The Philosopher Kings (38 page)

At the end of the ode, there was a consensus for hearing it again, so we did. This time many people were joining in with the final chorus, making the commitment to fight to defend peace.

We went back into the Chamber in a very different mood. I was preparing to begin on the question of art raids when a messenger came in to the Chamber. It was Sophoniba, a Young One, one of the Florentine troop. “The head of Victory is back,” she said, panting. She had been running.

“Back?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Back in the temple of Victory just outside the walls, where it used to be. And the strangest thing is that the gravel courtyard was raked this morning and there are no marks on it at all. It's as if the gods brought it back.”

“Was it with the returned art?” The returned art was on display in the agora and the colonnades around it, forming an impromptu art exhibition which everyone had been enjoying in their spare moments. I'd been spending my spare moments reading to Ikaros, so I hadn't had time for it myself.

“No,” Pytheas said. “I looked closely, as you'd expect. The head of Victory wasn't there. But you say now it's back in the temple?”

“That's right,” Sophoniba said. “It's the strangest thing.”

We all trooped out to see it, and there indeed it was, where it had always been, serene, victorious, mysterious, in the niche against the back wall. Pytheas started to sing his ode again, and although the choir had dispersed many people joined in.

“It's a Mystery,” Aurelius said to me as we were walking back.

“I certainly can't understand it.”

“Do you think it was Sophia?” Manlius whispered behind us.

“I can't think who else it could have been,” Sophoniba said. “There wasn't a mark on the gravel, and it shows every mark.”

“If she's still paying attention, what must she think of us!” Manlius said.

Back in the Chamber, the debate on art raids then resumed.

Pytheas began. “After the Last Debate, when the new cities were founded, we all agreed that we couldn't divide the technology because we didn't understand it well enough to move things, and all of it was needed here to function properly. We might have agreed to divide it with our brothers and sisters in any case, had it not been absolutely necessary to the lives of Crocus and Sixty-One. Their vital need for electricity was more important than anything. Secondly, the electricity keeps the library at a constant temperature, which isn't just a comfort for us but a necessity for the preservation and safety of the books. That's why we printed additional copies for the libraries in the other cities but kept the originals here.” He looked at the Lucians, all sitting in a group on the left-hand side now. “You weren't present for that debate, but I feel sure you'd have agreed if you had been.”

There were nods among them, and some hands raised in other parts of the room, which I ignored. If people wanted to point out that the books were traded rather than given away, that would divert the argument. Let them wait.

“Then when the envoys of Psyche suggested dividing up our art, it seemed at first to be the same thing. It was an easy mistake to make. But it wasn't at all the same. Art can be divided in a way that technology cannot. We can travel to look at art. Nobody's life was being endangered if the art left the City, nor was the art itself endangered. We wanted to keep it because we loved it, but that was the same reason why our brothers and sisters in other cities wanted to own it. We fought over it. Nothing could have been more foolish than war over art. And we're all tired of it. All the cities have brought back what was taken, and we've been enjoying seeing it again. I propose that we distribute art to all the cities according to population, and bring it back here to redistribute it again every five years, at a great festival of art, where new art can also be seen and enjoyed. Simmea,” he choked as he said her name, took a deep breath and said it again, louder. “Simmea always said that we should be making more art instead of squabbling over the art we have. She loved the Botticellis in Florentia with all her soul. But there are nine of them. If four of them had gone, one to each of the other cities, she'd still be here to love the five that were left.”

He sat down. Among the forest of hands, only one was raised among the Lucians: Auge. Curious, I called on her.

