The Plot to Save Socrates (Sierra Waters Book 1)

by Paul Levinson

  Thomas had had no choice regarding Sierra. He had needed her to lure Heron into this... To turn him from a talented inventor who had traveled back to Alexandria into maybe a madman who sought to revise more of time than just the final night of Socrates... But that had been necessary, too...

  Thomas loved Sierra, the woman of three different names. He had been tempted to go back to Alexandria and speak to her.... But he did not want to complicate her life and the world any further....

  Would anyone have recognized him? Probably not. Maybe a little, unconsciously. Hard to say ... He had taken a random assortment of distinguished genes and fashioned a new face, new eyes, new vocal chords and voice, and a somewhat new body ... And he had grown old in it... A real shame, in a way... He was arrogant enough to miss his original...

  He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket...

  Socrates. What time is it?

  Visitor. The dawn broke a little while ago.

  Socrates. I must have been sleeping . I did not see you enter--

  Yes, Socrates had written that. Others had changed it over the years, either deliberately or not. Such was the way of translation and cultural inheritance. Words on the page mutated, like genes in the flesh...

  Thomas wondered if maybe he should make a few additional changes. There was one that he was obliged to make, to keep history consistent. He crossed out "Visitor". He replaced it with "Andros" -- the island in the Aegean which had saved his life.

  He was tempted to make other changes. He would return to Athens some day, well after the presumed death of Socrates, and make copies of this manuscript on suitable scrolls. One of them, or a faithful copy of it, would find its way into the Millennium's Library, in the 2020s.... He was sure of this. After all, had not the past year of his life so vividly confirmed this... Had not almost the last half of his life confirmed it even more...

  He wondered if he should try revisions of other Socratic and Platonic dialogs. He could salt the past with better truths...

  No. He could not think about that now.... He carefully folded the paper, and put it back in his pocket. He had done enough today. His head was still swirling in the rapids of emotion...

  Let this day be just for Socrates. He had just buried his mentor, here in an age in which neither had been born. If only they could have had more time, but he would be forever grateful for the time they had stolen... It had made everything worth it... He thought Socrates had cherished it, too. Home-made melting ice-cream, the Palisades gleaming on a bright day, the sight of women who made your heart race... His mentor's vocabulary had become more jumbled, but they hardly noticed it. The two ancient companions had even managed a little drive through the countryside, in an open convertible, from Ithaca to Syracuse....

  Socrates, of course, had known who he was, had recognized him, despite his new face. Socrates had smiled at him, in that way of his, the minute he had sat across the table in the Club, just a few a months ago... Socrates alone had grasped the truth. It felt strange, indeed, to talk to him in that old Greek of theirs, after he had spent so much time as a nineteenth and twenty-first century New Yorker... That little English dictionary that Sierra had given him long ago had done its job...

  Alcibiades stood, sighed, waved goodbye to the bartender, and walked slowly down the stairs. Yes, he grieved deeply about her, and always would. After leaving the Hippocrates Medical Center in 2061 Athens, he had travelled back to Alexandria in Theon's time, with every intention of returning to her. He had sought out Theon. He had questioned him about a cure for what would kill Socrates, rob him of his escape from death by hemlock, but Theon knew nothing of any cure. Another trick of Heron's, is what Alcibiades thought then.

  He had returned to 2061 Athens in search of Ampharete. She was gone, and the Chairs were not precise enough for him to arrive on any of the specific days for which he knew her whereabouts.

  So he went back to 2042 Athens, and searched for her there -- and he fell very ill. He nearly died.

  He was sick for months, in and out of what they called hospitals. At some point, he realized that his conversation with Theon might well have been the source of Heron's information about an ancient cure for Socrates. He was furious at himself, at the whole prospect of time travel, when he realized that. The problem was not Heron's deceit. Not that time. It rather was the inherent trickery, of heads chasing tales, of all time travel....

  He learned about e-mail, and left word in public places for Ampharete. Appleton, who also had mastered this writing with digital wings, eventually spotted the messages. Appleton found him, and brought him back to 1890s New York. That was when Appleton told him about Sierra's rescue from Alexandria in AD 410...

  Alcibiades' bouts with illness lasted for years. He was unable to travel. Appleton told him why. People born in the past who travel to the future acquire immunity to its diseases the hard way -- by living through them, if they didn't die.

  Appleton died at 85 years of age in 1899. If his time on the roads of the past and future was counted, he was at least a year or more older. The noblest soul in this whole enterprise. He had died content, knowing he had served as Sierra's guardian angel.

  Alcibiades never stopped yearning for her. But he knew she would be happier without him -- without him as Alcibiades, her lover.

