Aristotle and the Secrets of Life: An Aristotle Detective Novel
434
Aristotle and the Secrets of Life: An Aristotle Detective Novel
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Overview
Tensions between the Athenians and the Makedonians—whose leader, Alexander the Great, is one of Aristotle’s former students—draw the philosopher across the Aegean Sea, accompanied by the devoted Stephanos. Both will have much to learn about survival as they find themselves beset by pirates, uncovering conspiracy, and facing the horrors of war. It will be up to Aristotle to try to shed light on the darkness they are about to encounter—in this novel in the historical series praised as “unusually authentic” (Kirkus Reviews) and “eminently enjoyable” (Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse Mysteries).
Also published as Aristotle and the Mystery of Life
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780226132204 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Chicago Press |
| Publication date: | 03/04/2020 |
| Series: | The Aristotle Detective Novels , #3 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 434 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Aristotle and the Secrets of Life
By Margaret Doody
The University of Chicago Press
Copyright © 2003 Margaret DoodyAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-226-13220-4
CHAPTER 1
The Sanctuary of Asklepios
It was still dark as we moved cautiously along the narrow way at the side of the steep Akropolis, towards the southern slope. Four men, two of whom were slaves carrying a litter, and one unseen woman, enclosed in the box they bore along.
'Be careful!' exclaimed the older man sharply, as one of the slaves nearly missed his footing on the invisible path. A few belated owls still hooted around the temple above us. Straining our eyes against darkness we searched for the shrine. Wings flapped. One of the cocks I held was struggling to fly, as if to escape his death or else to hasten towards his appointed end. It was hard holding on to the birds with their wiry feet and claws and writhing necks, especially as I could not see them. I could feel one of them digging into my hand, even though we had bound their beaks for the journey.
The shrine at last was before us, a dark shape mysteriously solid in the no-dimension of night. We waited, at the head of a little line of suppliants, in the summer morning, the strange time just before dawn. The sky grew less dark. Birds chirped. Then along the eastern horizon as along the edges of a cut a redness bled along the eastern sky. The first rays struck the temple door, and the door opened. We pilgrims and suppliants joined the priests and their attendants in singing the morning hymn:
'Awaken Paieon Asklepios
Awaken and hear thy hymn!'
Aristotle and the slave assisted the woman out of her cramped container. She stood there, leaning against her husband, a thin woman, but evidently pregnant, and heavily veiled. We moved together towards the altar-place. Somewhere near us were the snakes in the sacred pits, but I could not see them. I unbound the cocks; Aristotle and the slaves assisted the attendants in taking them to the altar. They flapped and crowed, announcing the dawn just as the attendant advanced upon them with a thin sharp knife. Their 'coco-ricoo!' ' was cut short. A splash of blood dabbled the marble stone and the bright confident feathers. The light moved in a rosy ray streaming over the altar, making a glimmer in the blood and in the sightless eyes of the severed heads, floppy under their red combs.
We stood in prayer and supplication in an enclosure lit by a little altar fire and by the fresh dawn light. A sweet summer morning breeze came through the open door.
The priest-physician asked 'What is troubling you?' and Aristotle answered.
'My wife has been troubled by mild fever and want of appetite. Often she cannot keep food down when she does eat.'
'Is she pregnant?' the priest asked quickly. 'Lady, I insist that you must answer for yourself. Who are you? What is your name?'
'Pythias, wife of Aristotle of Athens.'
'Are you pregnant?'
'I am.'
'You know,' the priest said addressing both of them, 'that Asklepios has no remedy for pregnancy, as it is a natural matter, and we do not treat it. And you should know that no child is to be born within the precincts consecrated to Asklepios.'
'But,' Aristotle argued, 'my wife's troubles are other than just those of pregnancy itself. I am a physician's son and I know. She has feverishness, she trembles. Describe your symptoms,' he added, turning to Pythias, who answered in a voice low and pleasant, with more than a little touch of foreign inflection:
'Hot and then cold. Trembling in the limbs. Some weakness in the eyes that comes and goes. And trouble with my stomach and some soreness in the side. It is not like my former childbearing.'
