The Golden Mean (29 page)

“I can’t believe you’re going,” he says.

I give my student two gifts: a volume of Homer, and one of Euripides.

“But these are your own.” He looks through them. “Your notes are here.”

I nod.

“I will always sleep with them beneath my pillow,” he says gravely, and I bite back a smile. I rise. “No, no. For all I’m giving you, I want one more gift.”

“Anything.” What else can I say?

Alexander laughs and says, to an invisible audience, “Look at him. You’d think I was asking for his first-born.”

I feel a last pang of jealousy. Here is a mannerism I’ve not seen before; already Alexander has fallen under new influences. That I’ll no longer be close enough to watch him adopt and adapt, to watch his mind fill in as his body has—this is love, then, finally, I think, what I feel as I watch him. Maybe Callisthenes was right. As good as love.

“A lesson. I want a last lesson.”

We take our seats.

“I suppose it would be a waste of time to speak to you of moderation.” I hook a smile. “Therefore I will speak to you of excellence. What is human excellence? When is a man a good man? What does it mean to live a good life?”

“To triumph. To act to the furthest extent of one’s capacities. To flourish.”

“To flourish.” I nod. I talk about the exercise of a man’s faculties, and all the ways in which he might excel: in character, in friendship, in intellect. I linger over the intellect, explain that it is the divine seed in man that no other animal shares. In the hierarchy of excellences, intellect is at the top; therefore the best human life is that spent in pursuit of intellectual excellence.

“In philosophy,” Alexander says.

I turn away from the glibness in my student’s voice, the smooth amusement. I want at this moment to bury my face in my books the way Little Pythias once buried her face in her mother’s breast, obliterating the world thereby.

“Lysimachus used to say the same thing,” Alexander says. “That it was in my nature to excel in all things, and anyone who stood in my way was thwarting the will of the gods.”

“I don’t think that’s quite what I’m saying, is it?”

“Not quite.” Alexander smiles. “Lysimachus flourishes, these days.”

“Does he?”

“I’ve promoted him to my personal bodyguard. Oh, the face! You don’t approve?”

“Not for me to approve or disapprove. Only—”

“Only?” He leans forward.

“Only I would have thought he had all the preconditions to pursue the kind of excellence I’m describing to you. A well-rounded man, an athlete, an artist, a lively mind, just the mind to appreciate the innate superiority of the contemplative life. Not to mention the means, the leisure. I’m pragmatic enough to know that’s a necessary part of the equation.”

“I have the same qualities, don’t I?”

“If your father left you an impression of a Macedonian king having time for leisure, you weren’t paying very close attention.”

“Don’t avoid the question.”

“You have the same qualities. No. You have these qualities superlatively. You know it. You know I don’t flatter you. Have I ever?”

“Wouldn’t love you if you did.” Before an awkwardness can grow up he says, “I should retire to one of my father’s estates and spend my time in a comfortable chair, drinking water and considering the wonder of creation?”

“Not too comfortable a chair. My father’s estate is in Stageira, by the way.” I make sure he looks at me. “I never lived there as an adult.”

“A self-made man.”

“That can be hard to pull off. Harder than you know.”

He laughs. “You think your life is perfect. You think everyone should want to be you. All our years together, you’ve made your theories out of the accidents of your own life. You’ve built a whole philosophy around the virtue of being you. Seashells are worthy of study because you love to swim. Violence should be offstage because you never got to leave the tent at Chaeronea. The best government is rule by the middle class because you come from the middle class. Life should be spent in quiet contemplation because life never offered you more.”

“Tell me what more is.”

“There’s a whole world more.” His eyes go big. “You could travel with me, you know. I’m not staying here. I’m going east, and east, and east again. I’m going as far as anyone’s ever gone and then farther. Animals no one’s ever seen. Oceans no one’s ever swum in. New plants, new people, new stars. Mine for the taking. Yours, too. I’ll make sure you’re comfortable. We’ll carry you in a palanquin, cushions, scribes, wagons groaning with all the specimens you’ll collect. You’ll never even notice the army. We’ll just be clearing the way forward for you. To make the unknown known, isn’t that the greatest virtue, the greatest happiness? Isn’t that exactly what we’re talking about?”

“You conflate pleasure and happiness, real enduring happiness. A few thrills, a few sensations. Your first woman, your first elephant, your first spicy meal, your first hangover, your first ascent of a mountain no man’s ever climbed, and your first view from the top to the other side. You want to string together a life of thrills.”

