Tuesday morning brought Dr. Padgett and Art History. They had completed Egypt, to the delight of Damon, and the other Near Eastern civilizations, and were beginning Greece. It was here that Dr. Padgett introduced the concepts of balance and proportion, to the delight of Bryce.
She used the phrase ‘human scale’ to designate the achievement of the Athenians, and distinguish it from the outlook of the previous cultures, where bigger seemed identified with better.
Dr. Padgett lectured: “Let us consider the matter of size in the ancient Greek city-state. In the Republic, Plato says the ideal city-state should contain five thousand citizens. He is not, of course, talking about a total population of five thousand. His five thousand citizens are five thousand male heads of household. In ancient Greece, generally speaking citizenship excluded foreigners, women, children, and, of course, slaves. So Plato might have been talking about a total population of fifty thousand people. Aristotle, in his Politics, says that in the ideal city-state every citizen should be able to recognize every other citizen when he meets him in the agora, or market place. Most city-states seem to have been smaller than this ideal. At one extreme is the ally of Athens at the beginning of the Persian Wars, which sent her entire army, that is her entire citizen body between the ages of eighteen and fifty-nine, in one boat. There were eighteen of them.
“But, while great size was not important to the Classical Greeks, proportion was, and the Greek concept of proportion is related to the human figure, or more specifically to the adult male. It has been determined by measuring skeletons and the like that the average height of an adult Greek male during the Classical period was about five foot, seven and one-half inches. This is the ‘measure,’ or ‘meter,’ which was used in laying out a new town during the period of Greek expansion around the Mediterranean world. That emphasis placed by Aristotle on a citizen being able to recognize fellow citizens in public spaces, such as the agora or the gymnasium, depended on such a measure. For a man five foot, seven and a half inches tall, the maximum distance at which it is possible to distinguish the general outline of a person – clothing, age, gait – and hence to identify him, and the maximum distance at which basic colors are easily distinguishable, assuming normal eyesight, is about 450 feet.
“On the acropolis at Athens, the sacred district containing the temple of the patron deity of the city-state, Pallas Athene, the maximum visual distance, from the Propylaea to the farthest corner of the Parthenon is 465 feet, and the maximum width is 430 feet. The distances in the agora are comparable. The Greeks knew better than to construct a city which swallowed up its citizens, like old Cronos.
“The Sophist philosopher Parmenides is credited with the statement that, ‘Man is the measure of all things.’ In Athens this might have been literally true. If we take five foot, seven and one-half inches as the measure of a man, we find some interesting relationships in the Parthenon, that most famous of all Greek structures. The Parthenon is 540.12 inches high, eight times the measure of a man. It is 1215.3 inches wide, eighteen times the measure of a man. It is 2734.03 inches long, 40.5 times the measure of a man. These dimensions are multiples of the 4:9 ratio, which governs the entire acropolis area (4:9 = 8:18 = 18:40.5). Moreover, the interior columns are three times the measure of a man in height, the distance between the architraves is six times this measure, the statue of Pallas Athene is said to have been eight times this measure.
“This concern with proportion is important to all who would understand the Classical Greeks. The remarkable relationship in public spaces of all things to the measure of a man is a physical parallel to the mottos of the god Apollo found at his oracle at Delphi: ‘nothing to excess’ and ‘know thyself.’ It is this avoidance of extremes and concentration on the human scale which gives the civilization of Classical Greece its enduring appeal.
“That enduring appeal can be found in the marvelous oval which makes up Bernini’s triumphal St. Peter’s Square in Rome, which is 430 feet wide. The Place Vendôme in Paris, and the Amalienborg Square in Copenhagen are exactly 450 feet at their farthest distances. The maximum length of the Piazza San Marco in Venice is 425 feet. There is something definitely human to those spaces, but in larger spaces the human tends to get lost in the immensity of the architecture.
“But let us return to the Parthenon, this masterwork of proportion and human scale. The columns are tapered slightly, and are also leaning slightly, not because the Athenians didn’t know any better, but because they did. This is in reality an optical illusion. To the human eye, these columns look right, even though measurements show they are not.”
From there, Professor Padgett went on to discuss the human elements, and the emphasis on proportion, in the sculptures on the Parthenon. The enthusiasm of the instructor for the ancient Greeks, and for the Parthenon in particular, was manifest.
