The old man did not speak without interruption. There were promptings and contributions from his listeners, and now and then a question from us. And he had to be brought back to Lec i Madhe, for the politics of his own lifetime were fresher in his mind and more stirring to his emotions.
“Lec i Madhe was not a wise man like his father, but he was a chief and a fighter, and a leader of great fighters,” said he. “There were twenty-one kings before his father, who were kings of all the tribes from the Black Sea to the Adriatic, north of the tribes of Greeks. The kingdom was made by Karanna, who was a foreign chief from the eastern shores of the Black Sea. He came over the sea and made the united kingdom, and its capital was the city Emadhija.[5] After him came these kings: Cenua, Trimi, Perdika, Argua, Filip, Ajeropi, and Ajeropi was the first king whose family was of the pure blood of our fathers who came first from the east. After him there were these kings: Alqeti the son of Ajeropi; Aminti the son of Alqeti, who was the ally of Darius the king of Persia. Then Lec the son of Aminti; Perdika i dyte, the son’s son of Perdika, Arqelloja the son of Lec; Oresti the son of Perdika i dyte; Arqelloja i dyte the son of Arqelloja; Armint’ i dyte the son of Arqelloja i dyte; Pafsania who was a foreigner; Armint’ i trete, the son of Armint’ i dyte; Lec i dyte, the son of Armint’ i trete; Ptolemeoja, who was a foreigner; Perdika i trete, of the family of Perdika; Armint’ i katerte, the son of Lec i dyte; Filip i dyte, the son of Lec i dyte, and Lec i Madhe, the son of Filip i dyte. After Lec i Madhe was Filip i trete——”
But here the genealogy breaks off, for we wished to hear more of Lec i Madhe, and we never came back to the story of his successors.
“Lec i Madhe was born at Emadhija in the Mati,” began the old man, and was interrupted by three small shrieks of excitement.
“Alexander the Great born in Albania!” we exclaimed. “But—but it is written that he was born in Macedonia!”
“There were at that time two capitals of the united kingdom,” said the old man. “There was Pela, between Salonika and Monastir, and there was Emadhija, the old capital, lying in the valley which is now the Mati. In Pela and in Emadhija Filip the Second had great houses, and sometimes he was in Pela and sometimes in Emadhija. There was a trouble between Filip the Second and his wife, because she loved Emadhija and would not go with him to Pela. She went, it is true, but she did not want to. And there was trouble between them because of a Greek woman of Pela. I do not know the song, but I think that it was fancy and foolishness, for Filip the Second was a good man and a wise king. But this is true, that before Lec i Madhe was born his mother left Pela and came back to the city Emadhija, and it was in Emadhija that Lec i Madhe was born, and there he lived until he was out of the cradle. He rode on a horse when he first went down to Pela, and Filip the Second came out from Pela to meet him, and it was from the back of a horse that Lec i Madhe first saw his father.
“And it is said that when Lec i Madhe rode down from Emadhija with his mother and many chiefs of the Malisori they passed through the valley of Bulqis, where there are springs of strange waters, and that as they passed through the forest—there was in those days a great forest in the Bulqis, where now there are fields of grain—they rested by one of the springs, in the place where the great rocks are standing in rows. There they heard a sound of singing in a strange tongue, but the end of the song they understood, and the end of the song was, ‘Long live Lec, the son of Filip i dyte, Lec i Madhe, the king of the world!’[6]
“Filip the Second was very proud of his son, and his pride led him to the one great foolishness of a good and wise king. He said that he would make Lec i Madhe king of the world, and that was well enough, but he thought that to be king of the world a man must be more learned than he himself. Whereas all old men who have watched the ways of the world know that to be strong and ruthless will make a man powerful, but to be learned makes a man full of dreams and hesitations. In his pride and blindness, Filip the Second sent to Greece for an Albanian who had learned the ways of the Greeks, and to that man he gave the boy, to be taught books.”
“Really, this is too much!” said Alex. “Aristotle an Albanian?”
“Yes,” continued the old man, taking the amber mouthpiece from his lips and tranquilly answering the sound of the name, “his name was Aristotle, and he was from a family of the tribe of Ajeropi, his father having gone to a village in Macedonia and become a merchant there. Being rich, he sent his son, who was fond of thought rather than of action, to learn the Greek ways of thinking. And it was this man who was brought back by Filip the Second to teach his son, though there were many chiefs of the Malisori who could have shown him how to be a man and a leader of men.