Free The Dream of Scipio by Iain Pears Page B

precedents in the past to go by. Was not Hypatia the greatest philosopher of Alexandria, and a true martyr to the old values of learning? She was torn to pieces by a mob of incensed Christians not because she was a woman, but because her learning was so profound, her skills at dialectic so extensive that she reduced all who queried her to embarrassed silence. They could not argue with her, so they murdered her. And Sophia’s father had been one of her last pupils, and when she died had fled to Marseille, a city less under the sway of religion, for fear that the same punishment would be meted out to him.
    For Sophia, Manlius’s efforts were a mixed blessing, as not all he summoned to her feet were moved solely by the love of philosophy. Many dressed ostentatiously, gave dinner parties modeled on the banquets of old, sneered at the vulgarity of Christians, the coarseness of the rabble unable to appreciate the delicacies of true thought. They stood around in the street, loudly talking of the nature of the divine. Her philosophy, so jealously protected and cradled within her, became their youthful defiance, spitting in the face of the world. She even had to reprimand them on occasion.
    “I do not wish to become like Socrates or Hypatia. I do not wish to be accused of corrupting the morals of youth and be murdered because of my pupils’ behavior. I do not wish my teaching to be nothing more than a costly garment, to distinguish you from others. More decorum and modesty, if you please. There is no virtue that I know of in giving offense. And today, as a punishment, we will talk of the beauties of Christianity.”
    And so she did, shaming them, cowing them with her arguments, awing them with the immensity of her knowledge, for she could see good even among absurdity, and wisdom among the dross. They all loved her, it was impossible not to do so; and she knew she took far too much pleasure in their reverence and punished herself with lengthy fasts and days of meditation.
     
 
 
AMONG BARNEUVE’S POSSESSIONS, sorted out by a cousin after his death, was a photograph discovered in a volume where it had been used, evidently, as a bookmark. It meant nothing to the cousin, who had scarcely known his relation and performed the task out of family duty. Barneuve’s goods passed to this man, who had little need for the vast number of books and papers Barneuve had accumulated during his life and which were stored in several rooms of his capacious apartment on the rue de la Petite Fusterie in Avignon. Some were offered to his university, which took what it needed; everything else he sorted through, selling what was valuable and throwing out the rest. This photograph fell into the latter category; a few hours after it was found it was put into the refuse bins in the courtyard, then taken away the next morning.
    There was no reason not to throw the photograph away; there was nothing to identify the person shown and it could never have illuminated any dark corners of history. Only Barneuve himself could have said who it was, and even the careful observer could discover little from the image alone. It was square, in black and white but faded into those sepia tones that creep over old photographs with the passage of time. The subject, a woman of about twenty, leans against the rail of a ship in a conventional holiday-cruise pose, the sort of snapshot that must have been taken tens of thousands of times. Had the photographer moved a little to the left, the name of the ship might have been known, for there was a fraction of a life buoy to be seen on the rail. Beyond, in the background, was a port and what seemed to be a minaret—enough evidence to suggest the eastern Mediterranean.
    Of the woman, still less could have been said. She was dressed in a light cotton dress, down to the mid-calf, a sun hat on her head, but didn’t seem to be in a holiday mood. She had her own beauty, but it was not a conventional appeal. It was the intensity of her