Story: "The fire's mark" - Chapter One
Even if it can be considered as a part of a greater whole, this tale was however
meant to be a one-shot story perfectly capable to stand up by its own (or so I hope); my thanks go to
baranduin and above all to *wonderful* lorie945 who helped me to turn my hideous translation from Italian into something you could recognize as english, and who gave me amazing comments and advices...*hugs*
Title: The fire's mark
Author: Flora
Rating: Restricted to Adults (for some language and mild m/m sexuality)
Archive: Please, ask before...^^
Summary: Memories, thoughts, voices from the past - and the marks of a fire which burns too high. Days can be endless at Mieza, for Alexander and Hephaistion.
Feedback: yes, please...After the nightmare I've been through to translate this monstruosity I would need it!^^
Notes: This tale has been published two years ago on an Italian historical magazine; even if the audience was supposed to be cultured in history, the magazine wasn't specialized in hellenism; so I had the need to mingle the purpose of the story together with a solid historical background (and factual informations) and a progressive introduction of the many characters which appear in the story. That's why I chose to adopt a narration based on different POVs. (And especially the first chapter - which follows Aristotle's thoughts -could be considered as a real introduction).
The Italian version of the story is here - right click to download:
http://hephaistion.altervista.org/racconti/Il_tocco_del_fuoco.doc
For the English translation, click the Lj-cut.^^
THE FIRE’S MARK
"...Alexander, imperium tuum cludit oceans. O quantum magnitudo tua rerum quoque naturam supergressa est"
"Alexander, it's the ocean which encloses your dominion, and your greatness outcame nature itself"
Maro: "Suasoriae"
Chapter 1.
Summer had finally arrived at Mieza, in a glorious triumph of colors and scents.
The air, still chilly for the late beginning of the season, had been filling up with a vibrant secret energy of its own, turning the sky into a casting of liquid silver upon the dark patches of woods. Hidden among the grass, the wild narcissuses opened their pale white petals and spread a waxy scent, and the wheat was growing high on the lawns, the ears a golden wave ruffled by the wind.
Aristotèles stepped lively along the shady corridor, already breathing the spicy fragrances of myrtle and olive trees brought in by the first puffs of summer. He reached a window flooded by the warm afternoon sun and let that pleasant warmth heat his body, grown numb by the cold walls of the library in which he had spent the morning - then, he lazily stretched out.
He wouldn’t be so disrespectful as to address himself as old, but he hadn’t failed to notice how, lately, his bones seemed to take more and more of an eternity to get warm again, after a period of inactivity. Besides, the rooms of the old, hunting mansion which housed the many students of his school were perpetually cold.
The man looked out, toward the garden invaded by the brushwood, and wasn’t surprised to find it deserted.
He had granted his pupils a free afternoon and warned them to put it to good use by looking for some plants and shrubs drawn to them that morning at lesson - yet, he knew where to find the greater part of those boys, had he just tried to look for them.
A skewed smile, half-way between disappointment and amusement, curved his lips at the thought. They had to be around the woods, chasing some fox or, more probably, having a bath at the nymphs’ pool, to freshen up from the sudden summer swelter.
All, that is, except two of them.
He scanned the lawn below, and there they were in fact, under the shadow of an old beech, two seated figures intent on reading a book that one of the boys kept open on his knees.
Alèxandros, crown prince of Makedonìa, had his golden head slightly tilted on the side and was gesturing excitedly as he spoke, while the boy seated beside him, engrossed in listening, lightly nodded.
Aristotèles knew the book, having presented it to the young prince himself on the day they first met in Pella - nevertheless, he had not imagined it would exert such a powerful fascination over a boy that young. It wasn't the first time Alèxandros had surprised him, and he doubted it would be the last.
He had brought a highly valuable edition of the work of Xenophon from Athens, the history of Kyros, Great King of Asia, who had united the Median and Persian populations when they had been barely more then barbarian tribes in perennial struggle against each other. Kyros had moved forward unstoppable through those lands, taking ancient Babylon itself, together with her legendary treasures - giving birth to the immense Empire that spread from east of Hellespontus to the edges of the world.
Greeks knew that empire very well.
The Gods knew how many offenses had been inflicted on the sons of Hellas by those impious and powerful barbarians, the name of Xerxes still cursed by the sons of their sons, and only the Gods knew when the time of the rightful vengeance would come.
But now, Aristotèles reflected, Hellas had something better to think upon.
He scrutinized the small figure of the prince, so absorbed in his reasoning he was crackling with an hidden energy of his own. It startled Aristotèles to notice how much he resembled his father, and not for the first time.
