Klio reached into the fold of her kiton where it lay bundled at her side and pulled out a small cake and a knife.
“Ought we—I mean, is that all right?” Aristomache asked, as Klio cut the cake into quarters. I picked up my share. It was currant cake and smelled delicious.
“What’s wrong with it?” Klio asked, looking up.
“Well, Plato says we should have food in common, and I’ve interpreted taking food out of the eating halls to eat elsewhere as wrong,” Aristomache said.
I looked guiltily at the wedge of cake I’d taken. Was it unplatonic of me to take it? I looked at Klio.
“Plato doesn’t regulate the lives of the masters,” Klio said. “But I think you’re right. If we had food in private all the time it would be a bad thing. But this cake was made in Sparta’s kitchen, and it’s the same cake everyone is going to be eating there tonight. I’m always starving after swimming, and I thought I’d bring enough for all of us.”
Kreusa looked at the cut pieces and did not reach out for one. “I think we ought to debate this. Do you allow the children to take food?”
“No, never,” Klio said.
“Then it’s not really having it in common, if we have privileges they don’t,” Kreusa said.
“Maybe we ought to let them, at least a little bit,” Klio said. “What’s wrong with it, as long as they always share what they take with others?”
“It’s not what Plato says, but I agree that it might be all right,” I said. “I allow the Florentines to take nuts and dried fruit when they go running in the mountains.”
“So do I with the Olympians, but always enough for the whole group,” Aristomache said.
“Oh yes. And when mine run in pairs, one will take the nuts and the other the fruit, so they’ll share,” I said. “I didn’t discuss it with anyone because it didn’t seem to come under any particular committee, and Plato didn’t mention it, and I just thought it was my discretion. I mean, if the whole lot of us all go out on a run we take food, so if a smaller group does it seems like the same thing.”
“I agree,” Kreusa said. “And I like that, giving one the nuts and the other the fruit. That very much does go along with the spirit of what Plato said about food in common. I’ll do that with the Corinthians now you’ve mentioned it. Which is really a good reason for talking over things like that, so we can have the good ideas in common and stamp out the bad ideas before they get rooted.”
I blushed. “Yes. Sorry. But who should I have asked, or told?”
“Food comes under Agriculture and Supply,” Aristomache said, picking up a slice of cake. “I don’t know who’s on that committee.”
“Ikaros?” Klio suggested.
Aristomache and Kreusa laughed, and Kreusa pretended to fan herself. I bit into my cake to disguise the fact that the thought of him still made me uncomfortable.
“I don’t believe he is,” Aristomache said. “He’s never been on absolutely every committee. And since Sokrates has come and takes up a lot of his time, he has dropped several.”
“Ardeia is on it, I think,” Kreusa said.
“I’m not sure Agriculture and Supply is the right committee anyway. This isn’t about food supply. It’s a social issue. It’s Right Living if it’s anything, and I’m on that one,” Aristomache said. “I’ll bring it up in our next meeting, and if Manlius and everyone else is all right with it I’ll suggest the fruit and nuts thing in Chamber. I think we can be a little more relaxed. The children are going to become adults soon. Indeed, I was wondering if we could give them the privilege of choosing which hall they eat in.”
“Choose which hall?” Kreusa asked, her arched eyebrows rising right up into her hair. “Won’t that cause chaos?”
“I didn’t mean choose which hall unrestrictedly, or choose which hall to belong to,” Aristomache said. “That really would cause chaos. I meant simply that perhaps we could give the children limited privileges to invite their friends to their own hall, and to go to other halls if invited.”
“Won’t it mean surpluses in some halls and shortages in others?” I asked.
“Won’t it mean nobody knows where anybody is?” Kreusa asked.
“I think the surpluses and shortages would cancel out,” Aristomache said, looking at Klio.
Klio nodded. “Workers could redistribute food if necessary, and probably it wouldn’t be a problem; children missing from one hall would be cancelled out by children present from another. We could easily set up a mechanism where they had to sign in and out, and if a hall was full up nobody else could sign in unless somebody signed out. The food is very similar in all the halls. The social disruption potential is there, though.”
“I think most of the children would be sensible about it,” Aristomache said.
“Most of them, but there are some who wouldn’t,” I said.
“I don’t understand the point of it,” Kreusa said.
“The point is that once they become adults, we need to shuffle the sleeping houses so that everyone is sleeping with people of the same metal,” Aristomache said. “It will mean people are sleeping very far from where they’re supposed to eat. If there were some flexibility in that it would help. We don’t want to reassign eating halls, because the children are very attached to them, and also because that’s how we keep track of them.”
“I can see how it would help,” I said. “I’ll support it.” Klio nodded.
“I’m not convinced,” Kreusa said. “I see a lot of potential for trouble. I’d want to hear a really solid proposal.”
“It may come to nothing yet,” Aristomache said. “Tullius is opposed.”
I sighed and stretched. “I should get back. I have to teach soon, and then after dinner I need to work on the adulthood choices with Ficino, and I want to look through the list again first.”
“It’s only seventy children, and we know them well. You wouldn’t think it would be this difficult,” Kreusa said. She reached for her kiton.
“It’s the responsibility.” Klio shook her head. “I used to feel bad enough about grades and recommendation letters affecting people’s entire lives, but this? Deciding for seventy people not just what kind of soul they have but what work they’d be best suited for?”
“Lysias says he doesn’t really believe in souls, that he thinks they’re a metaphor,” I said. Lysias had been showing some polite interest in me recently. I liked him. He was quiet and considerate and as unlike flamboyant Ikaros as it was possible for somebody to be and still be a man.
“Doesn’t believe in souls?” Kreusa asked, pausing with her kiton half on. “Pallas Athene told us we have souls, the very first day. It’s one of the few metaphysical things we can be absolutely rock-solid sure about.”
“He thinks they’re not the same as Plato wrote. She didn’t answer Plotinus’s question about whether they have three parts,” I said. “He thinks they’re something odd, and Plato’s description is just a metaphor.”
“Even if it’s a metaphor, we still have to use it to classify everyone,” Aristomache said, twisting up her hair.
“Do you know, the other day I found myself picking up Ficino’s translation of the Republic to read through it in Latin, because I’ve read it so often in Greek that my eyes start to cross,” Klio said, laughing at herself.
“I’ve done that too,” I admitted, and we laughed together.
Kreusa stood up. “I envy you your hair, Maia.”