Bryce took down all these numbers, and was totally confused by them, but he did grasp the basic idea – or rather, the two basic ideas – in this lecture. The average height of a man in the ancient world was a measuring stick which provided a human environment which did not overwhelm people, and the most pleasing environments were based on principles of proportion. Combined with what Bryce already knew about the importance of the concepts of balance and proportion in ancient Greek thought, this might be useful information, that is, if he could ever figure out the numbers. But the fact that the most well-known piece of architecture in the ancient Greek world was based on proportion was significant when taken in conjunction with such other factors as Aristotle’s emphasis on the golden mean and avoiding extremes in politics. Since all this reinforced Bryce’s existing prejudice in favor of balance and proportion, he decided to add it to his collection of trivia for use as needed.
At lunch, Caroline took pity on Bryce, and insisted on talking about music rather than cooking. She even steered the conversation around so they were mostly talking about Mozart, Bryce’s favorite composer. By the time the lunch hour was over, it occurred to Bryce that one of the things he liked most about the music of Mozart was its balance.
When Bryce attended his class on the Renaissance in Italy, he found that Dr. Belzi’s topic for the day was likewise balance. While he proclaimed that he was not an art historian, he did insist that a study of the art of the Renaissance told one a great deal about the society, or at least the dominant elements of the society. The taste of those dominant elements stressed avoiding extremes. He made one comment which Bryce marked down for future consideration. “The men of the Renaissance stressed balance and proportion in their theoretical writings and their art, just as did those of their models in ancient Greece, not because they enjoyed those qualities in everyday life, but because they did not.” To illustrate his point, Dr. Belzi discussed several so-called princes of the Italian Renaissance, who were, in fact, little more than savage dictators. They were called signore or podesta, but they came to power by violence, and they retained power by violence. Once again, Belzi cited Jakob Burckhardt, the seminal Swiss historian, who used the phrase “the illegitimacy of power” to describe the political reality of Renaissance Italy. A “prince” who begins his reign by seizing power from the previous ruler, has no basis for his authority other than raw power. If he falter, grow old, or become careless in eliminating opposition, he will be replaced in the same way that he replaced his predecessor. Hence, most governments were oppressive. The great exceptions were Venice, Florence, and Rome. Venice was and remained an aristocratic republic throughout the Renaissance. Florence was a republic in name, but was “guided” by the Medici family after 1434. Rome had the legitimacy of rule by the popes, but the uncertainty of papal elections and lack of continuity of policy. Only Venice, therefore, was truly stable, and was therefore called “La Serenissima,” the serene republic. This was also the age of the beginning of modern diplomacy, with resident ambassadors and the concept of the balance of power. All this gave Bryce much to contemplate.
While he was in class, he felt his phone vibrate. He took a look, and saw that his text was from Damon. It read, “tea with Dr. Caldwell.” Hence, after class Bryce went directly back to the apartment rather than spend time in the library or at the fraternity house.
Bryce found that he was restless. A number of issues or questions which had arisen over the past few days gave him no peace. He did not know how to react to the desire of Damon and Jason to know his opinion about the necessity of religion without offending them. He did not feel at all comfortable with his outburst about tattoos, and wondered whether he was becoming a curmudgeon prematurely. And today was both reassuring and confusing: reassuring in that it reinforced his predisposition to favor balance and proportion in all things, but confusing because he did not fully comprehend the mathematical concepts involved.
Hence, he decided to pray about it. If there were not the commitment to Dr. Caldwell, he would have liked to go to St. Boniface. He always felt better there. But he asked Damon to leave him alone until time to go downstairs, and retreated into the bedroom. There, he simply sat in a chair, and tried to clear his mind of all the confusing cacophony of conflicting concepts.
Okay, God. It’s me again. It seems I only come to you when I have a problem. Right now, I’m not even sure what the problem is. I just feel confused. I could use some of that peace you promised those who believe in you. How about it?
Then he just sat and let his mind wander. He did not want to direct his thoughts, but rather wanted to remain open to whatever God chose to say to him. He sat for some time with no result. Then it occurred to him that most of those things he had been worrying about were not really all that important, except maybe for the balance thing. After all, neither Damon nor he were getting tattoos. Not even DeShawn was, although Bryce would not put it past him at some future date. It was not his responsibility to resolve the personal life of Janie Cooper. It was not his responsibility to deal with Mack and Bick. It was not his personal responsibility to come up with the definitive interpretation of ancient Greek art or Renaissance politics. He was, after all, a nineteen year old student. Maybe, just maybe, his problem at the moment was ego. Let go, and let God. Wasn’t that a motto of someone or another?