It wasn’t in Alèxandros’ physical looks, or not so much to catch the eye anyway, but in the seemingly insignificant details as the sudden strength with which he clenched his jaw or the spark that lit up his grey eyes when he grew heated in an argument. More than that, it was the irrepressible energy that seemed to radiate from every fiber of his body which struck Aristoteles as being most like the King his father. He had personally met Philippos only a few months before, but there wasn’t anybody in Greece, who hadn’t heard about him.
Aristotèles squinted his eyes until a mesh of wrinkles appeared at the sides of his face.
Those old, flabby Athenian demagogues.
They had called Philippos a barbarian, the King of a backward province that, at the moment of his accession to the throne after one of the countless, bloody struggles for succession, seemed still plunged in the age of Dorians. They had even mocked his attempts to give himself a semblance of that Greekness they were so proud of and which he couldn’t have as birth’s right.
They had called him a barbarian, a buffoon, the shame of Hellas.
But now that barbarian held almost all Hellas tight in his iron fist. His boorish soldiers and his generals, his army of men who spoke the hideous Doric dialect that couldn’t even be called Greek, had advanced irresistibly - the ridiculous coarseness of their customs mangling Greece into inert feebleness.
None of the speeches or intrigues of the petty politicians who crowded Athens, as well as the henhouse that the agoras had become, had been of any use. Not even the delirious invectives of that peacock Demosthenes, who preached that a rude barbarian didn’t have the right, couldn’t set himself up as supreme leader of the sacred Hellas. Philippos had let them have their talk.
And then he had acted, scorchingly rapid as a bird of prey.
Aristotèles smiled while a cruel expression appeared on his features.
His love affair with Athens had long gone. It had died after Platon’s death, when he had been set aside in favor of that old fat hen of Speusippos as the head of the Academy to which he had devoted so many years of his life.
It had been an intolerable affront, but he had learned to live with it, and he hadn’t been surprised when the King had come to him.
Aristotèles remembered Philippos very well.
He was well known for the incontinence of his customs, his utter love for wine (but what Makedonìan did not overindulge in the pleasures of Dyonisos?), his hot temper, his libertine ways. Nevertheless, the man wasn’t without a charm of his own.
Trying to clean himself up from the stink of barbarism, he had summoned to Pella artists, scholars, all the most distinctive figures of Greece. He had had his generals’ sons educated by the most estimed Athenian teachers. The royal palace of Archelaos in Pella had nothing to envy in its magnificence, to the most beautiful buildings of which Greece herself was so proud.
He had even attempted to learn to speak Greek with the soft, perfect Ionic accent of Attika and, indeed - Aristotèles had to give him credit for this - the results had been remarkable.
It was as if Philippos had wished to show that he was a spouse worthy of the lover he had decided to take by strength.
That lover had repudiated him, rejected him - made a fool of him.
Philippos still loved her, but he didn’t have anything more to prove and he knew it.
The bride was his by now, by right of force.
The King had been called to the north by a violent rebellion of Thracian tribes and had been forced to momentarily put aside his fierce dissensions with Athens, but he would be back soon. Aristotèles was conscious that the decisive battle for supremacy was about to begin and he knew which side he would be on, when the moment came.
He returned to observing the prince once again. Alexandros’ head and the one of the boy beside him were touching as they leaned against each other and continued reading. The afternoon light made their hair shine with bronze sparkles - they were motionless as two golden statues forsaken on the grass.
Aristotèles was the son of the physician who had taken care of Amyntas, Philippos’s father, as well as Philippos himself, since his early years. He knew Makedonìa very well, yet was conscious that was not the only reason for which the King had come to look for him as far as Mitilene, on the island of Lesbos, where he had withdrawn to devote himself to his naturalistic and zoological studies.
Philippos wanted his son to be educated as a Hellene.
He wanted his son to be a rightful descendant of that Greece which would never accept the father, no matter how many efforts he made or gifts he would bring her - or how much blood he would shed.
Alèxandros would be different; the boy would have everything he had never been able to get. He would be a Greek.
The cruel smile lit the man’s half-closed eyes once again. He hadn’t sold himself cheap - he was well conscious of his value.
Stagira, small pearl of Khalkidiki, had been destroyed by Philippos himself a few years before, many of its inhabitants sold as slaves.
Stagira had been his price. Philippos would rebuild it, he wouldn’t accept anything less, and the King hadn’t even batted an eyelid at his request.
Of course it wasn’t only about Stagira.
His eyes flashed. The temptation to have such a great part in all of this, and in what was likely to come, had been attractive as the logical challenges on which he'd once embarked with his colleagues of the Academy.
He had been asked to educate a boy.
He would shape a King. A King who was likely to rule the whole, united Hellas one day - a Greek King, for a new Greece.
