Glory and the Lightning (47 page)

“Aspasia?” he said, and made a mouth of distaste. “She is notorious. She has fashioned her school on the school of Sappho of Lesbos. What would I have to do with a Lesbian?”

“Sappho has been unjustly maligned,” said Helena with reproof. “But why is it more reprehensible for a woman to love another woman, than a man to love a man?”

“You would not understand,” said Pericles, smiling. She slapped him lightly on his bare shoulder and said, “That is the foolish reply of all men to an acute question from a woman. It tells us nothing except you will tell us nothing. Let us return to Aspasia. She was once the companion, the mistress, of a Persian satrap. She left him two years ago, heavy with jewelry and gold. The oppression of women in Persia is even worse than it is in Greece, and she is determined on the eventual emancipation of all women, as am I. If you laugh, my love, I shall drive you from my house. Your attention, please.

“I have heard from Aspasia, and from old Thargelia of Miletus, too, that from early youth it has been the dream of Aspasia that women’s minds must be respected as well as their bodies loved, or lusted for, and that they have a mission in this world as well as a duty to bear sons to their husbands. They have talents unique to them, and who knows how many female geniuses have died in childbed? We have souls as well as genitals.”

“I have never denied that,” said Pericles. “I have an intelligent mother of many attributes, though she is growing waspish in her age. This is no wonder. Dejanira is the sole authority in the house and it is a case of older arrogance meeting younger arrogance, and Dejanira’s vindictiveness is awesome—and dangerous—to encounter. So even my poor mother is silenced by her and I console her frequently, reminding her that it was she, not I, who desired this disastrous marriage.”

“Do not distract me from the subject of Aspasia, Pericles. Aspasia is no Lesbian. It is reputed that she is very discriminating in the choice of lovers. It is said that she has had many, but this I do not believe, for she is fastidious and is concerned only with her school. Many of your more enlightened friends have placed their daughters under her tutelage. She not only teaches them the arts of song and dance and music but gives them an excellent education besides, equal to that of men. Zeno of Elea teaches them at intervals; philosophy and dialectics.”

“For what end?” asked Pericles, with a gravity that pleased Helena. “What can an educated and intelligent woman do in this world?”

“I am a physician,” said Helena, running her fingers through her auburn hair, which streamed over her bare breasts and shoulders. “It is true that I am considered infamous, but that is not of great moment to me. Many of my patients are men of distinction—and money, for I have a reputation, and a school of medicine and a large infirmia. I am very rich. I am not alone among my sisters, and many of the hetairai have married noble and famous men, men of family, who have regard for a woman’s intellect and gifts. Have you not promised me that you will help women to attain their status in life, and so be regarded as human and with respect?”

“I have sworn it,” said Pericles. “If I had daughters instead of two sons I could not be more determined.”

“Good.” She gave him a rewarding kiss. “I will give a dinner for Aspasia, and you will be one of my guests.”

Pericles became wary. It was one of his convictions that, with the exception of Helena and a few more of the hetairai, women of intellect cared nothing for personal beauty and did not cultivate it in themselves and regarded it as trivial. He had been careful not to let Helena guess this opinion, which he held in common with other men. His mother, too, had been an exception. He said, “What is her appearance?”

She regarded him closely with her large blue eyes. “Is that of importance?”

“I dislike harpies,” he said. “No one, man or woman, should neglect a pleasing aspect.”

Helena sighed. “Aspasia is considered the most beauteous woman in Athens, for all she is no longer young, being twenty-two years old. Have you not heard of her loveliness?”

“I have heard she is a Gorgon.”

“From men who have never seen her. For a powerful man who hears and sees everything you have been very ignorant. I will give that dinner in my house and you must come. Aspasia’s voice is as lovely as her appearance, though it is no soft or gentle one, and not fluting. It resembles the singing in a sea shell, and men are captivated by it. She is also very amusing.”

“A paragon,” said Pericles. “Still, you have not told me of her appearance, except that she is beautiful. I have discovered that when a woman says a woman of her acquaintance is charming she is invariably no rival and is repulsive to men.”