Bryce took a deep breath. Okay, this was something to talk to Father Miller about next Monday. But for now, hang loose. When he told himself that, he laughed out loud. You know, Bryce, sometimes you are a real idiot. You’ve got time. All the problems of the universe don’t have to be resolved until tomorrow. And, as Annie says, tomorrow is always a day away. At that thought, he laughed again. Then he went to have a drink before having tea with Dr. Caldwell. On this occasion, his choice of drink was Coke, not Bourbon.
Bryce and Damon descended the stairs and knocked on the door to Dr. Caldwell’s quarters on the ground floor. Once again, they were immediately admitted, and sent to the parlor while their host fetched the tea. As before, the cups and saucers, lemon, milk, and plates of sandwiches cut into neat triangles were already arrayed on the coffee table in the center of the room.
As Dr. Caldwell entered with the tea, Bryce asked, “Have you always taken cream with your tea, Professor?”
“I never take cream with my tea,” Dr. Caldwell replied. “This is milk. But I have enjoyed it this way since I spent a year at Cambridge following my undergraduate work, before embarking on my doctorate at Yale, and that’s a long time ago.”
Bryce was a bit flustered. “Oh, I guess I assumed by parallel with coffee ….” He trailed off.
Damon chuckled. “Bryce is not used to being wrong,” he taunted his partner.
Once settled, Dr. Caldwell mentioned how pleased he was that most of his renters did not object to spending an hour or two over tea on occasion. “With or without milk,” he added with a grin. It was clear from the way he said it that the emphasis was on the word “most.” Bryce knew that Curtis and Maddy had been to see their host, and that Ken Broussard and Annette Rimbault had likewise stopped in for tea. That kind of opened the door to talk about the renters in the carriage house.
“I have met all your renters, Dr. Caldwell, but the guys in the carriage house less than any others,” Bryce tried for an opener.
“Yes. Those boys pay their rent on time, so I have no real complaint, but they are not as friendly as the rest of you,” Dr. Caldwell said, confirming Bryce’s deductions.
“I have noticed the same thing. I met them once, but they did not stop to talk, and seem to be invisible most of the time,” Bryce said.
Dr. Caldwell sighed. “Being a landlord is not really my forté,” he admitted. “I much prefer something like this, getting to know people, and having a friendly talk. The stark relationship represented by a rent check leaves me dissatisfied.”
Bryce asked, “Do you know why they are so stand-off-ish?”
“Not really. As you know, they were here last year as well. I have no valid complaint as a landlord. As I say, they pay their rent on time, and I have had no problems as far as their behavior. No police visits. No stories of destruction of property. As I understand that you boys are gay, I can confess that I thought that might be why they avoided others last year, but you say you’ve had the same experience?”
“Yes, we have. Damon has yet to meet them, and I had only the one brief encounter. From that, I do not think I can draw any conclusions, but I seriously doubt that those two are gay. They simply did not come across that way to me. Of course, I may be mistaken,” Bryce said.
Damon added, “We do hear about other gays on campus, but I’ve heard nothing about those two. There is one source of information that we ought to consider though.”
“What’s that?” Bryce asked.
“Remember Tyler Rollins? He’s a new pledge at the fraternity, but he’s also a brother of Sean. Surely he knows what’s going on,” Damon proposed.
“Right. I forgot about that,” Bryce admitted.
“Do you mean to say my renter has a younger brother in your fraternity?” Dr. Caldwell asked.
“Well, he’s a pledge this term. But as far as I know there have been no problems, so he should be admitted to membership in December. But basically, yes, we have access to Sean Rollins’ younger brother,” Damon told their host.
“If you should find out why Mr. Rollins and Mr. Miller are the way they are, I would appreciate knowing. I sincerely hope it is nothing I have done,” Dr. Caldwell said.
“I doubt that,” Bryce said. “I got the cold shoulder the only time I met them, and there was no reason for them to be distant to me at that time because of anything you might have said, Sir.”
“Well, we certainly do not wish to spend all our time on those two. What else has been going on?” Dr. Caldwell asked.
“Among other things, my partner went off on a rampage against tattoos yesterday,” Damon grinned. He knew this would put Bryce on the hot seat, and he liked teasing his lover.
“I just think tattoos are aesthetically gross, and I worry that the prevalence of them is some kind of sign of the decline of our civilization,” Bryce defended himself.
“When you say ‘our civilization,’ what do you have in mind?” Dr. Caldwell asked.
“Well, I guess the traditional American culture. Us as a part of Western Civilization,” Bryce cautiously proposed.
