“And I want the same for both of you,” Sokrates said.
“You’re in love with him too,” I said, realizing it as he spoke. “And so you must know he doesn’t take more than you want to give.”
“As long as you want to give everything.” Sokrates smiled wryly. “I have loved Athene and Apollo all my life, and between them they have consumed most of it.”
“But aren’t you better for it? In your soul?”
“I wouldn’t want to be any different,” he admitted.
“And you love Pytheas the same way I do!” I was pleased, thinking it through, excited and not even a shred jealous. I trusted Sokrates, and this was something we shared. If we were both in love with Pytheas, then we could talk about it and maybe define agape more clearly. I leaned forward eagerly with my hands on my knees, ignoring the twinge in my back.
“I love both of you, of course,” he said, gently, clearly disconcerted.
“I know, and when it comes to philia I truly love you too, but that’s not what I mean, though of course that’s also really important.” I took a breath to compose my thoughts more clearly. “I love you and you love me, as teachers and pupils who are friends love each other.”
“Yes,” he agreed, cautiously.
“But you love Pytheas the same way I do. Agape.”
He shook his head. I had argued with Sokrates about many things over the course of years, and had rarely seem him this disconcerted. “Not the same at all. I’m an ugly old man. I joke about being helpless before his beauty, but—”
“And I’m an ugly young girl, and he’s Apollo, he’s thousands of years older than both of us. But he has chosen both of us as votaries because age and beauty are trivial; what really matters to him is excellence. What’s on the inside of our heads. And both of us can help him, we can give him new ideas and new ways of thinking!” I said all this as fast as I could get the words out. “It does make it a bit different that you don’t have any eros to struggle with conquering. But it’s still agape, and still very similar.”
“I knew him as a god first, and was his votary, and only later came to know him as Pytheas, and vulnerable,” he said.
“Yes, that’s a real difference,” I acknowledged. “You knew him as a god for so long. I did that the other way around. But you also loved him all that time. And now both of you passionately want to increase each other’s excellence, just the same as he and I do. This is so great! We both want that for him, and he wants it for us,” I was so pleased I’d worked this out. “And we want that for him a lot.”
“We do,” Sokrates said, staring at me. “Sometimes I think the most important thing I can be doing—and the same for you—is helping him to increase his excellence. More important than the workers or the city or anything. Because he’s not just our friend Pytheas, he really is the god Apollo. He’s the light. And what he learns and knows and understands is so important for the world. His excellence has a future, and nothing else here does.”
“Well, ours does for our souls,” I amended. “But Pytheas still has so much to learn about being human, so much that he ought to understand about it. He really is wonderful. And he tries so hard. It’s marvellous that he says excellence is something even the gods must pursue.”
“He certainly pursues it. I can’t speak for all the gods, and he doesn’t either. I do wonder what his Father pursues, alone in the centre.”
“He said he didn’t know.”
“That doesn’t stop me wondering about it all the more.” Sokrates tugged at his beard, as he sometimes did when thinking hard.
“But Pytheas—Apollo—wants to increase my excellence, as I want to increase his. And it’s the same with you.” I beamed at him. I was so delighted to have figured this out.
Sokrates focused on me and sighed. “You are truly very close to what Plato dreamed. You’re almost enough to justify this whole absurd structure.”
“It’s not absurd,” I said. “Though I must admit it does have its absurd side sometimes.”
“Plato understood so little about what people are like,” Sokrates said.
“If I were making a plan for a Just City, there are things I’d change. I’d let people choose their partners, and whether to bring up their own children.”
“It’s like a delicate mosaic, if you change anything the whole thing falls apart into incoherence. Plato had logical reasons for those things.”
“I do wish I could read it. Maia says not until I’m fifty, which is ridiculous.”
“Didn’t Pytheas tell you what it said?” Sokrates was looking at me alertly, his most characteristic expression. I wondered how many debates we’d had sitting just where we were in this garden, and how many more we would have in the years to come.
“He told me about the masters cheating at the lots to get better children. Though it wasn’t the masters cheating that put me with Kebes, it was Athene, to punish Pytheas and me for annoying her.”
“What?” Sokrates puffed up with anger. “That’s unjust!”
“Pytheas says she can be spiteful. He says you shouldn’t make the mistake of assuming that they’re good.”
“They shouldn’t have that power if they’re not responsible with it. This city is a great many things, but one of them is directly enforced with Athene’s power.” He leapt to his feet and began to pace around the garden. “I have a good mind to challenge her. I’ve been thinking about it for a while. I am her votary too. And what she is doing and learning here is also an issue that has very deep consequences for the world.”
“You love her too, in that same way,” I said.
“Of course I do. I have always loved wisdom. Pytheas says she wants to know everything. I have questions it would do her soul good to consider.”
“Pytheas says she’s really angry now, but she’ll calm down. It might be better to wait until she calms down before you challenge her.”
“Did he say how long it would take?” Sokrates asked, stopping and looking down at me.
“He said maybe a decade.”
“I don’t have a decade. I’m seventy-four years old.” He began to pace again.
Nobody would have been able to tell he was that old, especially watching him pace. He looked a vigorous sixty. “You’re not about to drop dead. And I think she should have a little bit longer. She and Pytheas had an argument yesterday.”
He spun around. “She’s the goddess of reason and logic. She shouldn’t quarrel and act in anger.”
“I agree, but if that’s the way things are, there’s not much point saying they ought to be different because that would be better and more logical,” I said.
Sokrates laughed. “I do have a tendency in that direction, yes. I want to challenge her—” There was a scratch at the outside door, and he went to open it. I hoped it wouldn’t be Pytheas, as I wasn’t ready to see him yet. I knew it wouldn’t be Kebes.
It was Aristomache and Ikaros. I heard them wishing Sokrates joy before they came outside and wished me the same thing. “Weren’t you drawn in the lots today?” Aristomache asked as I returned their greetings. “Are you still recovering from childbirth?”
“I was drawn, and I have played my part and finished,” I said.
“It must be a very uncomfortable thing,” Ikaros said. “I’m glad I don’t have to abide by it. A random partner every four months, sometimes friends, sometimes enemies, sometimes strangers.”
“We were just saying that we don’t know what Plato was thinking,” Sokrates said.
They laughed, as if this was an often repeated joke.