"Gentlemen!" I said. " 'Tis late, so let's to our business. It concerns five bags of golden coins ..."
I went over the tale of Alexander's joke on the two professors, letting a fistful of staters rattle through my hands as I did so.
"Now," I said, "I have thought long on this matter and have concluded that drastic action is needed. Certainly we cannot let the king's benevolence and generosity to science be thwarted by petty human motives. If need be, I shall—"
"Good Leon!" cried Amyntas, as he had been coached to do. "Do not carry out your threat! Destroy not the glory of Athens!"
The Macedonian sank to one knee, giving an appearance of terror. Vardanas, Pyrron, and Theophrastos joined in with pleas that I spare the city. The two senior philosophers looked bewildered.
"What can this vulgar young ape accomplish?" said Aristoteles.
Amyntas said: "You little know your peril, O Aristoteles. Have you heard of the Eyes and Ears of the Persian Kings?"
"Thertainly. Do you take me for an ignoramus?"
"Well, Troop Leader Leon is the Eyes and Ears of Alexander. The king, you know, has kept and even strengthened the security organization of the Persian kings. A harsh word in one of Leon's reports to Alexander were enough to snatch me from Athens, haul me off to Babylon in chains, and crucify me."
"Ah!" said Aristoteles, glaring defiantly at me. "When I hang on the croth at Babylon, O Leon, I trust you will be there to observe. It will make it easier, to thee a familiar face."
"I dinna threaten you personally," I said. "Nor Xenokrates. First, let me explain my plan. I have here gold pieces worth twenty-seven thousand drachmai, consigned to Xenokrates, who, however, refuses them. Aristoteles has an elephant that will, to put it gently, prove dear to keep.
"I propose that Xenokrates use this money to set up a fund for the elephant's keep. As so much gold would be unsafe to keep in anybody's house, I propose that the money be deposited with the banking firm of Dareios and Pamphylios. My inquiries show them to be trustworthy, and Aristoteles can draw on this deposit as needed. Then, as even elephants live not forever, you two can agree on some worthy cause on which to spend the balance of the money after Aias departs this life."
"Preposterous!" said Xenokrates.
"Utter rubbish!" said Aristoteles.
"Preposterous rubbish, perhaps," I said. "But hear what will happen if you agree not. I shall inform King Alexander that the schools of Athens are hotbeds of subversive anti-Macedonian agitation and conspiracy. I shall advise him to close down all philosophical schools anywhere in Hellas or in his empire. If you think of removing to Sicily, know that Alexander is on his way back from India. Soon, no doubt, he will gobble up Magna Graecia and Carthage as he has all other nations in his path. So much for philosophy!"
"My dear young man!" cried Xenokrates. "Do be—ah—reasonable!"
"I will not be reasonable! You two have placed me in an absurd and undignified position, and I'll do whatever I must to get out of it.
"Now, gentlemen, if you wish to discuss this proposal in private, yonder's my room. The rest of us will take a pull at this excellent Thasian whilst you settle the future of human thought betwixt you."
Aristoteles said: "A hundred years ago, Thessalian, none would have dared to make such a threat in Athens. You would have been knocked on the head and thrown into the Barathron for conspiring against the right of free Hellenes to freedom of thought. I fear, however, that the Light of Hellas flickered out at Chaironeia. As Sophokles says:
"Of all the ills that plague the human kind,
None harsher is than stark Necessity.
"Come, Xenokrates."
The professors withdrew. The rest of us drank and talked of trivial matters. Soon the two godlike intellects came out. Aristoteles said:
"So be it. Draw up your contracts. The barbarians have vanquished us after all, eh, Xenokrates?"
The signing took place in the Deigma at Peiraieus the following afternoon. The money was counted out and handed over to the bankers. Afterwards, as I walked out into the sunlight from the colonnade with Aristoteles, I noted that his bitterness and sarcasm of the night before had vanished. He said with a wry grin:
"I don't think you could have clone as you threatened, young fellow. At worst, I could have written the king a letter that would have caused you more trouble than you caused us."
"Then why did you agree?"
He lowered his voice. "I thought so ingenious a plot deserved to succeed. Besides, old Xenokrates can't endure forever, and he ought not to carry his feud with me to his grave. And the money will, I confeth, be jolly convenient for keeping Aias in hay and cabbages." He chuckled. "My previous offer still stands. If you'll remain in Athens, answering all my thilly questions about the mysterious East, the school will permit you to attend the thummer term gratis. How say you?"
"Will you include my friend Vardanas? He can answer many questions that I cannot."
"A foreigner in my school? That were unheard of!"
"Doubtless you're right, O best one. I'll send him to the Akademeia instead; there he can perform the same office for Xenokrates that I do for you."
"Wait. On second thought, it were more expedient to bring him to my school. We cannot let foreigners acquire erroneous ideas of Greek thought as a result of dear old Xenokrates' fumbling attempts to elucidate it. Be at the Lykeion at thunrise tomorrow. You have your choice of my lecture on advanced political thience and Theophrastos' lecture on elementary natural history. In the afternoon, Herkleides will talk on the Pythagorean theorem. Bring a tablet for notes, and don't be late. We have no patience with slugabed scholars!"
That night I wrote the king my last report. I gave him a final accounting of his money, enclosed copies of Xenokrates' receipts, and tendered the resignation of Vardanas' and my commissions.
Let me note a curious thing about the two rival philosophers. Despite Aristoteles' patronizing remarks about poor old Xenokrates' short remaining life, Aristoteles died only three years later in exile in Chalkis, while Xenokrates survived eleven years after I met him and reached his eighties.
As even Aristoteles admitted, Xenokrates was a dear old chap and an earnest if humdrum interpreter of the divine Platon. But he was, in my opinion, no very deep or original thinker. He had none of Aristoteles' godlike brilliance and breadth of view of the workings of the universe. It would not surprise me if, a hundred years from now, men still remember the name of Aristoteles of Stageira.
Now began one of the happiest times of my life. Were human memory more trustworthy, I could fill another book with my discussions with Aristoteles. Although I clearly recall the opinions he expressed, after so many years I can no longer separate one discussion from another, let abee set them in proper order with correct dates. So any Aristotelian dialogues I wrote would be like those imaginary speeches historians put into the mouths of the men of yore: true in a higher sense, perhaps, but not literally and exactly true to what had befallen. And I prefer the literal, exact kind of truth, leaving loftier kinds to loftier minds. Forbye, Aristoteles' opinions are clearly set forth in his dialogues, of which most leading scholars and royal libraries have copies.
I soon found, however, that whilst I could follow the philosophers when they spoke of commonplace things like the organs of animals and the politics of states, I soon went in over my head when they talked of logic or mathematics, or explained why Zeus put the earth at the center of the universe with the planets going round it. In fact, I could then make no sense of their talk at all. When I confessed this to Aristoteles, he said:
"Don't distreth yourself about it, Leon. There are people with abstract minds, and people with practical minds, and the unthinking mass with virtually no minds at all. You possess a practical mind, although of course the abstract mind is the noblest kind."