Kingdom.”
The divine voice rushed through me, filling my thoughts. I could no longer see my audience; I could only speak Kleio’s words.
I vaulted back three centuries for my second instance. At that time the Middle Kingdom had just invented battle kites and our ground troops had no defenses against them. To counter this advantage Sparta needed thousands of huge evac cannons to shoot them down. The generals demanded that the scholars produce the vast supply of fire-gold needed to rarify the air inside these cannons.
The Akedeme dragooned all its pyrologists and geologists, their task to turn the production of fire-enriched metals from a slow, dangerous, complex task to a simple, safe, easy one. Ten years and ten million obols later, they succeeded. In the process two fields of science were advanced, and float carts, capsule tubes, and a thousand other modern conveniences based on fire-metals were made practical, but again those were side effects of military demands.
To complete my trinity of examples, I looked back six hundred years to a time when the League’s armies were too large to be fed on their extended campaigns. Sparta called on Athens for help and spontaneous-generation research became the most important subject at the Akademe. Seven years of work led the hero Aigistos to discover the formula for producing cows from garbage. Armies could now travel where they wanted for as long as they needed.
“As an afterthought he eliminated hunger throughout the League,” I said, “and he sparked the First Indian Rebellion.”
I had made clear the dominance of Sparta over Athens; now I had to show that that dominance came about through political machination. I went backward nine centuries to speak about the two heroes who had chained the Akademe to the battlefield: Alexander and Aristotle.
The scarred moon had fallen behind the heads of the students, limning the grove of varied trees in a ghostly aura. I imagined Alexander and Aristotle standing on this very spot under a moon untouched by man. The young general asked the old philosopher-turned-scientist for help in remaking the Delian League into a force that could conquer the Middle Kingdom. Legend said they worked under a divine vision of the future, but the dusty chronicles in the cellars of the Akademe said otherwise.
I paused to catch my breath for a moment; Kleio also paused, pulling away from my mind so that I might recover from the throes of her epistasy.
I looked at my audience for the first time in an hour. The scholars weren’t bored anymore. They leaned forward, their hands were knotted in their robes, their eyes were bright with interest. The students rocked back and forth on their crossed legs. Their faces were rapt like maenads about to tear apart a goat for the glory of Dionysos.
Before Kleio would take my mind again, Athena stepped in and stopped my voice with sudden wisdom. Pallas made me look at the scholars and students and understand that they had not heard what I had said. I had told them the bloody history of the Akademe, and they were proud of it. If I told them the truth about Alexander and Aristotle, they’d ignore me. Crazy Aias, they’d think, hope the Archons don’t expect much from his work.
The pressure of their attention washed over me with a wave of fatiguing realization. It would make no difference to them if I told this assemblage that Aristotle had connived with Alexander to purge the Platonists from the Akademe by force.
If I proved to them that the founder of modern science had sacrificed his philosophy to make weapons for a boy who thought he was a god long before his death and apotheosis, it would not matter. These pursuers of truth would not care that Aristotle gave up his vision of uniting all knowledge so he could become master of the school founded by Plato, the teacher he hated.
I stood poised between two goddesses, both of whom claimed my allegiance. I did not know then why Athena counseled the speaking of
The divine voice rushed through me, filling my thoughts. I could no longer see my audience; I could only speak Kleio’s words.
I vaulted back three centuries for my second instance. At that time the Middle Kingdom had just invented battle kites and our ground troops had no defenses against them. To counter this advantage Sparta needed thousands of huge evac cannons to shoot them down. The generals demanded that the scholars produce the vast supply of fire-gold needed to rarify the air inside these cannons.
The Akedeme dragooned all its pyrologists and geologists, their task to turn the production of fire-enriched metals from a slow, dangerous, complex task to a simple, safe, easy one. Ten years and ten million obols later, they succeeded. In the process two fields of science were advanced, and float carts, capsule tubes, and a thousand other modern conveniences based on fire-metals were made practical, but again those were side effects of military demands.
To complete my trinity of examples, I looked back six hundred years to a time when the League’s armies were too large to be fed on their extended campaigns. Sparta called on Athens for help and spontaneous-generation research became the most important subject at the Akademe. Seven years of work led the hero Aigistos to discover the formula for producing cows from garbage. Armies could now travel where they wanted for as long as they needed.
“As an afterthought he eliminated hunger throughout the League,” I said, “and he sparked the First Indian Rebellion.”
I had made clear the dominance of Sparta over Athens; now I had to show that that dominance came about through political machination. I went backward nine centuries to speak about the two heroes who had chained the Akademe to the battlefield: Alexander and Aristotle.
The scarred moon had fallen behind the heads of the students, limning the grove of varied trees in a ghostly aura. I imagined Alexander and Aristotle standing on this very spot under a moon untouched by man. The young general asked the old philosopher-turned-scientist for help in remaking the Delian League into a force that could conquer the Middle Kingdom. Legend said they worked under a divine vision of the future, but the dusty chronicles in the cellars of the Akademe said otherwise.
I paused to catch my breath for a moment; Kleio also paused, pulling away from my mind so that I might recover from the throes of her epistasy.
I looked at my audience for the first time in an hour. The scholars weren’t bored anymore. They leaned forward, their hands were knotted in their robes, their eyes were bright with interest. The students rocked back and forth on their crossed legs. Their faces were rapt like maenads about to tear apart a goat for the glory of Dionysos.
Before Kleio would take my mind again, Athena stepped in and stopped my voice with sudden wisdom. Pallas made me look at the scholars and students and understand that they had not heard what I had said. I had told them the bloody history of the Akademe, and they were proud of it. If I told them the truth about Alexander and Aristotle, they’d ignore me. Crazy Aias, they’d think, hope the Archons don’t expect much from his work.
The pressure of their attention washed over me with a wave of fatiguing realization. It would make no difference to them if I told this assemblage that Aristotle had connived with Alexander to purge the Platonists from the Akademe by force.
If I proved to them that the founder of modern science had sacrificed his philosophy to make weapons for a boy who thought he was a god long before his death and apotheosis, it would not matter. These pursuers of truth would not care that Aristotle gave up his vision of uniting all knowledge so he could become master of the school founded by Plato, the teacher he hated.
I stood poised between two goddesses, both of whom claimed my allegiance. I did not know then why Athena counseled the speaking of
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