The Golden Mean

In her historical novel The Golden Mean (2009), Canadian author Annabel Lyon dramatizes the three-year period starting in 343 BC when the Greek philosopher Aristotle tutors the teenaged Alexander III of Macedon, better known as Alexander the Great. The title refers to a Greek philosophical concept prescribing that individuals aim to strike the perfect balance between excess and deficiency. For The Golden Mean, Lyon received a nomination for the Giller Prize, an annual literary award given to Canadian fiction writers.

In the year 343 BC at the age of 41, Aristotle is recalled from Athens by Philip II—the king of Macedon and a childhood friend of Aristotle—to tutor his two sons. Prior to that, Aristotle served as an educator at Plato's Academy for 20 years until shortly after Plato's death. Aristotle is depicted as a deeply unhappy man, cursed with a dry wit and a "freakish brain." He is extraordinarily self-deprecating and goes so far as to refer to himself as garbage.

Of Philip II's two sons, one is gentle but suffers from significant cognitive deficiencies. The other is the violent, impetuous, and brilliant 13-year-old boy Alexander III, who will later be widely known as Alexander the Great. Alexander is just as unhappy as Aristotle, though his depression stems from too much passion, not a lack of it like Aristotle. To correct this, Aristotle counsels the future military commander to achieve "the golden mean," a perfect balance between excess and deficiency. Alexander rejects this prescription, accusing Aristotle of prizing mediocrity.



Both Aristotle and Alexander have troubling relationships with bodies, human and otherwise. Aristotle, for example, disembowels lizards alive with complete dispassion to study their biological responses. In another instance, he stops having sex with his wife, Pythias, to share a clinical observation about her genitals. Alexander, meanwhile, is already a terror on the battlefield, carving off the face of an enemy combatant. Elsewhere, he blithely decapitates a dead body to provide a prop for a theatrical production. Over the course of the narrative, Alexander develops what Aristotle calls "soldier's heart," a primitive term for post-traumatic stress disorder. That said, Alexander loves his mother, Olympias, intensely and has a great deal of affection for his friends and his horse, displaying an emotional maturity that Aristotle clearly lacks. The irony is that, of the two individuals, Aristotle possesses a temperament arguably better suited for the horrors of the battlefield, given his clinical approach to the human body.

For all their differences, Aristotle recognizes in Alexander several traits they share, including a sharp intellect, a rigorous tendency to question everything, and an understanding of one's own destiny and future place in history. Moreover, Aristotle views his tutelage of Alexander as necessary to curb some of the boy's more sadistic and megalomaniacal tendencies.

As the book progresses, Aristotle's heart seems to soften significantly, perhaps because of his interactions with Alexander. This adjustment in his temperament is seen in his warm interactions with his daughter, who is also named Pythias, and his witty servant, Athea. Moreover, when Philip II is assassinated by one of his seven bodyguards, Aristotle feels intense grief over the loss of his old friend.



In addition to educating Alexander on philosophy and temperament, Aristotle advises the boy on how to be an effective leader. He tells Alexander to treat his subjects as he would friends or relatives but to treat warring barbarian hordes as beasts or plants even. Aristotle also encourages Alexander to lead conquests to the East. He holds enmity toward the Persians of the Middle East, displaying a strain of racism that is no less disturbing in its characteristic dispassion.

Eventually, Aristotle follows Alexander into war, serving as a medic pulling arrows out of wounded soldiers in a tent. By this time, Alexander's zeal for conquest is so large that he no longer makes time for the intellectual pursuits Aristotle encourages. Eventually, the two grow distant, and Aristotle returns to Athens to establish his own academy, the Lyceum. There he composes his most enduring works, including Metaphysics and Politics. Meanwhile, Alexander becomes the king of Macedonia following Philip's death and successfully conquers Persia and Anatolia, thus establishing an empire that stretches from the Adriatic Sea to northwest India. He invades India but eventually retreats to regroup. In Babylon, Alexander dies of an unknown illness at the age of 32.

According to The Globe and Mail, The Golden Mean is "a virtuous work, though fibrous, fat-free and rarely what you'd call fun. But that is probably exactly as Aristotle would have wanted it."