Alasdair Gray - Old Men in Love

This morning she sat silently glooming over the breakfast table, refusing to touch the omelette I served, then suddenly said, “Well it’s tonight.”

“What is?” I asked. She said, “The meeting here, with those folk you don’t want to see. But you neednae see them. Lie low in the bedroom like I suggested if you won’t spend the night in a hotel. Everything should go fairly quietly.”

I said I would not let such strangers into my house and would call the police if she tried to bring them. She said, “How? You havenae a phone.”

I told her that today I would buy a mobile phone. On a shrill note she asked did I want her to get her throat cut? Or worse? I stared at her, speechless, and saw she was panic-stricken, with facial twitches and trembling I have never seen before and want never to see again. If she had started weeping I could not have borne it. I said alright, her visitors could come, but I would certainly not hide from them as if I was a criminal and they were police. I would meet them at the front door, offer them sandwiches and drinks in the living room, then withdraw to the study, leaving her to discuss business without my presence. In a smaller voice than I have heard her use before she whispered, “Thanks,” and went out, not seeming much cheered up. But that is what I have decided, what I will certainly do.

Despite which surprisingly happy day re-reading, re-planning book as originally intended, but named Money at Play. It only needs now a short end note for Socratic part, and enlarged Renaissance part showing workings of Medici capitalism, fall of Constantinople, French invasion. From Filippo Lippi’s standpoint these will appear like a brilliant landscape above which looms a huge storm cloud he does not notice — the coming Protestant Reformation and Catholic Counter-Reformation that will change most of Europe for the worse. That may take months but the end is certainly in sight.

An almost incredibly great idea seizes me. Can I also complete for this book my panoptic vision of Scotland from the Genesis of the universe to the near future? If I did, would it not become the Bible of a new and independent Scotland? Perhaps. I will now throw together the Athenian end notes then pop down to Buchanan Street, buy a mobile phone and see if it can be activated before Zoe brings her visitors. Best be on the safe side.

Witnesses were not called at Athenian trials and none of the important witnesses I have described could have attended the trial of Socrates in 399 BC. Alcibiades had died five years earlier, murdered by enemies after betraying so many people that nobody knows who hired the assassins. It may have been Critias who died a year later, in battle against the restoration of Athenian democracy. The name of Anytus’ son is not recorded but was almost certainly not Phoebus. He is said to have liked Socrates more than his own father, but may not have been the neurotic wretch I invented to show the bad effect of a strong, original thinker upon a weak one.

It is a pleasant fact that the restored Athenian democracy prospered without its empire for centuries after the trial of Socrates. It lived up to Pericles’ boast of being a school for other nations, though soon after Pericles died the Athens of his day was thought a golden age. Romans who made Greece part of their empire studied Greek poetry, philosophy, art and science in Athens which seemed their strongest source. Many schools of philosophy flourished there, Idealist and Cynic, Academic and Realist, Stoic and Epicurean. All claimed Socrates as their founder. Statues of him were erected in public places.

If I knew Greek well enough to understand the plays of Aristophanes he would have had a bigger part in my story, being as great an original genius in drama as Socrates in philosophy. His plays are great poetry, like Shakespeare’s, and satirize every aspect of life in his day: Olympian gods, the mighty dead, the Athenian state, its politicians and celebrities. He understood the democracy so completely — it understood him so well — that he successfully caricatured it in The Wasps as a daft old man who has to be locked up by his son because he prefers parliamentary politics to minding his own business. When Cleon, a tanner like Anytus, became popular by a vulgar display of bad parliamentary manners, Aristophanes showed him being pushed out of office by a sausage-seller whose manners were even worse. No good actor could be found brave enough to perform as Cleon on stage so Aristophanes acted the part himself. During the war with Sparta his comedies constantly, wittily denounced it. No government, democratic or monarchic, has since allowed such freedom to a great satirist.

The Greek empire Alcibiades dreamed of leading was made real by Alexander, young king of Macedonia, the Greek state closest to barbarism. He conquered all Greece, Palestine, Babylon, Egypt, Persia and part of India. He died at the age of thirty-three and his generals dismembered his empire. The Romans later reconquered much of it, adding on Italy, Spain, France, the Balkans and south Britain. Then the Roman empire split in two, the eastern and richest part being ruled by emperors with a bureaucracy speaking Greek. In the 1322 ndyear of the Christian era that part was conquered by an Islamic empire that renamed the capital city Istanbul. It ruled what is now called Turkey, Greece and most of the Balkans until 1864 when Greece got independence under a constitutional monarchy whose capital was Athens. In World War 2 it was conquered by the Third Reich, a German empire that held it for three or four years, after which the constitutional monarchy was restored. In 1967 a left-wing government was overthrown by a military coup aided by the United States. This dictatorship lasted until 1974 when Greece got back a form of parliamentary democracy with Athens still the capital.

Nowadays the securest nations have elected assemblies acting as their governments. None would have appeared democratic to Athenians who believed democracy was impossible in big nations, since in a vast population the influence of a single individual hardly exists, if he is not very rich. Plato said the ideal state should have 5,040 citizens, a number divisible by all numbers up to 13 except 11, thus making subdivisions of populace easy. Aristotle preferred solid things to ideal numbers and said the best size of nation was one with borders visible from a high point in the centre. The quarter-million people in the Icelandic Republic would have seemed unmanageably vast to democrats before the days of radio, telephone and cheap swift transport. But in small democracies (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Iceland, Holland, New Zealand) goods are still shared best. I hear the Irish Republic is a better place to live since a hierarchy’s hold on it loosened. Even before then hardly anyone in the Irish Republic wanted to be ruled again by the London parliament, hence Brendan Behan’s words: 63

The sea, the sea, the blesséd sea!

Long may it flow between England and me.

God help the Scots, they’ll never be free.

He may turn out to be wrong. The Scottish general election next week will show us. Surely at last some of Scotland’s faithful Labour party voters will see Blair, Brown and his crew had become Thatcherite Tories when they came to power? That is why the English money market let them come to power.