The Just City

by Jo Walton

  The other different thing was our schedules. Before this, almost all of Florentia did the same things at the same time every day, with a few exceptions like astronomy and the sessions with Sokrates. Now we were all doing different things. Some of us still had every moment scheduled. Others, and especially we golds, had a reasonable amount of flexibility as to how we spent our time. For music I did mathematics and read in the library. I had very little supervision in reading. Masters might suggest books to me, and occasionally a request for a book was denied. Otherwise I was free to read what I wanted to—which was mostly philosophy and logic. I still did mathematics with Axiothea, which was always fun. Art was something for my free time, which I experienced now for the first time. I could go to the studio and work on my paintings and designs whenever I wasn’t expected anywhere else, and I often did.

  I continued to spend hours in the palaestra—but I decided which hours they would be. The way Maia explained this to me was that we were to pursue excellence as seemed best to us, now that we knew what it was and that we wanted it. Children need guidance; adults can learn to guide themselves. Most of all I pursued excellence by debating with Sokrates. Kebes and I took to following him around in the mornings, when he talked with anyone he ran into.

  Soon, well before the summer, I perceived a problem. Before the new year, anyone whom Sokrates befriended was clearly destined to become a gold, and we all were duly awarded gold pins. After that, Sokrates continued to befriend people, but now their status was fixed. Only golds were supposed to study philosophy and rhetoric. But the masters couldn’t very well stop Sokrates from going up to people and asking them about their work. They couldn’t stop him from inviting whomever he chose to come back to Thessaly for conversation. Sokrates was famous. All of the masters revered him practically by definition—they were here specifically because they revered Sokrates, after all. They didn’t want to stop him behaving the way he had always behaved. They had loved to read in the Apology about how he was a gadfly sent by the gods to Athens. Now he was their gadfly, and they weren’t as happy about that. He was upsetting their neat system, and he knew it. He would laugh about it.

  “How can they know who is the best?” he asked in one of our debates. The four of us were alone in the garden of Thessaly, eating delicious fried zucchini flowers stuffed with cheese that Kebes had brought from the Florentine kitchens.

  “They observe us,” I said. “They see who is best fitted for each task. My friend Andromeda is motherly and loving, and she was assigned to learn childcare. I am interested in debate, and I am assigned to learn rhetoric with you.”

  “Good. But how about Patroklus of Mycenae, who only became interested in debate the day before yesterday? He has been assigned to learn how to care for goats and sheep. Now he wants to debate.”

  “That doesn’t mean it’s what he’s best suited for,” I said. “He might be best suited as a shepherd.”

  “Does everyone have one thing for which they are best suited?” Kebes asked. “You’re good at design, as well as debate.”

  “They always told us that we were a mixture of all the metals, and it was a case of discovering which one was strongest,” I said.

  “The metals are supposed to be an analogy for the parts of the soul,” Kebes said. “So if Patroklus wants to turn to philosophy, does that mean reason is stronger in his soul than appetites, and they were wrong in thinking appetites were stronger? Or was Plato wrong about the soul?”

  “Or perhaps the soul and the proportions of its parts change over time?” I asked.

  “But assuming that Patroklus is truly best suited as gold, as my friend and debating partner, what does that mean?” Sokrates asked.

  “It means the masters made a mistake.” I shrugged. “Nobody said they were gods to get everything perfect.”

  Sokrates looked at Pytheas, who was leaning back on his elbow in the shade of the tree, eating zucchini flowers and looking like a Hyakinthos. “You’re very quiet today,” he said.

  Pytheas licked his lips slowly, and Sokrates laughed and then swore aloud. “Apollo! Oh, Pytheas, you can make me swoon at your beauty, you know I’m helplessly in love with you, but that won’t help you in debate.”

  Once we had all stopped laughing Pytheas sat up straight and answered seriously. “I think your question is the real question,” he said. “How can they know who is the best? Even if they could see into our souls, how could they know? And to my knowledge nobody can see into our souls.”

