Glory and the Lightning (65 page)

He shrugged. “Traitors cry for liberty—for themselves. But they will vehemently attack opponents who also desire that same liberty. It is the old story of tyranny.”

Writhing with rage over a populace that did not heed their exhortations against Pericles the government sought another way to destroy or mortally wound him. It had been seeking for years. They newly scrutinized his associates, particularly Anaxagoras and Socrates and Zeno and Pheidias, and, above all, Aspasia. Were they not all impious, heretical and a menace to the order of the State? A hetaira of despicable repute, and barefoot philosophers and challengers of orthodox religion! They were worthy of imprisonment, death or exile. They were inciting the people to rebellions against priests and authority, all capital crimes. The middle class was demanding reductions in taxes and tribute. The workers were demanding a larger voice in government. The very slaves were seething. Athens was in a dangerous position and the government was determined to save her. Their virtue inflamed them to excesses, at which Pericles only laughed. He also ignored them, or publicly jeered at their bureaucrats and humorously addressed the Assembly and said that bureaucrats were the excreta of civilization. Perhaps, he would say, they were sometimes necessary lest a nation become constipated, but one must always remember that they were only feces, with a smelly function.

His friend Jason said to him, “But who will do the recordkeeping and the paperwork, for there must be order, as you know, in government.”

Pericles said, “I do not dispute that, but bureaucrats have a way of proliferating, to increase their powers and importance. But when they become more onerous than government itself that is the time to decimate them and restore to them the truth that they are only menials and do not rule us, for all their busy pens and their endless rivers of interpretations.”

In retaliation—which he usually despised—he ordered officials to reduce their bureaucrats by one-third at once. “Athens,” he said, “cannot afford this waste of money and the removal of workers from private employment, where they are needed.” He assumed a countenance of virtue, in mimicry and mockery of his enemies. “Above all,” he said, “let us save money. Are you not demanding this, yourselves?”

Only one part of the populace listened to the government, and that was the market rabble who hated Pericles for daring to call them less than slaves and exhorting them to work. Among them was the class of professional criminals, incendiaries, murderers and thieves. They were also for hire by government, which was an old story. Governments had, through history, used them to intimidate citizens who showed signs of indignation, just as they had always used bureaucrats.

What Daedalus lacked in personal power he made up in vituperations against Pericles, whom he now hated with a frenzied hatred. His fellow Archons began to be wearied by him, though they agreed with him and hated Pericles hardly less than he did. But while he merely frothed they consulted how best to depose Pericles and obtain his exile as an overweening and dictatorial Head of State. He was not invulnerable, so far. They dared not, as yet, pass resolutions against him and consult openly with the others of the government how to bring about his fall. They could only insidiously discuss with the many others the situation of his extravagance and his outrageous contempt for the weighty and heavy pendulum of government and its confusions and vacillations. “It is true that he is Head of State,” they would say, “but that does not make him a god, not in our form of democratic government! Nor does it give him the power of a despot. He is answerable to us,” and they added as an afterthought, “and to the people who elected us.” He sought to be king, with absolute powers and had not Solon, himself, warned of ambitious men?

Daedalus urged his daughter, Dejanira, to marry again, for she had many mercenary suitors who were also of noble if impoverished families. But she shuddered away from him, weeping, and declared that she loved only Pericles and still considered herself his wife, and that if he would permit her she would creep like a dog to his feet. Daedalus loved his daughter; therefore he was scandalized at this abjectness, and ashamed. So, he upbraided her, only to be answered by loud sobbing and a wringing of her hands. Once she even said to him, “Callias deserved his fate; I do not pity him, though I love him as my son. He received only a measure of justice. Another man would have been executed for that act.” Daedalus did not see the certain nobility of Dejanira’s words—for she had lost a measure of her obtuseness. He was only aghast and accused her of being an unnatural mother.

She believed herself blameless for the dissolution of her marriage, for had not Pericles on their wedding night declared his passion for her and had he not embraced her with desire? What had she done to deserve banishment from his house? But still she said to her father, “I despise such as Aspasia, but he had forced me from his bed long before he saw her. She is only a hetaira, and Pericles is of an illustrious house. I do not believe he loves her, for how could such an abandoned woman be respected by such as my husband? No, she is a passing fancy; there will be others.”