“You are speaking of mean and trivial women who have minds like pigs,” said Helena. “When I say a woman is beautiful she is truly beautiful. Aspasia is as tall as I, but slender while I am robust, and her body would make Aphrodite envious. She has hair of so pale a color that it appears spun from both moonlight and sunlight. Why are you suddenly gazing at me so intently, Pericles?”

“I am but listening,” said Pericles.

“She has an oval face, a complexion of milk and vermillion, and a mouth like a pomegranate. There is no aspect of her which is not perfect. Pheidias has already cast her in bronze from the memory he has of a small figurine he created. Why do you start so strongly, my love?”

“Did I start?” he replied. But he had paled. Anxiously she felt his forehead for fever, touched his pulse and was alarmed to feel it racing. She reached to the bedside table and poured him more wine and held it to his lips.

“I am not ill,” he said. He drank the wine; his expression was abstracted. Then excitement seized him. “I must meet this famous Aspasia,” he said.

She smiled in relief. Her description of her younger friend had stirred him and she was gratified for both Aspasia and Pericles, for she had a kind and loving heart. She forgot that she was a free woman and a physician of much renown and began to plot. The more she thought of Aspasia and Pericles together the more enthusiastic she was and the more determined.

“I will tell Aspasia that she is to meet the most powerful man in Athens,” she said, laughing gleefully.

“Except for the damnable Archons and the rest of this government,” he said.

“Dear love, you have forgotten that Pericles is also of the government.”

That conversation with Helena had occurred last night, and he had almost forgotten it, for his mind was too disturbed today as he sat in his hot offices in the Agora and considered Athens and her government. Because of the discipline of his mind he could focus his thoughts on any subject and give it his full concern to the exclusion of other matters. Nothing distracted him from a reflection in which he was engaged. He had removed his toga of office and was clad only in a short tunic of yellow linen, without sleeves. He had folded his white strong arms across his chest and had lifted his sandaled feet upon his desk. As usual, he wore his tall helmet for he was still very sensitive on the subject of his towering brow and skull. His handsome face was full of brooding. Books and parchments and tablets and pens were strewn on the desk before him, awaiting his attention. Why are bureaucrats, he thought with loathing, always so zealous with pens and parchments, as if what bustled in their tiny minds was of importance? There was no one so busy as a man of no station and no consequence. I find it pathetic, this belief of theirs that what they record, or suggest, will have immortality, especially in oppressive laws.

He could hear the roar of the heavy traffic on the streets which surrounded the Agora, and the clamor of thousands of impatient voices. Common Athenians were noisy and insistent, unlike the aristocrats among them. This was not surprising; the market rabble in every country were alike. In other countries, however, the market rabble did not vote, except for the rising city-state of Rome, in Italy. Pericles promised himself to visit Rome, which was reputed to have been founded on a fratricide, but which was also reputed to be sternly moral and virtuous and full of industry, and whose great hero was Cincinnatus, the Father of his Country. It was said that Rome also had a representative government and this savored of a republic, in embryo at least. He had already received a request from the Roman Senate to permit it to send him a commission which desired to study the laws of Solon and his legislation.

I am afraid that they will be disappointed in the government we have! he thought, moving his buttocks restlessly on his chair. But it will do no harm to inspire a young nation with the dream of Solon, though we have not achieved it ourselves. A shaft of burning sunlight struck through the high narrow window and with it came a cloud of bright dust and the usual smell of a heated city—compounded of hot stone and latrines and animal offal and stale air and nameless astringent and dusty scents. A swarm of flies gushed through the windows and Pericles slapped at them irritably. Many of them settled on his desk and particularly on the rim of his wine goblet which was full of dregs. Some crawled on his white and muscular thighs. He snatched up a rolled parchment and killed them. That, he said to himself, is the sole usefulness of messages from a bureaucrat. He brushed the bodies from his flesh and flung the parchment from him.

A guard in plumed helmet and leather armor knocked on the bronze door then opened it tentatively. Seeing Pericles’ glare he almost retreated; then his courage rose. “Lord, the noble thesmothetai Archon, Daedalus, is here to consult you on a grave matter.”

