“It seemed more practical,” I said, defensive as always when Children criticized the decisions the Masters had made. “It was Plotinus’s idea.”
“If you’d got children of all ages from ten to newborn, that wouldn’t have been any easier,” she said, opening the door into Thessaly.
I followed her across the room, tightly packed with beds, empty now because Pytheas was busy somewhere else and the children were at lessons. We went into the spacious fountain room, tiled in black and white diagonals. She turned on the water and we both stepped under. The shock of the cold water on my hot sweaty skin was delicious.
Clean, I dried myself on my kiton and wrapped it around me. Simmea did the same. “I should wash this one day soon,” she said, looking critically at a stain. Then she looked directly at me. “I was hoping to do this over a cup of wine after we’d finished with the cheese, but I wanted to ask you about the New Concordance,” she said.
I opened my mouth, but she held up a hand.
“I know you hate it. I want to understand. You know more about it than anyone here. Ikaros wants—well, the City of Amazons want—to send people here to preach. In the Foreign Negotiation Committee we’re debating whether it will do more harm to allow it or forbid it. We’re going to take it to Chamber.”
“I was a Christian before I came here,” I said.
“So was I,” Simmea said, surprising me.
“You remember?”
“Of course I remember.” We went out into the street again. “You told us to forget. Ficino said it had been a dream. But ten years of life isn’t a dream, and you can’t forget it.”
“I sometimes almost forget the years before I came here, and I was nineteen,” I said.
Simmea looked at me sideways with a patient expression. “New Concordance?”
“Sorry. It’s wrong. Literally and specifically wrong. Ikaros has built a whole complex structure based on incorrect axioms. He’ll debate any individual point, but I couldn’t get him to examine his axioms.” We walked down the broad diagonal street of Athene, passing others and nodding greetings to them from time to time.
“So what’s so appealing about it? Why did people convert, both historically and in the City of Amazons? Why was my village Christian? Why did Botticelli convert? He wasn’t an idiot. Anyone can see he thought hard about things.”
I blinked. “Botticelli was always a Christian. What made you think he converted?”
“Didn’t he paint the Seasons and the Aphrodite first, when he still believed in the Olympians, and then the Madonnas and things after his conversion?” she asked.
“No, he painted some pagan scenes even though he was always a Christian,” I said. “I don’t know all that much about Botticelli’s personal beliefs, but in the Renaissance almost everyone was Christian, although of course they admired the ancient world. They used pagan stories and imagery just as stories. But Christianity was the majority religion, and it was hardly even questioned. It was the same in my time.”
“Aphrodite wasn’t just a story to Botticelli, or the seasons either,” she said, sounding absolutely sure. “But go on, tell me what it is about it that’s appealing. I was a child. I remember chanting and prayers and some of the stories, but none of it was ever really explained clearly.”
I thought for a moment as we walked past a smithy, with the scent of quenched iron hanging heavily on the air. “I think what’s so appealing, both then and now, is the idea of forgiveness for sin. If you’re genuinely sorry for what you’ve done, you can be forgiven and your wrongdoing taken away.”
“You give up responsibility for it?” She was frowning hard.
“Yes. You’re washed clean of it.”
“Without making restitution to people you harmed?” she asked.
“It’s the spiritual side of it,” I said, feebly. “But you’re right of course, it’s between you and God, not you and whoever you wronged.” But Ikaros had come to apologize to me. My forgiveness had been important to him, not just God’s forgiveness.
“And God is all-powerful?”
“Yes. That’s appealing. And of course, there’s the whole thing where everyone is really sure, and there’s the hope of an eternal afterlife.”
“We’re really sure about Athene.” She was still frowning. “And Jesus incarnated himself as a human?”
“Yes, that’s also part of the appeal. Think of a god doing that, giving up his powers, to live like us, to redeem us.”
Simmea laughed. “If that’s why he did it! Maybe he just had questions he wanted answered.”
I was startled. “Questions?”
“About being human. Assuming he was ever real and actually did it. But thank you, I do see now why people might like it. Do you have an opinion on whether we ought to allow it?”
We walked past Crocus’s colossal statue of Sokrates Awakening the Workers. I was almost used to it by now. “Banning it gives it too much power. And it would be impossible to keep it out entirely now that it’s the official religion of the City of Amazons, if we’re going to have any contact with them at all. Forbidding it might make it seem attractive to rebellious Young Ones,” I said.
Simmea sighed. “Alkibiades is being rebellious, though not in religious directions, which considering everything is a good thing.”
“I think we ought to allow it but laugh at it, and keep showing how silly it is. Because it is silly. There are a whole lot of absurdities. And we know Athene is real and has real but limited abilities and knowledge. We can deduce certain things from that, but not that there’s an omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent deity who wants us all to become angels.”
“I’ve read some of Ikaros’s theses, but only some of them. They make my eyes cross. And of course they don’t have their holy book. Having a holy book nobody can read but which you can quote from whenever you want is a bit too convenient!”
“Lots of people here would know if Ikaros were misquoting,” I said. “I would myself—except that the Bible was a long book, longer than the Republic. If he misquotes the Sermon on the Mount, he’s going to be corrected, even after twenty years. But he’s much less likely to be caught out on verses from the book of the prophet Amos.” And of course, Ikaros probably did have a copy of the Bible among his forbidden books. But he wouldn’t be able to admit that.
Simmea sighed. “Will you talk to the committee and say what you’ve just said?”
“Of course I will.”
“We’re meeting next on the day after the Ides.” She grinned. “Letting them in and ridiculing them seems like a terrific strategy. Forbidden fruit is sweet, but nothing is appealing if people mock it.”
The mission from Psyche had been housed in an empty sleeping house near the agora. Maecenas, one of the captains of the Excellence, and another member of the Foreign Negotiations Committee, was entertaining them. They looked relieved when we came in, and so did the envoys. The envoys were all men, of course. Psyche did not admit women to full citizenship. But they accepted that the other cities did, and dealt with us when they had to. Two of them were Masters, whom I knew, and the third was one of the Children whom I only vaguely recognized.
“Joy to you,” Simmea said.
“Joy to you, Hermeias, Salutius,” I said, then inclined my head to the third man. “I’m Maia.”
“Aurelius,” he said.
We all sat down. I fetched wine and mixed it. “Have you had a pleasant journey?” Simmea asked, when we had all drunk a toast to Plato.