Creation (3 page)

Thucydides was about to continue what looked to be the beginning of a most ugly scene, when young Democritus suddenly propelled me forward with the cry, “Way for the ambassador of the Great King!” And way was made.

Fortunately, my litter was waiting just outside the portico.

I have had the good luck to be able to rent a house built before we burned down Athens. It is somewhat more comfortable if less pretentious than the houses currently being built by wealthy Athenians. There is nothing like having your native city burned to the ground to inspire ambitious architects. Sardis is now far more splendid after the great fire than ever it was in the time of Croesus. Although I never saw the old Athens—and cannot of course see the new Athens—I am told that private houses are still built of mud brick, that the streets are seldom straight and never wide, that the new public buildings are splendid if makeshift—like the Odeon.

At present, most of the building is taking place on the Acropolis, a lion-colored lump of rock, Democritus’ poetic phrase, that overhangs not only most of the city but this house. As a result, in winter—right now—we get less than an hour of sun a day.

But the rock has its charms. Democritus and I often stroll there. I touch ruined walls. Listen to the clatter of the masons. Ponder that splendid family of tyrants who used to live on the Acropolis before they were driven out of the city, as everyone truly noble is driven out sooner or later. I knew the last tyrant, the gentle Hippias. He was often at the court of Susa when I was young.

Today the principal feature of the Acropolis is the houses or temples that contain the images of the gods which the people pretend to worship. I say pretend because it is my view that despite the basic conservatism of the Athenian people when it comes to maintaining the
forms
of old things, the essential spirit of these people is atheistic—or as a Greek cousin of mine pointed out not long ago, with dangerous pride, man is the measure of all things. I think that in their hearts the Athenians truly believe this to be true. As a result, paradoxically, they are uncommonly superstitious and strictly punish those who are thought to have committed impiety.

DEMOCRITUS WAS NOT PREPARED FOR some of the things that I said last night at dinner. Not only has he now asked me for a true account of the Greek wars but, more important, he wants me to record my memories of India and Cathay, and of the wise men that I met at the east—and at the east of the east. He has offered to write down everything that I remember. My guests at dinner were equally urgent. But I suspect that they were simply polite.

We are seated now in the courtyard of the house. It is the hour when we get the sun. The day is cool but not cold and I can feel the sun’s warmth on my face. I am comfortable, because I am dressed in the Persian fashion. All parts of the body are covered except the face. Even the hands in repose are covered by sleeves. Naturally, I wear trousers—an article of clothing that always disturbs the Greeks.

Our notions of modesty greatly amuse the Greeks, who are never so happy as when they are watching naked youths play games. Blindness spares me the sight not only of Athens’ romping youths but of those lecherous men who watch them. Yet the Athenians are modest when it comes to their women. Women here are swathed from head to toe like Persian ladies—but without color, ornament, style.

I dictate in Greek because I have always spoken Ionian Greek with ease. My mother, Lais, is a Greek from Abdera. She is a daughter of Megacreon, the great-grandfather of Democritus. Since Megacreon owned rich silver mines and you are descended from him in the male line, you are far richer than I. Yes, write that down. You are a part of this narrative, young and insignificant as you are. After all, you have stirred my memory.

Last night I gave dinner to the torchbearer Callias and to the sophist Anaxagoras. Democritus spends many hours a day with Anaxagoras, being talked at. This is known as education. In my time and country, education meant memorizing sacred texts, studying mathematics, practicing music, and archery ...

“To ride, to draw the bow, to tell the truth.” That is Persian education in a proverbial phrase. Democritus reminds me that Greek education is much the same—except for telling the truth. He knows by heart the Ionian Homer, another blind man. This may be true but in recent years traditional methods of education have been abandoned—Democritus says supplemented—by a new class of men who call themselves sophists. In theory, a sophist is supposed to be skilled in one or another of the arts. In practice, many local sophists have no single subject or competence. They are simply sly with words and it is hard to determine what, specifically, they mean to teach, since they question all things, except money. They see to it that they are well paid by the young men of the town.

