The Just City (42 page)

“Below the belt,” Simmea muttered. I grinned. She was completely caught up in the debate.

“Plato had a dream which was never tried until now, but now that it has been tried it is successful,” Athene said, wisely avoiding the issues of Syracuse and Alexander.

“So you brought the children here and put them into an experiment, in the hope it would be successful,” Sokrates said.

“Yes,” Athene conceded.

“And you believe it has been?”

“Yes.”

“Successful at maximizing justice?”

“Yes,” she insisted.

“Well, I think there are other points of view possible on that subject. To take just one aspect of this supposedly Just City consider the festival of Hera, which instead of increasing happiness is visibly making everyone miserable. Human relationships can't work like that. Eating together is different from sharing eros together. I've seen people made unhappy by being drawn together, or unhappy by being drawn together once and never again.” Again Sokrates was seeking out people in the crowd. I was grateful he did not look at us. “Damon?”

“Yes, Sokrates?”

“Is the system of having wives and children in common making you happy, or unhappy?”

“Unhappy, Sokrates,” Damon said, clearly.

“Auge?”

“Unhappy, Sokrates,” she said promptly.

“Half the children are cheating on the system, and almost nobody likes it. Plato knew a lot about love and was notably eloquent on the subject, far more eloquent than I could ever be, though he set the words in my mouth. How could he then set up such a travesty? But you will say, will you not, that the purpose of the system is not to maximize individual happiness but the justice of the whole city?”

“Yes,” she said.

“And how does this maximize justice?”

“People do not form individual attachments but are attached to all the others, and people do not care more about their own children than all the children of the city.”

“But that's nonsense,” Sokrates said gently. “They do form individual attachments, they're just pursuing them in secret. And they do care more about their own children, they're just prevented from seeing them.”

“It may not be perfect, but it is more just than the existence of families,” Athene said. “Plato was successfully attempting to avoid nepotism and factionalism. We have none of that here. Ficino, you can speak for the evil which families can cause to a republic.”

Ficino nodded sadly. “Yes, it's true, family rivalries did great harm to Florentia. The Guelphs and the Ghibellines, and then later in my own time the rivalry between the Medici and the other noble families. It can tear a city apart, and there is no justice possible.” I saw many of the masters nodding. “The worst thing is with inheritance. Even if you educate an heir carefully, they will not always be the best person to succeed to power. And unless rulers happen to be childless, they will always prefer their children, regardless of fitness.”

“We saw that in Rome,” Manlius said. “Caligula, Commodus, we have innumerable examples. Whereas when the emperor was childless and chose the best succesor we had rulers like Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. But family love can be a wonderful consolation when things go wrong in the state.”

“It can indeed be very pleasant when things go well in the family,” Athene said, nodding to him in a friendly way, and then turning back to Sokrates. “Just as you called on one or two children to say that Plato's system makes them unhappy, there are many among the masters I could call on to talk about how families did the same for them.”

“And I could call on many more among the children to witness that they are forming individual attachments in secret, but I will not, because I would be putting them in danger of being punished if they spoke the truth.”

Athene was silent, and so was the crowd. Everyone kept still and tried to avoid Sokrates's eyes.

Then Klymene spoke up, astonishing me. Her voice sounded very soft in the big space, but everyone was so quiet that she could be heard clearly. “I have not made any individual attachment. But I see it all around me. In my sleeping house, I am the only one who is not in some kind of love affair. Sokrates is completely right about this. Almost everyone has individual attachments. And while I believe the city knows best how to bring up children, and I understand what you're saying about the dangers of factionalism and preference, I do miss my own boy, that I only saw for a few minutes after he was born.”

“Bravely spoken,” Sokrates said, smiling at her. “I think that point is made. Now, let's move on. I questioned whether Plato was wise enough to write the constitution for a city like this. He was only a man. But you are a god, are you not?”

“I am,” Athene said, cautiously stepping into Sokrates's unavoidable rhetorical trap.

“So you know more than mere mortals, isn't that so?”

“Of course,” Athene said.

“So we should trust you to be doing what is right for us, even if we can't quite understand why?”

“Yes.”

“And you have been deeply involved in setting up this city from the beginning?”

“Yes.”

“And you have constantly used your power to make things work out for the city, things that might otherwise not have worked?”

“Yes.”

“The trouble with that is that even though you are a god you too are ignorant in some areas. One area I can easily cite is to do with the workers. Until I discovered it, just recently, nobody knew that they had free will and intelligence.” Sokrates raised an arm to indicate the workers who were there listening in a circle around the outside of the agora. Axiothea was standing near Crocus and read aloud the response he carved.

“Volition,” she read. “Want to choose, want to talk, want to make art, want to debate, want to stay.”

“Wait,” Manlius called. “Sixty-one is writing something.”

“What is it?” Sokrates asked.

“No choice brought, choose stay city,” Manlius read out.

“Precisely,” Sokrates said. “They wanted to choose and to talk and to make art, they wanted a say in their own lives. They didn't choose to come, but they do choose to stay. But you didn't even know they could think, nobody did.”

“But as soon as you discovered it, we agreed to consider them people. Now they spend ten hours a day working and ten being educated and the rest recharging, their equivalent of eating and sleeping.” Athene looked pleased. “Once we realized we were committing an injustice we moved at once to redress it.”

“Indeed. That speaks very well of you, of the city in general. I think Aristomache deserves especial thanks for this.” He smiled at Aristomache where she stood near him in the crowd. “But my point is that the reason you were treating them unfairly is because you were not even aware, until Crocus and I discovered it, that the workers were people.”

“He's got her,” Simmea muttered.

“Yes, I was unaware,” Athene admitted.

“So even though you are a goddess you don't know everything?”

“Of course not.”

“Of course not,” I echoed. “He knows that.”

“Yes, but not everybody does,” Simmea said. “Hush.”

“So, for instance, you didn't know how well Plato's experiment would work until you tried it?”

“No.”

“It was an experiment?”

“Yes. I said so.”

“An experiment, and nobody knew what would happen. And to perform this experiment, why didn't you do as Plato said?”

“We did,” Athene said, indignant.

“Plato said you should take over an existing city and drive out everyone over ten years of age, you didn't do that?”

“No. It seemed better to start fresh.”

“Seemed better to you?”

“Yes.”

“Even though it wasn't what Plato said?” Sokrates pretended surprise. There was a ripple of laughter.

“What Plato said wasn't possible,” Athene snapped.

“Wasn't possible even for you?” Sokrates sounded even more surprised.

“Not everything is possible even for the gods,” Athene said.

Sokrates paused, then shook his head sadly. “Not everything is possible, and you do not know everything?”

“I already said so.” Athene was clearly irritated now.

“To return to what Plato said. He thought his city would be near other cities, would trade with them and make war with them. Why did you decide instead to put it on an island far away from other cities and with no contact with the outside world?”

Athene hesitated. “It seemed it would work better that way.”

“So you felt free to change things Plato wrote when you thought they would work better a different way, but you kept them the same and held Plato's words up as unchangeable writ when you didn't want to change them?”

She hesitated again. “There were a number of good reasons to choose this island.”

“Yes, the volcano that will erupt and destroy all the evidence of your meddling. That was going to be my next point. If you believe that this is the Just City, that the life here is the good life, why did you situate it in this little corner of the world that will be destroyed, at a point in time where it can influence nothing and change nothing? Why is it set here in a sterile backwater? Why didn't you put it in a time and place where it could really have an effect, where it could have posterity, where all humanity could benefit from the results of this experiment and not just you?”

There was a swelling murmur through the crowd at that, especially from the masters. Everyone must have wondered about that.

“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?”