by Jo Walton
“You’re the god Apollo,” I said, dropping my voice to a whisper and shaking my head. “I can’t get over it. You are, and you take it for granted.”
“I’m used to it,” he said. “You’ll get used to it.”
Even Sokrates was used to it. He’d had three years to accustom himself to the idea, even if Pytheas hadn’t been talking to him about it. It was only to me that the idea was new and strange.
“What made you decide to become Pytheas? I know it was volition and equal significance, but what made you realise you needed to understand them?”
“That’s a long story, and I’d really like to talk to you about it, but not here where someone might overhear. Let’s go down to the water.”
I retrieved my kiton and shrugged it around me. I couldn’t believe how well I felt. I wanted to bounce and run and get all sweaty again now that all the old sweat was scraped off. We walked together down to the gate of Poseidon and down the curve to the harbor and the beach. As we went past the temple of Nike we could see the sea change colour out in the bay, where the deep water was, and the dolphins. “You couldn’t swim because normally when you want to you became a dolphin,” I said, realising.
“Human bodies aren’t made for it,” he agreed. “Dolphins are. I always said so.”
“But you wouldn’t give in,” I said. It was the first thing I had admired about him.
The beach was empty—it was too early in the year for anyone to be swimming, the very edge of spring. There was a pelican down by the water’s edge, and a worker on the harbor doing something to the Excellence. We sat together on the rocks at the top of the beach. Gulls were flying overhead and calling out occasionally. “The sea speaks Greek, but the gulls speak Latin,” Pytheas said. “Listen. The sea against the shore says its name in Greek, THA-lass-ssa, THA-la-ssa, over and over. And the gulls cry out in Latin, Mare, Mare.”
I wasn’t to be distracted. “Why did you become Pytheas, really?”
He handed me a pear from inside his kiton, warm from his body’s heat. I bit into it. The juice ran down my chin.
“I’ve been thinking about it for a long time and I think I have it figured out now, but maybe you can help me understand it better. There was a nymph. Her father was a river. Her name was Daphne.” He stared out to sea. There was a little breeze just beginning to ruffle the surface “I wanted her. She didn’t want me, but I thought she was playing.”
The pear tasted sour in my mouth. I drew away from him. “You raped her?”
“No! But I would have. I didn’t know. I didn’t understand at all. It was a game, chasing and running away. I called to her to run slower and I’d chase more slowly. But she didn’t want to play and I didn’t understand.” He sounded guiltier than I had ever heard him. “She prayed to Artemis, and Artemis turned her into a tree. I was embracing her. I had one hand on her stomach, and then I was touching bark. She became a tree, a Daphne tree, a laurel.”
“You live in Laurel, here,” I said.
“Athene’s idea of a joke,” he said. His face twisted. “I’ve wondered if I could do something with the tree, to show her I understand her choices now and value her. I’ve thought I could make garlands.”
“It would make good garlands,” I said, considering it. “It would weave well and look recognizable and attractive. They’re pretty leaves. And it is giving her something. I think that’s a good idea.”
“I could wear one, and they could be for poets and artists,” he said. “I think I’ll adopt that when I get back.”
“But how did she turn into a tree?” I asked.
“Artemis transformed her. It’s not that difficult. She had prayed to her for help. The question was why. I just couldn’t understand why she wanted to do that, why she was so strongly oppposed to mating with me that she’d rather turn into a tree.”
“But you understand now?” I buried the pear in the stones. I wasn’t going to be able to eat any more of it.
He nodded. “I didn’t ask. And she didn’t want me. And I thought she was playing. But she wasn’t.”
“She must have been terrified,” I said, imagining running to try to escape rape, pursued by a laughing tireless god.
He bit his lip, then turned to me. “Do you think so? I thought she just hated the idea.”
“I was really nervous the first time, and I had agreed. It’s a scary kind of thing, especially if you’ve seen rape and violence.”
“Had you seen it?” He was staring at the sea again, his eyes following the pelican swimming away.
