to Sophia to see if she could restore his tranquillity with her wisdom. He might have expected that she would do no such thing.
“So tell me. Why do you continue to live in idleness?” she asked once his salutations were presented. “What is your justification beyond that of natural lassitude?”
What was it about this woman that made him feel so confident and content? How was it that her mere look, the way she smiled, could banish all his fears and persuade him that all problems could be understood? How was it that, when faced with a difficulty, he always thought of what she would say or recommend? The first thing he had done after burying his father was to go south, to Marseille. She had comforted him, reassured him, stilled his heart. It was because of her words that he had not brought out his troops and let them loose for an indiscriminate revenge that would have convulsed the province into civil war, because of her again that he did not allow his inactivity to grow into a cancerous hatred of humanity. For twenty years now she had been his mentor, his teacher, his guide; never had she failed him. She had criticized, scorned, bullied, but never withdrawn her love. And he had risen to meet that challenge, always seeking to live up to her expectations, even though he knew he must always fall short.
Her question was a shock, even though it was put in her normal fashion, with the inquiring neutrality of a teacher probing her pupil, forcing him to consider unthought-of questions that he knew only too well once posed. They were in the house he had given her, although it was as unfurnished as the day she walked up the hill and into its door; her way of life was as ascetic as a desert anchorite’s. She never had possessions; a few clothes and her books were all that she had or wished to have. In this she remained thoroughly Greek, although almost as archaic as she was in the Attic she still sometimes spoke in homage to her masters, already dead for nearly eight hundred years.
“Are you urging me to abandon a life of contemplation and take up public affairs? After all you have told me about the virtues of the philosophic life? Which side should I take? The bad, or the worse?”
She cocked her head to one side and looked at him dreamily, in the way she always adopted when teaching. As usual, she was a mess, a disgrace. Her dark hair was cropped short and looked as though it had been shorn by a slave with a blunt knife; her dress was of coarse linen, short in the arms and not very much different to the sort of thing shopkeepers might wear. Her nails were rough-cut, and her feet bare. She wore no decoration; her eyes were her only adornment, but these so far excelled all artificial baubles in their beauty that any jewel would have seemed tawdry in comparison. And her voice, which had not changed in all the time he had known her, still dark and throaty, seductive and commanding, amused and critical by turns; once heard, impossible ever to forget. Blind men could fall in love with Sophia, just as Manlius did, despite his usual fineness of discernment in the matter of female beauty.
“An example,” she said. “You may comment on it when I am finished. According to Aristotle, one of the earliest laws of Solon, the great law-giver of Athens, said that if a society split into strife and civil war, anyone who refused to take sides should be exiled and outlawed when order was restored. Your opinion?”
“An absurdity,” said Manlius, with a sigh of contentment, for this is why he came to her, to have his mind tested and strained; it was what he lived for, almost, and what she had always unselfishly given. “It’s obvious that the more people join in, the worse the conflict. It seems designed to increase dissent, and spread the chaos of faction even to those who would ordinarily preserve something of civility in a period of violence.”
“Your beliefs are so thinly held that you think your grasp on reasoned behavior would
“So tell me. Why do you continue to live in idleness?” she asked once his salutations were presented. “What is your justification beyond that of natural lassitude?”
What was it about this woman that made him feel so confident and content? How was it that her mere look, the way she smiled, could banish all his fears and persuade him that all problems could be understood? How was it that, when faced with a difficulty, he always thought of what she would say or recommend? The first thing he had done after burying his father was to go south, to Marseille. She had comforted him, reassured him, stilled his heart. It was because of her words that he had not brought out his troops and let them loose for an indiscriminate revenge that would have convulsed the province into civil war, because of her again that he did not allow his inactivity to grow into a cancerous hatred of humanity. For twenty years now she had been his mentor, his teacher, his guide; never had she failed him. She had criticized, scorned, bullied, but never withdrawn her love. And he had risen to meet that challenge, always seeking to live up to her expectations, even though he knew he must always fall short.
Her question was a shock, even though it was put in her normal fashion, with the inquiring neutrality of a teacher probing her pupil, forcing him to consider unthought-of questions that he knew only too well once posed. They were in the house he had given her, although it was as unfurnished as the day she walked up the hill and into its door; her way of life was as ascetic as a desert anchorite’s. She never had possessions; a few clothes and her books were all that she had or wished to have. In this she remained thoroughly Greek, although almost as archaic as she was in the Attic she still sometimes spoke in homage to her masters, already dead for nearly eight hundred years.
“Are you urging me to abandon a life of contemplation and take up public affairs? After all you have told me about the virtues of the philosophic life? Which side should I take? The bad, or the worse?”
She cocked her head to one side and looked at him dreamily, in the way she always adopted when teaching. As usual, she was a mess, a disgrace. Her dark hair was cropped short and looked as though it had been shorn by a slave with a blunt knife; her dress was of coarse linen, short in the arms and not very much different to the sort of thing shopkeepers might wear. Her nails were rough-cut, and her feet bare. She wore no decoration; her eyes were her only adornment, but these so far excelled all artificial baubles in their beauty that any jewel would have seemed tawdry in comparison. And her voice, which had not changed in all the time he had known her, still dark and throaty, seductive and commanding, amused and critical by turns; once heard, impossible ever to forget. Blind men could fall in love with Sophia, just as Manlius did, despite his usual fineness of discernment in the matter of female beauty.
“An example,” she said. “You may comment on it when I am finished. According to Aristotle, one of the earliest laws of Solon, the great law-giver of Athens, said that if a society split into strife and civil war, anyone who refused to take sides should be exiled and outlawed when order was restored. Your opinion?”
“An absurdity,” said Manlius, with a sigh of contentment, for this is why he came to her, to have his mind tested and strained; it was what he lived for, almost, and what she had always unselfishly given. “It’s obvious that the more people join in, the worse the conflict. It seems designed to increase dissent, and spread the chaos of faction even to those who would ordinarily preserve something of civility in a period of violence.”
“Your beliefs are so thinly held that you think your grasp on reasoned behavior would
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