"Bova, Ben - Orion 04 - Orion and the Conquerer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

"Truth is often difficult to determine, Orion. Sokrates gave his life seeking for it. My own teacher, Plato, tried to determine exactly what truth is, and he died brokenhearted."
I wondered silently what the essence of truth might be. Were my dreams truer than my waking reality? Were my hazy recollections of other lives true memories or merely desperate fantasies of my mind?
He misinterpreted my silence. "Yes, I differ from Plato's teachings. He believed that ideas are the essence of truth: pure ideas, with no physical substance whatsoever. I cannot accept that. To me, the only way to discover truth is by examining the world about us with our five senses."
"You say that Plato died of a broken heart?"
The gnomish old man's face grew somber. "Dionysios invited Plato to his city of Syracuse, in distant Sicily. There Plato instructed him on how to be a philosopher-king, a great leader among men. It isn't every day that a philosopher has a king for his student."
"What happened?"
"Dionysios listened very carefully to Plato's ideas about the ideal republic. And he used those ideas to make himself absolute tyrant of Syracuse. His son was even worse. He threw Plato out of Syracuse, sent him packing home to Athens."
"So much for the philosopher-king," I said.
Aristotle gave me a troubled look, then fell silent.
Our little band was growing larger every day with Aristotle's constantly-growing collections. We had to buy more mules and wagons and more men to tend them. The pack train would be twice the size of our original group by the time we reached Athens. There was already snow on the lower mountaintops, and the trees were turning gauntly bare. I urged our band southward through the narrow pass of Thermopylai, where Leonidas and his Spartans had stood against the invading Persians of Xerxes more than a century and a half earlier.
Alexandros insisted that we stop and do homage to the brave Spartans, who died to the last man rather than surrender to the Persians.
So there on the narrow rocky shelf between the grim mountains and the heaving sea, near the hot springs for which the pass was named, we paid honor to ancient heroes while the winds keening down from the north warned of impending winter. Alexandros spoke of the Persians with contempt, ending with, "Never will our people be free until the Persian Empire is shattered completely."
Aristotle nodded agreement. The men were impressed with his words. I was more impressed with the smell of snow in the graying sky. We moved on.
"One thing that Alexandros did not mention," said Aristotle from the back of the gentle chestnut mare he rode, "was that the Macedonians allowed Xerxes and his army to travel through their territory without raising a finger against them. They even sold the Persians grain and horses and timber for their ships, as a matter of fact."
He spoke with a forgiving smile, and in a low voice so that no one could hear but me. Even so, he added, "But that was a long time ago, of course. Things have changed."
I had expected Attica to be somewhat like Macedonia, a wide fertile plain ringed with wooded mountains. But instead the mountains marched right to the edge of the sea, and they were mostly starkly bare rock.
"The Athenians cut down their forests over the generations to make ships for their incessant wars," Aristotle told me. "Now the country is fit for nothing but bees."
Alexandros rode up between us. "You can see why the Athenians took to the sea," he said excitedly. "There isn't enough farmland here to feed a village, let alone a great city."
"That's why they depend on the grain from beyond the Bosporus," I guessed.
"That's why they want to hold onto the port towns. We can strangle them by taking all their ports away," said Alexandros. Suddenly his eyes lit up. "When I make war against the Persians, the first thing I will do is to take all their port cities. That will make their fleet useless!"
And he galloped off to tell his friends of his sudden strategic insight.
Philip's command was that Alexandros and his Companions—he had brought four of them—should remain incognito while in Athens. They were to be nothing more than part of the guard for the revered teacher and philosopher, Aristotle. I knew it would be difficult to keep these high-born Macedonians from shining through any disguise; especially Alexandros, who wanted to see everything and be everywhere. He would never follow my orders. Any Athenian with half an eye would see that this was the golden-haired son of Philip who was already becoming something of a legend throughout the land.
We entered Athens without fanfare, stopping at the city gates only long enough to tell the guards on duty that this was Aristotle of Stagyra come to visit his old friend Aeschines, the lawyer. As we rode through the narrow, winding, noisy streets I saw the great white cliff of the Acropolis rising before us and, gleaming atop it, splendid marble temples and an immense statue of Athena, the city's protectress.
My heart leaped in my chest: Of course! This is her city! This is the place where I will find her.
As if he could read my thoughts, Alexandros said to Hephaistion, riding beside him. "We must go up there and see the Parthenon."
His young friend, tall and lean and dark where Alexandros was short and solid and blond, shook his head. "I don't think they allow visitors up there. It's sacred ground."
"It's where they keep their treasury," Ptolemaios said, laughing. "That's why they don't allow visitors."
"But I'm not merely a visitor," Alexandros snapped. "I am the son of a king."
"Not on this trip," said Ptolemaios, like a big brother. "We're just escorts for the old man."
Alexandros tried to stare Ptolemaios down, found he could not, then turned to stare at me. I looked the other way. Yes, I said to myself, it's going to be very difficult to keep him under control.
The house of Aeschines, the lawyer, was more magnificent than Philip's palace. It was smaller, of course, but not by much. Its portico was all marble, its walls decorated with colorful friezes of nymphs and satyrs. Statues crowded the garden like a marble forest: grave men in solemn robes and nubile young women in various stages of undress.
Aeschines himself was not at home when we arrived, his major domo told Aristotle. He spoke Attic Greek, not the Macedonian dialect, but I could understand him just as well. The lawyer was pleading a case before the Assembly and would probably not return until nightfall. We had several hours to unpack and settle into the spacious guest wing of the house.
"Is it true?" I asked Aristotle as we watched the slaves unload his specimens and cart them off into the room that had been given him for his studies. "Are all Athenians lawyers?"
The old man laughed softly. "No, not all Athenians are lawyers. Some are women. Many are slaves."
I took an especially heavy crate from a staggering, frail older slave and started off toward the philosopher's work room with it on my shoulder. Aristotle walked beside me as we entered the house.
"They say this city is a democracy," I said, "where all the citizens are equal. Yet they have slaves."
"Slaves are not citizens, Orion. Nor are women."
"Then how can it be a democracy if only a portion of the population has political power?"
He countered with another question. "How can the city manage without slaves? Will the looms run by themselves? Will crates carry themselves from place to place? You might as well ask that we give up horses and mules and oxen as give up slaves. They are necessary."
I fell silent. But once I had gently deposited the crate on the floor of his workroom, Aristotle carried his lesson a step farther.
"You have hit upon a sensitive point, Orion. Democracy is to be preferred over tyranny—the rule of one man—but democracy itself is far from perfect."
Deciding to play the student, I asked, "In what way?"
There were no chairs in the workroom as yet. Nothing but the crates that the slaves were bringing in. Aristotle peered at one, decided it was not too fragile to sit upon, and planted himself on it. I remained standing.
"When all political decisions are to be made by a vote of the citizens, then the man who can sway the citizens most easily is the man who makes the real decisions. Do you see the sense of that?"
"Yes. A demagogue can control the citizenry."
"You say 'demagogue' with scorn in your voice. The word merely means 'leader of the people.' "
"The Athenians have turned the word into something else, haven't they?"
He blinked at me. "How do you know so much, when you have no memory?"
"I am learning quickly," I said.
He did not look entirely satisfied. Still, he went on. "Yes, it's quite true that orators like Demosthenes can sway the Assembly on tides of passion and rhetoric. It is Demosthenes who has goaded the Athenians into making war against Philip. It is his demagoguery that I must counter."