“When the pirates came, and on the ship. It was brutal.” I could remember only too clearly. And the taste in my mouth, and choking, and the sense of violation, and the contempt of the men.
Pytheas put his hand on mine. I looked down at our hands together. The pebbles were grey and black, my hand was brown and his was golden. It would have made an interesting composition, maybe in oils. “I wouldn’t have been like that, like them.”
“Well, there was only one of you, but I don’t see how otherwise it would have been different.”
“I feel sick,” he said.
“You ought to. It’s sickening. It’s unjust. But you didn’t do it, because fortunately she turned into a tree. And you know better now.”
“I do. I talked to Artemis and to Athene, and I finally got it through my head that her choices should have counted, not just mine. What I was talking about yesterday, volition. Equal significance. She should have had it and I wasn’t giving it to her.”
“That’s horrible,” I said. I almost moved my hand away, but I looked at his face and what I saw there reminded me how much I loved him. He was trying to pursue excellence, even in trying to understand this crime he had so nearly committed, trying so hard to make even his own nature better.
“I know now. But I didn’t understand then. I became incarnate to try to understand. And you know I’ve been trying!”
“I’m really horrified that you wanted to rape her.” I was still trying to cope with the idea.
“I didn’t! Rape isn’t something I want at all. I wanted to mate with her. I just didn’t understand that she didn’t want me. The others had wanted me. They ran away, but they wanted to be caught. The chase, catching, it’s erotic play. But Daphne—I do understand all this much better since that time with Klymene.” He shuddered.
“Thousands of years as a god and you weren’t considering her choices at all?”
“I have learned more about considering other people’s choices in the eighteen years I have been a mortal than in the whole of my life before. Gods don’t have to think about those things very much. Not for mortals. Only each other.”
It was true that he had really been trying to understand these things. I’d seen him. I’d helped him with it, even when I didn’t know why he needed that help. “Have other gods done this?”
“What, become incarnate? Yes, lots of them.”
“Learned about the things you’re learning about,” I said.
“I don’t see how they could become incarnate without discovering these things, whether that was their intention or not,” he said. “The learning process seems to be an inevitable part of the procedure.”
“But the gods who stayed on Olympos, or wherever, they don’t know it?”
“There’s not much chance for them to come across it,” he said.
“You have to tell them!” I said. “You have to explain it to them, to all of them. And to humans, too.”
“I could try to explain it to the gods,” he said, though I could see him quail at the idea. “Explaining it to humans wouldn’t be possible. I could try to inspire people to make art about it. Poems. Sculptures. But it’s one of those things that doesn’t go easily into the shapes of stories.”
“It’s not just rape. It’s understanding that everyone’s choices ought to count.”
“I know. I really do understand.” He patted my hand. I looked at him and saw tears on his cheeks. Then I hugged him and he was sobbi
ng and I held him as if he were a child and I were his mother, rocking him and making nonsense noises.
“Do you forgive me?” he asked, with his face buried in my shoulder.
“It’s not for me to forgive you,” I said. “I’m not the person you wronged.”
He rolled over and lay with his head in my lap, face up, looking up at me. “But you still love me?”
“There’s no question of that, is there? You could murder half the city at midday in the Agora and I’d be furious with you and want to kill you, but I’d still love you. I love you like stones fall downwards, like the sun rises. I loved you even when I was almost too tired to breathe.”
“You cried when you saw me, yesterday.”
“That was because I loved you and I was so exhausted.” I looked down at his perfect face, tear-stained but no less beautiful. I smoothed a curl off his forehead. “I can’t believe I didn’t realize you were Apollo. I mean, who else could you possibly be?”
“A boy who didn’t know how to swim, and who you risked your own life to teach,” he said. He sat up. “Let’s pursue excellence together. Let’s make art. Let’s build the future. Let’s be our best selves.”
“Yes,” I said.
33
MAIA
Lysias had thought the debate on slavery would be divisive, but in fact it was our shining moment, one of the things it makes me proudest to remember.
After my conversation with Sokrates and Crocus I told Lysias that I was convinced that the workers were people and not tools. He heard me out and then nodded. “The evidence is certainly mounting up on that side,” he said. Then he changed the subject.
