The Golden Mean - Annabel Lyon [0]
PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF
Copyright © 2009 by Annabel Lyon
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.aaknopf.com
Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Originally published in Canada by Random House Canada, a division of Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto, in 2009.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library for permission to reprint an excerpt from Diogenes Laertius: Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Volume II, Books 6–10 (Loeb Classical Library Volume 185), translated by R. D. Hicks (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press), copyright © 1925 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Loeb Classical Library® is a registered trademark of the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reprinted by permission of Harvard University Press on behalf of the Trustees of the Loeb Classical Library.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lyon, Annabel, [date]
The golden mean : a novel of Aristotle and Alexander the Great / by Annabel Lyon.—1st U.S. ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-59444-0
1. Aristotle—Fiction. 2. Philosophers—Greece—Fiction. 3. Alexander, the Great, 356–323 B.C.—Fiction. 4. Greece—History—Macedonian Expansion, 359–323 B.C.—Fiction. 5. Athens (Greece)—Fiction. I. Title.
PR9199.3.L98G65 2010
813′.6—dc22 2010017548
v3.1
For my parents,
my children,
and Bryant
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Cast
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Afterword
Acknowledgements
A Note About the Author
Cast
(IN ORDER OF APPEARANCE)
Aristotle, a philosopher
Callisthenes, Aristotle’s nephew and apprentice
Pythias, Aristotle’s wife
Hermias, governor of Atarneus, Aristotle’s former patron
Philip, king of Macedon
Phila, Audata, Philinna, Nikesipolis, wives of Philip
Olympias, wife of Philip, queen of Macedon
Leonidas, one of Alexander’s tutors
Carolus, a theatre director
Demosthenes, an Athenian orator, enemy of Philip
Arrhidaeus, son of Philip and Philinna, elder half-brother of Alexander
Philes, Arrhidaeus’s nurse
Alexandros, king of Molossos, Olympias’s brother
Antipater, a general, regent in Philip’s absence
Alexander, son of Philip and Olympias
Arimnestus and Arimneste, twins, Aristotle’s younger brother and sister
Proxenus, husband of Arimneste, Aristotle’s guardian after his parents’ deaths
Amyntas, Philip’s father, king of Macedon
Illaeus, a student of Plato, Aristotle’s tutor
Perdicaas, Philip’s elder brother, king of Macedon after Amyntas’s death
Euphraeus, a student of Plato, Perdicaas’s tutor
Hephaestion, Alexander’s closest companion
Ptolemy, another of Alexander’s companions
Lysimachus, one of Alexander’s tutors
Pausanias, a Macedonian officer, later one of Philip’s bodyguard
Tycho, a slave of Aristotle
Artabazus, a Persian refugee in the Macedonian court
Athea, a slave of Aristotle
Meda, sixth wife of Philip
Little Pythias, Aristotle and Pythias’s daughter
Xenocrates, a philosopher, Speusippus’s successor as director of the Academy
Eudoxus, a philosopher, director of the Academy in Plato’s absence
Callippus, a philosopher, companion of Eudoxus
Nicanor, son of Arimneste and Proxenus
Plato, a philosopher, director of the Academy
Speusippus, Plato’s nephew, director of the Academy after his uncle’s death
Herpyllis, Pythias’s maid, Aristotle’s companion after Pythias’s death
Cleopatra, seventh wife of Philip
Attalus, father of Cleopatra
Eurydice, daughter of Philip and Cleopatra
Pixodarus, governor of Caria, Arrhidaeus’s potential father-in-law
Thessalus, an actor
Nicomachus, Aristotle and Herpyllis’s son
IT MUST BE BORNE in mind that my design is not to write histories, but lives. And the most glorious exploits do not always furnish us with the clearest discoveries of virtue or vice in men; sometimes a matter of less moment, an expression or a jest, informs us better of their characters