The attempts of the cowardly Athenian politicians would be worth nothing, Greece was already held tight in Philippos’ iron grip by now, it didn’t take much of an effort to see it. Alèxandros was going to claim her as his own, one day, even if he was barely more then a child now.
Aristotèles was a pragmatic man.
Athens had humiliated him, had put someone else before him, but he would come back, he would show he had been able to bring them someone capable of leading their drifted beloved.
It would be a sweet revenge. Oh, it would.
Philippos hadn’t minded any expenses. He had agreed, taking Aristotèles’s advice, that it would be best to educate Alèxandros away from Pella’s tense atmosphere as well as the intrigues and the schemes of a court that, even if he was reticent to admit it, still remained rough and uncultivated as the mountainous lands north of the Makedonìan capital.
Philippos had refurbished a country mansion in an enchanting valley half a day’s horseback ride from Pella, had its walls repainted by the most talented frescoers, had summoned servants, furniture and ornaments, and had supplied the library with new books.
Aritotèles had, thus, moved to Mieza with the young prince and the sons of the most important nobles of Makedonìa - mainly Philippos’ faithful generals, youths who were going to become Alèxandros’ retinue and army companions.
The place, considered sacred to the Nymphs, had proved to be an inestimable source for his studies. Aristotèles had gone into ecstasies over it. The woods and the surrounding countryside swarmed with life, and he was trying to collect and to catalogue samples of the highest number of plant and animal speciments. His stay at Mieza would bring unquantifiable benefits to his botanical and zoological researches.
Just the day before, while he was walking through the gardens of Midas (and what name would be more appropriate to address the heaven he was in?), he had caught sight of a new species of rodent he didn’t know yet.
He would send one of his boys to catch one for him. After all, he was becoming too old to run the risks of breaking his bones crawling through the bushes the way he once did.
The thought of it made him smile but it also brought him a twinge in the chest.
Time had passed yet life continued to be beautiful and full of alluring mysteries to him. One existence would never be enough, but the Gods have their own ways of mocking men, after all.
Aristotèles lowered his eyes again. Alèxandros seemed still lost in his Xenophon. To tell him that the great Kyros had likely had very little to do with the enlightened and admirable monarch the book described would be useless. Xenophon had simply outlined the portrait of the ideal King and had given him the name of Kyros. Alèxandros wouldn’t believe it, so why tell him that? The boy could be stubborn in his argumentations.
Aristotèles had chosen the book for its ethical and didactic aims, and this should have been enough for him, but he had been amazed at the passion Alèxandros had put into reading it, and at the unforeseen questions - sagacious indeed - he had asked already and that he was evidently going to keep on asking.
He didn’t seem to ever be satisfied with discussing the singular way Kyros had chosen to rule the immense land he had created and their arguments had often degenerated, against Artistotèles' own will. The philosopher knew about Alèxandros’ love for Homer, but that heroic epic, imbued with hubris, was popular among the boys his age.
More remarkable had been his falling in love with Kyros.
It was undoubtedly a positive sign that a future monarch was interested in the way to run a kingdom, but there had been certain times in which Aristotèles himself had run out of words. Alèxandros appeared more interested in knowing the exact amount of the soldiers Kyros had had in his army, or the road network that, so he said, had to be huge for it linked several capitals of the empire, rather than the intimate logical and ethical mechanics of the art of ruling.
The boy could be impossible, sometimes.
He had already been well educated, to tell the truth. Arisotèles knew that his first tutor had been a certain Leonidas, one of his mother’s relatives, an upholder of the strictest educational methods of Spartan derivation.
Since an early age Alèxandros had been trained to hardship and privation as well as to have a disciplined hold on his most basic needs. Aristotèles had heard rumors he would have dismissed as false had he not seen the boy with his own eyes. Leonidas had trained him to manage with practically nothing. He had even starved him, so it had been said, wore him out with physical excercise and deprived him of a warm cloak as well as wool blankets during Pella’s hard winters. The result had been that the boy could bear virtually every privation, but was as stubborn as a mule.
He could speak Greek, and even quite properly, but he did it only when he wished. On more then a few occasions he had addressed Arisotèles with insults in the vulgar Makedonìan of the soldiers (he had surely learned it in the men’s barracks, when he still lived in the den of Pella, left to his own like a wild cub), staring at him with a defiant look.
This, more than anything, got on Aristotèles’nerves; it was like the young prince constantly put him to the test, and it would be absurd to think this about a boy just fifteen years old.
But thus it was.
It couldn’t be denied he was intelligent. He kept the pace with his lessons at a speed the other boys could only dream of, he commented on Homer with an unthinkable correctness of language while the others still hobbled on the easy didascalic editions, and Aristotèles was certain to have been able to arouse his ardent curiosity - even though the boy was reluctant to admit it.