The day of the debate dawned as cold as any day could be on Kallisti, with a chilly wind out of the east. It was nothing to the winters I remembered in Yorkshire when I was young, but I had been acclimatized to them, besides having warmer clothes, especially socks. I spent my free time in the library. This was a popular choice on cold days, as on very hot days in the summer when it felt cool. Many of the work spaces were filled up. Walking around looking for a place to sit, I noticed Tullius and Atticus sitting with Septima on the window seat where she seemed to spend a great deal of her time. “Know where you are with a scroll, not all this flicking through pages,” Tullius was complaining in a murmur as I went by.
“No, I disagree, I think they’re wonderful. I find it much easier finding something again,” Atticus replied, his tone no louder. He raised a hand to me. “Joy to you, Maia.”
“Joy to you Atticus, Tullius, Septima,” I said, in the hushed tones appropriate to the library.
Tullius grunted in my direction, and Septima nodded at me. “We were just discussing the codex,” she said, and I noticed that although her voice was barely louder than a whisper it was still perfectly clear.
“I grew up with them, but I think both have their virtues,” I said. Most of the scrolls we had were originals, and were stored in the big library. Touching them always filled me with a kind of awe. I wished that I could have gone with Ikaros and Ficino to rescue them from Alexandria and Constantinople.
“And what are you working on today?” Atticus asked me.
“I’m not really working at all. I’m just in the library to keep warm. I’m going to be entirely self-indulgent and re-read the Gorgias,” I said. “Have you read it yet, Septima?”
We had recently allowed it onto the list of Plato the golds were allowed to access, which was of course why I was re-reading it, in advance of a lot of conversations I was expecting to have with them about it. “Oh yes,” she said, smiling to herself. I was glad she had enjoyed it.
“Are you prepared for the debate tonight?” Atticus asked.
“Oh, don’t let’s talk about that,” Tullius begged.
“I am ready, but I agree, let’s not talk about it,” I said. I was surprised Atticus would mention it in front of Septima. “I’ll see you both there, no doubt.”
I moved away to continue questing for a seat. “In the Palatine Apollo library in Rome,” Tullius was saying as I moved on.
However much he wasn’t looking forward to it, Tullius was at the Chamber early for the debate. Lysias was also there before I arrived, sitting with Klio on the crowded benches near the front. I sat with Axiothea in our usual spot. The big hall was chilly, and most of us kept our cloaks on. Creusa slipped in at the last minute and joined us. “Crisis with a baby that stopped breathing,” she said.
“Is it all right?” I asked.
“No, the poor thing died. Nothing I could do. It just happens sometimes.”
“One of the newborns?” Axiothea asked.
“No, one of the first ones, more than a year old.” Kreusa shook her head. “It’s only the second Corinthian baby we’ve lost. Charmides’s mold drugs are miraculous in most cases.”
I nodded my agreement. “It’s wonderful how few babies we’ve lost, compared to what I’d expect.”
Tullius raised his hand to begin the debate, and we all fell silent. I was expecting Aristomache to start, as she had proposed the debate, but Lysias stood up and was recognised. He went down to the rostrum then turned to address us all.
“I was wrong,” he began. “I did not believe the workers could possibly be intelligent. I come from a time closest of all of us to the time they come from, and I know the most about them and have been working most closely with them. They were never my area of study—I was a philosopher. They were tools. But since I have been here I have done my best to maintain them—and inadvertently done them much injustice. Because I believed they were tools, I refused to admit that they might have become conscious, and I have mistreated them by removing their memories.”
“Their memories!” Kreusa murmured, horrified. It did seem such a horrible thing, to tamper with what somebody remembered.
“I did this in ignorance, but it was unjust, and I owe them an apology. Now I acknowledge that some of them at least are conscious, and I have to see the others as having the potential to become so.”
“You’re admitting that they’re people?” Sokrates interrupted from the floor. Tullius frowned but allowed it, as he almost always did with Sokrates.
