Free Glory and the Lightning by Taylor Caldwell Page B

their naked hands and bleeding feet and teeth and nails, when their thin spears and iron swords and weak little ships had splintered and disintegrated. What great secret heart had moved them to fight thus, and made them larger than the average man, if only for a few hours? What had inspired envious little souls and quarrelsome little minds and had given them divinity and incredible courage?”
    “They were fighting for their lives,” said Aspasia. “They had nothing to lose but their lives.”
    “You deny heroism, and the ability of men to fight for something greater than themselves?” cried the teacher, goaded beyond endurance.
    “I do deny that men will fight for something greater than their own selves,” said Aspasia. “It is against human nature.”
    “You do not believe in personal nobility?”
    “I have not observed it.”
    “You are a cynic, my child, and I pity you.”
    “I am a student of mankind. A man fights to protect himself and his own cherished rights, and if he fights for anything else he is either a madman or a god.”
    The teacher let a portentous silence fall while he regarded Aspasia with hooded eyes. “You equate madness with the gods?” he asked in an ominously soft voice, he who had often hinted he did not believe in the gods.
    Aspasia saw the dangerous trap. “Madness, it is often said, is akin to divinity. You have told us that yourself, Aeneas. ‘The divine madness.’”
    “I was referring to poetry, and to the divine madness of a man who will fight for something nobler than himself, and the divine madness of artists. War is an art, also, as we Greeks have always said, though you Ionians are slow to discern it.”
    “We once allied ourselves with Sparta,” said Aspasia, “which, I agree, was a madness in itself.”
    Today, to the maidens’ fatigue, Aeneas continued his quarrel with Aspasia over the difference between a republic and a democracy. He asserted they were the same, as he had asserted before. But Aspasia said, “Solon desired a free republic. But though the Greeks honor that desire they are only a democracy, and so dangerous. Unfortunately, though Solon conceived the permanent base for a republic he did not frame the establishment of such. So, the rule of Athens fell into the hands of the Tyrants, who introduced democracy. The Athenians are too volatile and too active in insignificant affairs and too full of laughter and change, and too excitable, to extend Solon’s dream of a republic.”
    Aeneas said, “As you are so wise, my pupil, define the difference between a democracy, which is Athens, and a republic.”
    Aspasia said with patience, “I have done so before, my teacher. But I will do it again. A republic, as Solon has said over a century ago, is government by written and permanent law, instead of government by incalculable and changeable decrees, which is democracy. A republic, he has said, is when the people obey the rulers and the rulers obey the laws. But in a democracy the rulers obey the mass, which is whimsical, violent and greedy. Hence chaos and finally the tyrant.”
    The wrangle continued. In Aeneas’ opinion the voice of the people was the voice of the gods, hence democracy. He now fell into the trap. A republic did indeed represent the people, but it believed too firmly in law, and did not take into thought the changing desires of those it governed. To which Aspasia replied, “Is law then—established just law which assures the people of a stable government and the respect of government for law—to become the light plaything, like a ball, in the name of Demos? Is it to be interpreted by whim by the self-serving and the naturally lawless and exigent, and by those who are ruled by their bellies and not by their minds, and have no respect for orderly government?”
    “You have but contempt for the people, Aspasia.”
    “I only observe, Aeneas.”
    Few of the maidens understood the controversy, but all were pleased by Aspasia’s composure and