He must have loathed old Leonidas.
One day, he had asked his pupil a query through an abstract syllogism. The only proper solution was by means of a logical extrapolation, but the boy had looked at him disgusted and had offered, instead, an unexpected and rather sagacious practical solution.
Arostotèles shook his head. The boy had purebred blood, but was difficult to manage. Nevertheless their relationship was improving.
His gaze slide to the boy sitting beside the prince and he found himself staring at his serious and composed features.
He remembered the day he had conducted a lesson about friendship. Like friendship is, for a man, the greatest welfare, the inestimable wealth to find, outside oneself, another self, like a single soul shared in two bodies. He had often disagreed with Platon in the past, but he had never nursed any objection to this concept.
He had talked to the boys of how friendship is virtue in itself, whose ultimate aim is to protect and to love the virtue in the other - of how there is only one, unique perfect friend for each man, and how great is the gift of the Gods if they decide to make such an aknowledgment possible.
Perfect friends share everything - enjoyment and happiness as well as privations.
They share their own visions and purposes. The dreams of one are the dreams of the other.
Akhilleus and Patroklos, till the end.
The other boys had giggled at this mention. The tavern gossip concerning the alleged relationship that bound the two heroes was well-known, all things considered. They were all very young and Aristotèles knew that love skirmishes as well as the moods of a body that was changing too quickly were inevitable at that age. He turned a blind eye because this offended neither his Athenian morals, nor was it in contrast with Makedonìa’s. Nevertheless he had willingly left aside the transient sphere of Eros, who dazzles and makes easily blind, something that, in his own opinion, took away rather then adding to friendship.
The kind of friendship he was talking about was a communion of souls.
Alèxandros hadn’t laughed at it; his eyes had sparkled while he was listening to his talk. Maybe one of his lessons had found a way into the youth’s heart.
The two boys had been inseparable well before their arrival at Mieza. They had surely met previously, but since their first days at the school it had been clear as the sun they were attached to one another even more deeply then one would expect of two boys that age.
Hephaistion, so the other boy was named, was the son of Amyntor, one of Philippos’ closest generals, one of his Hetairoi, the companions of the highest rank of cavalry. Arostotèles had even caught a glimpse of the man one day, when he had come to visit his two sons who were studying at Mieza. He was an imposing figure, somehow different from the common, coarse Makedonìan soldier, and one who certainly commanded respect.
Amyntor had curiously polite manners, even refined if compared to the rough and uncouth men of his land, and Aristotèles wasn’t surprised Philippos held him in such high regard. Even his Greek was quite remarkable, as if he had frequented Athens with assiduity.
The boy’s, though, was perfect.
Hephaistion had surely grown up in Athens, perhaps the son of some local concubine. Aristotèles hadn’t gone into this aspect in more depth and the boy appeared rather reticent to talk about his past, but there weren’t any doubts. The neat accent, the soft sound of the Attik pronunciation was a delight to Aristotèles’ ears, and too perfect to have been merely learned in school.
Aristotèles had been stunned to find such an attentive and brilliant pupil in him; the greater part of the boys at Mieza had been ordered there by their fathers who wished to gain advantages from the fact their sons had been the prince’ schoolmates as well as his boyhood friends. Achieving a place at Mieza had surely been much longed for by many an ambitious father. Unfortunately, this hadn’t brought any benefit to Aristotèles, who was often forced to talk to an inattentive and absent-minded classroom, and this had revealed to be frustrating almost beyond belief.
Hephaistion, instead, was a source of endless satisfaction to him.
The youth was the only one who could keep pace with Alèxandros in the study, had a curious and lively mind, and his swift mental leaps were disarming even for Aritotèles. He showed an iron grasp of logic, yet he possessed a deep sensitivity, so rare in a boy that young.
He was seventeen, but often, observing his earnest and concentrated face, Aristotèles thought it was difficult to give him an age. He didn’t have the lively impudence and the taste for challenge that characterized the young prince. Rather, he was quiet, often secretive, although it was possible to sense a continous flow of emotions running deep beneath the surface.
A movement below roused Aristotèles from his reflections. The two boys had stood up. Hephaistion kept the book under his arm and was walking next to Alèxandros as they headed at a brisk pace for the wood, right beyond the garden. They had at last decided to join the others, Aristotèles thought with amusement. The afternoon had become muggy and the attractive call of the lake must have been irresistible even for them.
He followed them with his eyes until they vanished in the undergrowth, among the shadows and the bushes of canine-rose, then he raised his face toward the limpid sky, the sun of a dazzling and divine brightness.
He smiled while he shielded his eyes with a hand. The Gods had been generous; it was going to be a perfect summer and everything at Mieza was already showing the signs.