  “Not even the gods?” Sokrates asked, rocking forward and almost toppling over.

  “We know the gods can hear prayers directed to them, and sometimes speech before it is spoken. I don’t believe they can see into anyone’s soul beyond that, except perhaps all-knowing Zeus.” Pytheas shrugged and took another zucchini flower. “But in any case, the masters don’t have that ability.”

  “The masters just do the best they can with observation and intelligence and goodwill,” I said at once. “To their observation, Patroklus was best suited to be a shepherd.”

  “Should they change their minds now?” Pytheas asked.

  I looked at Sokrates. “I’d guess not, because it would cause too much confusion.”

  “That’s certainly what they’d say,” Sokrates said. “Some might put individual happiness above social confusion.”

  “Is happiness the highest goal?” Kebes asked.

  “Is it a goal at all?” I asked. I thought of that moment by the fire when I had recognized how happy I was. “Is it rather something that’s a byproduct of something else? An incidental that comes along when you’re not pursuing it? When I think about when I am happiest it’s never when I’m trying to be happy.”

  “And how does happiness differ from joy or fun?” Kebes asked. “Fun can certainly be a goal.”

  “It can also come along as an incidental,” Pytheas pointed out. “A spin-off benefit.”

  “If you pursue happiness, like pursuing excellence, truth, or learning, do you get closer to it or further away?” Sokrates asked.

  “You certainly can’t will happiness,” Kebes said, thoughtfully.

  “Further away, I think,” I said. “If you try to make somebody happy, you can’t do it by asking them or telling them to be happy. You can do it by doing something for them, or doing something with them. So it seems much more like a side effect to me. Or almost like a thing that happens to you. So if you wanted to maximize happiness, for a person or a city, you’d do better to aim at something else that was the kind of thing likely to produce that side effect.”

  “Like what?” Kebes asked.

  “Like excellence,” Pytheas said.

  Kebes made a rude noise, and Sokrates tutted at him. “What if you wanted to make Simmea happy?”

  “I’d argue with her,” Pytheas said. I threw a tuft of grass at him and we all laughed.

  “But it’s true. Debate does make me happy,” I said. “It’s not just that it’s fun.”

  “What does happiness consist of?” Sokrates asked.

  “Freedom, and having everything you want,” Kebes said, looking from Sokrates to me.

  “Not everything you want,” I said. “You might want something that would make you unhappy if you got it. Having what is best.”

  “That brings us back to what is best,” Sokrates said.

  “The pursuit of excellence, as Pytheas said just now. When we first came here, Ficino said that he wanted each of us to become our best self,” I said. “That seems to me an admirable goal.”

  “And that has been your constant pursuit since you were ten years old,” Sokrates said.

  “Eleven,” I admitted.

  Sokrates laughed. “Since you were what passed for ten years old. But how about Kebes?”

  “How could he not want to be his best self?” I asked.

  “Kebes?”

  But Pytheas interrupted before Kebes could answer. “He might have a different pursuit. A different goal. Something he rates more highly.” />
  “More highly than being his best self?” I asked, incredulous.

  “If you’ll let me speak, yes I do,” Kebes said. These days Kebes seemed to tolerate Pytheas better most of the time, but he was really glaring at him now.

  “What is it?” Sokrates asked, calm as ever.

  “Revenge,” Kebes said. “Slavers killed my family and enslaved me and the masters bought me and brought me here against my will. I can’t possibly ever be my best self. That’s out of reach. My best self would have had parents and sisters. My best self would have lived in his own time. All I can be is the slave self they made me, and my slave self wants revenge.”

  “The masters didn’t kill your family,” I said. “It’s like when you poked me back in the slave market, because you couldn’t reach those who could hurt you and I was there. You can’t reach the ones who hurt you, and you want revenge on those who have done you nothing but good.”

  “If there weren’t any buyers there wouldn’t be any slavers,” Kebes said. “They’re part of it. And that they have high intentions makes it worse, not better. And they did the same to you.”