Anaxagoras is the best of a bad lot. He speaks simply. He writes good Ionian Greek. Democritus read me his book
Physics
.
Although I did not understand a lot of it, I marvel at the man’s audacity. He has attempted to explain all things through a close observation of the visible world. I can follow him when he describes the visible but when it comes to the invisible, he loses me. He believes that
there is no nothing
.
He believes that all space is filled with something, even if we cannot see it—the wind, for instance. He is most interesting (and atheistic!) about birth and death.

“The Greeks,” he has written, “have a wrong conception of becoming and perishing. Nothing comes to be or perishes, but there is mixture and separation of things that exist. Thus they ought properly to speak of generation as mixture, and extinction as separation.” This is acceptable. But what are these “things”? What makes them come together and go apart? How and when and why were they created? By whom? For me, there is only one subject worth pondering—creation.

In answer, Anaxagoras has come up with the word mind. “Originally, from the infinitely small to the infinitely large, all things were at rest. Then mind set them in order.” Then those things (
what
are they?
where
are they?
why
are they?) started to rotate.

One of the largest things is a hot stone that we call the sun. When Anaxagoras was very young, he predicted that sooner or later a piece of the sun would break off and fall to earth. Twenty years ago, he was proved right. The whole world saw a fragment of the sun fall in a fiery arc through the sky, landing near Aegospotami in Thrace. When the fiery fragment cooled, it proved to be nothing more than a chunk of brown rock. Overnight Anaxagoras was famous. Today his book is read everywhere. You can buy a secondhand copy in the Agora for a drachma.

Pericles invited Anaxagoras to Athens and gave him a small pension, which currently supports the sophist and his family. Needless to say, conservatives hate him almost as much as they do Pericles. Whenever they wish to embarrass Pericles politically, they accuse his friend Anaxagoras of blasphemy and impiety and all the usual nonsense ... no, not nonsense for Anaxagoras is as much an atheist as all the other Greeks, but unlike the rest he is not a hypocrite. He is a serious man. He thinks hard about the nature of the universe, and without a knowledge of the Wise Lord you must think very hard indeed for otherwise nothing will ever make sense.

Anaxagoras is about fifty years old. He is an Ionian Greek from a town called Clazomenae. He is small and fat, or so I am told by Democritus. He comes from a wealthy family. When his father died, he refused to administer the ancestral estate or hold political office. He was interested only in observing the natural world. Finally he turned over all his property to distant relatives and left home. When asked whether or not his native land concerned him at all, Anaxagoras said, “Oh, yes, my native land very much concerns me.” And he pointed to the sky. I forgive him this characteristic Greek gesture. They do like to show off.

During the first table, as we dined on fresh rather than preserved fish, Anaxagoras was curious to know my reaction to the tales of Herodotus. I tried several times to answer him, but old Callias did most of the talking. I must indulge Callias because our invisible peace treaty is by no means popular with the Athenians. In fact, there is always a danger that our agreement will one day be renounced and I shall be obliged to move on, assuming that my ambassadorial status is recognized and I am not put to death. The Greeks do not honor ambassadors. Meanwhile, as co-author of the treaty, Callias is my protector.

Callias described yet again the battle of Marathon. I am very tired of the Greek version of this incident. Needless to say, Callias fought with the bravery of Hercules. “Not that I was obliged to. I mean, I’m hereditary torch-bearer. I serve the mysteries of Demeter, the Great Goddess. At Eleusis. But you know all about that, don’t you?”

“Indeed I do, Callias. We have that in common. Remember? I am also hereditary ... torchbearer.”

“
You
are?” Callias has not much memory for recent information. “Oh, yes. Of course.
Fire
-worship. Yes, very interesting, all that. You must let us watch one of your ceremonies. I’m told it’s quite a sight. Particularly the part where the Arch-Magian eats the fire. That’s you, isn’t it?”

“Yes.” I no longer bother to explain to Greeks the difference between Zoroastrians and Magians. “But we don’t
eat
the fire. We tend it. The fire is the messenger between us and the Wise Lord. The fire also reminds us of the day of judgment when each of us must pass through a sea of molten metal—rather like the real sun, if Anaxagoras’ theory is true.”

“But then what happens?” Although Callias is an hereditary priest, he is most superstitious. I find this odd. Hereditary priests usually tend to atheism. They know too much.