Aristotèles turned and disappeared down the dim corridor.
Chapter two
meant to be a one-shot story perfectly capable to stand up by its own (or so I hope); my thanks go to
baranduin and above all to *wonderful* lorie945 who helped me to turn my hideous translation from Italian into something you could recognize as english, and who gave me amazing comments and advices...*hugs*
Title: The fire's mark
Author: Flora
Rating: Restricted to Adults (for some language and mild m/m sexuality)
Archive: Please, ask before...^^
Summary: Memories, thoughts, voices from the past - and the marks of a fire which burns too high. Days can be endless at Mieza, for Alexander and Hephaistion.
Feedback: yes, please...After the nightmare I've been through to translate this monstruosity I would need it!^^
Notes: This tale has been published two years ago on an Italian historical magazine; even if the audience was supposed to be cultured in history, the magazine wasn't specialized in hellenism; so I had the need to mingle the purpose of the story together with a solid historical background (and factual informations) and a progressive introduction of the many characters which appear in the story. That's why I chose to adopt a narration based on different POVs. (And especially the first chapter - which follows Aristotle's thoughts -could be considered as a real introduction).
The Italian version of the story is here - right click to download:
http://hephaistion.altervista.org/racconti/Il_tocco_del_fuoco.doc
For the English translation, click the Lj-cut.^^
THE FIRE’S MARK
"...Alexander, imperium tuum cludit oceans. O quantum magnitudo tua rerum quoque naturam supergressa est"
"Alexander, it's the ocean which encloses your dominion, and your greatness outcame nature itself"
Maro: "Suasoriae"
Chapter 1.
Summer had finally arrived at Mieza, in a glorious triumph of colors and scents.
The air, still chilly for the late beginning of the season, had been filling up with a vibrant secret energy of its own, turning the sky into a casting of liquid silver upon the dark patches of woods. Hidden among the grass, the wild narcissuses opened their pale white petals and spread a waxy scent, and the wheat was growing high on the lawns, the ears a golden wave ruffled by the wind.
Aristotèles stepped lively along the shady corridor, already breathing the spicy fragrances of myrtle and olive trees brought in by the first puffs of summer. He reached a window flooded by the warm afternoon sun and let that pleasant warmth heat his body, grown numb by the cold walls of the library in which he had spent the morning - then, he lazily stretched out.
He wouldn’t be so disrespectful as to address himself as old, but he hadn’t failed to notice how, lately, his bones seemed to take more and more of an eternity to get warm again, after a period of inactivity. Besides, the rooms of the old, hunting mansion which housed the many students of his school were perpetually cold.
The man looked out, toward the garden invaded by the brushwood, and wasn’t surprised to find it deserted.
He had granted his pupils a free afternoon and warned them to put it to good use by looking for some plants and shrubs drawn to them that morning at lesson - yet, he knew where to find the greater part of those boys, had he just tried to look for them.
A skewed smile, half-way between disappointment and amusement, curved his lips at the thought. They had to be around the woods, chasing some fox or, more probably, having a bath at the nymphs’ pool, to freshen up from the sudden summer swelter.
All, that is, except two of them.
He scanned the lawn below, and there they were in fact, under the shadow of an old beech, two seated figures intent on reading a book that one of the boys kept open on his knees.
Alèxandros, crown prince of Makedonìa, had his golden head slightly tilted on the side and was gesturing excitedly as he spoke, while the boy seated beside him, engrossed in listening, lightly nodded.
Aristotèles knew the book, having presented it to the young prince himself on the day they first met in Pella - nevertheless, he had not imagined it would exert such a powerful fascination over a boy that young. It wasn't the first time Alèxandros had surprised him, and he doubted it would be the last.
He had brought a highly valuable edition of the work of Xenophon from Athens, the history of Kyros, Great King of Asia, who had united the Median and Persian populations when they had been barely more then barbarian tribes in perennial struggle against each other. Kyros had moved forward unstoppable through those lands, taking ancient Babylon itself, together with her legendary treasures - giving birth to the immense Empire that spread from east of Hellespontus to the edges of the world.
Greeks knew that empire very well.
The Gods knew how many offenses had been inflicted on the sons of Hellas by those impious and powerful barbarians, the name of Xerxes still cursed by the sons of their sons, and only the Gods knew when the time of the rightful vengeance would come.
But now, Aristotèles reflected, Hellas had something better to think upon.
He scrutinized the small figure of the prince, so absorbed in his reasoning he was crackling with an hidden energy of his own. It startled Aristotèles to notice how much he resembled his father, and not for the first time.