  He had traveled not to the past but the future, and acquired his new face and voice. Alcibiades became Thomas O'Leary. He was not as noble as Appleton. Thomas set in motion his part of the events that would bring Sierra into this.... What else could he do? Any other course of action would have unravelled not only his own but Sierra's life, even the last ten years of Appleton's. Alcibiades the future Thomas would have been dead at forty in Phrygia. He might even have chosen in 2042 to take that path again, to suffer his original fate. But would Sierra have really been happier, more fulfilled, if Thomas had never approached her with the dialog? She was destined to do great things with the life he had helped make for her…. Things that went beyond even Socrates.

  The front door of the Millennium Club opened, just as Thomas reached it.

  "Mr. Charles? Did you forget something?"

  "Oh, no, Thomas. I just felt lonely at home ... on such a day. I was hoping you might still be here ... Care to join me for a drink?"

  Alcibiades, known to Mr. Charles as Thomas O'Leary, clapped his friend on the back. "Of course."

  And the two headed back upstairs...

  Appendix

  The following real people appear in The Plot to Save Socrates (along with characters for whom there is no historical record). The details provided below are what we know of them, as of the time of this writing (January 2005).

  Alcibiades, 450-404 BC. Reputed to be handsome, amorous, wealthy, brilliant, brave, unpredictable, egotistical, and Socrates' favorite student. The two saved each other's lives as soldiers near the beginning of the Second Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta. Alcibiades later became an Athenian general, with mixed results. He fell in and out of favor with various oligarchic and democratic governments in Athens. While taking temporary refuge in Phrygia, on the east side of the Aegean, he was murdered by a band of Spartans (either loyal to Sparta, or hired by Alcibiades' political opponents in Athens). According to I. F. Stone and his sources (see below), Alcibiades was surprised while in bed with a woman, and fought "naked, outnumbered, but brave with sword in hand" till the end.

  Antisthenes, 444?-365 BC. Oldest disciple of Socrates, said to have walked daily from Piraeus to Athens to hear him speak. Identified in Plato's Phaedo as being present on the last day of Socrates (Plato's absence is noted). Later founded the Cynic school of philosophy, and (in the words of I. F. Stone, see below) "was especially cynical about democracy". According to Diogenes Laertius, Antisthenes wondered why Athenians did not vote that "asses were horses," since they elected people as generals who had as much in common with military leaders as asses did to horses. Also according to Diogenes, Antisthenes drove Anytus from Athens in retribution for the death of S
ocrates, but this is historically unsupported (see Anytus, below). Antisthenes wrote a dialog about Alcibiades; just a few fragments survive.

  Anytus, dates of birth and death apparently unknown. Smith's 1849 Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology says Anytus was Socrates' "most influential and formidable accuser" (there were two others) before and during the trial; recent sources, including Stone (see below) agree. Anytus was a wealthy middle-class merchant of hides (a "tanner"). Appointed an Athenian general in 409 BC, he failed to prevent the loss of Pylos (the modern Navarone); he was later brought up on charges, acquitted, but was said to have bribed the jury (in what is reputed to be the first recorded case of jury bribery). He was back in favor by 403, and moved against Socrates three years later. Most sources agree that his animus was personal as well as political: Anytus' son was attracted to Socrates' teachings, which held that philosophy was a nobler pursuit than tanning. Nothing is known of Anytus after 386 BC. Most sources agree that reports of Diogenes Laertius (third century AD) and others that Anytus later was repudiated, exiled, and even stoned are fables born of the desire to see Socrates' prosecutors punished.

  Appleton, William Henry, 1814-1899. Became head of the publishing company, D. Appleton & Co, when his father Daniel retired in 1844. Published Lewis Carroll, Charles Darwin, Thomas Huxley, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer, and leading nineteenth-century scientists and philosophers in America. Offices in Manhattan. Owned the Wave Hill house in Riverdale, overlooking the Hudson River and the Palisades, 1866-1899. Huxley was among his guests at the house. Theodore Roosevelt's family rented Wave Hill (when he was a boy in the summers of 1870 and 1871), as did Mark Twain (1901-1903).

  Heron (or Hero) of Alexandria, 150 BC??-250 AD?? The years of his birth and death are debatable -- Heron pops up throughout a 400-year span of ancient history. He was a prolific inventor of devices that embodied principles and techniques that were 2,000 years ahead of their mass application in the Industrial Age. These included a toy that ran on steam power (the aeolipile) and an automated theater that utilized "phantom mirror" and persistence-of-vision effects that are the basis of our motion pictures. Many of his treatises on other inventions, and mathematics, exist just in fragments, or are known only via reference to them by later Greek, Roman, and Arabic writers. His Metrica, considered his most important mathematic work, was discovered in Istanbul in 1896.