I answered him, traditionally: “If you have served the Truth and rejected the Lie, you will not feel the boiling metal. You will—”

“I see.” Callias’ mind, such as it is, flits about like a threatened bird. “We have something like that, too. Anyway, I want to watch you eat fire one of these days. Naturally, I can’t return the favor. Our mysteries are very deep, you know. I can’t tell you a thing about them. Except that you’ll be reborn once you’ve got through the whole lot.
If
you get through them. And when you’re dead, you’ll be able to avoid—” Callias stopped; the bird settled upon a bow. “Anyway, I fought at Marathon, even though I was obliged to wear these priestly robes that I must always wear, as you can see. Well, no, you can’t see them, of course. But priest or not, I killed my share of Persians that day—”

“—and found your gold in a ditch.” Anaxagoras finds Callias as exasperating as I do. Unlike me, he does not have to endure him.

“That story has been much distorted in the telling.” Callias was suddenly precise. “I happened to take a prisoner who thought I was some sort of general or king because I wear this fillet around my head, which you can’t see. Since he spoke only Persian and I spoke only Greek, there was no way to sort the matter out. I couldn’t tell him that I was of no importance at all, outside of being torch-bearer. Also, since I was only seventeen or eighteen, he should have figured out that I wasn’t important. But he didn’t. He showed me a riverbank—
not a ditch
—where he had hidden this chest of gold. Naturally, I took it. Spoils of war.”

“And what happened to the owner?” Like everyone in Athens, Anaxagoras knew that Callias had promptly killed the Persian. Then, thanks to that chest of gold, Callias was able to invest in wine and oil and shipping. Today he is the richest man in Athens. He is deeply envied. But then, at Athens everyone is envied for something—even if it be nothing more than the absence of any enviable quality.

“I set him free. Naturally.” Callias lied easily. Behind his back he is known as rich-ditch Callias. “The gold was by way of ransom. Normal sort of thing in battle. Happens every day between Greeks and Persians—or used to. That’s all over now, thanks to us, Cyrus Spitama. The whole world owes me and you eternal gratitude.”

“I will be quite happy with a year or two of gratitude.”

Between the removal of the first tables and the arrival of the second tables, Elpinice joined us. She is the only Athenian lady who dines with men whenever she chooses. She is privileged because she is wife to the rich Callias and sister to the splendid Cimon—sister and true widow, too. Before she married Callias, she and her brother lived together as man and wife, scandalizing the Athenians. It is a sign of the essential crudity of the Greeks that they do not yet understand that a great family is made even greater when brother marries sister. After all, each is a half
of the same entity. Combine the two in marriage and each is doubly formidable.

It is also said that Elpinice, not Cimon, actually ruled the conservative party. At the moment, she has great influence with her nephew Thucydides. She is admired and feared. She is good company. Tall as a man, Elpinice is handsome in a ravaged way—my informant is Democritus, who at the age of eighteen regards anyone with so much as a single gray hair as an unlawful fugitive from the tomb. She speaks with that soft Ionian accent which I like as much as I dislike the hard Dorian accent. But I learned my Greek from an Ionian mother.

“I am a scandal. I know it. I can’t help it. I dine with men. Unattended. Unashamed. Like a Milesian companion—except I’m not musical.” Hereabouts, the elegant prostitutes are called companions.

Although women have few rights in any Greek city, there are barbarous anomalies. The first time that I attended the games in one of the Ionian Greek cities of Asia Minor, I was startled to note that although the unmarried girls were encouraged to attend the games and examine potential husbands in the nude, the married ladies were forbidden to watch, on the no doubt sensible ground that any alternative to a lawful husband must not be viewed. In conservative Athens, wives and maidens are seldom allowed to leave their quarters, much less attend games. Except for Elpinice.

I could hear the great lady as she settled herself—like a man—on a couch instead of sitting modestly in a chair or on a stool, the way Greek ladies are supposed to do on those rare occasions when they dine with men. But Elpinice ignores custom. She does as she pleases and no one dares complain ... to her face. As sister of Cimon, wife of Callias, aunt of Thucydides, she is the greatest lady in Athens. She is often tactless, and seldom bothers to disguise the contempt she has for Callias, who admires her inordinately.