I put my hands to my ears, but before I’d heard two notes of that dangerous music we were back on in the peaceful glade, surrounded by the beautiful trees.
13
CROCUS
I. On Philosophers Who Have Been Slaves
Aesop was a slave. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus was the slave of the Roman Emperor Nero’s guard captain.
Phaedo of Elis, the friend of Sokrates for whom Plato named his most beautiful dialogue, on the immortality of the soul, was a slave. He met Sokrates and came to philosophy, and Sokrates asked Krito to buy him and set him free, as an offering to philosophy and to the gods. (Krito did this without hesitation, as I would have expected of him. I did not know him well, but he was always a good man.)
Plato himself was enslaved, briefly, when he left Syracuse for the first time. He did not live as a slave, but was bought immediately by a friend on Aegina and restored to his home and his possessions. Perhaps it was that experience, combined with knowing Phaedo, that made him rethink the whole system which most people of his day took for granted. Although he was rich and well-born, Plato wanted no buying and selling of people, and no hereditary castes of people forced into doing unpleasant work. The system he proposed in the Republic was radical for his time.
In our time, much of that necessary work is done by Workers, who find it at worst a little tedious.
I am sorry Plato never knew about us and the possibilities we embody.
II. On Art
Plato says that it is necessary for art to make an argument that it is beneficial to the soul as well as enticing to it. He leaves this question open at the end of The Republic, saying he will listen whenever the argument is made, in prose or verse, and that he’d like to resolve the quarrel between poetry and philosophy. Many people, from Aristotle on, have taken up the gauntlet and defended poetry, or more widely, art. Here in the Republic, so many people have attempted it that I should be embarrassed to add to their number. Nevertheless, I shall do so.
It seems to me, as an artist, and as one of the more well-regarded artists among Workers, that art can come at philosophical issues sideways, and open the soul to them where otherwise the mind might throw up bastions against the truth. Many people from other cities, and especially from Athenia, have said to me that my colossus The Last Debate has made them understand what a horror Athene’s transformation of Sokrates was, even though they had known the facts of the matter their entire lives beforehand. Perhaps even more important than showing good examples, art can cut straight through to uncomfortable truths.
Humans have told me my work made them cry. Saeli have told me it made them rock to and fro. Workers have told me it made them know themselves for the first time.
This is an immense responsibility, and while art (even poetry, even music) is certainly a craft and requires crafting skills, I believe for this reason it is best practiced by philosophers.
I said this more concisely in my colossus Art Confronting Truth, which stands in Hieronymo. There the two obsidian figures reflect in each other to reveal a third figure.
III. On Helplessness
After the Relocation, those delegates from the Lucian cities who had come to the Remnant were anxious to get home and reassure their friends about what had happened. Pytheas and his children and Maia had explained it to us on their return from Olympus, but the other cities had experienced the Relocation without any explanation for what had happened. Pytheas assured us that we had all assented in our souls, and a few of us had indeed refused and not made the transfer.
“They are stuck there in the Bronze Age in the margins of history,” Arete said. “But we will have posterity!”
“If they have any sense they’ll move around to the other side of the island before the mountain erupts and manage to survive,” Pytheas said, despondently. “I’ll have to check on them once I get back, they’re my responsibility too.”
“I’m glad you’re prepared to attend to your responsibilities now!” Maia said. Pytheas stuck out his tongue at her, and she laughed.
As for those of us who had been relocated to Plato, since we had no memory of being asked or assenting, it did not help in understanding the transition, which at first many found confusing and distressing even with an explanation. Many of us were even less happy about the move once they really understood what it entailed. The climate and landscape of our new home were not to everyone’s liking. There were a lot of complaints. The Lucian delegates’ desire to get home and explain was more serious.
Aristomache was one of the Masters, and quite old at that time, in her seventies. She had been born in the nineteenth century, and was a translator of Plato’s work. In the Republic she had been a friend of Sokrates and Ikaros. At the Last Debate she had gone off with Kebes, and become again a Christian, as she had been in her own century. I had always liked her because she had been one of the first to acknowledge my personhood, and because she had argued at length and in such a way as to convince all the Masters that enslaving any thinking being was unjust. She cornered me one day when I was talking with Maia and Maecenas about the heating installation project.
“You promised to take us home in the Excellence,” Aristomache said to Maecenas. He was one of the captains of the ship, one of the Children, then solid and middle-aged. He was a Gold, and served on the Tech Committee.
He put out both hands, palms out, in the “stop” gesture. “We can’t possibly do that now there isn’t sea between your home and ours,” Maecenas said, reasonably enough. “We’ll put together an overland expedition, with plenty of food and supplies, and take you home. Everyone agrees. But winter is setting in here, and it looks as if it’s going to be a cold one, so it’ll have to wait for spring.”
“But meanwhile our people in the Lucian cities will have no idea what happened!” Aristomache insisted. “They’ll be alone and confused all winter. It’s bad enough as it is, but think of coping with this with no explanation! You’re planning to install electrical heating here, but they don’t have electricity. How are they going to cope?”
“Eventually we will install solar plants to produce electricity in all the cities,” Maia said.
“We’ll get you home as soon as we can, that’s all we can do,” Maecenas said.
Then Aristomache turned to me. “Crocus, can’t you help?”
“How?” I wrote on my wax tablet and held it up to her. She brought it close to her eyes to read it.
“You have those treads, you can cover ground much faster than we can walking. Maybe you could carry me back to Marissa in only a few days,” she said.
“I could try,” I wrote. I was worried that it would take me too far from a feeding station. I need to spend several hours every day recharging.
“No,” Maecenas said, as I was writing. “We don’t know exactly where Marissa is now, or what terrain lies in between. We can’t risk Crocus alone on a wilderness expedition. He has the treads, yes, but what if he got into trouble out there, fell into a lava pit, say?”
“Maecenas is right, hard as it is,” Maia said. “There’s nothing we can do for them this year.”
I erased what I had written without showing it. I wanted to help Aristomache, and I sympathized with the plight of the people in the Lucian cities, but Maecenas was indeed right. There was no way we could do it immediately. Aristomache nodded. She had tears falling down her cheeks, but she ignored them. Maia hugged her, and she embraced her back fiercely.
“Sorry,” I wrote.
“It’s not your fault, Crocus,” Maia said, looking down at the wax. “We’ll do it as soon as we can.”