Then Thargelia said, and she was suddenly serious, “What is it that you wish from this life, Aspasia?”
The girl shrugged and bent her head. “Something more than my intended fate, but what it is I do not know.”
Thargelia stood up and said, “Find it in the arms of a man, for there only will you find it and nowhere else.” When rebellion flashed in Aspasia’s eyes the older woman added, “For men have what we want, no matter what it is we want, and they can give it to us.”
Thargelia saw that Aspasia’s eyes welled and darkened and increased with thought, and she nodded with satisfaction.
The tutors for the maidens were usually erudite females, some of them former courtesans themselves, and learned, but Thargelia also employed male teachers who were of a respectable age and of no prepossessing appearance, for one must guard virgins.
A year ago the tutors had solemnly approached Thargelia, saying, “The maiden, Aspasia, is of an intricate mind, and excessively talented. She desires to know all things, and not superficially. Discourses on medicine, mathematics, and art engross her, and her questions are incisive and controversial, and she will not be satisfied with idle answers. In short, she will demand to know all that we know, and will not accept cursory instructions. She has the mind of a man, which may be unfortunate.”
“I have suspected this,” said Thargelia, not without pride. “But what human brain can contain all knowledge? Still, if one is talented one is gifted freely by the gods, who pour down upon the chosen one a full lavishness of mental treasures, just as when a beautiful woman is created she is perfection in all ways. Truly, Aspasia is formidable in talent as well as in loveliness. She wishes to encompass all things. But in what is she most proficient?”
An elderly sage said, stroking his gray beard, “She is fascinated with Solon, the founder of democracy, and all his laws.” He hesitated and then continued, “She wishes to know why Greece does not follow the laws of Solon, as laid down over a hundred years ago. We have explained that the Athenians were too capricious and too inconstant a people to demand that their rulers obey an unchangeable Constitution, for they suspected what they considered inflexibility, even in perfect laws.”
“Our Aspasia, then, is a politician as well as an artist and a mathematician,” said Thargelia, smiling.
“Lady,” said a woman tutor, “is it not our custom to discover the talent of each maiden, and train her therein, that she may be the perfect companion of a man of that bent and occupation?”
“True,” said Thargelia. “But our Aspasia is protean, and her talents are equally enormous. She has myriad eyes, all developed. Would you say, then, that she is most proficient in politics, mathematics, art, science?”
“She is also engrossed with medicine,” said the physician, “and is most dexterous and inventive in potions. She is constantly in the infirmia and often I conjecture if Apollo was not her father.”
Thargelia laughed. “I am assured that that is not so. But it is a pretty concept, for does she not shine like the sun? What a maiden this is! Only a mighty Persian satrap would be worthy of her. Do not discourage her. Answer her deeply and with candor, respecting her intelligence. She was born in Miletus, and not in Greece, where women and their intelligence are despised. It is true that we are now under Grecian dominance but she is a daughter of Asia Minor.”
She smiled at the uneasy tutors. “The gods must indeed be her guardians, for had she been born in Greece she would have been confined to the gynaikeia (women’s quarters) and would have been forbidden the meanest learning. Give to Aspasia all that is in your power, and do not fear that you will fatigue her. The mind has no boundaries.”
She contemplated the price that Aspasia would bring, but still she was as proud as if she, herself, had been Aspasia’s mother. The damsel was a prodigious gem, deserving of polishing and of a setting that would reveal all her colors and her glory. A jewel like this, and a virgin in addition, was worthy of even more than a Persian satrap. An emperor was more to be desired. Still, the Persians were very rich and powerful and, it must be admitted, somewhat more subtle than the Greeks, even the antic Athenians with their philosophers. They had an ancient and cynical wisdom, incomprehensible to the westerners. They were less muscular and direct, though they were terrible warriors when aroused. Thargelia was fascinated by mankind in all its manifestations. Man was created by the gods either in a fit of utter madness or they were commanded by something superior even to themselves. That was a subject for philosophers who pretended to understand the nature of man and were as ignorant as the lowest peasant. Thargelia considered one of the superstitions of the Greeks: the Unknown God, Whose altar was still bare, but Whom they reverenced. Did not the Persians hint of Him also? Thargelia shrugged. Men pursued the gods, but women pursued life, and perhaps they were the same. But it was a woman’s womb which produced both gods and men, and therein lay women’s power and their wisdom. Zeus was the king of gods and men, but Zeus was ruled by his wife, Hera, and he lived in terror of her. Thargelia laughed. It was a great comedy. It was no wonder that men were afraid of women, both gods and men. Women had a mysterious power. They could raise men to Parnassus or deliver them to Hades.