  I thought for a moment. Pytheas opened his mouth to speak, but Sokrates raised a hand, stopping him. “I see a clear distinction between those who killed my family and the masters,” I said. “And it is my belief that I have more chance of being my best self here than I would have there. I can’t know this for sure.”

  “Do you mean you condone having your family murdered to get you here?” Kebes almost shouted.

  “That would be called Providence, and it’s an interesting argument to consider,” Sokrates said, calmly. “But it’s late and you’re growing heated. Let’s stop for today.”

  Kebes stayed, and I left with Pytheas. “I wonder where Sokrates heard about Providence,” Pytheas said as we walked down the street. “He’s so clever.”

  “Sokrates is clever, but Kebes is an idiot,” I said, kicking a stone. I was still upset.

  “If Kebes were an idiot, he wouldn’t be half so dangerous,” Pytheas said.

  15

  MAIA

  One day in the summer of the Year Five, Kreusa, Aristomache, Klio and I were sitting on the stones at the top of the beach one afternoon, drying off. We’d had a meeting of the Committee on Women’s Issues, and then we’d had a swim. Aristomache was in her fifties, one of the oldest women in the city. She was originally an American, from later in my own century. She had long greying hair, usually neatly knotted on top of her head but now falling loose in damp curls over her little breasts. I’d been in the city so long that I barely even registered the fact that we were all sprawled comfortably naked in the sun. We were all masters of the city, and the only time we worried about was the present. As Plato correctly deduced, people grow used to seeing bodies, even when they’re not young or beautiful.

  Klio reached into the fold of her kiton where it lay bundled at her side and pulled out a small cake and a knife.

  “Ought we—I mean, is that all right?” Aristomache asked, as Klio cut the cake into quarters. I picked up my share. It was currant cake and smelled delicious.

  “What’s wrong with it?” Klio asked, looking up.

  “Well, Plato says we should have food in common, and I’ve interpreted taking food out of the eating halls to eat elsewhere as wrong,” Aristomache said.

  I looked guiltily at the wedge of cake I’d taken. Was it unplatonic of me to take it? I looked at Klio.

  “Plato doesn’t regulate the lives of the masters,” Klio said. “But I think you’re right. If we had food in private all the time it would be a bad thing. But this cake was made in Sparta’s kitchen, and it’s the same cake everyone is going to be eating there tonight. I’m always starving after swimming, and I thought I’d bring enough for all of us.”

  Kreusa looked at the cut pieces and did not reach out for one. “I think we ought to debate this. Do you allow the children to take food?”

  “No, never,” Klio said.

  “Then it’s not really having it in common, if we have privileges they don’t,” Kreusa said.

  “Maybe we ought to let them, at least a little bit,” Klio said. “What’s wrong with it, as long as they always share what they take with others?”

  “It’s not what Plato says, but I agree that it might be all right,” I said. “I allow the Florentines to take nuts and dried fruit when they go running in the mountains.”

  “So do I with the Olympians, but always enough for the whole group,” Aristomache said.

  “Oh yes. And when mine run in pairs, one will take the nuts and the other the fruit, so they’ll share,” I said. “I didn’t discuss it with anyone because it didn’t seem to come under any particular committee, and Plato didn’t mention it, and I just thought it was my discretion. I mean, if the whole lot of us all go out on a run we take food, so if a smaller group does it seems like the same thing.”

  “I agree,” Kreusa said. “And I like that, giving one the nuts and the other the fruit. That very much does go along with the spirit of what Plato said about food in common. I’ll do that with the Corinthians now you’ve mentioned it. Which is really a good reason for talking over things like that, so we can have the good ideas in common and stamp out the bad ideas before they get rooted.”

  I blushed. “Yes. Sorry. But who should I have asked, or told?”

  “Food comes under Agriculture and Supply,” Aristomache said, picking up a slice of cake. “I don’t know who’s on that committee.”

  “Ikaros?” Klio suggested.