“We didn't take any art on the
Goodness.
We made our own art in the Lucian cities. We haven't talked about it, but we're not here to demand our share of original art for our cities, and it might be at risk going by sea, and we wouldn't want that. I'm horrified at the art raids you've been describing. I can't believe Simmea died in one—actually died! Simmea, whose own original work was so wonderful. The kiton I wore when I lived here has long since worn out, but I cut off the piece of embroidery Simmea did along the hem and I still have it framed on the wall above my daughter's bed. But what I stood up to say is that I'm a sculptor. If you agree to share your art as Pytheas suggested, I'll do an original piece of stonework for each of your cities, on any subject you like. The people of Sokratea have already commissioned me to do a statue of Sokrates as he appeared in the Last Debate. I'll do that for free, and whatever else equivalently for the other four cities—statues or bas reliefs, whatever you want.”

There was a roar of acclamation, and I had a lump in my throat. She was so sincere, and asking for nothing but instead offering to make and give. And her visible horror at the thought of the art raids helped us realize how barbaric they were. They'd been going on so long we'd almost become used to them.

Then Crocus raised one of his great arms. Neither of the Workers spoke often in Chamber. I called on him. He wrote his statement on a tablet, and Manlius read it aloud. “I will also offer free art equivalently, and extra work, whatever is needed, to stop the fighting.”

There was another great cheer. More people began to offer the same. Then there were a few other speeches. Some citizens of the original city said how attached they were to the particular art in their own eating halls, and Aeschines and Sixty-one talked about how frescoes and mosaics couldn't be moved without damaging them. But nobody wanted to continue the art raids. When I called for a vote it was almost unanimous.

 

30

ARETE

When I came back from the missions I plunged straight into my adulthood tests, along with Boas and Archimedes, who were the other two people born in my birth month. When my brothers had become ephebes they had done it amid hordes of other Young Ones born in the same month, but for me there were only the three of us. Boas and Archimedes had been waiting more or less patiently for my return so that we could all do it together. They could have petitioned the Archons to go ahead without me, and I could have done it alone, but they had waited. Neither of them were philosophically inclined. Boas wanted to be a metal worker, perhaps a sculptor, and Archimedes loved growing things and was already working out at the farms for far more than the required time. We had very little in common but we got along well.

We all acquitted ourselves well in the palaestra, especially Archimedes, who was already getting broad shoulders. “They'll make you a silver,” I said when scraping him off after the wrestling.

He shook his head and grinned. “They know where I belong.”

Then the conference began. Alkibiades, with his friend Diogenes, came to town with the Athenian delegation, and Porphyry came with the Amazons, so Thessaly was full to bursting point. I had no time to spend with them because I was being tested on the laws, and on rhetoric, and history, and music, and mathematics. It was an experience intended to be grueling, and it was. It was meant as a rite of passage. For Boas and Archimedes it unquestionably was. If I hadn't been on the voyage I would no doubt have felt it that way too. As it was, I felt grown up already, as if this were just a necessary marker.

I wanted to know about the conference. Maia wouldn't talk about it, but my brothers told me everything.

Ikaros had come to the conference. I asked Phaedrus to heal him while he was in town. He was reluctant. “He couldn't help but notice!” Father had talked to us seriously about not being caught using our powers.

“He already knows about me. We can arrange it so that he thinks I've healed him,” I said. “Come on Phaedrus, think about it, he's nearly blind and he loves reading.”

“He wouldn't tell anyone,” Porphyry assured him.

“All right then. But not until after your initiation. You won't have time to pretend it's you until then.”

I had to be content with that.

The day after the conference was the Ides, and therefore the day set for me to swear my oath to the Republic, and become an ephebe and be given my metal. It wasn't the grand affair it had been when the Children swore, or even five years ago when my brothers swore. Then there had been so many new ephebes that almost the whole city turned out to see them swear. But nevertheless, it was an occasion. Since all the envoys were still in town and many of them knew me and wanted to come, it was going to be a big public event, with a proper feast afterward, with a sheep roasted on a spit, and bannocks, and cream cheese, and plums stewed with honey. Hebe, one of my friends in the Florentine kitchens, told me about the preparations.