The teacher of science said to Aspasia, “There is no verity except when an experiment can be repeated time after time with the same result, with no deviations. That is reality, and reality is all we can know.”
“What is reality?” asked Aspasia.
“Reality,” said the teacher, “is what can be proved, can be discerned by our five senses, and can be, as I have said, repeated over and over at all times in the same experiment. All else is metaphysics and conjecture and fable and the dreams of madmen, and drunken poets.”
“Such as Homer,” said Aspasia with that demure expression of hers which her teachers often found exasperating.
The teacher frowned. He lifted a bundle of sticks and wagged them in Aspasia’s face, while his other pupils exchanged smiles and shifted on their wooden benches. “Here,” he said, “are ten thin sticks. A decade. All mathematics are based on the rule of ten, no matter how esoteric or what symbols are used. So, we can call this reality.” He threw the sticks into the air and let them drop on the table. They fell into a disordered pattern. Aspasia leaned forward to study them.
Then she said, “But reality is based on causality—cause and effect?”
“True.”
“And the pattern, the experiment, is endlessly repeated in all respects, if it is valid?”
“True.” The man stroked his beard and regarded Aspasia with no great pleasure, for her beauty did not entrance him and her remarks often disconcerted him, to the high amusement of the other maidens.
Aspasia lifted the sticks and her sparkling eyes regarded the teacher enigmatically. She let the sticks drop, tinkling, on the table, and did not remove her gaze from the teacher. The sticks fell into another pattern. She studied them. “Causality, reality. The experiment is always the same, and never varies. Behold those sticks. I let them drop as you dropped them, Cipo, but they formed another pattern entirely. I will demonstrate again.” She lifted the sticks in a profound silence, which was broken only by the raucous shriek of a peacock in the garden. She let the sticks drop. They formed still another pattern. She studied them as if with surprise. “The selfsame sticks, the selfsame gesture, even to the placement of my fingers on them. Yet, the pattern is so different each time. Ten sticks, ten thousand, perhaps, differing patterns. So, reality then must have ever-changing patterns, and experiments are never the same nor the results of them, though the conditions are identical. Shall we then conclude that reality has millions of faces and never is repeated and that if an experiment can be reproduced exactly it is only a delusion and not a truth?”
The teacher felt a desire to strike her. He said, trying to control his rage, “That is a fool’s and a woman’s reasoning. A tremor of your fingers, a bounding of your pulse, a slight wind, could destroy the exactitude of the experiment. Were you ab
le to drop the sticks, through all eternity, with the same exactitude, under the same absolute condition, they would form an unchanging pattern.”
“That is theory,” said Aspasia. “It cannot be proved. And have you not said that that which cannot be proved is not reality?”
When he did not answer she continued: “Nothing remains the same. All things, all conditions, change, including the stars in their passage, and the winds in the air. Reality, then, is ephemeral, and what is real, today, is false tomorrow or even in the next moment. Poor mortals that we are! We must rule our lives in the hope that there is some changelessness in our affairs, and that causality is inevitable and reality a fact But none of this is true. We are helpless barks floating on waters of mystery and on waves which never repeat themselves, and the very stars betray us. Nothing is fixed or certain, and therein lies our distress. Our concepts of reality are subjective, not objective, for objectivity does not exist.”