Pericles muttered something particularly obscene and pithy concerning his father-in-law, then rose and nodded at the guard. He put his thumbs in each side of his silver girdle and cautioned himself to discipline his vexed thoughts. When Daedalus entered with his usual harsh quick glancing-about, Pericles greeted him amiably enough and led him to a chair. Daedalus was drier and more wizened than ever, and leaner of body and more skull-like of facial appearance, and his brown long robes were dusty.

He had never had a pleasant expression that Pericles could recall and age was making his skeleton’s face more disagreeable every day. He was soured that he had not attained the position of King Archon with extraordinary powers, for he was an ambitious man, ambitious for self-aggrandizement and not for his country. For this Pericles could not forgive him, among many other things he could not forgive Daedalus, including having begotten Dejanira.

Daedalus regarded his son-in-law’s stateliness of form and his dignity of countenance. He both secretly respected and resented Pericles, who always appeared incomprehensible to him. Pericles puzzled him also, for though invariably serene and calm and firm he avoided any serious conversations with Daedalus. So the latter had come to the conclusion that Pericles, for all his fame as a soldier and a statesman, was innately frivolous. Pericles usually assumed a lightness in all dealings with Daedalus, because he held Dejanira’s father in low esteem and unworthy of an intelligent man’s time. Daedalus was never unconscious of Pericles’ power, but there were powers he could not seize, thank the gods, and those certain powers belonged to the Archons. They were safe from Pericles, for did not the people honor them and vote for them?

Still, Daedalus was proud that Pericles had married his daughter and he would boast of him to his fellow Archons when he was alone with them. But he incessantly complained of him to Dejanira who agreed with him that Pericles was a difficult man, if a kind husband and indulgent father, and that he lacked the proper respect for an Archon.

“How may I serve you, Daedalus?” Pericles asked. “Cool wine, bread and cheese and fruit? I have some fresh plums and grapes in that closet yonder.”

Daedalus waved away these suggestions. “I have no time for dallying, Pericles. I come to you on a matter of great importance.”

Pericles doubted this but he inclined his helmeted head gravely and seated himself on a corner of his desk, and waited. Daedalus wished he would sit down in a chair, for Pericles’ presence was overpowering when too close. This quality in him had intimidated larger men than Daedalus and Daedalus was suddenly furious that he felt that force in Pericles, that imminence which often appeared silently threatening. Daedalus swallowed his fury though his bony cheeks crimsoned.

“You have heard of one Ichthus?” said the older man in his grating voice.

Pericles widened his pale eyes and again they attained the aspect of a statue’s eyes, blind and hidden. This usually affrighted more subtle and intelligent and powerful men than Daedalus, but the latter thought it merely unpleasant. It was as if Pericles had removed himself to a distance, and Daedalus was vexed.

“You know I have not only heard of Ichthus, Daedalus,” said Pericles in a gently perilous voice, “but you know he is one of my dearest friends and that he saved my life when we were young.” He paused because he was suddenly alarmed; he hid the alarm from his detestable father-in-law, but he grasped his elbows tightly. “Ichthus is of a most distinguished family, as you know, Daedalus, almost as distinguished as mine,” and certainly more honorable than yours, he added to himself.

Daedalus, always careful of himself, heard the warning in Pericles’ voice. But he was a malicious man, and sharp malice made him less afraid of Pericles today than he customarily was. Pericles, he reminded himself, was not entirely invulnerable. There were still things he could not do in spite of his position.

“I know all about Ichthus’ family,” said Daedalus. “His father was ostracized for heretical opinions and died in exile. Despite your gracious opinion of Ichthus, Pericles, the family is not notable. Nor is it rich.”

Pericles still fixed those blind eyes on the other man and did not answer. He only waited.

“Ichthus wasted his patrimony by buying and freeing worthless slaves, and on his activities, which are both impious and subversive of government.”

Daedalus watched Pericles closely but Pericles’ face remained impervious. “I know of Ichthus’ dedication to the freeing of slaves,” he said. “I find it admirable, for did not Solon demand this also? It is not unlawful, this bestowing of liberty on the unfortunate who are suffering under the whips and tortures of cruel masters. Mercy is not to be despised. You have mentioned my friend’s ‘activities.’ What are they?”