The Golden Mean

by Annabel Lyon (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  2011

  $3.31

  Macedon. 367 BC. Philip II is bringing war to Persia. Forged in the warrior culture of Macedonia, the time has come for his young son Alexander to take up his inheritance of blood and obedience to the sword. It is a training that has made the boy sadistic; fiercely brilliant, but unstable. A dangerous trait in a king fated to rule the vastest empire of the ancient world. Compelled to teach this startling, precocious, sometimes horrifying child, Aristotle soon realises that what the boy needs most to learn - thrown before his time onto his father's battlefields - is the lesson of the golden mean, the elusive balance between extremes that Aristotle hopes will mitigate the boy's will to conquer in this age of fighting heroes...

• Used

  Hardcover
  2010

  $3.31

  As The Golden Mean opens, Aristotle is forced to postpone his dream of succeeding Plato as the leader of the Athenian Academy when Philip of Macedon asks him to stay on in his capital city of Pella to tutor his precocious son, Alexander. At first the philosopher is appalled to be stuck in the brutal backwater of his childhood, but he is soon drawn to the boy's intellectual potential and his capacity for surprise. What he does not know is whether his ideas are any match for the warrior culture that is Alexander's inheritance. But he feels that teaching this startling, charming, sometimes horrifying boy is a desperate necessity. And what the boy needs most to learn - thrown before his time onto his father's battlefields - is the lesson of the golden mean, the elusive balance between extremes that Aristotle hopes will mitigate the boy's will to conquer. In her first novel, Annabel Lyon boldly imagines one of history's most intriguing relationships and the war at its heart between ideas and action as ways of knowing the world. She tells her story, breathtakingly, in the earthy, frank and perceptive voice of Aristotle himself. With sensual and muscular prose, she explores how Aristotle's genius touched the boy who would conquer the known world. And she reveals how we still live with the ghosts of both men.