“This was a time when it was possible. The more things affect time, the less power the gods have to do things.” She sounded even more irritated now.
“So you deliberately chose a backwater?”
“Yes,” she snapped.
“And you deliberately chose a time when it could not last?”
“I told the masters when I gathered them together. Nothing mortal can last, and the most we can hope for is to create legends. Legends of this city will change the world.” She spread her hands out to the crowd.
“Ah yes,” Sokrates said, drawing everyone’s attention back to him. “Atlantis.” He laughed. “Can legends change the world? Is that really the best you could do?”
“Legends really can change the world,” I whispered to Simmea. “Whether Sokrates believes it or not.”
“This city is worth having whether it has results in time or not,” Athene said.
“Then why didn’t you build it on Olympos, outside time?”
“That wouldn’t have been possible.” It really wouldn’t. It wasn’t even imaginable. Athene cast another furious glance at me, only too aware who must have told Sokrates that Olympos was outside time.
“And how do you know it is worth having?”
“It self-evidently is!”
“It may or may not be, but you have established that you did not know everything, that it was an experiment. You did not, could not, know it would be a better life for those you brought here against their will.”
“They prayed to be here,” Athene said.
“The masters prayed. The children and the workers were purchased and given no choice at all, since we have agreed to leave aside the claims of choices made by souls before birth.”
Athene smiled. “The children had as much choice as humans ever do. Every human soul is born into a society, and that society shapes their possible lives. And we have given them lives as good as we could imagine. As for the workers, if they had not come here they might never have developed souls at all.”
“Even if that is so, it’s worth mentioning that since they came here, the children and the workers have not been allowed to leave. In most cities, as young people grow up they can leave and seek out a more congenial home if they do not like it. They could leave Athens for Sparta or Crete, or if they preferred they could choose to found a new colony, or settle among the horselords of Thessaly. But if your children have tried to leave they have been brought back, even if it damaged them.” Sokrates indicated Glaukon in his wheelchair. “They have been flogged for running away.” He indicated Kebes. “And did you do this with good intentions?”
“Yes!” she insisted.
“But you did it in ignorance of how it would turn out?”
“… Yes.” I could tell she was still uncomfortable, but she seemed to have regained her calm.
“Did you even believe that it could work, or were you just as interested in seeing how it might fail?” I had never told him that, he must have just deduced it.
Athene bared her teeth. “I wanted it to succeed. I worked hard for it. I have spent my time and efforts here. I brought everyone here to make it succeed.”
“Everyone except me. Why didn’t you bring me here until the fifth year?”
“So you could teach the children rhetoric.” She hesitated again. “You were an old man. I wasn’t sure you’d live to teach them at fifteen if you came here at the beginning.”
“I am grateful for your consideration,” Sokrates said, standing straight and hearty. There was a laugh. “Why did you not extend that consideration to those older than me, or frailer? How about Tullius, or Plotinus, or old Iamblikius and Atticus there, who might well have been even more useful than I am if they’d been allowed to come here later when the work of setting it up was done?”
“You were more important,” Athene said.
You’d think that would upset the older masters, but not a bit of it. They agreed with Athene that Sokrates was more important. After all, he was Sokrates.
Sokrates laughed. “I’m glad to hear it even if they are not. But I don’t entirely believe you. I think you knew I wouldn’t approve of this city and didn’t want me to have a say in its foundations. I think you knew I wouldn’t have agreed, and too many of the others would have sided with me. I did not ask to be here. I was brought here directly against my will. The children and workers were given no choice. I actively refused to come.” He looked for Krito in the crowd. “My old friend Krito prayed to you to rescue me, even though I had told him I was ready to die by the laws of Athens. I drank the hemlock. I did not fear death. Nor do I fear it now. I ask you again, why did you bring me here?”
“I can’t imagine,” Athene snapped. Everyone laughed.
Sokrates looked into the crowd again. “Maia,” he said. “Do you truly believe that what Plato wrote is the way to reach excellence?”
“Yes,” she said, unhesitatingly.
“And you have dedicated your life to that?”
“I have.”
“And when you learned that the workers were people, did you vote for their emancipation?”
“I did. And now I support their education,” she said, waving at the workers on the edge of the crowd.
“And if you had known earlier?”
“I would have supported their education earlier. From the very beginning,” she said.
“And do you think you have been doing good here?”
“Yes!” she said, passionately.
“And have you never had doubts about what Plato said and following everything he wrote?”
“I—” Maia started to speak, then stopped. “I have had doubts,” she admitted. “There was so much he didn’t specify and we had to improvise. And then when we first had the children. And now with the festivals. I do think we need to modify some of what Plato said there. But I still believe we’re trying to reach excellence, trying to reach justice and the good life.”
Sokrates leaned back a little, shifting his weight. “Thank you.” He turned back to Athene. “I hate arguments that blame everything on the gods,” he said, conversationally. “But it seems that here I have one. The children and the workers are doing their best to pursue the good life. So are the masters, as best they can in their limited way. For the most part they truly believe all Plato wrote and want to implement it as best they can, but even they have doubts. But you are ignorant, and you have great power, and you don’t hesitate to meddle with the lives of others.”
“What is he doing?” I whispered to Simmea.
“He’s baiting her,” she said.
“Why?” I really couldn’t understand it.
“I expect he’s going somewhere with it,” she said. “He’s leading up to something.”
Sokrates looked at Athene in a friendly way. “And is it true that you lie and cheat?”
“No!” she raged.
“Mistake,” Simmea whispered.
Sokrates looked taken aback. “I’m sorry. You’re not following Plato in that either, then?”
“The Noble Lie isn’t a lie, it’s a myth of origin,” Athene said.
“For those of you who haven’t yet been allowed to read the Republic, and won’t be until you’re fifty years old, and only then the golds among you, I should explain that the Noble Lie is the lie about the metals in your soul and that your life before you came to the city is a dream,” Sokrates explained.
“She’s absolutely right, it’s a myth of origin,” Simmea said.
“Your children will believe it,” I said.
“Good,” Simmea said, firmly.
“An origin myth,” Athene said again. “Not a lie.”