  Aristomache and Kreusa laughed, and Kreusa pretended to fan herself. I bit into my cake to disguise the fact that the thought of him still made me uncomfortable.

  “I don’t believe he is,” Aristomache said. “He’s never been on absolutely every committee. And since Sokrates has come and takes up a lot of his time, he has dropped several.”

  “Ardeia is on it, I think,” Kreusa said.

  “I’m not sure Agriculture and Supply is the right committee anyway. This isn’t about food supply. It’s a social issue. It’s Right Living if it’s anything, and I’m on that one,” Aristomache said. “I’ll bring it up in our next meeting, and if Manlius and everyone else is all right with it I’ll suggest the fruit and nuts thing in Chamber. I think we can be a little more relaxed. The children are going to become adults soon. Indeed, I was wondering if we could give them the privilege of choosing which hall they eat in.”

  “Choose which hall?” Kreusa asked, her arched eyebrows rising right up into her hair. “Won’t that cause chaos?”

  “I didn’t mean choose which hall unrestrictedly, or choose which hall to belong to,” Aristomache said. “That really would cause chaos. I meant simply that perhaps we could give the children limited privileges to invite their friends to their own hall, and to go to other halls if invited.”

  “Won’t it mean surpluses in some halls and shortages in others?” I asked.

  “Won’t it mean nobody knows where anybody is?” Kreusa asked.

  “I think the surpluses and shortages would cancel out,” Aristomache said, looking at Klio.

  Klio nodded. “Workers could redistribute food if necessary, and probably it wouldn’t be a problem; children missing from one hall would be cancelled out by children present from another. We could easily set up a mechanism where they had to sign in and out, and if a hall was full up nobody else could sign in unless somebody signed out. The food is very similar in all the halls. The social disruption potential is there, though.”

  “I think most of the children would be sensible about it,” Aristomache said.

  “Most of them, but there are some who wouldn’t,” I said.

  “I don’t understand the point of it,” Kreusa said.

  “The point is that once they become adults, we need to shuffle the sleeping houses so that everyone is sleeping with people of the same metal,” Aristomache said. “It will mean people are sleeping very far from where they’re supposed to eat. If there w
ere some flexibility in that it would help. We don’t want to reassign eating halls, because the children are very attached to them, and also because that’s how we keep track of them.”

  “I can see how it would help,” I said. “I’ll support it.” Klio nodded.

  “I’m not convinced,” Kreusa said. “I see a lot of potential for trouble. I’d want to hear a really solid proposal.”

  “It may come to nothing yet,” Aristomache said. “Tullius is opposed.”

  I sighed and stretched. “I should get back. I have to teach soon, and then after dinner I need to work on the adulthood choices with Ficino, and I want to look through the list again first.”

  “It’s only seventy children, and we know them well. You wouldn’t think it would be this difficult,” Kreusa said. She reached for her kiton.

  “It’s the responsibility.” Klio shook her head. “I used to feel bad enough about grades and recommendation letters affecting people’s entire lives, but this? Deciding for seventy people not just what kind of soul they have but what work they’d be best suited for?”

  “Lysias says he doesn’t really believe in souls, that he thinks they’re a metaphor,” I said. Lysias had been showing some polite interest in me recently. I liked him. He was quiet and considerate and as unlike flamboyant Ikaros as it was possible for somebody to be and still be a man.

  “Doesn’t believe in souls?” Kreusa asked, pausing with her kiton half on. “Pallas Athene told us we have souls, the very first day. It’s one of the few metaphysical things we can be absolutely rock-solid sure about.”

  “He thinks they’re not the same as Plato wrote. She didn’t answer Plotinus’s question about whether they have three parts,” I said. “He thinks they’re something odd, and Plato’s description is just a metaphor.”

  “Even if it’s a metaphor, we still have to use it to classify everyone,” Aristomache said, twisting up her hair.

  “Do you know, the other day I found myself picking up Ficino’s translation of the Republic to read through it in Latin, because I’ve read it so often in Greek that my eyes start to cross,” Klio said, laughing at herself.