“Joy to you, Lysias, thank you for coming,” Sokrates said.
“Do you want to make art?” Ficino asked the workers.
“Yes,” they both wrote.
“I would like to see your art,” I said. “I can’t imagine what it would be like.”
35
MAIA
It was a rainy evening in early spring, and I was trying to organize the names for the next festival of Hera, when Klio came to tell me that Tullius had died. “Charmides was with him. Apparently at the last moment he just completely disappeared—the same as with Plotinus. His death was pretty well documented. It must be so strange. From the assassin’s point of view, he’d suddenly have looked fifteen years older just before they stuck the knife in.”
“It’ll happen to all of us,” I said. “Well, not with assassins. I expect I’ll just seem to have aged terribly and fallen dead at my aunt’s feet in the Pantheon.”
“And I in my office. I can’t imagine how they’ll explain it. At least I was alone.” Klio picked up the paper on my table and glanced idly at it.
“I’ll miss old Tullius,” I said. “He never wanted to take any notice of me, but his speeches were always wonderful.”
“I suppose Porphyry will be the President of the Chamber now,” Klio said. “Or Krito?”
“It’ll be so much easier when the children are grown. None of this wrangling. All of them seeing clearly the best way ahead and doing it.”
“Do you really believe that?”
“… No. I’d like to. But some of them are very smart, and they’ve been brought up the right way, and maybe by the time they’re fifty? Who knows.”
Klio put the paper down. “I must get on and do my own list. It’s so difficult to decide which of the boys are the most deserving.”
“It is. I think we should space the festivals out more, have them every six months, or even just once a year. Once we take out all the girls who are pregnant and those who are still feeding, the numbers are getting smaller and smaller. And we don’t need all that many babies. Maybe we should time the festivals for just after the dark of the moon, to reduce fertility, instead of at the full to maximize it.”
“That’s a good idea. Cutting down the frequency would make everyone upset, but nobody would take any notice of changing the timing, and having fewer births would be much easier on us. You should bring that up in Chamber.”
“If we ever get on to any subject that isn’t workers.” I sighed. “It might be better to suggest it to Ardeia and Adeimantus and whoever else is on the Baby Committee.”
There was a knock on my door. Klio opened it, and Ficino came in. “I came to tell you about Tullius, but I see Klio was before me,” he said.
“I was very sorry to hear about it,” I said. “And I expect you are more sorry, as you were friends.”
“I had that privilege,” Ficino said. He sat down on the bed. “It was a privilege. I thank Athene every day for the privilege of being here and knowing these people—men from the past whose work I revered.”
“And men and women from your future who revere your own work,” Klio said.
I gave up on the thought of getting any more work done and got up and began to mix wine.
“My work was as an intermediary, a translator, a librarian, more than as an original thinker,” he said, taking a wine cup and nodding.
“You always say that,” I said, taking wine to Klio, who was pacing. “But you underestimate your importance to the Renaissance and everything that came after.”
“Your commentaries on Plato—” Klio started.
“I know I can’t compare to Cicero,” he said.
“But who can? I can’t compare to you,” I said. “It’s not a contest.”
Ficino sipped his wine. “I wonder sometimes whether Plato imagined this city. Not the Republic he wrote about, but our imperfect attempt to create it now. And if so, and knowing what we would need, whether that might have been why he wrote about the female guardians as equals, to draw all of you young women towards us because we would need you so much.”
“No, that’s nonsense,” Klio said, stopping and turning to him. “Because he could have written about women as slaves and animals as Aristotle did, and you wouldn’t have needed us then, if there was no need to train women in philosophy. You could have managed with workers, or buying female slaves to help with childbirth and childrearing.”
“It’s a privilege to debate with philosophical women too,” Ficino said.
“Two sips and you’re drunk already?” I asked.
“I’m sad because of Tullius, that’s all. Death makes me think about mortality. Even though I know our souls will go on. Even though in one sense Tullius’s soul has already gone on through many lives and I might even have known him by another name, death is sad because it is a parting.”
“We were contemplating what it would be like for our bodies to reappear at the moment of our disappearance,” I said. “Suddenly older. Suddenly dead.”
“I had decided to die at sixty-six, because it was the best number. Ninety-nine seemed difficult to accomplish.” We all laughed.
“When did you pray to be here?” I asked.
“Oh, all the time.” He shook his head. “When I first translated the Republic. And thereafter every time something went wrong politically in Florence, which was often, I assure you!”
“And you prayed to Athene,” Klio said, leaning back against the edge of my table.
“Often. But I’d pray to the Archangel Gabriel for it too, and to St. John and the Virgin.” He smiled wryly. “Have you heard Ikaros’s interesting explanation that Athene is an angel?”
“He did mention it,” I said. “I’m more than a little conflicted about it.”
“He is the ultimate synthesist. He always was. I remember when he first came to Florence—he had everything going for him. He was so young, so good-looking, and a count! What he wanted was philosophy—he was in love with philosophy. Literally in love with it. He wanted a Socratic frenzy, that was his term. He sent me such letters! He had read everything in the world, in every language, and he was desperate for people to debate him. So he came, trailing young women he had seduced and sparkling with new ideas. I was so sad when he took up with Savonarola and then died. I was delighted to meet him again here.” Ficino sipped his wine then turned the wine cup in his fingers. “Do you remember that night at the beginning, when the three of us had no wine and pretended we did? I’m sorry you’re not his friend any more.”
“Sometimes it’s hard to be one of the women,” I said.
“You should have stuck to Plato,” Ficino said.
“I did. It’s he who should have.”
“I think it’s nonsense,” Klio said, getting up again. I stared at her. “Not that. Saying Athene’s an angel. You two, and Ikaros as well, sort of want that to be true because you were Christians. I was never a Christian, though I lived in a country where most people were. She’s not an angel. She’s something from a different universe entirely. She’s herself, the way Homer wrote about her. I don’t see how Ikaros can deny that. He didn’t think that at first. It’s only since he hasn’t seen her every day, hasn’t been face to face with the reality of what she is, that he’s been able to come up with this … comfortable explanation. Angels! I wonder what she thinks of it? It’s a betrayal of her.”
“What’s wrong with angels?” I asked.
“Angels are fluffy woolly nonsense. Guarding your bed while you sleep. Free of will, nothing but winged messengers in nightgowns, coming to tell us not to be afraid? Tame agents of an all-knowing creator God whom we’re supposed to believe is good even though the world is so flawed?”