He ate at the house of Demades, with a few guests of honor; the occasion was not one for feasting. But it was very Attic: well-worn spare elegance, couches and tables whose ornament was perfect shaping and silky wood; wine cups of old silver thin with polishing; quiet expert service, talk in which no one interrupted or raised his voice. In Macedon, Alexander’s mere lack of greed put his table manners above the common run; but here he took care to observe the others first.
Next day on the Acropolis he made dedications to the City’s gods, in earnest of the peace. Here were the fabled glories, towering Athene of the Vanguard whose spear-tip guided ships—where were you, Lady, did your father forbid you the battle, as he did at Troy? This time were you obedient? Here in her temple stood Pheidias’ ivory Maiden in her robe of folded gold; here were the trophies and dedications of a hundred years. (Three generations; only three!)
He had been reared in the Palace of Archelaos; fine building was nothing new to him; he talked of history, and was shown Athene’s olive, which sprouted green overnight when the Persians had burned it. They had carried off, too, the old statues of the Liberators, Harmodios and Aristogeiton, to adorn Persepolis. “If we can get them back,” he said, “we will let you have them. Those were brave men and faithful friends.” No one answered; Macedonian boastfulness was a byword. From the parapet he looked for the place where the Persians had climbed up, and found it without help; it had seemed impolite to ask.
The peace party had got a motion passed that, to recognize Philip’s clemency, his statue and his son’s should be set up in the Parthenon. As he sat for the sculptor’s sketch, he thought of his father’s image standing there, and wondered how soon the man would follow it.
Was there anything else, they asked, any sight he would like to visit before he left? “Yes; the Academy. Aristotle my tutor studied there. He lives now in Stagira; my father rebuilt the town and brought the people back. But I should like to see where Plato taught.”
Along the road there, all the great soldiers of Athens’ past were buried. He saw the battle-trophies and his questions delayed the ride. Here, too, men who had died together in famous actions lay in fraternal tombs. A new site was being cleared; he did not ask for whom.
The road petered out into a grove of ancient olives, whose long grass and field-flowers were dried with autumn. Near the altar of Eros was another, inscribed EROS AVENGED. He asked the story. An immigrant, they said, had loved a beautiful Athenian youth, and vowed there was nothing he would not do for him. He had said, “Then go jump off the Rock.” When he found he had been obeyed, he made the same leap himself. “He did right,” said Alexander. “What does it matter where a man comes from? It’s what he is in himself.” They changed the subject, exchanging looks; it was natural the son of the Macedonian upstart should have such thoughts.
Speusippos, who had inherited the school from Plato, had died the year before. In the cool, plain white house that had been Plato’s, the new head, Xenokrates, received him, a tall big-boned man whose gravity, it was said, cleared a path before him even through the Agora at market-time. Alexander, entertained with the courtesy of eminent teacher to promising student, felt the man to be solid and took to him on sight. They talked a little about Aristotle’s methods. “A man must follow his truth,” Xenokrates said, “wherever it leads him. It will lead Aristotle, I think, away from Plato, who was a man for making How serve Why. Me it keeps at Plato’s feet.”
“Have you a likeness of him?”
Xenokrates led him out past a dolphin fountain to Plato’s myrtle-shaded tomb; the statue stood near it. He sat scroll in hand, his classic oval head stooped forward from heavy shoulders. To the end of his days he had kept the athlete’s short-cut hair of his youth. His beard was cleanly trimmed; his brow was furrowed across and down; from under its weight looked the haunted unwavering eyes of a survivor who has fled from nothing. “Yet still he believed in good. I have some books of his.”
“As to the good,” said Xenokrates, “he himself was his own evidence. Without that, a man will find no other. I knew him well. I am glad you read him. But his books, he always said, contained the teaching of his master, Sokrates; there would never be a book of Plato, for what he had to teach could only be learned as fire is kindled, by the touch of the flame itself.”
Alexander gazed eagerly at the brooding face, as if at a fort on some impregnable rock. But the crag was gone, overthrown by the floods of time, never to be assailed again. “He had a secret doctrine?”
“An open secret. You, who are a soldier, can only teach your wisdom to men whose bodies have been prepared for hardship, and their minds to resist fear; isn’t that so? Then the spark can kindle the spark. So with him.”
With regret and surmise, Xenokrates gazed at the youth who looked, with surmise and regret, at the marble face. He rode back past the dead heroes to the City.
He was about to change for supper when a man was announced and left alone with him; a well-dressed, well-spoken person, who claimed to have met him at the Council Hall. Everyone, he learned, had praised the modesty and restraint he had shown, so proper to his mission. Many regretted he should have denied himself, from respect for public mourning, the pleasures of a city so well able to provide them. It would be disgraceful were he not offered the chance to taste them in harmless privacy. “Now I have a boy…” He described the graces of a Ganymede.
Alexander heard him out without interruption. “What do you mean,” he then said, “that you have a boy? Is he your son?”
“Sir! Ah, you will have your joke.”
“Your own friend, perhaps?”
“Nothing of the kind, I assure you, entirely at your disposal. Only see him for yourself. I paid two hundred staters for him.”
Alexander stood up. “I don’t know,” he said, “what I have done to deserve you, or your merchandise either. Get out of my sight.”
He did so, returning with consternation to the peace party, which. had wished the young man to take away grateful memories. A curse on false reports! Too late now to offer a woman.
He rode north next day.
Soon after, the dead of Cheir Oneia were brought to their common tomb in the Street of Heroes. The people debated who should speak their funeral praises. Aischines was proposed, and Demades. But the one had been too right, the other too successful; to the sore hearts in Assembly, they looked sleek and smug. All eyes returned to the ravaged face of Demosthenes. Perfect defeat, enormous shame had burned out, for the time, all spite from him; the new lines on his tight-drawn skin were of a pain greater than hate. Here was one they could all trust not to rejoice when they were mourning. They chose him to speak the epitaph.
All the Greek states but Sparta sent envoys to the Council at Corinth. They acknowledged Philip supreme war-leader of Hellas against the Persians, for defense. At this first meeting he asked no more. All the rest would follow.
He marched to the frontier of sullen Sparta, then changed his mind. Let the old dog keep its kennel. It would not come out; but if cornered, it would die hard. He had no wish to be the Xerxes of a new Thermopylai.
Corinth, city of Aphrodite, proved readier to please than Athens.
The King and Prince were splendidly entertained. Alexander found time to climb the long path to Acrocorinth, and survey the great walls which, from below, looked narrow as ribbons round the mount’s towering brow. With Hephaistion he gazed, the day being clear, south to Athens and northward to Olympos; appraised the walls; saw where one could build better ones and scale those that were there; and was reminded to admire the monuments. At the very top was the small graceful white temple of Aphrodite. Some of the goddess’s famous girls, the guide advised them, would certainly at this time have come up from the city precinct to serve her there. He paused expectantly, but in vain.