“Ah yes. Western Civilization. For many, many years I taught the freshman survey course in Western Civilization. What we really meant was European history, of course, as we touched on other parts of the West only as they related to Europe. Now they have something called World History. How anyone can manage to cover the entire world, when I barely managed to get the most salient aspects of the West covered, is beyond me.” Dr. Caldwell declared.
“Not very effectively,” Damon said. “I had Dr. Dickinson for that class last year, and I’m sure he did as good a job as anyone. But just about the time I got interested in something, we were off on something else. I’m not sure I really remember much about anything, except maybe a few names, and the idea that there were a number of centers of advanced societies over time. I don’t think I ever got it clear how any of them were related to any others before the nineteenth century.”
“That is what I feared,” Dr. Caldwell said. “The Department was discussing the shift at the time I retired. I argued strongly against it. I hope no one thought I was biased against the Indians or the Chinese, but I simply could not see how we could do them justice, and still cover the basics of our own civilization. After all, the original justification for any such requirement was that we needed to know where we came from, not as individuals, but as a nation.”
“I felt kind of equivocal about the requirement, being black and all,” Damon said. “I don’t really think of myself as an African. I met some very nice people from Africa last summer, and I continue to correspond with them, but the more we share, the more I find that I don’t belong where my long-ago ancestors came from. But I’m not European either, and so this talk about Western Civilization leaves me out as well.”
“It need not,” Dr. Caldwell insisted. “True, as I said, when we teach a course on Western Civilization, we tend to be actually teaching European history. But I don’t think Western Civilization is tied to any one nation or people or race. It is, as I envision it, a set of ideas. Those ideas just happened to develop in Western Europe, but I strongly object to any talk about racial elements. It could have developed anywhere, given the same contributing elements.”
“That’s an interesting thought, Dr. Caldwell,” Bryce said. “I’m currently a kind of moderator for a study group connected to Dr. Dickinson’s class in Medieval England. One of the issue we’ve found thus far is that some think the English have some kind of hereditary claim to superiority to all others.”
“That is a lot of nonsense, and potentially dangerous,” Dr. Caldwell said with spirit. “I suppose I am as much of an Anglophile as anyone. As far as I know, I am entirely British in ancestry, that is, English and Scottish. I am an Anglican by religion. I have been for many years a member of the English Speaking Union. I have a great appreciation for the contributions made by the English speaking peoples, on both sides of the Atlantic, and especially in the political sphere. But I adamantly deny that any of this is genetic. If I might make the comparison, in the dispute between nature and nurture, when it comes to culture I am firmly on the side of nurture.”
“I suppose I am as well,” Bryce said. “I really do not like the idea of our ideas and values being determined by genetics. But could you expand on this theme a bit for me?”
Dr. Caldwell chuckled. “You have no idea how much a retired professor yearns to have someone ask him to give the benefits of his wisdom. Well, you asked for it. Let me think.” He paused, and poured himself another cup of tea. With milk. Sipping it, he began.
“When I taught Western Civ, I always began the semester with a kind of overview. I told the students that Western Civilization rests on four foundation stones, or, to put it another way, there are four groups of people whose contributions are essential parts of the civilization which developed in Western Europe and spread to other parts of the globe. These four are the Greeks, the Romans, the Christians, and the Germanic tribes.”
“The Germanic tribes?” Bryce questioned.
“Let me get to that in due course,” Dr. Caldwell insisted. “As I see it, the essential contribution of the Greeks is philosophy. By that, I mean the development of rational thought. By observing nature, and noting patterns, the Greeks developed logic, especially in the works of Aristotle. They sought an explanation of the world around them based on something more predictable than merely the will of the gods. Without that, so much would be different. Euclid, the founder of mathematics as an intellectual discipline, was an Aristotelian. In the larger picture, without Greek philosophy, modern science would not exist.
“But, moving on, we come to the Romans. Frankly, I don’t like the Romans much. They were a crude people, given to violence and bloodshed at the least provocation. But they did have a significant contribution to make to the future development of Western Civilization. They had a knack for organization. We can see this in their most obvious achievement, the Roman Empire. They were much more successful in governing themselves than the Greeks. They set up constitutional arrangements which distinguished between the individual and the office he held. They organized armies, and conquered the Mediterranean basin. They imposed peace, the Pax Romana, on what had been a jumble of warring entities. And, in that same spirit, they developed a system of law which emphasized due process and regularity of application, which has influenced not only the West, but just about everyone else by now.