'You have borne children before?'
'Two stillborn, one who lived a year and died of a disease, and one a little girl who lives now.'
'And you, sir.' The priest turned to Aristotle. 'Describe your own afflictions.'
'Pain in the leg—sciatic trouble. Stiffness and pain in the thigh and leg.'
'Any others?' He looked at me, I shook my head. I was there as a supporter of Aristotle, literally. I stood at his left side ready for him to lean on if need be. Aristotle was supporting Pythias. On her other side stood Aristotle's kinsman Theophrastos.
The priest-physician and our party went on into the proper prayers. I gazed around the inner precincts with eyes increasingly cleansed by the growing light. There were many good images. Asklepios the little child, the newborn babe—surrounded by soft flames or light rays. Asklepios the Beloved, the Great Healer. This is a really good statue of the healer seated on a throne with snakes like wheels standing out in relief along the sides of the chair. Asklepios holds his staff with the snake entwined around it. His long curly hair and luxuriant curling beard make him look slightly foreign, like a Phoenician. His face is noble, the eyes wonderfully carved and deeply set. They look off into the distance with a suggestion of suffering and hope—yet these eyes seem also to look at you, with a look of great compassion. Behind the healer there is a large votive relief showing Asklepios with his sons, the two physicians, one Machaon the surgeon and the other Podaleirios, a treater of internal ills. And a good tall image of his daughter Hygieia. One may hope not to need Asklepios' sons, but everyone wants his daughter, who is Health itself.
At that moment we were all together there in that tight little sanctuary, close to the healer—Aristotle and Pythias, myself, Theophrastos. Together, alive and safe. The light glided in and struck the wall, so that I could now see clearly the thank-offering images hung upon it. Some of these were crudely carved sticks, others elaborately polished wood with fine carving. Not a few were in silver that made a pleasant glitter in the sunbeams. One bronze image of a full-sized big toe glistened with polish, and was adorned with a miniature garland. A leg, a hand, an eye, a penis. Here, a shield showed gratitude for delivery from war. There, part of a ship carved in marble—a sign of someone saved from shipwreck, or recovered from physical damage wrought by a shipwreck. Garlands of real hair fluffed out on pictured wooded heads, images of children made well. All gave assurance of the power of the divine Physician, and the strength of healing of the dark earth, the sacred springs, and the serpent who comes from the depths.
We departed from the sanctuary, Pythias leaning on her husband, after the priest-physician gave some instructions, which seemed to involve chiefly change of diet and sitting in a warm place in the sunlight. Pythias had to be helped carefully into the litter. We set off again, Aristotle limping a little from the sciatic trouble. It was especially irritating to someone as active and restless as he—his group have been called 'the Peripatetics' because he liked lecturing while walking about. He preferred in general to be in motion. I wasn't worried that Aristotle would be permanently crippled. The philosopher was still surprisingly active for a man of his age, even if he suffered intermittently from sciatic complaint, especially after he was careless or forgetful enough to sit very long on a damp marble bench. As for Pythias, she would soon be delivered of her trouble and Aristotle would have the son he long had wished for. The priest-physician had been right, perhaps, to be a little alarmed about the risk of a birth within the shrine, as is forbidden absolutely in the holy place, for Pythias was evidently near her time.
Aristotle himself seemed relieved and expansive.
'I have so seldom been here,' he said, 'but Pythias wished to come. I would have liked us to go to the Asklepion in Peiraieus, which is in some ways finer than this one, and I think has better priests. And many associations too—you remember it in Aristophanes' Ploutos? But that is too far for her to travel, while it was quite practicable for us to come here. She will be easier in her mind.'
'What did they prescribe?' I asked, more from a sort of politeness than real curiosity.
'The usual sort of thing, you know. Hydromel when she can keep nothing else down, for the honey-and-water mixture will quench thirst and supply food for the baby. Liquids are good. Eggs, too. Sitting in the sunshine—fortunately we have a courtyard where she can do that. They consider it partly an eye problem. When she recovers she is to offer at the shrine an image of an eye—as for me, I should donate the image of a leg. I shall have them done in silver I think, and we will sacrifice a pig. By the time we have the images made, we shall have our baby—our boy, as I hope and believe.'
