Glory and the Lightning

  He had no tolerance for those who would oppose inquiry, no matter how “impious” it seemed. “The only impiety,” he would say, “is a denial that the Divine Mind is larger than the mind of man.”

  Pericles would attend his classes and he would experience, as always, an exaltation of spirit and excitement as he listened to this majestic man’s teachings. He would feel an enlargement in himself, a quickening of consciousness. Anaxagoras perfected and colored his dreams for Greece above all other teachers. It was Anaxagoras who told him that he had become too engrossed with the arts of war and politics. Pericles joked, “Can a man’s mind contain all things?” to which the philosopher replied, “There is no limit to a man’s mind, no end to his speculation, if he is not lazy and does not tell himself that his mind can contain only so many matters, and that it is necessary to judge what is important and what not. Who are we to decide the importance of anything?”

  “Except truth,” Pericles would reply with mock solemnity. “Have you not said that, yourself, you scientist?” Anaxagoras replied, “Even truth has its amusing variables, and we scientists recognize that—if we are truly scientists.” He added, “Even reality changes or is transformed when man perceives it.”

  Pericles had heard of Pheidias, who was the same age as Anaxagoras, but busy as he was he had not yet encountered him. Anaxagoras soon changed that. He took Pericles to the studio of the sculptor, who now had a considerable fame. He had already executed the incomparable chryselephantine Athene for Pellene and the Marathon memorial at Delphi. The mighty bronze statue of Athene, which towered on the acropolis and was a landsight for sailors, had been designed and cast by him. He had many students; some of the more gifted imitated him expertly.

  He was an Athenian, son of Charmides, and though still fairly young he was balding, and he had a shy sweet smile infinitely touching and self-deprecating. His body was slight and bending like a young sapling, but his face was plump and rosy and frank, which gave him an appealing aspect. His workshop was as modest as himself, and as dusty, and as stained with paint and the shavings of metal, but as noisy as he was quiet. He greeted Anaxagoras with affection, touching him gently on the shoulder and smiling bashfully into his eyes. He gave the impression that he felt that Anaxagoras was demeaning himself by visiting him, Pheidias, and he was humbly grateful in consequence. He looked at Pericles with some timidity, for he was afraid of strangers. He had seen Pericles at a distance, at the theatre and in the halls of the Ecclesia, and at the games, and knew who he was.

  “My friend, Pericles, who is a notable soldier and, alas, a blossoming politician, has been very anxious to know you, dear friend,” said Anaxagoras. Anaxagoras was dressed as humbly as the famous sculptor but nothing could reduce his aspect of self-containment and grandeur. Pheidias led his two visitors outside his workshop and into the midday. Here there was a small but perfect garden of myrtles and oaks and sycamores surrounding graveled walks and one single flowerbed centered with a fountain in which stood one of his own works: a little but exquisite bronze statuette of Psyche with a butterfly on her shoulder, her wings outspread, one delicate foot poised on her pedestal. The metal had been polished by the water which flowed over her so that she was bright gold in the hot sunlight and airy. It was so finely wrought, that statuette, that it appeared alive and pulsing, and the infinitesimal veins on her hands and ankles seemed to palpitate with moving blood. A smile of eager and virginal seeking was on the lovely little face, an ardent desire for love. Pericles went to the fountain to admire this work and to long for it. Pheidias watched him with an expression of gratification, and he thought: Though this young man is obviously somewhat pompous in manner and speech, and even assuming, there is something splendid about him, something massively stately and sincere. As if Pericles had heard this thought he turned suddenly and encountered Pheidias’ gaze and he said to himself that here was a great man who understood more than one could guess, however simple his demeanor. Now Pericles himself understood what Zeno had meant when he had said that it was only the base fellow who swaggered and spoke importantly and had a high opinion of himself. Alas, however, the truly great were frequently ignored by the rabble, and even by government and prominent men, for they had no pretensions. He, himself, Pericles, acknowledged that he was not guiltless at times of open scorn, and that he slighted others when impatient.