Daedalus, beside himself, shouted at her, “Do you not hear the gossip that she is with his child?”

Dejanira closed her eyes suddenly with grief and anguish. Daedalus went on: “He is not only not ashamed that he has lacerated the sensibilities of decent men. He flaunts her condition to all who will listen.

Yes, I know that the hetairai often bear children to their lovers, though it is loathsome in the eyes of the virtuous. But at least their lovers do not boast of the vileness as does Pericles.”

Dejanira opened her tearful eyes. “It is not in Pericles’ nature to boast, my father.”

“Hah! And how do you know this thing? Pericles was perhaps speaking the truth when he said to me that you were stupid.”

Seeing her suffering, and seeing her shrinking, he felt some compunction. But the next moment he was again incensed that Pericles had made his daughter suffer such despair. When Xanthippus and Paralus next visited his house he said to them, “Are you not ashamed that your father has begotten an illegitimate child by his hetaira, his whore? Have you considered what this will do to your name, his lawful offspring?”

“What will it do?” asked Xanthippus, a bland expression on his lively face. Paralus nudged him in his side, for he saw the brilliant mischief in his brother’s eyes and he was innately more compassionate than the irrepressible Xanthippus. But Xanthippus said, “We honor Aspasia, for she is not only the most beautiful woman in Athens, but is kind and loves us. She adores our father, and gives him laughter and consolations. Her situation is quite common and there are few outcries against it.”

“You do not care for the humiliations of your mother?”

Paralus said with his father’s own gravity, “My mother is no longer the wife of my father. What he does does not injure her in the esteem of others, for she has no part in any of his affairs.”

Daedalus seized on this with hope. “You do not, then, approve of your father?”

Paralus had more respect for his grandfather than did the youthful satyr, Xanthippus. So he replied, “I did not say that. Forgive me. I meant that what my father does, or my mother, is not the concern of either. They are not one.”

Xanthippus struck an orator’s attitude and quoted from Homer: “‘There is nothing stronger and nobler than when man and wife are of one heart and mind in a house. A grief to their foes, and to their friends great joy. But their own hearts know it best.’” He grinned at Daedalus. “That best describes my father and our beloved Aspasia.”

Paralus did not like this baiting of the aged Daedalus who stood blinking, now, trying to comprehend with his senile wits. So he said, while frowning formidably at Xanthippus, and resembling his father acutely, “Do not mind Xanthippus, Grandfather. He loves to tease. He means nothing by it.”

“I never say a word which is not pertinent,” said Xanthippus, who affectionately made fists at his brother and stood in the attitude of a pugilist.

After Callias, Daedalus loved Paralus best. He was afraid of Xanthippus and his acid wit, and so disliked him while still loving him.

He said, “Pindar has asserted, ‘Strive not to become a god. Mortal aims befit mortal men.’” (He had heard this in the Assembly only yesterday.) He added, “Your father strives to become a god before the people, for their worship. Men are but mortal; they are as dust before the gods, something your father does not realize.”

Xanthippus shook his naughty head and imitating Paralus’ gravity he proclaimed, “Sophocles has said, ‘Wonders are many, but none is more wonderful than man.’ My father is a wonder. Therefore, he is as wonderful as the gods.”

“Your syllogism lacks something,” said the temperate Paralus. “My father is not mad; he is above the folly of considering himself divine and his decrees are not infallible.” He smiled. “One should not quote philosophers as the ultimate authority, for they dispute with each other and are frequently contentious. They are also not quite sane, in our own dull interpretation of sanity.”

“It is true,” said Xanthippus, “that you are frequently dull, my brother,” and they laughed in each other’s eyes and pushed each other. “You should encounter Pan!”

Daedalus was not following this quick exchange. He said with bitterness, “Your father is trying to lead us into war again. Who profits by war, except tyrants such as he?”

“Hah!” cried Xanthippus. “Has not Homer said, ‘All dreadful glared the iron face of war, but touched with joy the bosoms of the brave’?”

Paralus said quickly, “Poets, too, often disagree with each other—as do the gods. I doubt, Grandfather, that our father is warlike, though he is a soldier. He is trying to unify Greece, and if he appears devious at times we must trust him.”