“Yes, that’s what I’m saying,” Lysias said. “They’re people, or potentially people, though a very different kind of people from us. I don’t know how this can be. I don’t understand them as well as I should. But there’s no question that they’re engaging in dialogues they couldn’t have if they weren’t self-aware. I don’t think all of them are conscious. I don’t believe any of them were conscious when they came. I suspect this is something they have developed here, over time.”
Klio stood up and was recognized. “I agree with Lysias, and I also want to apologize to the workers for my part in dealing unjustly with them,” she said. “And I move that we bring in the workers to speak for themselves in this debate, and to hear our apologies.”
Tullius raised a hand. “This was to be a debate on slavery, entirely separate from the question of the workers.”
Sokrates stood up, but again spoke without waiting to be recognised. “The question of slavery can’t be discussed separately from the issue of the workers.”
“It can be discussed purely theoretically,” Tullius said.
“Is that what the Chamber wants?” Sokrates asked.
Aristomache stepped forward. Her cloak was covered in brightly colored squares like the patchwork quilts of my childhood. “I don’t think we need to vote on that,” she said. “I think the issues are inseparable, but we can certainly begin with theory.”
Tullius nodded. “And we won’t bring in the workers. It would be a terrible precedent.”
Sokrates sat down again. He was sitting beside Ikaros around the curve of the hall from me so I could see him well. He was looking intently at Aristomache as she began.
Aristomache straightened herself up and looked out over the benches where we all sat. “What is freedom?” she asked, conversationally. “What is liberty?” she repeated, in Latin. Th
en she switched back to Greek. “In the month since we agreed to this debate, while Sokrates has been talking to the workers, I have been going around talking to the masters about what we understand freedom to be. Many of us come from times when we kept slaves. I myself come from such a time. Others come from eras that regard the fact that we did so as a stain on our civilizations. From these conversations I have written a dialogue, which I have submitted to the Censorship Committee. I have called this dialogue Sokrates; or, On Freedom. In it, Sokrates, Atticus, Manlius, Ikaros, Klio, and I discuss our different views on freedom and slavery. I’d like it to be printed, and I’d like the masters to read it, but that is of course for the Censors to say.”
“Fascinating,” Axiothea breathed in my ear.
Ikaros stood up from where he was sitting beside Sokrates, and Tullius recognised him. “Speaking for the Censors, I’d just like to say that we are approving Aristomache’s dialogue for publication, though of course at level fifty.” That meant that only masters could read it, and eventually the golds once they reached the age of fifty. There was an approving murmur.
“I can hardly wait to read it,” Kreusa said.
Ikaros sat down again, with a swirl of his cloak. Aristomache nodded to him, and then continued. “Sokrates is of course from the earliest time of any of us here, from classical Athens. Atticus comes to us from the last days of the Roman Republic. Manlius comes from the end of the Roman Empire. Ikaros comes from the Renaissance. I come from the Victorian era. Klio comes from the Information Age. All those periods have their own ideas about freedom, and about slavery, and they are very different from each other. I have set out these different views in detail in my dialogue, which is in a way a historical survey of different ways of thinking about what freedom is and who should possess it. But those historical attitudes, fascinating as they are, don’t matter here and now, because all of us, of course, are Platonists.”
I saw Sokrates’s shoulders move as if he were considering getting up, but Ikaros put a hand on his knee. Sokrates turned his head to smile at him, and stayed in his place.
“What Plato says about slavery is quite clear. He lived in a time when slavery was commonplace. And he believed it was necessary, but that only those people should be slaves whose nature it was to be slaves. He approved of Sparta’s helots, who were not exactly slaves. He talks about slavery in the Laws, and those who are fitted for it, and using criminals for the hardest parts of it. But in the Republic he took the radical step of abolishing slavery altogether—the Noble Lie of the mingling of metals in the soul leads to everyone doing the work for which they are fittest. Plato had the work which was done by slaves in Athens done by free iron-ranked citizens in the Republic, as we have instituted here in the city. The irons are an essential part of our city—and how we agonised over assigning the right class to each child.”