  A student brought wine and cheese and olives and honey and bread to a rough plain table under the shade of an oak, and a dish of dates and figs. Pheidias made no hypocritical apology for the simplicity of this light meal and as the three sat and ate and drank Pericles gathered that food was of small importance to the sculptor and to Anaxagoras also. The wine was execrable, and cheap, yet Pheidias was not a poor man. It is probable, thought Pericles, that he has as meager a regard for food and wine as he has of money. In the background, from the workshop, there came a constant hammering and the sound of youthful voices.

  “It is my dream,” said Pheidias in his hesitating voice which implored forgiveness for his words, “to see Athens the supreme centre of beauty as well as philosophy and science.” He glanced up at the acropolis, and mused and his face became sublime with dreams. “I can see a temple there, to Athene Parthenos, and a statue of her before it of ivory and gold, a vast statue facing the dawn, heroic and terrible and commanding, bathed in the light of Aurora, and gleaming against the blue sky.”

  “It is not an impossible dream,” said Pericles, and Pheidias was pleased again by the sonorous quality of his voice. “I, too, wish for the glory of Greece and though Anaxagoras here despises politicians it is necessary to be one to obtain the money to bring a dream into reality.”

  “But we have a ramshackle democracy,” said Anaxagoras, “which is too solicitous for the bellies of the citizens to care for the glory of the nation. Only republics, and empires, can rise above the gutter and execute splendor. But democracies are feminine and republics and empires are masculine, and therein lies the difference between mediocrity and sublimity.”

  He began, as usual, to inveigh against the Ecclesia and the judges, not with rancor but with regret. Pheidias listened, sighing. “Even the arts, which are immortal, must stand aside for the greedy appetites of the mob,” he said. “You are correct, my Anaxagoras, in believing that the spirit is of more importance than the body. But it is impossible to tell government that. Or, they are afraid to acknowledge it in the search for votes.”

  He led his guests back into the workshop. “I perceive little or no marble here,” said Pericles. “Do you work only in gold and ivory or bronze?”

  “I find marble too ponderous,” said Pheidias, again with that air of fearing to give offense. “But I dream of the acropolis crowned with marble, as pure as light, as powerful in aspect as a mountain.”

  “Which you will grace with your genius,” said Anaxagoras. “How beautiful are the elements of nature, ivory, gold, metals, marble! They speak in the voices of silence, which are holy.”

  Pericles watched in fascination as Pheidias took up a knife and began to work on a statuette of Zeus. The knife flashed and cut as through butter, and Pericles marvelled at such elegant and fastidious power. The small countenance began to emerge, regnant and endowed with godly lineaments. “One day,” said Pheidias, as if thinking aloud, “it may be that I will enlarge this small thing into superhuman stature, not only for my own delight but for the greater delight of those who will see.” His face saddened a little as if he feared that such a dream had small hope for emerging into reality.

  When Pericles and Anaxagoras left Pheidias, Pericles carried with him a gift from the sculptor, an ivory figurine no longer than his index finger, and it was of a lovely woman with a clear and valiant face. She had the body of a young goddess, yet was mature of aspect. Her hair was dressed in the Grecian fashion and bound with ribbons, which Pheidias had colored with gold. One arm was lifted in a gesture of pinning her robe on her right shoulder, and one perfect leg was half-revealed. Her expression was musing but fir
m and there was a slight indication of humor about her mouth. Pericles held it on the palm of his hand and said, “Where is such a woman endowed not only with beauty but, better, with character and subtlety? Yes, I have my pretty courtesan, and she is like a mirror to me, reflecting back what I say. She has graces. But she is not as womanly as this, so bravely tender of appearance, so human yet so divine, indicating profundity of mind.”

  “You are speaking of Helena, the physician?” asked Anaxagoras with surprise, for he knew Helena.