“You deny objectivity, Aspasia?”
“Of a certainty. Our attempts at objectivity rise from our unique subjectivity, and each man has his own and none is alike.”
“You believe in no absolute?”
She lifted her gilded eyebrows as if with astonishment. “There is no absolute.” Her expression changed subtly. “Except, perhaps, with God, Whose reality has not as yet been proved, at least to the satisfaction of our scientists. He, too, is subjective. I consider objectivity only a confusion of men’s minds, and only private opinion, for on what subject can all men totally agree?”
“Your reasoning is shallow and chaotic!” shouted the teacher, now beside himself with anger. He swept the sticks from the table and they fell, clattering, onto the floor. He wished he could do the same with Aspasia.
“Reveal to me my error,” she said.
The other maidens were delighted, but Aspasia frowned on them and said, “It is more than possible that my conclusions are as foolish as those of our teacher or of any other mortal. None of us has the truth about anything at all.”
“You disturb and distract my students, to their disadvantage and destroy my authority,” said the teacher. “Remove yourself from my room and do not return until tomorrow.” He was more enraged than ever at her sudden smile of pleasure as she rose and left the room, her hair drifting behind her like a bright cloud, her lovely face serene and aloof. She resembled a nymph who had wandered here, unseen and unseeing, bent only on her own thoughts and desires and unaware of her surroundings.
She went into the gardens where the shadows of sycamores and oaks and myrtle trees were sharp and greenly dark on the grass and the pebbled walks, and where birds in cages hung from branches and chattered with those free in the brilliant air. The flowers in their beds stung the eye with their intense vividness and the sky and the large fishpool resounded with passionate blue. To Aspasia color had sound for the ear, and the frail resonances of the warm fountains appeared to her to have a secret color of their own. In her all the senses were one and interchangeable, so that taste, smell, hearing, seeing and touching met in a single emotion, often too acute and ardent to be borne without an overwhelming turbulence of the spirit. She could hear the deep murmur of the sea beyond the gardens. The statues in grottos and in the fountains were clothed in light. A slight breeze lifted her hair and stirred her white long tunic and the sun heated her cheek and her feet and hands. A cluster of palm trees clattered their fronds, and a parrot in a cage screamed and then laughed. There were no other sounds but these.
She could give herself wholly to joy and to the vehemence of the moment. She had already forgotten her unfortunate teacher. She had some time before she entered another classroom as a pupil. She lifted her delicate hands and let the sunlight stream through them, marveling at their sudden translucence and the rosy blood at their margins. What a wondrous thing was this world and all in it! A blade of grass, a stone, a leaf, held glories and mysteries beyond the words of any poet or philosopher. There was no common thing; nothing was gray or dull or lifeless or without beauty, but all shone with an inner splendor and astonishment at their own being. Nothing could be adequately explained or understood; nothing could be fully known. Therein lay the most profound of excitements, and amazements. She examined a lock of her hair, feeling its silken texture, its living presence. But, what was it in truth besides its seeming? What deeper reality was there behind what could be felt, tasted, heard, seen or touched?
Her thoughts were still childish and full of wonder, but her intensity was not childlike, nor the passion that rose in her nubile breast when contemplating all that existed. She was seized with restlessness, and she suddenly clenched her hands together to restrain her fervor. She wished to fly, to rush into the sea, to fling her body upon the ground, to hold all things in her arms and make them one with herself. There was an enormous hunger in her which had no name, no lineaments, no shape, no form, but which devoured her and moved her, at times, to weeping. She longed for embraces from all that she saw and heard. A butterfly, as red as blood, blew like a rose petal onto her knee and while she gazed at it her eyes filled with tears. It was not only the beauty of the insect which caused her heart to beat wildly. It was its very existence, and the enigma of its existence. She was overcome with adoration, but for what she did not know.
Behind her the pillared house with its painted frescoes seemed formed of white fire and appeared to float rather than to rest on the ground. Then there was the sound of lutes and singing, and she rose, trembling, and tried to compose herself, for now she must go to the room of the physician, who taught the maidens what they must know of the arts of healing.