  Hypatia, 355-370?-415 AD. Daughter of Theon, who was an astronomer, mathematician, and one of the last members of the Museum in Alexandria. Hypatia likely assisted her father in his new edition of Euclid's Elements and his commentaries on Ptolemy's Almagest, but she was considered a brilliant philosopher and mathematician in her own right, and led the Neoplatonist school in Alexandria. Renowned not only for her intellect, but her beauty and eloquence, Hypatia attracted many students and admirers. Hypatia was pagan, however, and her charm and accomplishments infuriated certain Christian fanatics, who brutally murdered and mutilated her. The death is thought to mark the end of Alexandria as an intellectual center of the ancient world; it was followed by an exodus of scholars. Charles Kingley's 1853 novel Hypatia made her a heroine of the Victorian era, and she is today regarded as the first woman to have made a significant contribution in mathematics. (Kingsley is today better known for his 1863 urban fantasy, The Water-Babies.)

  Jowett, Benjamin, 1817-1893. Translator of The Dialogues of Plato, in four volumes, with extensive analyses and introductions, first edition, 1871 -- still the standard English translation -- as well as translations of Thucydides, and Aristotle's Politics. Declining health prevented him from completing a series of essays about the Politics. He was for 28 years a tutor, and then for 23 years Master, at Balliol College, Oxford.

  Plato, 427?-347 BC. Socrates' student, considered by many to be the greatest philosopher in history, the father of philosophy, etc. Among his most influential ideas is that truth exists in some ideal realm, separate from humanity, and which humans can only imperfectly understand (theory of forms); and the best kind of government is an absolute dictatorship of the wisest (philosopher-king). Our entire knowledge of Socrates is based on what he says in Plato's dialogs, along with lesser works by Xenophon (also Socrates' student), and his appearance as a character in contemporary plays, such as Aristophanes' The Clouds. Debates continue as to what parts of what Socrates says in Plato's dialogs are expressions of Socrates' original ideas and words or Plato's, whether Plato or Xenophon provide more reliable accounts of the trial (they agree on the important details), etc. Most accounts agree that Plato, 28 years old at the time of the trial (399 BC), left Athens before Socrates took the hemlock, travelled widely and as far away as Egypt and Sicily, and returned to Athens permanently in 387 BC. The Academy that he founded in Athens continued until closed by Justinian in 529 AD.

  Socrates, 470?-399 BC. No texts written by Socrates have survived or are alluded to by ancient authors; all that we know of him are from the writings of his students, mainly Plato (see above), and a few contemporaries. Socrates taught that the pursuit of knowledge was the highest virtue, and knowledge was best obtained through continuing questioning and dialog. He was no fan of democracy -- in the Phaedrus (where Socrates also condemns the written word as conveying only the "pretense of wisdom"), Socrates asks why, if we would not trust a man ignorant of horses to give us advice about horses, should we have confidence in a government composed of everyday people with no philosophic training in understanding good and evil -- yet Socrates, condemned by the Athenian democracy on charges of corrupting the youth of the city with his ideas, accepted its death sentence. Indeed, waiting in prison for thirty days for the return of the priest of Apollo from Delos (no death sentences could be carried out in his absence), Socrates refused an offer of escape and refuge made by his old friend Crito. Socrates explains in the Platonic dialog of that name that to evade the death sentence would be to put himself above the state, which as a critic of the state he had no desire to do. I. F. Stone (see below) argues that Socrates may also have wanted his death penalty carried out as a way of permanently shaming the democracy he hated. In any case, that was certainly the result: the death of Socrates by prescribed hemlock in 399 BC redounds as one of the worst cases in history of a dissident destroyed by government, all the worse because that government was the world's first known democracy.

  Stone, I. F., 1907-1989. American gadfly journalist, and publisher of I. F. Stone's Weekly, 1953-1971. In semi-retirement, he taught himself to read ancient Greek, claimed that many extant translations of classical work were slightly off, and in 1988 published The Trial of Socrates.

  Synesius of Cyrene, 370-414. Pupil of Hypatia (see above) and her devoted disciple. Christian Bishop of Ptolemais, 410-414. Synesius was earlier in Athens and Constantinople. His letters to Hypatia show a deep interest in science and invention, and a profound affection for Hypatia. One of this last letters to Hypatia, written in 413, reproaches her for not writing to him, and avers that, if she had, he would be “rejoicing at your happiness”. Whether or not his feelings for Hypatia were carnal, and whether or not they were consummated, is unknown.

  "The Thirty," 404-403 BC. Athenian oligarchy, overthrew democracy and overthrown by democracy, in power for about a year. Buttressed by Spartan garrison. Plato's uncle (Charmides) and cousin (Critias) were among its members. Bitterly opposed by Alcibiades (see above) and Anytus (see above) -- and likely responsible for the former's murder. Socrates offered mild "civil disobedience" (as I. F. Stone puts it; see his account in The Trial of Socrates, and in Plato's Apology). Plato, in his Seventh Letter, says he was invited to join The Thirty, was at first tempted, but was soon disenchanted (see Stone for details).

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