Behind the scenes with Aristotle and pupil Alexander

September 26, 2010|Roberta Silman, Globe Correspondent

Annabel Lyon is the author of a collection of stories, “Oxygen,’’ and a book of novellas, “The Best Thing For You.’’ Now we have her ambitious first novel, “The Golden Mean,’’ which was published to great acclaim in Canada last spring. Beautifully researched and written, it is the story of Aristotle during the crucial years after he was summoned by his childhood friend, King Philip of Macedon, to come to Pella and teach Philip’s son, Alexander the Great.

Roughly based on the actual events first recorded in “Plutarch’s Lives,’’ Lyon’s novel covers much of the material explored in Mary Renault’s 1969 novel, “Fire From Heaven.’’ However, where Renault’s novel was considered a somewhat sentimental picture of Alexander, Lyon’s book is refreshingly blunt and accessible as it delves into the complicated relationships of Alexander and Aristotle as they interact with a large group of vivid characters who all seem to have ideas about how to educate a ruler.

Told from Aristotle’s point of view, it reminds us that the philosopher was born in Stageira and that he and Philip were childhood friends because Aristotle’s father was the doctor to Philip’s father when he was king. When the book opens in 343 BC, Aristotle is disappointed that he was not chosen to lead Plato’s Academy in Athens after his famous teacher’s death. So Aristotle is completely open to Philip’s invitation to come to Pella where Philip lives with Olympias, the mother of Alexander. The boy is now 13, spoiled, arrogant, and wild.

He has an older half-brother, Arrhidaeus, a boy who is mentally challenged although he was born healthy. History tells us that he may have been epileptic; in the novel, some people believe he was poisoned by Olympias to ensure her son’s ascension to the throne, but as presented by Lyon he seems more within the autism spectrum than anything else.

We learn a lot about Aristotle’s childhood, how he was always a loner, avidly curious about everything, and subject to fits of depression, which he calls blackness. His father, Nicomachus, realizing early that this child was not cut out for soldiering, encourages him to become a doctor, even dragging Aristotle to a gruesome caesarean birth. But he doesn’t really know what he has, and as Aristotle puts it: “His encouragement came in mean doses, and often at random; why was it fine to want to watch the birth of a litter of puppies but idle and wasteful to work out the mathematical relationship between the length of a lyre string and the tone it produced?’’

Nicomachus finally sends him to Illaeus, who teaches the boy philosophy and books (and sex) until the plague takes both parents, and Aristotle finds his way to Plato’s Academy, where he becomes the star student.