It wasn’t in Alèxandros’ physical looks, or not so much to catch the eye anyway, but in the seemingly insignificant details as the sudden strength with which he clenched his jaw or the spark that lit up his grey eyes when he grew heated in an argument. More than that, it was the irrepressible energy that seemed to radiate from every fiber of his body which struck Aristoteles as being most like the King his father. He had personally met Philippos only a few months before, but there wasn’t anybody in Greece, who hadn’t heard about him.
Aristotèles squinted his eyes until a mesh of wrinkles appeared at the sides of his face.
Those old, flabby Athenian demagogues.
They had called Philippos a barbarian, the King of a backward province that, at the moment of his accession to the throne after one of the countless, bloody struggles for succession, seemed still plunged in the age of Dorians. They had even mocked his attempts to give himself a semblance of that Greekness they were so proud of and which he couldn’t have as birth’s right.
They had called him a barbarian, a buffoon, the shame of Hellas.
But now that barbarian held almost all Hellas tight in his iron fist. His boorish soldiers and his generals, his army of men who spoke the hideous Doric dialect that couldn’t even be called Greek, had advanced irresistibly - the ridiculous coarseness of their customs mangling Greece into inert feebleness.
None of the speeches or intrigues of the petty politicians who crowded Athens, as well as the henhouse that the agoras had become, had been of any use. Not even the delirious invectives of that peacock Demosthenes, who preached that a rude barbarian didn’t have the right, couldn’t set himself up as supreme leader of the sacred Hellas. Philippos had let them have their talk.
And then he had acted, scorchingly rapid as a bird of prey.
Aristotèles smiled while a cruel expression appeared on his features.
His love affair with Athens had long gone. It had died after Platon’s death, when he had been set aside in favor of that old fat hen of Speusippos as the head of the Academy to which he had devoted so many years of his life.
It had been an intolerable affront, but he had learned to live with it, and he hadn’t been surprised when the King had come to him.
Aristotèles remembered Philippos very well.
He was well known for the incontinence of his customs, his utter love for wine (but what Makedonìan did not overindulge in the pleasures of Dyonisos?), his hot temper, his libertine ways. Nevertheless, the man wasn’t without a charm of his own.
Trying to clean himself up from the stink of barbarism, he had summoned to Pella artists, scholars, all the most distinctive figures of Greece. He had had his generals’ sons educated by the most estimed Athenian teachers. The royal palace of Archelaos in Pella had nothing to envy in its magnificence, to the most beautiful buildings of which Greece herself was so proud.
He had even attempted to learn to speak Greek with the soft, perfect Ionic accent of Attika and, indeed - Aristotèles had to give him credit for this - the results had been remarkable.
It was as if Philippos had wished to show that he was a spouse worthy of the lover he had decided to take by strength.
That lover had repudiated him, rejected him - made a fool of him.
Philippos still loved her, but he didn’t have anything more to prove and he knew it.
The bride was his by now, by right of force.
The King had been called to the north by a violent rebellion of Thracian tribes and had been forced to momentarily put aside his fierce dissensions with Athens, but he would be back soon. Aristotèles was conscious that the decisive battle for supremacy was about to begin and he knew which side he would be on, when the moment came.
He returned to observing the prince once again. Alexandros’ head and the one of the boy beside him were touching as they leaned against each other and continued reading. The afternoon light made their hair shine with bronze sparkles - they were motionless as two golden statues forsaken on the grass.
Aristotèles was the son of the physician who had taken care of Amyntas, Philippos’s father, as well as Philippos himself, since his early years. He knew Makedonìa very well, yet was conscious that was not the only reason for which the King had come to look for him as far as Mitilene, on the island of Lesbos, where he had withdrawn to devote himself to his naturalistic and zoological studies.
Philippos wanted his son to be educated as a Hellene.
He wanted his son to be a rightful descendant of that Greece which would never accept the father, no matter how many efforts he made or gifts he would bring her - or how much blood he would shed.
Alèxandros would be different; the boy would have everything he had never been able to get. He would be a Greek.
The cruel smile lit the man’s half-closed eyes once again. He hadn’t sold himself cheap - he was well conscious of his value.
Stagira, small pearl of Khalkidiki, had been destroyed by Philippos himself a few years before, many of its inhabitants sold as slaves.
Stagira had been his price. Philippos would rebuild it, he wouldn’t accept anything less, and the King hadn’t even batted an eyelid at his request.
Of course it wasn’t only about Stagira.
His eyes flashed. The temptation to have such a great part in all of this, and in what was likely to come, had been attractive as the logical challenges on which he'd once embarked with his colleagues of the Academy.
He had been asked to educate a boy.
He would shape a King. A King who was likely to rule the whole, united Hellas one day - a Greek King, for a new Greece.
The attempts of the cowardly Athenian politicians would be worth nothing, Greece was already held tight in Philippos’ iron grip by now, it didn’t take much of an effort to see it. Alèxandros was going to claim her as his own, one day, even if he was barely more then a child now.