'At least,' I said, 'you have already sacrificed a cock. In advance.'
'"A cock for Asklepios." Sokrates' last words—as I know you will recall. The cock cries at dawn, so this is an offering for day, for light and life itself. When we are born we see daylight, enjoy the gift of our first dawning. In sacrificing a cock we give thanks for the new day.'
'But Sokrates said that just before he died,' I objected. 'He didn't get a new day. They were putting him to death at the time.'
'Sokrates must have meant in thanksgiving for the new day, even though it was to be his last. But more truly, I suppose, he meant an offering of thanksgiving for the whole of his life, for the gift of birth. For being permitted to exist and to have a human life in the world. To live is a wonderful thing! When we get back to the Lykeion, let us look up Plato's account in his wonderful book.'
We had left the Akropolis and skirted the Agora, already beginning to fill with the morning crowds, as we made for the city gate. Although they now had the benefit of daylight, the bearers of Pythia's litter had a hard time in threading through some of the narrow streets with their burden. Men hammering metal or making chairs seemed determined to carry out their work on the footway, making the path difficult. Children ran up to us to try to sell us things. One of them, a little fellow wrapped in a cloak with a thick hood, was most persistent, poking some shabby herbs at us. At length Aristotle took the faded fennel and tossed him a coin: 'just to get rid of him,' as he explained.
'That child doesn't look very healthy,' I said. 'He probably has some illness if he is so wrapped up and hooded when it is nearly midsummer.'
Indeed, the day was growing warm already, though midsummer was some twenty days away. Outside the city, harvests were ripening, or had already been gathered. Hay had been cut. Sweet roses bloomed briefly and you could smell flowers even in Athens, where you cannot see the gardens that flourish behind house walls.
It would have been a relatively short journey to return to my own house; the way back to Aristotle's house was slightly further, long enough for slaves with a burden. (Not that Pythia was heavy—far from it—but the litter itself was an awkward object.) Aristotle lived outside the city gates, in the opposite direction from Plato's Akademeia, which was likewise outside the city gates. Aristotle lived in an eastern region, well watered by the Ilissos river and shaded with plane trees—a lovely area, though at that time quite noisy with the building of the new Stadium. His celebrated school was in the precinct named for Apollo Lykeios, the god of wolves—who, curiously, also keeps wolves away. Aristotle's school was referred to as 'the Lykeion', just like the nearby gymnasium at which the young men did their military service training. He took private students, and had special scholars working with him, but the area was a place of open groves and free discussion; the Lykeion neighbourhood was a gathering-place for philosophers and philosophy-seekers. Most of Aristotle's celebrated lectures were public in the good old fashion. The area had always been full of young men, so it was a good place to garner those who wanted to engage in intellectual conversation.
Aristotle had to rent accommodation for his family and his school. The law of Athens prohibited aliens, even a resident alien, a metoikos like Aristotle, from owning any property. Thus, even though he had been Plato's best—and probably favourite—student, Plato could not bequeath the Akademeia to him. Aristotle had left Athens for a long time after the death of Plato. When he came back, married to this foreign woman, he rented his own residence in the Lykeion area. He had sunk some of his personal money in the place, adding on and creating outbuildings. His needs included an inordinate amount of space for books. Any major changes had to be approved by the city, and of course his improvements represented a loss, as he could not sell the place to another, nor legally bequeath it to his heirs.
When we arrived at the Lykeion, Aristotle was visibly anxious to see that Pythias was immediately settled in their home. 'She is tired and needs to rest,' he said.
'Herpyllis will look after me,' said a muffled voice from within the litter.
'Olympos and Phokon will help us and put the litter away,' Aristotle planned. 'So, Theophrastos, why don't you take Stephanos into our Thinkery and introduce him? Treat him to one of our modest meals? I shall join you later.'
The slaves set the litter down and helped their mistress out of it. Very gently Aristotle took her hand, and then put his arm around her. The two went up the shallow flight of garden steps to the house door. I heard her say 'I am so glad Herpyllis is here now. You need not come in if you have your visitor.'