“Teach me better, then. Come with my army. Come with me. You’ve been a father to me. Don’t orphan me twice.”

“You worked on that line.”

“I never please you. Not when I’m polished and not when I’m dull. Yes, I worked on that line. Is that so terrible? We’re not so different after all, you and me. We both work for what we want. Nothing comes easy. Does your work come easily to you?”

“No.”

“Look at me.” He stands up. “I’m short. I fumble when I talk. I blush. I’m afraid of the dark. I black out in the middle of battle and can’t remember anything afterwards. They look at me, they say, Great warrior, well-spoken, charming, worthy student of the greatest mind in the world. I’m holding on by my fingertips and so are you.”

I nod.

“Maybe you’ve made me into yourself after all. A fine, fierce surface on the mess underneath. Like you polished up my brother, teaching him to speak, teaching him to ride. That’s you, isn’t it? That’s you, and me, and him?”

I say nothing.

“I’ll tell you what I accept, in your theory of happiness,” he says. “I accept that the greatest happiness comes to those capable of the highest things. That’s where we leave my brother behind. That’s where you and I walk away from the rest of the world. You and I can appreciate the glory of things. We walk to the very edge as everyone else knows and understands and experiences it, and then we walk the next step. We go places no one has ever been. That’s who we are. That’s who you’ve taught me to be.”

“Did I teach you that?”

“I’ve made you sad.”

“Yes.” I touch my forehead. “Yes, you have.”

“We’re so alike. I’m your child.”

The boy who knew where to find the head, the heart, the breath, the brain. The boy who smelled so nice. The boy running in from the rain. “Majesty.”

He says, “Stay with me. Don’t make me go the next step alone.”

W
E LEAVE ON A SUNNY DAY
, when the sunlight sparkles on the marsh and makes the ocean blinding.

Alexander has loaded me down with goods and gear and servants and money until I begged him to stop. Herpyllis rides with the children on a cart lined with furs; she is cheerful and placid, nursing the baby, chatting with Little Pythias, almost four, who’s excited and fretful and already looking strained around the eyes, a sign of the headaches that afflict her. I gesture to Herpyllis to remind her about her hat. I know I am seeing in Little Pythias the anxiety her mother would be feeling about such a trip. Herpyllis, in contrast, could be going to the seaside, or back to Mytilene; it’s all the same to her. The slaves, Tycho and Simon and the rest, have a cart to themselves. Philes is mounted beside me, my plan for him realized at last. He can’t speak. He’s terrified.

“Uncle.” Callisthenes holds out his hand.

He’ll serve Alexander on his expeditions as official historian. Travel, then; with luck, love is still to come. We embrace and bid each other farewell.

I’m about to mount when he says, “There’s someone else here who wants to say goodbye.”

A tall young man with a familiar loping gait steps out from behind a cart, where he’s been hiding with the little groom who is now his companion. Both their grins are enormous.

“Now who is this?” I say, knowing.

“I don’t want you to go,” Arrhidaeus says.

The young man clings to me, even weeps briefly, while I pat his shoulders and his hair. “I’m very proud of you, Arrhidaeus.”

This, then, is what I see as I ride out: my nephew, his heart a Macedonian heart now; and the fool beside him no longer quite a fool, one hand raised in farewell, until they’ve dwindled, in my sight, almost to specks.

As soon as there’s no one to see, I dismount and get onto a cart so I can write. No more doctoring, politicking, teaching children; no more dabbling. Soon I’ll be alone in a quiet room where, for the rest of my life, I can float farther and farther out into the world; while my student, charging off the end of every map, falls deeper and deeper into the well of himself.
Never be afraid to enter an argument you can’t immediately see your way out of
. Can anyone tell me what a tragedy is?

