The Golden Mean by Annabel Lyon

I had heard of this book years ago but I had forgotten about it and had never read it. I had read that it had been a story about Aristotle and his student Alexander.

I decided to tackle this same project of Alexander years ago, and I am still in the process of writing it.  So lately while thinking of his feeble minded elder brother Arrhideus, I went on a search to find all that i could find on the internet connections pertaining to Arrhideus.  His mother is not Olympias, however, and so they are actually half brothers.  In the process, I was reminded of this book that someone had told me about so I decided to see if I could find it. I thought maybe I should read it to see what it is about.

I just finished it.  I do not like it but it is engrossing.  SPOILER ALERT!  The language she employs to describe her characters and their actions is often too graphic and vivid for my tastes.  The character of Alexander is disturbing and destructive.  It is a horrible young child that she imagines, and it is often in conflict with his positive qualities.  She describes Alexander so badly that I developed a strong dislike for her and her evil pen.

But it did awaken my mind to the fact that there are many people who do peceive Alexander in a light that astounds me.  It also makes me wonder again and again at all the many episodes in which I have relived his life as I have.  I am now aware that there may be a good reason for me to know all those experiences as I have had more than I had ever considered.  I had no idea that anyone would ever paint such an ugly portrait of him.  She has him decapitating a dead body just to win the approval of a dramatist. Later, she has him go mad in battle, with his attempting to skin the head of a dead man.  I found all that repugnant and false to my understanding of Alexander's training to become a warrior.

The book is despicable in that respect.  She does develop the story of a feeble minded elder brother and as I had had my own drama regarding a discussion between Alexander and Arrhideus I found her description to be too damaged.  In my own interpretation, Arrhideus and Alexander talk together openly about the differences between them, which is rather poignant...He is not quite so impaired in my version as he is in her story.  So that bothered me a lot.

But mine is yet to be written, accepted, and published...I realized that she is drawing on the depths of hell, while I acknowledge all the hell that is around, I am also drawing on the powers of the gods and the divinity that is in Alexander. He is also perceived as a religious man who was carefully taught all the rites and rituals of the Holy Man.

At the very end, she seems to try to tidy up her own mess by tying a neat little bow in her package of opposites, a balancing act she calls it.  Gradually, she leads us through the drudgery of teaching, schooling, battles, and then at last, release....Aristotle is free to move from Pella but meets with both Alexander and Arrhideus to realize that not only has he fathered a daughter and a son from two wives but also has in a sense fathered Alexander and Arrhideus as well.  Perhaps the author is close to correct in that conclusion...end of story....too tidy for such a messy walk through Aristotle's version of the story of the court of Philip of Macedon and Alexander.


I do not really recommend this book because I honestly do not believe that Aristotle would write this way nor do I believe that Alexander is a seriously dangerous and disturbed young boy.   It is odd to consider that she finally at the end lets Aristotle realize that he has loved...not only his wife, but also Alexander, and even his second wife...the author delights in using shock to prejudice a reader into a false belief.