Aristotèles was a pragmatic man.
Athens had humiliated him, had put someone else before him, but he would come back, he would show he had been able to bring them someone capable of leading their drifted beloved.
It would be a sweet revenge. Oh, it would.
Philippos hadn’t minded any expenses. He had agreed, taking Aristotèles’s advice, that it would be best to educate Alèxandros away from Pella’s tense atmosphere as well as the intrigues and the schemes of a court that, even if he was reticent to admit it, still remained rough and uncultivated as the mountainous lands north of the Makedonìan capital.
Philippos had refurbished a country mansion in an enchanting valley half a day’s horseback ride from Pella, had its walls repainted by the most talented frescoers, had summoned servants, furniture and ornaments, and had supplied the library with new books.
Aritotèles had, thus, moved to Mieza with the young prince and the sons of the most important nobles of Makedonìa - mainly Philippos’ faithful generals, youths who were going to become Alèxandros’ retinue and army companions.
The place, considered sacred to the Nymphs, had proved to be an inestimable source for his studies. Aristotèles had gone into ecstasies over it. The woods and the surrounding countryside swarmed with life, and he was trying to collect and to catalogue samples of the highest number of plant and animal speciments. His stay at Mieza would bring unquantifiable benefits to his botanical and zoological researches.
Just the day before, while he was walking through the gardens of Midas (and what name would be more appropriate to address the heaven he was in?), he had caught sight of a new species of rodent he didn’t know yet.
He would send one of his boys to catch one for him. After all, he was becoming too old to run the risks of breaking his bones crawling through the bushes the way he once did.
The thought of it made him smile but it also brought him a twinge in the chest.
Time had passed yet life continued to be beautiful and full of alluring mysteries to him. One existence would never be enough, but the Gods have their own ways of mocking men, after all.
Aristotèles lowered his eyes again. Alèxandros seemed still lost in his Xenophon. To tell him that the great Kyros had likely had very little to do with the enlightened and admirable monarch the book described would be useless. Xenophon had simply outlined the portrait of the ideal King and had given him the name of Kyros. Alèxandros wouldn’t believe it, so why tell him that? The boy could be stubborn in his argumentations.
Aristotèles had chosen the book for its ethical and didactic aims, and this should have been enough for him, but he had been amazed at the passion Alèxandros had put into reading it, and at the unforeseen questions - sagacious indeed - he had asked already and that he was evidently going to keep on asking.
He didn’t seem to ever be satisfied with discussing the singular way Kyros had chosen to rule the immense land he had created and their arguments had often degenerated, against Artistotèles' own will. The philosopher knew about Alèxandros’ love for Homer, but that heroic epic, imbued with hubris, was popular among the boys his age.
More remarkable had been his falling in love with Kyros.
It was undoubtedly a positive sign that a future monarch was interested in the way to run a kingdom, but there had been certain times in which Aristotèles himself had run out of words. Alèxandros appeared more interested in knowing the exact amount of the soldiers Kyros had had in his army, or the road network that, so he said, had to be huge for it linked several capitals of the empire, rather than the intimate logical and ethical mechanics of the art of ruling.
The boy could be impossible, sometimes.
He had already been well educated, to tell the truth. Arisotèles knew that his first tutor had been a certain Leonidas, one of his mother’s relatives, an upholder of the strictest educational methods of Spartan derivation.
Since an early age Alèxandros had been trained to hardship and privation as well as to have a disciplined hold on his most basic needs. Aristotèles had heard rumors he would have dismissed as false had he not seen the boy with his own eyes. Leonidas had trained him to manage with practically nothing. He had even starved him, so it had been said, wore him out with physical excercise and deprived him of a warm cloak as well as wool blankets during Pella’s hard winters. The result had been that the boy could bear virtually every privation, but was as stubborn as a mule.
He could speak Greek, and even quite properly, but he did it only when he wished. On more then a few occasions he had addressed Arisotèles with insults in the vulgar Makedonìan of the soldiers (he had surely learned it in the men’s barracks, when he still lived in the den of Pella, left to his own like a wild cub), staring at him with a defiant look.
This, more than anything, got on Aristotèles’nerves; it was like the young prince constantly put him to the test, and it would be absurd to think this about a boy just fifteen years old.
But thus it was.
It couldn’t be denied he was intelligent. He kept the pace with his lessons at a speed the other boys could only dream of, he commented on Homer with an unthinkable correctness of language while the others still hobbled on the easy didascalic editions, and Aristotèles was certain to have been able to arouse his ardent curiosity - even though the boy was reluctant to admit it.
He must have loathed old Leonidas.