AFTERWORD

C
LEOPATRA AND HER BABY DAUGHTER
were murdered shortly after Philip’s death, supposedly by Olympias. Leonidas once rebuked the boy Alexander for wasting incense on the altar, saying he should not be extravagant until he had conquered the countries that produced such spices. Years later, from Gaza, according to Plutarch, Alexander sent Leonidas “five hundred talents’ weight of frankincense and an hundred of myrrh.” Alexander conquered Persia and Egypt, and led his army as far as India and Afghanistan. At the oracle of Ammon at Siwa, he is supposed to have asked whether any of Philip’s murderers had gone unpunished, and whether Philip was really his father. He strove to synthesize Eastern and Western cultures, adopting Persian dress and manners. His behaviour during his long campaigns became increasingly erratic: he drank heavily, suffered fits of violent rage followed by crippling depression and guilt, and refused to go home. He took two wives, and died in Babylon of a stomach ailment at the age of thirty-two. Ptolemy became one of Alexander’s greatest generals and later ruled Egypt, where he established the Ptolemaic line of rulers that ended, in Roman times, with the death of his great-great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter from the bite of an asp. Hephaestion remained Alexander’s constant companion and died in battle scant weeks before Alexander himself. Callisthenes accompanied Alexander on his campaigns as a historian, but lost favour after criticizing Alexander for accepting obeisance from his soldiers in the Eastern fashion. The ancient biographer Diogenes Laërtius says Callisthenes was “confined in an iron cage and carried about until he became infested with vermin through lack of proper attention; and finally he was thrown to a lion and so met his end.” Arrhidaeus became regent of Macedonia during Alexander’s long absence in Asia, and king after his death. He was assisted by the aging general Antipater. Olympias quarrelled frequently with Antipater and eventually had Arrhidaeus murdered so she herself could serve as regent.

Aristotle returned to Athens to direct his own school, the Lyceum, until a rise in anti-Macedonian sentiment following Alexander’s death forced him to leave that city a second time. He spent his final year at the Macedonian garrison at Chalcis in Euboea, where he died at the age of sixty-one.

Aristotle’s will survives:

All will be well; but, in case anything should happen, Aristotle has made these dispositions. Antipater is to be executor in all matters and in general; but, until Nicanor shall arrive, Aristomenes, Timarchus, Hipparchus, Dioteles and (if he consent and if circumstances permit him) Theophrastus shall take charge as well of Herpyllis and the children as of the property. And when the girl [his daughter Pythias] shall be grown up she shall be given in marriage to Nicanor; but if anything happen to the girl (which heaven forbid and no such thing will happen) before her marriage, or when she is married but before there are children, Nicanor shall have full powers, both with regard to the child and with regard to everything else, to administer in a manner worthy both of himself and of us. Nicanor shall take charge of the girl and of the boy Nicomachus as he shall think fit in all that concerns them as if he were father and brother. And if anything should happen to Nicanor (which heaven forbid!) either before he marries the girl, or when he has married her but before there are children, any arrangements that he may make shall be valid. And if Theophrastus is willing to live with her, he shall have the same rights as Nicanor. Otherwise the executors in consultation with Antipater shall administer as regards the daughter and the boy as seems to them to be best. The executors and Nicanor, in memory of me and of the steady affection which Herpyllis has borne towards me, shall take care of her in every other respect and, if she desires to be married, shall see that she be given to one not unworthy; and besides what she has already received they shall give her a talent of silver out of the estate and three handmaids whomsoever she shall choose besides the maid she has at present and the man-servant Pyrrhaeus; and if she chooses to remain at Chalcis, the lodge by the garden, if in Stageira, my father’s house. Whichever of these two houses she chooses, the executors shall furnish with such furniture as they think proper and as Herpyllis herself may approve. Nicanor shall take charge of the boy Myrmex, that he be taken to his own friends in a manner worthy of me with the property of his which we received. Ambracis shall be given her freedom, and on my daughter’s marriage shall receive 500 drachmas and the maid whom she now has. And to Thale shall be given, in addition to the maid whom she has and who was bought, a thousand drachmas and a maid. And Simon, in addition to the money before paid to him towards another servant, shall either have a servant purchased for him or receive a further sum of money. And Tycho, Philo, Olympias, and his child shall have their freedom when my daughter is married. None of the servants who waited upon me shall be sold but they shall continue to be employed; and when they arrive at the proper age they shall have their freedom if they deserve it. My executors shall see to it when the images which Gryllion has been commissioned to execute are finished, that they be set up, namely that of Nicanor, that of Proxenus, which it was my intention to have executed, and that of Nicanor’s mother; also they shall set up the bust which has been executed of Arimnestus, to be a memorial of him seeing that he died childless, and shall dedicate my mother’s statue to Demeter at Nemea or wherever they think best. And wherever they bury me, there the bones of Pythias shall be laid, in accordance with her own instructions. And to commemorate Nicanor’s safe return, as I vowed on his behalf, they shall set up in Stageira stone statues of life size to Zeus and Athena the Saviours.