The Glory That Was

Chapter Eight

Three hours later they slouched into the inn of Podokles. Bulnes said, "I've got museum feet, and I think a nice big mug of wine — thank you, my dear Podokles. Wiyem, if you find yourself broke in Athens, you can make a living as a tourist guide. But don't try to show everything at once. I've seen so many statues they all look alike to me.

"I suppose I did let my enthusiasm run away with me," said Flin humbly. He made a face at his wine. "Hang it all, if I could only have a dish of tea!"

"Wrong century."

"Uh-huh. I admit the sheer physical discomfort of this environment does take some of the bloom off."

"Personally," said Bulnes, "I shall be satisfied hereafter to view ancient Greece in the form of museum exhibits."

"Oh, but you don't get the same effect at all!" Flin took a gulp of his wine, spilling a little out of the wide shallow cup, more like a soup plate on a base than a proper drinking vessel. "If you'll come up on the Akropolis again, I'll show you the other ..."

"God forbid! Podokles, my friend, give us of your wisdom. How is Periklean regime doing?"

The innkeeper, thawing to Bulnes's persistent friendliness, planted his broad bottom on the bench. "Not too well."

"How so?"

"Everybody expected war and was full of enthusiasm. Then the Perikles suddenly made a treaty with the Spartans, compromised with the Corinthians, and offered the Potidaians synoecism."

"Offered them what?"

"Common citizenship with Athens. A lot of the commercial people are saying: Why go to all the trouble of building up an empire if we are to give its benefits away to foreigners? What do you think?"

"I fear as foreigners my friend and I is prejudice."

"What?"

"Never mind. What will come of these?"

"I do not know. I fear that if the Perikles continues to follow a soft line in foreign affairs, the radical factions will join with the extreme conservatives to gain control of the Assembly. I, now, am for moderation, wherefore I have always favored the Perikles."

"So that's how it was!" said Flin.

"We don't know yet," said Bulnes, and to Podokles: "How do the radicals propose attack Perikles?"

"There is a rumor — Polites Eurybotou was repeating it here the other night — that Dophithes and Kleon and those fellows were going after his friends, since he himself is too popular. They think they have something on some of them."

Flin exclaimed, "Then it is real! It must be! Because that's just what happened. We've got to warn Perikles they're after Pheidias and Anaxagoras and Aspasia!"

"Take it easy, my dear fellow," said Bulnes. "What shall they do to Perikles' friends?"

"Indictments," said Podokles. "For instance, the Pheidias handled a lot of gold in his work on the New Hekatompedon of Athene Polias ..."

"The which?"

Flin interjected, "What you'd call the Parthenon. Go on, Podokles."

"As I was saying, he handled much gold in doing the work, and it would be surprising if some had not stuck to his fingers."

Later Flin told Bulnes, "This waiting is driving me mad. Here we're running out of money with no more in sight. My wife is God knows where. The plot against Perikles is gathering. And we sit waiting for Sokrates to come back."

"You can't rush things like that without ruining them. And what makes you so sure we want to save Perikles?"

"The Peloponnesian War ruined Hellenic culture ..."

"I thought Aristotle and a lot of other important thinkers came after this war?"

"They did, but — oh, it's too complicated to explain. Political morality had broken down and so on. Evidently Perikles tried to stave off the war, but the rabble-rousers forced his hand by attacking his associates — so he dropped his efforts to conciliate Sparta and let the war break out to unite the people behind him. Now if we could only ..."

"My dear friend, we don't even know yet if this is the genuine Perikles. Even assuming we're back in ancient times, what should we accomplish? Perhaps we should find ourselves unable to change anything, since an act once done can hardly be undone. Or if we did change events, we should alter all subsequent history and destroy ourselves in the process."

"Nonsense! We haven't disappeared yet. We might start history off on another tack ..."

"So men would perfect the solar bomb in the third century instead of the twentieth and, having no notion of a world society, would merrily blow each other off the face of the globe? Let's wait till we have all the facts."

Next morning found them scouring the Agora until, several hours after sunrise, a disturbance around the Painted Porch drew their attention. There stood a new arrival among the talkers and loafers, a short, bald, potbellied, snub-nosed man of about forty, barefoot, wearing nothing but a ragged himation, whom it did not need the greetings of his acquaintances to identify as Sokrates.

Though most of the chatter was too fast for Bulnes to follow, he caught a reference to Sokrates's previous day.

"Of course," said Sokrates, "you will understand that my affection for the young Alkibiades is of a purely spiritual kind."

The dignified graybeard of the previous day was there too, saying, "Rejoice, O Sokrates!" with the rest.

"Rejoice, O Protagoras," said Sokrates. "I heard you were in Athens and hastened to see you. How long will you be with us this time?"

"Perhaps a month. Have you seen Demokritos?"

"I know him not. Is he in Athens, too?"

