The Decline and Fall of Practically Everybody. Will Cuppy
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to dine with her husband unless there was company, when she was expected to keep to her own quarters. At ordinary meals she sat on a chair and he reclined on a sofa because he was all tired out discussing Truth, Beauty, Goodness, Justice, Freedom, and Moderation with his men friends.20
Greek wives could not go gadding about the streets, but they could look out the windows and have babies. After the age of sixty, they could attend funerals. Yet many of them were dissatisfied with their lot.21 We have no statistics on the number of women in Athens, as they were not considered worth counting. The Greeks little knew what things were coming to.
Since she was not respectable, anyway, and could do as she chose, Aspasia ran a salon at Pericles’ house. Celebrities of the day gathered there, and you could always find a group of her cronies around – nobody special, just old friends and neighbors such as Herodotus, Sophocles, Phidias, Thucydides, Euripides, Anaxagoras, and Socrates. In addition to her other interests, Aspasia is said to have advised Pericles on political problems and to have helped in the preparation of his speeches. Theirs has been called a union of intellects. Their son was named Pericles the Younger, or Junior.22
The last few years of Pericles’ life were none too happy. In 431 B.C., in order to revive his waning popularity, he brought on the Peloponnesian War with Sparta and her allies. It lasted twenty-seven years, until both sides were completely ruined. He didn’t know it was loaded. The citizens turned against him in 430 B.C. and fined him 50 talents, or $61,500, for stealing a little money. Then Aspasia was arrested for irreligion and immorality, but Pericles got her off with one of his speeches. A pestilence resulting from the war killed a fourth of the people, including Xanthippus and Paralus, Pericles’ two legitimate sons by Telesippe, and the Peloponnesians put Junior to death. Pericles died of the plague in 429 B.C., just as his war was getting into its stride. Naturally, the period of his government is called, in his honor, the Age of Pericles.
During Pericles’ last days, the citizens cleaned out most of the geniuses in one way or another. They hounded harmless old Anaxagoras from the city and imprisoned Phidias, who shortly died. They let Socrates live until after the war.23 I guess the Athenians were just folks.
Aspasia never got far with her women’s rights movement. As time went on, though, women were allowed to eat at the family table even if guests were present. Later still, they were permitted to cook the meal and wash the dishes afterwards.
Aspasia probably had her faults, but she loved Pericles dearly. She didn’t mind his being cone-headed. After his death she was companion to Lysicles, a sheep dealer. She didn’t seem to mind that, either.
1 Strictly speaking, the Age of Pericles may be said to have ended in 430 B.C., when Pericles was found guilty of embezzling public funds. It was never the same after that.
2 We have cone-headed people today, but we do not call them Squill Heads. We call them Zips.
3 I cannot believe that Aristides the Just stole nearly as much as Themistocles said he did. He always looked so stately and dignified.
4 Themistocles offered an easy mark for the rougher forms of political argument, having been born out of wedlock.
5 Pericles immediately banished his strongest rival, Cimon, who had achieved popularity by bringing the bones of Theseus, slayer of the Minotaur, back to Athens from the island of Scyros. As Theseus was a myth, he could hardly have had any bones. Nevertheless, Cimon brought them back.
6 The very poorest citizens had a chance to become President, but somehow they didn’t. It may have been just a coincidence.
7 Pronounced Pnyx.
8 He also revoked their right to censor the private lives of the citizens. This was nasty of Pericles, for about the only pleasure the old fellows had was catching some citizen doing what he shouldn’t. After that, they had to use their imaginations.
9 Sir Francis Galton said the Athenians were about twice as intelligent as we are. If you want a real laugh, though, look up Sir Francis’ theory of the stirps.
10 Members of the poorest class were not eligible for these offices. They had the wrong backgrounds.
11 Whenever a city objected to being helped in this way, it would be made to see reason. The amount of protection was fixed by Aristides the Just.
12 This had nothing to do with the trial for embezzlement. That was something else again.
13 Many persons believe he built the Acropolis on the Parthenon. I have tried to think of some way of preventing this error. There is no way.
14 Pericles was very fond of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides because he could not see jokes either.
15 Euripides passed his last years in Macedonia, his wife having fallen in love with Cephisophon, an actor. Many Greek women were mentally undeveloped.
16 People who talk like that are called philosophers.
17 Back of every great man is always a woman to instruct him in something. Then he does just the opposite.
18 This has been called the Golden Age.
19 Indeed, we had some such movement in our own day. How did that turn out, anyway?
20 The Greeks did nothing to excess, unless they were crazy about it.
21 Women were also admitted to the tragedies at the theatre. They were always late.
22 He had to be legalized by a special vote of the Assembly, all on account of that law his father had passed in 451 B.C. It shows you never know.
23 A correspondent asks why Socrates was always hanging around corners with a bevy of handsome young Greeks. He was waiting for a streetcar.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT
ALEXANDER III of Macedonia was born in 356 B.C., on the sixth day of the month of Lous.1 He is known as Alexander the Great because he killed more people of more different kinds than any other man of his time.2 He did this in order to impress Greek culture upon them. Alexander was not strictly a Greek and he was not cultured, but that was his story, and who am I to deny it?3
Alexander’s father was Philip II of Macedonia. Philip was a man of broad vision. He drank a good deal and had eight wives. He subdued the Greeks after they had knocked themselves out in the Peloponnesian War and appointed himself Captain General so that he could uphold the ideals of Hellas. The main ideal of Hellas was to get rid of Philip, but he didn’t count that one. He was assassinated in 336 B.C. by a friend of his wife Olympias.4
Olympias, the mother of Alexander, was slightly abnormal. She was an Epirote. She kept so many sacred snakes in her bedroom that Philip was afraid to go home after his drinking bouts.5 She told Alexander that his real father was Zeus Ammon, or Amon, a Græco-Egyptian god in the form of a snake. Alexander made much of this and would sit up all night boasting about it.6 He once executed thirteen Macedonians for saying that he was not the son of a serpent.
As a child Alexander was like most other children, if you see what I mean. He had blue eyes, curly red hair, and a pink-and-white complexion, and he was small for his age. At twelve he tamed Bucephalus, his favorite horse. In the same year he playfully pushed Nectanebo, a visiting astronomer, into a deep pit and broke his neck while he was lecturing on the stars. It has never been entirely proved that Alexander shoved the old man. The fact remains that they were standing by the pit and all of a sudden Nectanebo wasn’t there any more.
For three years, until he was sixteen, Alexander was educated by Aristotle, who seems to have avoided pits and the edges of roofs. Aristotle was famous for knowing everything. He taught that the brain exists merely to cool the blood and is not