Daedalus was incredulous and his eyes bulged. “Trust your father? I should prefer to trust the harpies!”

“It is a matter of taste,” said Xanthippus, and was thrust from the room by the more forceful Paralus, to join their mother. While they travelled down a corridor Paralus said to his brother, “Why do you torment that poor old man, who has nothing but his hatred to feed him in his age?”

“Hatred is the bread of Hades to which he is destined,” said Xanthippus, who knew little mercy and found life ridiculous. He did not have the cold control of either his father or brother. He had only wit and intellect, and a huge sense of humor which others found infuriating. Above all things he loathed stupidity, and could not forgive it, though Paralus often told him, “Blame stupidity not on the intransigent nature of him who possesses it, but on his fathers who bequeathed it to him and on the gods who decreed it. Does a swine ordain his snout, and the monkey his lice, and the vulture his stink? We are what we are, not by our own desire, but from the loins of our fathers and the wombs of our mothers, and nothing can change that, not government, not alms, not learning, not prayer. We are fixed in our natures from our conception, and we cannot escape our fate.”

“We can try,” said Xanthippus. “At least it is in our power to order the filthiest aspects of ourselves. Do we defecate in the streets? No, we go to latrines. Let the stupid go to theirs and learn discretion, so that they do not offend others.”

“We can perhaps teach the stupid,” said Paralus, sighing, “even though they destroy those who would teach them,” to which Xanthippus disagreed and said, “You have refuted your own argument.”

They loved each other dearly, they so dissimilar, and they entered their mother’s quarters in amiability, and arm in arm. Dejanira was overjoyed to see them. They visited her at least once weekly but she greeted them as if she had not seen them for years, with embraces and smiling tears. She did not immediately inquire about their health but asked about their father with an eagerness they both found moving. Their grandmother lurked in the background sullenly with an air of chronic disapproval. She listened to the conversation, grunting, and as she, like other Greek women, did not believe in idleness, she was sewing industriously. But her eyes, black and small, darted about like cockroaches. She had affection for the sons of Pericles, though her love was for her grandson, Callias. So she felt some sullenness towards Xanthippus and Paralus, who did not resemble her or her daughter in the least. Her animosity towards Pericles extended to his sons, if not with the hatred she had for the father. This conflict of emotions made her irascible and her grunts always became very loud in the presence of the youths. Though they showed her the courtesy she deserved as their grandmother they ignored her after the greetings.

The youths conversed with their mother in an atmosphere of ease and love. She stroked their arms and fixed her eyes on their countenances, seeking for signs of Pericles. She asked about their academe. She had heard that Xanthippus was almost espoused to the daughter of a great house. Xanthippus shrugged. “I have met the maiden in the school of Aspasia, and she is sweet and kind. Why is it necessary for a man to marry? Is marriage all?”

To which his teased mother replied earnestly, “Yes, it is all.”

Xanthippus was about to enter on his military service and he affected to find it onerous, but he was the son of Pericles and the grandson of Xanthippus, and he always thought of this with a pride he was careful to conceal. He talked with his mother, but he was easily bored with those whose minds were lesser than his, and he was soon yawning despite the stern glances Paralus gave him. At last, in spite of Dejanira’s entreaties, both youths protested that they must return to their father’s house, as the hour was late and they had a military guard waiting in the courtyard. The poor woman clung to them, kissing them and leaving her tears on their cheeks, and imploring them to visit her as soon as possible.

They mounted their horses. An abnormally large orange moon stood in the dark sky and gave the earth a curious illumination, so that every pillar and wall shone with a saffron light and every shadow was sharp and black. The hills were bathed in a wash of lemon yellow and the crowded and rising columns of the acropolis temples appeared to be made of gold. Athens, below, glittered with red torches and lanterns and lamps, restless and unsleeping. The autumn air was pungent and the wind cool. Fallen leaves rattled on the road and scurried before the horses like brittle small animals. Xanthippus began to sing the newest ribald ditty of the streets, to the amusement of the guard, and he added a few more stanzas of his own which were even more lewd. The horses pranced a little; hoofs clattered on stone. Xanthippus was in high spirits, as usual, while his brother merely smiled and made reproving sounds which were not entirely sincere.