She looked at the sky and whispered impetuously, “O gods, permit me a little wisdom, a little knowledge, a little comprehension, that I may be more than a beast of the field who chews his cud and lays down his offal! Let me be fully human, and preserve in me the divine fever of amazement, the divine questing for an answer!”
CHAPTER 3
The physician, a lively man of middle age and with an agile expression, was, like Aspasia and Thargelia, an Ionian of Miletus. His name was Echion. He had never been a slave, but had been born free and of a prosperous family who manufactured silver and gold ornaments, and he had attended an Egyptian school of medicine. He was broad and fat and muscular, with a round red face and eyes like glittering blue stones, yet mirthful, and he was bald and had a rosy dome rising above his thick black eyebrows, and several fatty chins which testified to a good digestion and an excellent appetite. He affected short tunics in many hearty colors, none of them subdued, and they revealed legs of an admirable shape for all their bulk. He was one of Thargelia’s lovers, and she paid him well and did not underestimate his talents in bed or in the schoolroom. She loved his full and red and lustful mouth which was almost always smiling, for he had perfect teeth of which he was proud. He was not so proud of his nose, which Thargelia fondly called a turnip, and his nostrils were filled with virile black hairs.
He was quite content to instruct the maidens of the school for the hetairai, and if he yearned after any of them he was prudent enough to confine himself to an apparently paternal touch on the shoulder or arm or cheek. He was also very lazy in spite of his vigorous appearance, and preferred the luxurious life in this house to any medical practice in the city, for such practice could be arduous and held few rewards in money or esteem. He had his own small marble house on the grounds of the school, from which Thargelia summoned him when she was in the mood to be amused and treated roughly in bed. He was amiable and shrewd and a fine physician, and had much wit and, to the respect of many, his knowledge of medicine was astounding and his potions magical. A cynic, he had little pity for suffering, and illness to him was a challenge to his ego. Disease was an affront to him, and did not arouse any compassion, for he despised all that was sickly and struggled to abolish it. The Egyptians said that a physician could cure only if his heart was moved and his emotions engaged in behalf of a patient, but Echion had proved that to be false and sentimental. It needed
but skill, and disease was an enemy which must be understood and defeated, for it was ugly and he hated ugliness. He also had a deep suspicion, with which the Egyptians did not concur, that a man was his own malady and induced much of his own torment. He bullied the sick and reproached them even as he ministered to them, and he felt his triumph over illness was also a triumph over the weak and recalcitrant, who obstinately preferred disease to health. Above all, he detested weakness, for at heart he was a warrior. There was, in him, that cruelty which is the endowment of an expert surgeon, and never did his hand tremble as it wielded the scalpel nor did anxious sweat ever moisten his face.
He loved all that was healthy and blooming and admired it openly, and so he had a reputation as a discerning man of much sensibility, which was entirely untrue. Unknown even to himself, disease terrified him and he felt it a threat to his own life, and a portent for the future.
He had an eye which could sight the enemy even when it was hidden behind a rose-lipped young face or concealed behind bright eyes, and many were the maidens whom he had induced Thargelia to dispose of hastily to the first bidder. She never disputed him. She had seen the results too often when she had not followed his advice. The girls soon sickened and died, to the surprise and bewilderment of their patrons, but not to Echion. “Did I not tell you that the maiden had diseased kidneys or sluggish blood or a feeble heart, though these were not evident to you or to others?” he would say to Thargelia when she would read a mournful letter from some wealthy man who had taken the girl in good faith. “You did well to rid yourself of her. The purchaser?” Echion laughed. “A man who buys a horse or a woman should be knowledgeable in the matter, or he is a fool and deserves no sympathy.” He well knew that no maiden was actually purchased, for she was not a slave, and could leave her protector at her own will at any time, but he liked to consider the potentially ill, and therefore the weak, less than dogs or cattle.