“But, by the third century A.D., the Romans were a spent force. They failed to develop a philosophy which could satisfy the mind and still have a popular following. Something which could be accepted by both the elite and the masses. Various schools of thought, branches of Stoicism and Epicureanism, vied for favor, but they appealed only to the elite. The Classical world of the third century was arid, empty of life.
“That’s when Christianity came into play. From its Jewish roots and an imaginative interplay with Stoicism, Christianity filled a gap. It’s insistence on an afterlife, and a system of morality based on belief in a transcendent God, found appeal on all levels. No, pagan religion was not necessarily dying, and pagan society was not either, but they were going nowhere. They were sterile. They had no future. Christianity, in the hands of what are called the ante-Nicaean fathers, filled that gap. Now, I am speaking as an historian, not as a Christian, here. I leave aside any consideration of divine intervention, or the divinity of Christ, or any other specifically religious consideration. All I am saying is that Christianity supplied a soul, a purpose, in an otherwise harsh and sterile world. Something both intellectuals and the common man could share. And during the third and fourth centuries a fertile relationship was developing between Christianity and Classical culture.
“But Classical culture had more problems than a lack of purpose. It also had a lack of creativity, a lack of imagination, a lack of energy. It was exhausted. Think! Can either of you come up with a single philosopher, a single writer, a single creative person after Marcus Aurelius, who died in 180? I am excluding Christians, those ante-Nicaean, and, I suppose by the fourth century, post-Nicaean fathers as well. The only new idea was that pseudo-philosophy called neo-Platonism, which was essentially an abandonment of reason in favor of some kind of mysticism. It was more a mystery cult than a philosophy. The Classical world was stale, tired, sterile.
“And that’s where the Germanic tribes come into play. They brought energy, dynamism into the mix. It had been there earlier, but had been lost. It did not have to be the Germanic tribes who contributed it, but historically it was. It was they who allowed the Greek, Roman, and Christian elements to churn about, rub shoulders, get out of their comfort zones, be creative, in dealing with the unthinkable. In 410, when the Goths sacked Rome, that was the first time in eight hundred years a foreign force had occupied the eternal city. You can become very complacent in eight hundred years. St. Augustine, for example was deeply shocked, and composed his De civitate Dei in response. The end of Rome seemed like the end of the world.
“Well, the world did not end. During my period, the Early Middle Ages, what is often called the Dark Ages, these elements roiled and clashed, mingled and cross fertilized. Those centuries represent a decline in many ways, but it was also a very creative age. It was not as prosperous, not as sophisticated, as what went before or what would come after, but it was the crucible in which Western Civilization was born. The infancy, the first flowering, of that new civilization was the time of Charlemagne, the adolescence and coming of age was the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
“You see what I’m saying. There are these essential elements to the civilization which has offered humanity more than any other. In the long run it is Western Civilization which developed science, based on Aristotle’s logic. It was Western Civilization which developed the concept of the rule of law and constitutional limits to the powers of governments, based on the Roman experience. It was Western Civilization which developed notions of humanitarianism and the worth of the individual, based on Christianity. None of this is genetic. None of this is a matter of DNA. It could have been ancient Egypt, for example, which served as a base for this development. The elements were there. But it happened that it was Western Europe where these developments took place. You don’t have to be blond haired and blue eyed to appreciate these things. The values which were developed in the West from these elements I have described are human values. They can apply to anyone, anywhere. It is an accident of history that they came together in Western Europe. But, if you leave out any of the basic components, you no longer have Western Civilization.
“But this is the civilization to which I pledge my allegiance. This is the highest development of mankind thus far. It is far from perfect. And it seems to be in serious trouble at present. We seem to be abandoning logic along with Christianity, and all the commotion in the press about new ideas notwithstanding, most of what passes for thought today is infantile and sterile. I felt like a missionary when I taught Western Civ to freshmen, hoping that some of them, at least, would appreciate the wonderful heritage they had, and inspiring them to share it and develop it.”
Saying all that, Dr. Caldwell kind of collapsed. It was like watching the air escaping from a balloon. He shrunk into himself, and seemed to be in another world.
“Dr. Caldwell, that was brilliant,” Bryce proclaimed. “You have given structure to a lot of disjointed ideas I had. I am very grateful.”
“Thank you. Thank you for your kind words. Thank you for listening. But I think I need to rest now,” Dr. Caldwell said.
And so Bryce and Damon departed to their own apartment, to take part in the SAT meeting later that evening, but also to think about what Dr. Caldwell had said.