I had a new kiton, dyed orange and blue in the wool and woven in ocean pattern. Mother had been embroidering the hem when she died, and I had thought I'd wear it with the pattern unfinished. But Euklides had finished it for me while I'd been away. I could see where he'd taken it over, the lilies and scrolls were less even, and the colors less precise than the ones Mother had done. But it was wonderful that he had taken the time to finish it for me. I felt loved as I put it on for the first time on the morning of the Ides. I kept my hair loose for the ceremony.

I went to Florentia for breakfast, and as always when I went in my eyes sought for Ficino, and as always now failed to find him. I wondered whether I'd always do that, whether when I was myself ninety-nine I'd still half-expect to see him somewhere about the hall. Before I could sit down, Baukis and Erinna brought me a crown of flowers they had made. “Neleus and I collected the flowers and Baukis wove it,” Erinna said. It had tiny wild roses and long-stemmed daisies and little dark-blue hyacinths and their leaves. It was lopsided, but I didn't care. Baukis hugged me, and I looked over her shoulder at Erinna. “Welcome to adulthood,” she said, awkwardly, and smiled. I put the wreath on, and then Maia came up and started to fuss with my loosened hair and straighten the wreath for me. I hardly had time to gulp down my porridge before it was time to go.

We walked to the Temple of Zeus and Hera in a big crowd. My whole family was there—Father, and all my brothers, including Porphyry and Alkibiades. Neleus was wearing Ficino's hat. In addition we had Rhea and Diogenes, and Nikias, who probably should have been counted as family. All my close friends came—Maia, Crocus, Erinna and Baukis, and Baukis's father Aeschines. Klymene showed up just as we were about to leave Florentia, wanting to be included in the family for the occasion. She hugged me, and I let her. Father didn't want a feud. Kallikles was still very distant with her, and she was clearly hurt by this and trying not to show it. I missed Mother sharply and specifically then, because she would have known what to say to make it all right.

I patted the bronze lion as we went past it, for luck, and because Mother always did. It looked at me today as if it were hoping for something.

“I can't believe how easily the conference went,” Klymene said to Maia. “Or how fast either. I expected it to take six or eight days.”

“Everyone was reasonable,” Maia said.

“You were a great judge,” Father said. Maia snorted.

We ran into Boas and Archimedes as we came into the plaza where the street of Demeter crossed the street of Dionysios, by the Temple of Demeter and Crocus's great colossus of Sokrates laughing. They too had garlands and new kitons and clusters of family and friends with them. I was very glad to see them. We walked in our separate family clusters, like a procession.

“We don't have all this fuss in Amazonia,” Porphyry said. “We do it individually, on our actual birthdays, in the agora, and our names are written down.”

“That sounds nice,” I said.

“But our ceremonies in Athenia are ten times more formal, and take days,” Alkibiades said. “And we have to do our examinations right there and then, with everyone watching, not quietly in advance the way you do. So think yourself lucky.”

I laughed. “If I wanted to live in Athenia or the City of Amazons I'd go there. I belong here.” Being away had made me realize how much I loved my city, every pillar, every word of the Workers' dialogues carved into the marble flagstones, every patch of flowers in front of the sleeping houses.

When we came into the square in front of the Temple of Zeus and Hera, the two Archons were waiting on the steps between the two great statues of the gods that flanked the temple. The altar stood behind them, smoke rising from the sacrifice. The square was packed with all the envoys, and with people who had just showed up, and for all I knew some crazy oath-enthusiasts who went to every single ceremony for everyone. I noticed Ikaros and Aristomache with Sixty-One, standing together, engaged in dialogue. Maia went over to join them. All our family and friends faded back into the crowd, leaving the three of us who were candidates standing together in the center. One of the Archons made a welcoming speech, talking about the significance of citizenship and Plato and the city. I wasn't listening properly. I was nervous. I felt it was hard to draw enough breath. I straightened my wreath, which was slipping into my eyes. The other Archon made a very similar speech, about the importance of young people and the significance of the community, and how the city was open to all and we had never turned anyone away—aimed at the visitors, I suppose. Then finally they got to it.