitable—hated him with the deadly hatred of the simpleton. He laughed openly at their power, and derided it, though knowing it was theirs, and fought it ruthlessly and often successfully.

So, he was delighted that his sons loved and reverenced Aspasia and found her company irresistible. She could quell the cynical and sometimes cruel wit of Xanthippus, and make him more thoughtful and considerate of others, for he respected her and wished her regard. She could move the adamantine character of Paralus to a less intolerant reflectiveness. “It is good to have sound convictions,” she would tell him, “and noble principles. But the majority of men are neither sound nor of any intellectual principles at all. They are confused; they suffer the predicament of mankind, in that they are bewildered by the world in which they find themselves. Have mercy on them. But indiscriminate compassion is not only perilous. It is maudlin, and is often the attribute of the secret destroyers of mankind. Rather have pity of your fellow men, and seek to lead them with tenderness and understanding, but never with the conviction that you know what is best for them. We are all but human. To believe that we know more than our brother is the supreme arrogance.”

“But surely my father knows more than do his associates,” Paralus would protest, to the glee of Xanthippus.

Aspasia would dimple at this, and the youths would be enchanted. “Your father,” she would reply, “is very rare indeed. He even admits this, himself.”

She loved both the youths like a mother. She was often afraid for Xanthippus, whose tongue was like a double-edged sword, heedless of the wounds he inflicted and careless of the wounds he suffered in consequence. He was born to infuriate those of lesser minds, and he had realized that much earlier, and with enthusiasm. “It is not necessary to placate fools,” Aspasia would say. “Avoid them. But to hurt potential friends and make them enemies, just for a moment’s sharp epigram, is folly. An acid witticism is a high price to pay for the loss of a friend. A man needs all the devoted friends he can acquire.”