"He set out before I did, and should be here unless he has been lost at sea."

"Well, we have not seen him hereabouts," said Sokrates.

Flin breathed, "That was Protagoras we spoke to yesterday! I never thought we should run into anybody really important just like that!" .

"Who the devil's Protagoras?" asked Bulnes.

"Such ignorance! He's — oh, hush up and listen!" '

Sokrates continued, "Are you giving courses, Protagoras?"

"A brief one to pay my traveling expenses."

"How do you expect the purity of philosophy to withstand the contamination of vulgar commercial transactions?"

"As to that, Sokrates, I am not aware of any rule that philosophers have not the same right to eat as other men. Therefore I charge."

"Therefore you consider your teachings worth money?"

"Certainly," replied Protagoras.

"But I remember on your last visit, when we argued whether virtue could be taught, you professed that your teachings were priceless. If they are priceless, you obviously cannot put a price upon them."

"I do not. As I explained, I really charge for my time. The teachings are free."

"But how can you distinguish the time from the teachings, since the teachings take time to expound, and are therefore in a sense the same as the time?"

"Sokrates, you are an amusing rascal and I am glad to see you, but I will be ground to sausage and fed to Kerberos before I let you entrap me in one of your quibbles again."

"Be not angry. I admit I am an ignorant man in search of wisdom, and here you come, the godlike Protagoras, all the way from windy Abdera to dispense it, so naturally I make the most of my oppor —"

"Excuse me," said Protagoras firmly. "I see a couple of strangers who were asking for you yesterday. Come forward, sirs, and give your names."

"Me?" said Bulnes, a little disconcerted. "I am — uh — Bouleus of Tartessos, and my friend am Philon of Tartessos."

"Can you understand him?" said one onlooker to another. Bulnes persisted, "Hearing you were — ah — wisest man in Athens, Sokrates, we sought you out to make selves better."

Sokrates smiled an embarrassed grin. "No, no, somebody has been filling you with lies. My only advantage is that I know I am ignorant, whereas the other simpletons do not." He did not, however, sound displeased by the flattery.

"Tartessos?" said Protagoras. "Is that not in Spain, at the very rim of the known world?"

"It is," said Bulnes.

"I thought that city was either destroyed by the Carthaginians or sunk beneath the sea by an earthquake, back about the Seventieth Olympiad. I have heard both tales."

Bulnes, whose knowledge of historical geography was slight, turned to Flin. The little Englishman stepped into the breach, "True, Tartessos is not what it was, but it has not been destroyed. It has decayed because the silting up of the Tartessis River has left it stranded among great mudflats, so that it is no longer accessible to large ships."

"I see," said Protagoras. "Are the stories of its former mineral wealth true?"

"Quite true. In fact, we Tartessians believe your poet Homeros based his Scheria, the city of the Phaiakes in the Odyssey, upon an account of Tartessos."

Protagoras smiled. "Evidently the Tartessians are feeling their way to the theory of my colleague Prodikos of Keos, that all myths are either personifications of natural forces or exaggerated versions of the deeds of mortal men. I must tell the Prodikos when I see him. You know, Sokrates, one of your Athenian rhapsodes like this Xenophanes could turn the tale of Tartessos into a fine pseudo-epic."

"How?" said Sokrates. "More poet's lies?"

"Oh, make Atlas the king of it — the mountain named for him is out there somewhere, is it not? — and tell how Zeus sank the golden city beneath the waters of the Outer Sea when its people became insolent in their success, leaving nothing but impassible shoals."

Flin started to explain. "You mean Plato's story of Atlant —" and stopped.

"Who is this Platon?" said Sokrates. "I do not know the story."

"He is not yet b — I mean, that is — uh ..."

Bulnes stepped in. "Gentlemen: I will with you permission — ah — put up a puzzle to you. Let us suppose the world are inhabited by race of gods who powers are far beyond our. They can fly to the moon, talk to each other over thousands of stadia, and light their dwellings with lamp that require no oil. Let us suppose this gods can make men' complete not only in body but also in mind, so that a man just made has a memory stretching all the way back to his nonexistent childhood. And let us suppose as an experiment these god set aside part of the earth called 'Hellas' and stock it with the present population of those lands, all with the necessary — er — pseudo-memories, and a complete outfit of buildings, ship, and the like. Now, let us suppose you are those people, and experiment started five or six years ago. How might you prove otherwise?"

"But," objected Protagoras, "I have a clear memory going back more years than I like to think."

"I explain that. How could you prove this not a false memory implanted in you mind by the gods who made you six years ago?"

"Ridiculous," said a bystander.

Bulnes turned to the objector with his blandest smile. "No doubt, my.dear fellow, but how would you prove?"

"There is no need to prove it. It just is."

"That what you call summary justice. What do the philosophers think?"

