song,
their eyes like waterfalls.
The gray-eyed goddess kneeled
at Zeus’s feet and, speaking softly, eyes cast down, she said, “My Lord, Almighty Ruler of the Universe, most just, most wise, I pray you, do not forget the needs of Corinth, Queen of Cities. I have tended her lovingly, cherished her, guided her gently through stunning
catastrophes.
Throne after throne I have watched kicked down
through the whimsical will
of malicious, barbarous gods — gods who amuse
themselves
like boys pulling wings off butterflies. Yet I’ve kept her
pillars,
shrine of the arts, seat of all taste and nobility. Preserve my work! Give Jason the throne — for the
city’s sake.
Surely a city means more in your sight than one mere
woman!
Pity Athena as she’d have you pity our beloved
Aphrodite!
Grant my request, and grant Aphrodite some other gift still dearer to her.”
Hera smiled, but the gray-eyed Athena
maintained her mask of innocence. Those who
attended her
bowed, heavy with solemnity, and tapped their scrolls, their money-boxes, crowns, and harps. Aphrodite’s cheek burned dark red. Zeus said nothing.
Her head bent
as if in supplication to the Father of the Gods,
Aphrodite
rolled her eyes toward her sister. “Don’t play games
with me,”
she whispered, “immortal bitch! How wonderfully
reasonable
you always make your desires sound! Do you think
they’re fooled,
these gods you play to? They know what you’re after.
Power, goddess!
You want your way no matter what — no matter who
you walk on.
But you can’t come right out and say it, can you? That
wouldn’t be civil,
and the lovely Athena is nothing if not civil! — Well,
so are
sewers! indoor toilets!” She trembled with rage. Athena smiled, as calm and serene as the moon above roiling,
passionate
seas. Suddenly the goddess of love burst into tears, wept like a shepherdess betrayed. The gray-eyed goddess
of cities,
magnificent queen of mind, shot a quick glance at Zeus,
then widened
her eyes as if in amazement. “Why Aphrodite!” she
exclaimed,
“my poor, poor love!” She gathered her sister goddess
gently
in her arms like a child, and Aphrodite cried on
Athena’s breast.
Hera smiled.
But the brow of Zeus was troubled. He looked
from the love-goddess to Athena. “Enough!” he said.
The hall
grew still. The stillness expanded. The eyes of the
Father God
were like thunderheads. After some minutes had passed,
he said,
“You’re clever, Athena. You’d outfox a gryphon. Yet
even so,
you may be wrong, and Aphrodite right. You talk of cities, of how they’re more important than a single
life.
But the city in which that’s true would be not worth
living in.
I’ve known such cities. One by one I’ve ground them
underfoot,
slaughtered their poets and priests and planted their
vineyards to salt.
You pleaded against such a city yourself for Antigone,
goddess!
Has it slipped your mind? ‘Where the dead are left
to the crows,’ you said,
‘where a life means nothing, let the whole white hovel
be crows’ fodder.’
Justice demands that I grant Aphrodite’s wish.” He
was silent.
Then Hera turned to him. Her eyes flamed. “And my
wish, sir?”
she hissed. “I knew I was a fool to leave my business
to Athena!
How can mere reason compete with that?” She pointed.
Aphrodite
covered her bosom, blushing. “I agree, it’s wrong to make cities more important than the
people who live in them.
Cities exist to make possible the splendid life — the life of mind and sense in harmony, fulfilled to the utmost.
Good!
But what of Jason’s life? But that doesn’t matter, of
course. Not to you!
Not with her there, pleading with her big pink boobs!
What counts with you,
O mixed-up Master Planner? You reason by whim, like
the rest of us,
for all your pompous, grandiose pretensions. Fact! You purse your lips, you muse in beatific silence, you
nod,
and you do what you damn well please! Well not to me,
husband!
I want what I want, and I’m not putting elegant names
on it.”
Hardly moving, Zeus glanced at her. The queen’s lips
closed.
Then no one spoke for a long time. The attendant
gods
shifted uncomfortably, sullen, from leg to leg. Yet more than a few in that hall, I thought, would have backed
her if they dared. Athena
gazed demurely at the floor, as if checking a smile.
Zeus sat
with one hand over his eyes.
At length, as if contrite,
Athena said softly, “It’s fair and just that you
upbraid me, Lord.
But my heart spoke truer than my tongue. I gave you,
foolishly,
the reasons I thought expedient. But it was not the
survival
of the city — not that alone — that I meant to beg of you. I plead for a good and patient man, a long-suffering
man,
one who merits what I ask for him. Aphrodite’s madness has chained him too long. Without the assistance of
any god,
he’s seen through it. O kind, wise Lord, don’t frustrate
the climb
of a virtuous man on the rising scale of Good! I claim no special virtues for cities, but this much, surely,
is true:
Virtue tested on rocky islands, country fields, however noble we call it, is virtue of a lesser kind— the virtue that governs the hermit, the honest shepherd.
The common
bee, droning from flower to flower in his garden, can
choose
what’s best for him and for his lowborn, pastoral clan.
The common
horse can be diligent at work, if his hide depends on it. The lion can settle his mind to fight, if necessary, but his virtue, for all his slickness, the speed of his
paws, is no more
than the snarling mongrel dog’s. It’s by what his mind
can do
that a man must be tested: how subtly, wisely he
manipulates
the world: objects, potentials, traditions of his race.
In sunlit
fields a man may learn about gentleness, humility— the glories of a sheep — or, again, learn craft and
violence—
the glories of a wolf. But the mind of man needs more
to work on
than stones, hedges, pastoral cloudscapes. Poets are
made
not by beautiful shepherdesses and soft, white sheep: they’re made by the shock of dead poets’ words, and
the shock of complex
life: philosophers’ ideas, strange faces, antic relics, powerful men and women, mysterious cultures. Cities are not mere mausoleums, sanctuaries for mind. They’re the raw grit that the finest minds are made of,
the power
that pains man’s soul into life, the creative word that
overthrows
brute objectness and redeems it, teaches it to sing.”
The goddess
bowed, an ikon of humility, and turned to the queen, stretching an arm in earnest supplication: “O Hera, Queen of Heaven, center of the world’s insatiable will, support my plea! Speak gently, allure as only you can allure great Zeus to the good he would wish,