  “No,” said Pericles. “Helena belongs to no man, not even to me, though she is often my companion. I speak of my Pomona, my nymph.”

  He studied the figurine again as it seemed to him that she moved on his palm and was about to speak. He put his hand in his pouch and withdrew a silken kerchief and carefully wrapped the figurine in it and returned both to his pouch.

  “If I do find such a woman—which is impossible, of course—she will be more to me than my life.” As they walked on down to the Agora, Pericles said, as though continuing a conversation with himself, “Yes, the dreams of Pheidias will emerge into reality. I know it in my soul.”

  He put the figurine on the chest at his bedside and would gaze at it for long periods, filled with yearning and desire. Once he dreamt that she grew and stepped down from the chest and was a tall woman and that she smiled at him and bent over him and whispered, “I have hoped for a man like you. We will find each other.” When he awoke he was comforted and thereafter spent years seeking for her in every assemblage and in every temple. He was always disappointed yet he never ceased to search.

  CHAPTER 7

  It had not been Pericles’ serious intention to marry early in life, and he had often hoped to escape marriage entirely. As to the latter he was discreet enough not to discuss it in the presence of potential enemies or random friends. For he was in politics and it was dangerous to dissent against popular custom, especially in the case of a man who had no older brothers to continue the family line. He had idly played with the thought after his two years’ ephebia, or military service, when his mother had hinted of his duty to the family. He had had his choice of the camp followers when he was a young officer, and there had been pretty slave girls in his father’s house, and a concubine or two. He had fallen in love with the hearty Helena, a former hetaira, and now a physician much deplored in Athens. Helena, however, was a happy companion to any man who attracted her—another violence against the public virtue—but she loved none except her former protector who had been a noted physician, himself, and who had trained her in the arts of medicine. Upon his death she had been disconsolate, but she was very healthy and natively cheerful and liked men and so later gave her favors as she chose and at her own will and desire. It was she who had introduced Pericles to Pomona, a young hetaira, and had furthered the alliance. Helena was naturally benign and affectionate and she arranged the affair partly because of fondness she had for both Pericles and the young girl, and partly to distract Pericles from her own person and to free herself from his importunities.

  In short, he had wanted her only for himself and Helena considered that both tedious and self-assuming. Yet, she did not hurt his feelings and his passion for her by dismissing him abruptly. She let him occupy her bed occasionally but did not encourage his devotion. She accepted his gifts joyously, smiling her rosy smile of genuine pleasure. She also appreciated his genuine regard for a woman who was intelligent, and who did not despise her as did other Athenian men. As a woman of sense she also knew that there were many times when even such a proud and sufficient woman like herself needed the protection and influence of a prominent man, and particularly a politician and a man of riches. Too, Pericles was very handsome and when he was not pompous he was a merry companion. She trained him not to take himself and public matters too seriously, as he was inclined to do, and introduced him to men of famous wit and ribaldry in her house at her sumptuous dinners. (She could eat and drink like a man, and as zealously, and did not consider asceticism a virtue. Accordingly her tall figure was voluptuous, but not fat.) Above all things she had an enormous sense of humor, rollicking and sometimes even rude and a little coarse, and she had lightened the astringent and acid-tipped tongue of Pericles so that his natural impatience did not break out into arrogant insult too often, insults that invariably exposed the other man’s secret foibles or weaknesses to the laughing eyes of others. “One thing I have learned,” she told Pericles, “is that fools sometimes attain power and they can be dangerous. Moreover a little kindness never hurt the giver. The predicament of humanity is sorrowful and tragic enough without making it more onerous, even when justly exasperated.” She brought reluctant compassion into his life.