'Of course I shall see you in, my darling,' said Aristotle in a tone I had never heard him use before.
Theophrastos took charge of me and conveyed me a different way to the school's main buildings. I knew the Lykeion well—I had studied there myself for all too short a time, attracted by Aristotle's reputation and then by his intellect, until my father's business dealing grew so entangled and his means so straitened that I had had to leave. Shortly after that, my father died, and my family was plunged in chaos. I was by no means one of the best students at the Lykeion and the lack of my presence cannot have been any blow to Aristotle. But I turned to my old teacher later. After the death of my father, when my cousin was accused of murder and our family was besieged by difficulties, I came to ask Aristotle for help, though I had no claim upon him. I had turned up at his house, seeking advice, one day in the early autumn, nearly three years before this morning's visit to the Asklepion. I had reason to be glad I did so, for the philosopher's generous intellect and practical activity saved our family from disaster. Aristotle and I had recently been involved in another curious crime, when we had pursued an abducted heiress to Delphi in the spring of this same year whose summer warmth we were now enjoying.
Despite my growing friendship with Aristotle, however, I was by no means familiar with the Lykeion in its present state. Changes had been wrought since my time, as Theophrastos pointed out to me.
'We had to add more space—we extended the book room, simply because we had so many books. That's not counting the ones that Aristotle keeps in his own house.' I nodded, for I had seen him at home in his personal room with its surprising quantity of books. 'We have a special compartment for keeping especially valuable rolls dry and clean,' Theophrastos went on. 'Aristotle calls it "the book-pantry". And he designed this room.'
We were entering a long room—about twice the length I remembered. The upper half of each wall was now lined with shelves and compartments for book-rolls. The room smelt sweetly of the wood; it struck me that these boards, obviously of very good quality, must have been a costly importation, since wood is extremely scarce in Athens. In the lower middle of the wall below the book compartments and at waist height was a wide shelf running around the whole room, making a sort of universal work space. The light came in from windows high up under the roof, to keep rain out.
'Aristotle calls this room "the book kitchen". We write here as well as read. He designed those windows and had shades of linen made, so the sun doesn't fall directly on the rolls when they are open, and fade them,' Theophrastos explained. I could see that on the side of the room which the sun struck the windows were covered with strips of cloth.
'And now we have so many plants and specimens sent by Kallisthenes we are housing them in a special plant room.' He turned towards the door. 'Oh, here's Demetrios.'
A young man of most striking and unusual beauty came into view. This Demetrios was tall and well-shaped, with an admirable—nay, perfect—nose; his hair, worn rather long, was a sunny colour even in this pleasantly shady room. 'Demetrios of Phaleron,' Theophrastos introduced us. 'Stephanos of Kydathenion.' I wondered fleetingly why Theophrastos introduced us by naming the deme rather than by father's name; such a beautiful young man must have an eminent father. Demetrios nodded kindly to me. Although he could not have been much more than twenty years of age, the aristocratic youth seemed possessed of great aplomb.
'Demetrios has done most of these wonderful drawings,' Theophrastos explained. 'Demetrios, do move those shades a moment so Stephanos can see better.'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Aristotle and the Secrets of Life by Margaret Doody. Copyright © 2003 Margaret Doody. Excerpted by permission of The University of Chicago Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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Table of Contents
MapList of Characters
Part I: Parts of Animals
I The Sanctuary of Asklepios
II Murdering an Ox
III Meeting a Monkey
IV Sweetness and Bees
V Odour of Blood
VI Parts of Animals
VII The Monument
Part II: Movement of Animals
VIII Preparing for Flight
IX Taking Ship for the Islands
X Delos
XI Blood at Delos, Flesh at Mykonos
XII Naxos
XIII Storm at Sea
XIV The Healing Island
Part III: Body and Soul
XV The Doctors
XVI Facing Asia
XVII The Letter
XVIII Harpalos the Treasurer
XIX Carrying Treasure
XX The Killing Island
XXI Escape
XXII Healing and Light
Epilogue