Sokrates said, "What happens when one of these newly made Hellenes set forth on a long journey, as when a Greek city sends people to found a colony in the Euxine Sea? They would come to the bounds of this Hellas and enter the country of the gods, so discovering themselves to be mere pets, like carp in a fish pond."

Bulnes said, "We shall suppose the gods put the traveler to sleep as he nears boundary and then awaken him at an appropriate time and set him on the route back to Hellas, with a set of false memories of him journey through barbarous lands."

"You mean," said Protagoras, "that such places as Egypt and Spain exist not, save as images implanted in our minds by these crafty gods of yours?"

"Perhaps, perhaps not. For all you know, my friend and I might be gods come to see how the experiment are going. Except if we were, we would not let you in on the secret so careless."

"I see," said Protagoras. "Very ingenious. In fact it agrees with what I have been preaching for years — that as all our knowledge comes through our fallible senses, reality may be vastly different from what it seems, because of the distortions of our perceiving apparatus."

Sokrates said, "I should agree, except that you do not allow for the direct inspiration of the soul by the divine powers. Otherwise, it is as if we were all prisoners sitting at the entrance to a cave, facing the far wall, with our heads so shackled that we could not move, and trying to make out what is happening in the world outside by the shadows thrown on the cave wall and the sounds of traffic and conversation behind us."

"A striking example, Sokrates," said Protagoras. "And now I must get back to my pupils. I shall see you again. Rejoice!"

Sokrates said to Bulnes, "Tartessos does produce acute reasoners, especially for a barbaric land. What do Tartessians hold to be the ultimate good?"

Bulnes, foreseeing an endless argument, said, "That depends on the men, some seeking the satisfaction of their own appetites, some the good of their fellows, and some the advancement of knowledges. As for us, we are so ignorant as you say yourself to be, and hope you will enlighten us. What does you think?"

"Oh, I am without doubt the most ignorant man in all Hellas! You should have asked the Protagoras. He knows all the answers, and will gladly convey them to you at fifty drachmai a day. However, now that you have asked me, I will try to demonstrate the identity of the good, the true, and the beautiful ..."

"One moment, O Sokrates!" said Bulnes in some alarm. "Before you begin, do you know Meton the astronomer?"

"Why yes, I know him, and Anaxagoras and Archelaos and all that crew. When I was interested in such matters, I consorted with them regularly, before I decided upon the futility of all material science. The true astronomer, I now maintain, should have no need to spend his nights on his roof gazing at the stars, catching a cold in his head and a crick in his neck. He should derive the laws of the universe by pure logic. For, reason is the only infallible sense possessed by man. The others are fallible and delusive, and when applied to the vulgar and imperfect things of this material world ..."

"True," interrupted Bulnes, "but we wondered if — that is, you could do us a great favor by introducing us to Meton. As foreigners, you know, we cannot walk up to him front door and ..."

"What do you want to know that fellow for? All his stargazing and calendar-calculating have not made one wife more faithful, or one politician more honest. Such prying into divine secrets never meant for mortals to know is sheer insanity. Now, as I was saying ..."

"Because," persisted Bulnes, "while your wisdom is without doubt of a more fundamental and significant kind, the city of Tartessos, when he sent us forth, told us to look him up to ask him some questions about geography and such matters."

"Are you free men?" said Sokrates. "I do not see your slaves."

"We are."

Flin added, "As I understand it, to have legal protection while here we must enroll with the Polemarchos as registered metics and get some citizen to stand as our patron. Now, if you — ahem — could see your way ..."

"Nothing easier," said Sokrates. "But as I was saying about the good, nothing is simply good in relation to nothing. Everything must be good for something, or the reverse, and thus a thing can be both good and bad, depending upon ..."

Not daring to interrupt again, Bulnes gritted his teeth to listen.

Six hours later, Sokrates glanced at the lowering sun. "By the Dog of Egypt! I have talked the day through without stopping even to eat. You poor fellows must be starved!"

"While the meat of your discourse is adequate nourishment," said Bulnes, "I admit the clamor of the material man begin to drown out the divine thoughts of the spiritual one."

"Which brings up the question of dinner. Boy!"

A young man sitting on the ground with his back to a pillar and dozing now got up and wrapped himself in a himation even more ragged than that of Sokrates. Bulnes realized with a slight shock that this must be Sokrates's personal slave; he had not thought of the philosopher as a slaveowner.

Sokrates said, "Two days ago I spent my last obolos for a meal for Dromon and myself, and hence must depend upon my friends until my next rents come in. Being a bachelor, I have no wife to cook for me in any case."

"Oh!" said Bulnes. "You must allow us! While fare at our inn are not that of Persian kings ..."

"A kind offer," said Sokrates, "but I have a better idea. Whom did you wish to meet? Meton? Let us therefore sponge on him for dinner!"

And the philosopher set off at a pace that made the short Flin pant, and forced even Bulnes to stretch his long legs.