  She had a round pink face and full red lips, a small impertinent nose and gray eyes fringed with lashes the same auburn tint of her hair, which, in the sun, turned to the color of copper. She could laugh like a jovial man, and usually did. When she discovered that Pericles had become sensitive over his towering brow she suggested the nobility of a helmet to be worn in public at all times. She laughed when he did so, for her suggestion had been half jest. It was her spontaneous kindness and her handsomeness which made Pericles adore her, and her intellect, untainted by the insistences and haughty fretfulness of his mother. She taught medicine to young men as well as practiced it and had her own infirmia, left to her in the will of the one man she had truly loved. Her friends were devoted, her enemies, fierce—the latter did not distress her for she was courageous, and neither sought good will nor placated a foe. Though only the age of Pericles she had something endearingly maternal about her. To the women of Athens, with her freedom and her free ways, she was a revolting scandal, a fact that did not disturb her. Her only female friends were the hetairai.

  “One day,” she said to Pericles, “intelligent women will not be classed with whores as they are now, but will be respected and honored. And you, my beloved, will help to advance this felicitous state of affairs.”

  “And you shall be the first to be honored,” he said in answer.

  He went to her one night saying that exigency and his mother’s prayers and arguments had induced him to enter into an engyesis (giving of a pledge into the hand) between himself and his cousin, Dejanira, through the offices of the Archon, Daedalus, her father. (Rather, it was a pledge between two men, the suitor and the kyrios, the father, if still alive.) “She will bring me a handsome dowry from both Daedalus and her unlamented husband,” he told Helena. “Better still, she will bring me influence and power through her father, and I have no time to waste.”

  Helena’s full face sobered and she gazed at Pericles with unusual intensity, her gray eyes flickering with thought. “I have seen Dejanira in wedding processions,” she said, “and in her litter, when accompanied by her father.”

  “She is, undoubtedly, not beautiful,” said Pericles, making a face. “Nor can she claim that Athena ever gifted her with a touch of intelligence.”

  “Ah, well,” said Helena, shrugging her plump shoulders. “I suppose a man must marry, to continue the line of his fathers, and I hear that Dejanira is a matron of many virtues and is assiduous in the managing of a household. Also, though you are rich, my Apollo, more riches are not to be despised.”

  “I agree that a married man can ask no more,” said Pericles. “I had hoped, however, to escape marriage entirely and devote my life to my country.”

  “It has been my observation that married men do not loiter about their households with any zest,” Helena said with a smile. “They leave such things to their wives, and wives can be useful in many ways. You could do worse.”

  “At least she will have to take the ritual bridal bath,” said Pericles.

  “Do not be unkind, O Apollo. Order your slaves to sprinkle the nuptial chamber with nard.”

  She had spoken lightly, but she was perturbed not only for Pericles but over Dejanira also. She had heard of Dejanira’s stupidity and her other defects of character, and she knew that Daedalus w
ent to the brothels not only in what he considered complete secrecy but as one went to a physician with a serious disease, hating the necessity and almost hating the healer for that necessity. His wife was a woman singularly like her daughter. Helena would have pitied him had he not been so coldly contemptuous and condemning of those who lacked his own dedication, sincere and passionate and without hypocrisy, to public and private rectitude. “He detests himself for what he cannot help possibly more than he detests others with fewer or no qualms,” Helena would say. “He is like one who resents the actions of his bowels but must drive himself to a latrine, holding his nose against the smell. One understands such men, but one cannot forgive them for their harshness towards others, and their vindictiveness. In castigating their fellows they castigate themselves and suffer larger pain.”

  Pericles was less charitable towards Daedalus, whom he found repellent. ‘He is as lean as a skeleton and has a skull-like face and a mouth like a dried date, without its oozing sweetness. When I shook his hand at the time of the engyesis it was like shaking fingers formed of brittle parchment, so little life does it have. His whole power lies in his voice, which is like a horn, and his manner which expresses civic virtue. He is also honest, which is a rarity among us Athenians, and actually believes what he says. His word needs no oath to seal it, and I suppose that can be counted in his favor. How my beautiful mother could have such a kinsman is one of the seven extraordinary wonders of the world.”