by Tom Harper
He liked the certainty in her voice. He’d found Lily, but bringing her back would take time. He hadn’t forgotten that in the old stories, women who’d been to the underworld never returned quite the same. There was an ache in Lily’s eyes that hadn’t faded as he’d hoped. She’d drift off in the middle of sentences, or wander away while he was speaking to her. Sometimes, in the night, he woke up with her screaming, clinging to him as if a giant tide was pulling her away. He cradled her, sometimes for hours, and sang her back to sleep.
‘Will I see you again?’ he asked Ren.
He was certain she’d say no. She’d come into his life from nowhere, and he sort of understood she’d disappear the same way. But she surprised him.
‘Some day.’
She hung up. Lily came out of the bathroom, wrapped in a white towel that just reached her thighs. Her skin was scrubbed fresh, her wet hair pushed back off her face. Some of the light seemed to have come back into her eyes.
She kissed him. ‘I need fresh air.’
They went to the back door. Jonah hung back, but Lily didn’t skip a beat as she stepped over the threshold into the yard. Idiot, he told himself, but some dreams were hard to shake. He needed time, too.
They sat together on the riverbank and watched the water flow by. He put his arm around her and she leaned her head on his shoulder, two halves of the same whole. Neither of them said anything because they didn’t have to. They were sharing a moment of eternity, and words couldn’t touch it.
Athens
The grove is named for Academus, the ancient hero who helped rescue Helen when Theseus kidnapped her for his bride (much good it did her: as soon as she went home, the Trojans nabbed her instead). Inside the low wall, yews and poplars surround the gnarled olive trees that are sacred to Athena. A gymnasium stands between them, a weathered colonnade overlooking the running track and sandpits.
It’s summer again. My journey back from Italy wasn’t without its complications, but I’m home now. I’ve come down with Glaucon to see the festival; later, there’ll be a torch race in honour of Prometheus, who brought fire down from the gods to men.
Crowds mill about, waiting for nightfall so the race can start. Young men, naked bodies oiled and gleaming, stretch their legs and check out the competition when their backs are turned. Over at the sandpit, athletes queue up to take turns at the long jump. It’s a curious thing. Each one looks as if he’s trying his hardest every time, yet each leap takes him a few inches further than the previous mark. How do they manage it?
‘Odysseus returns!’ It’s Philebus, poling himself along on his walking stick, delighted to have caught me. ‘Not captivated by sirens or seduced by Italian sorceresses?’
I force a polite smile and wipe away the spittle he’s just sprayed over my face. There was a sorceress, and a siren song, but I’m not going to tell him about that.
‘I did have a shipwreck.’
The jowls flap. ‘Really. