Read Online Glory and the Lightning by Taylor Caldwell - Free Book Online

and the adornment of the gods, there could be no civilization, no justification of life. All else was mundane and prosaic and deadening. Nothing else so engrossed the intellect and joy and wonder of the mind, so exhilarated it and raised it above the flesh. It made man truly man. Tmolus had seen that Aspasia agreed with him. Once she had said to him, “Tmolus, you are truly a philosopher,” and he understood. He had received her comment as an accolade, even though she was only a maiden and he an old man.
    He was small and slight of body, and bent and gray, but his eves were vividly alive and filled with unquenched youth and joy in living, for he found, as did Aspasia, all things beautiful, even a warted toad or a lichened stone or a weed. Ugliness did not revolt him, for he believed all things intrinsically lovely. “A withered crone with no teeth, with whitened hair, with crippled hands, has an innate glory,” he would say. “Does she not live and have being? So, she is beautiful. Her life and her thoughts have molded her. Have they been hideous? But—they too have mystery, and therefore their own charm. When we learn that nothing is boring, nothing too mean or despicable, we can have serenity, for serenity is the soul of art.”
    “Even if it depicts violence?” Aspasia had once asked.
    “Violence is part of living, and often it is a quickening and a drama, child. We can contemplate it for what it is, an aspect of life, and living is an art in itself.” He found only men who would not see as disastrous, and unworthy of being called human. Moreover, they were a threat to other men.
    “Not everything that walks in the form of a man is human,” he would explain. “Many there are who do not have full humanity, or any humanity at all. Aspect is not all. There is the soul. I have heard that some birds create charming and delicate bowers for their females, choosing between colors and texture of flowers, and completing a haven of symmetry and fragrance. Are they not more human, in the full sense of the word, than a man who considers mere stone and wood and brick an adequate shelter? The gift of humanness is not confined to mankind. I have heard that many animals display the virtues of compassion and justice and law and tenderness and love. They are more human than the men who do not possess these.”
    He loved the gods, though reputed that they were often debauched and capricious and often too human. For, were they not beautiful, even the lame Vulcan? Zeus had violated Leda, and out of her eggs had come the Gemini and Helen of Troy and Clytemnestra. “But the story of Leda and the swan is immortally beautiful,” he would say. “Consider the delightful young maiden in all her wondrous loveliness and the white-winged swan beating against her breast.”
    The girls had giggled at this, archly. But Aspasia had dubiously understood. Out of tumultuous violence had come beauteous Helen and the Gemini; out of lustful love had come the forms of gods and the unforgettable face and lure of Helen of Troy. But one did not condone senseless violence, which was despicable, but only that violence which produced beauty, Aspasia thought.
    Tmolus excused everything which resulted in loveliness. But sometimes the recalcitrant Aspasia wondered. However, she loved Tmolus and forgave him.
    Beautiful male and female slaves posed for the hetairai for their lessons in painting and sculpture and mosaics. The bodies were carefully chosen for their grace and youth. Though Thargelia instructed the teacher that he should emphasize the attributes of alluring sexual differences, and expose the male slaves to the utmost scrutiny of her virgins, and discourse on their attributes and endowments, Tmolus preferred that these matters be discussed in the frame of artistry. “There is no coyness or libidinous aspects to Art,” he would say. “That which is exquisite is above tittering and filthiness. The evil is not in the object but in the viewer. We