One day, he had asked his pupil a query through an abstract syllogism. The only proper solution was by means of a logical extrapolation, but the boy had looked at him disgusted and had offered, instead, an unexpected and rather sagacious practical solution.
Arostotèles shook his head. The boy had purebred blood, but was difficult to manage. Nevertheless their relationship was improving.
His gaze slide to the boy sitting beside the prince and he found himself staring at his serious and composed features.
He remembered the day he had conducted a lesson about friendship. Like friendship is, for a man, the greatest welfare, the inestimable wealth to find, outside oneself, another self, like a single soul shared in two bodies. He had often disagreed with Platon in the past, but he had never nursed any objection to this concept.
He had talked to the boys of how friendship is virtue in itself, whose ultimate aim is to protect and to love the virtue in the other - of how there is only one, unique perfect friend for each man, and how great is the gift of the Gods if they decide to make such an aknowledgment possible.
Perfect friends share everything - enjoyment and happiness as well as privations.
They share their own visions and purposes. The dreams of one are the dreams of the other.
Akhilleus and Patroklos, till the end.
The other boys had giggled at this mention. The tavern gossip concerning the alleged relationship that bound the two heroes was well-known, all things considered. They were all very young and Aristotèles knew that love skirmishes as well as the moods of a body that was changing too quickly were inevitable at that age. He turned a blind eye because this offended neither his Athenian morals, nor was it in contrast with Makedonìa’s. Nevertheless he had willingly left aside the transient sphere of Eros, who dazzles and makes easily blind, something that, in his own opinion, took away rather then adding to friendship.
The kind of friendship he was talking about was a communion of souls.
Alèxandros hadn’t laughed at it; his eyes had sparkled while he was listening to his talk. Maybe one of his lessons had found a way into the youth’s heart.
The two boys had been inseparable well before their arrival at Mieza. They had surely met previously, but since their first days at the school it had been clear as the sun they were attached to one another even more deeply then one would expect of two boys that age.
Hephaistion, so the other boy was named, was the son of Amyntor, one of Philippos’ closest generals, one of his Hetairoi, the companions of the highest rank of cavalry. Arostotèles had even caught a glimpse of the man one day, when he had come to visit his two sons who were studying at Mieza. He was an imposing figure, somehow different from the common, coarse Makedonìan soldier, and one who certainly commanded respect.
Amyntor had curiously polite manners, even refined if compared to the rough and uncouth men of his land, and Aristotèles wasn’t surprised Philippos held him in such high regard. Even his Greek was quite remarkable, as if he had frequented Athens with assiduity.
The boy’s, though, was perfect.
Hephaistion had surely grown up in Athens, perhaps the son of some local concubine. Aristotèles hadn’t gone into this aspect in more depth and the boy appeared rather reticent to talk about his past, but there weren’t any doubts. The neat accent, the soft sound of the Attik pronunciation was a delight to Aristotèles’ ears, and too perfect to have been merely learned in school.
Aristotèles had been stunned to find such an attentive and brilliant pupil in him; the greater part of the boys at Mieza had been ordered there by their fathers who wished to gain advantages from the fact their sons had been the prince’ schoolmates as well as his boyhood friends. Achieving a place at Mieza had surely been much longed for by many an ambitious father. Unfortunately, this hadn’t brought any benefit to Aristotèles, who was often forced to talk to an inattentive and absent-minded classroom, and this had revealed to be frustrating almost beyond belief.
Hephaistion, instead, was a source of endless satisfaction to him.
The youth was the only one who could keep pace with Alèxandros in the study, had a curious and lively mind, and his swift mental leaps were disarming even for Aritotèles. He showed an iron grasp of logic, yet he possessed a deep sensitivity, so rare in a boy that young.
He was seventeen, but often, observing his earnest and concentrated face, Aristotèles thought it was difficult to give him an age. He didn’t have the lively impudence and the taste for challenge that characterized the young prince. Rather, he was quiet, often secretive, although it was possible to sense a continous flow of emotions running deep beneath the surface.
A movement below roused Aristotèles from his reflections. The two boys had stood up. Hephaistion kept the book under his arm and was walking next to Alèxandros as they headed at a brisk pace for the wood, right beyond the garden. They had at last decided to join the others, Aristotèles thought with amusement. The afternoon had become muggy and the attractive call of the lake must have been irresistible even for them.
He followed them with his eyes until they vanished in the undergrowth, among the shadows and the bushes of canine-rose, then he raised his face toward the limpid sky, the sun of a dazzling and divine brightness.
He smiled while he shielded his eyes with a hand. The Gods had been generous; it was going to be a perfect summer and everything at Mieza was already showing the signs.
Aristotèles turned and disappeared down the dim corridor.
Chapter two