Excerpt from INSOLENCE
Fire Consumes the Library of Alexandria
Emperor Theodosius ordered the Library of Alexandria set on fire to punish a sage’s braggadocio. The sage insinuated that power derived from brute force was fleeting: Remove the Emperor’s legions and his power smoke is on a windy afternoon.
Why did a sage act so incautiously?
It often happens that men of great intelligence have lacunas of common sense as great or greater in magnitude. The sage’s lack of common sense was apparent to everyone, in particular to his wife. The sage, his friends and disciples nicknamed Genius, in the early hours had been meditating on the nature of power. His wife interrupted him, having to run down to the market for a loaf of bread.
Genius, she said, keep an eye on the infant.
The six-month old infant had learned to roll on his side and back all the way to the edge of the bed. Genius kept an eye on the infant for maybe 30 seconds. The thread of his early meditation pulled him out to the porch, where the nature of power proved more compelling than his paternal duty. Genius went pacing around while the infant went rolling and fell into the chamber pot. It was filled to the rim with the previous night’s deposits, slang for urine and other excretions. The mother presaged danger and ran the last stretch home, a steep climb up the knoll. She found Genius out pacing deep in thought, and inside the house the infant drowning. She pressed the infant’s abdomen until he spat the last drop of deposits from his lungs, and proceeded to hammer Genius with the loaf of bread.
To be so smart, she rightfully castigated him, you are an ass.
Genius reacted like any 2nd century gentleman and scholar would: Young lady (he had married a woman half his age), have you forgotten your station in life?
She, still enraged, still screaming, still banging him, reminded him how lucky he was, and to thank his Gods, Apollo, or Poseidon, or whomever, that what she in her hand was a loaf of bread and not a two-by-four.
Genius left the house, telling himself, civilization, alas, has pitfalls. For one, can’t have the wife stoned at will. Or maybe he could put a heretic theory in her mouth, and let vehement Christians do the rest. He was wearing a splendid white tunic and sandals laced with gold, his long silver hair shone under the sun. Before heading to the palace for lunch with the Roman Emperor, he stopped at the Library of Alexandria for three servings of poetry, one serving of Plato (the irrelevance of the material world to the essence of man and his immortality), and one serving of medical science, or esthetics, an essay by the physician Galen on proportion and beauty, how one finger must relate to other fingers and the hand to the arm, and limbs to thorax, etc.)
Had Genius meditated on the nature of words instead of power, he would have kept his mouth shut at lunch with the Emperor. Instead he unleashed another defect abundantly evident in public intellectuals, what Alexandrians called the Prima Dona syndrome. When guests left or were too drunk to count, Genius reiterated, he simply had to, his view on the nature of power, and once his tongue got rolling, oh, it knew no boundaries, and the rolling tongue of public intellectuals always headed to the boulevard of self-aggrandizement.
Oh, yes, take away the goons, and what is left of the Emperor’s power? But eliminating the power of knowledge ingrained in the sage’s brain was beyond brute force, as was beyond goons destroying the intangible power stored within the walls of our temple of wisdom, our excelsior Library!
The emperor motioned a subaltern to approach. He whispered to his ear an order, and turning to the sage suggested having a last drink out in the terrace.
It does have an excelsior view of the city, he said.
Oh, yes, the sage concurred.
And the nature of fire manifested itself violently. The emperor had ordered the subaltern to set the Library on fire. Fire raged across the library and a cloud of smoke mushroomed over Alexandria.
Now, smiled the Emperor, tell me about your power.
No comments:
Post a Comment