Aristotle sat on a bench and called for Alexander. Hephaes-tion dragged me by the hand, then pushed me forcibly. I stood in front of the philosopher with my eyes lowered and my hands behind my back, staring at a column of ants carrying grain toward some bushes. Aristotle's voice rang out. It was the first time I had heard pure Greek, unhampered by any accent.

"Macedonia is just one star in a sky full of stars, do you know that?"

I looked up.

Aristotle drew me in and tamed me with his beautiful words and his soothing presence. He let me feel his body, which was nothing like those of the warriors I grew up with. His status as a philosopher meant he could dispense with all athletic training: his skin was soft, his belly fat, his chest flabby. Aristotle was living proof of the diversity of the world. Other men may be as powerful as warriors. Other towns may be more beautiful than Pella.

In the shade beneath the porticoes Aristotle unrolled his maps. He took an olive branch and traced the roads and shorelines. Country by country, he communicated his passion for geography to me. He smelled good, and his face glowed. No one before him had that phrasing, that way with words, that stringency and clarity. Aristotle was a mason who knew how to build minds. He consolidated the foundations laid down by Olympias, and erected the columns. Mathematics, logic, and metaphysics supported the structure of thought. I grasped that history was not written only by the gods of Olympus or by heroes destined for great exploits. The earth was populated not only with Cerberuses, centaurs, and mermaids. Men had created kingdoms, cities, and governments. Somewhere beyond incantations and witchcraft there was grammar, analysis, and morality. Beyond the art of divination, there was arithmetic, and that quest for a just medium between the failings and qualities of all things, that balancing act, that is called politics.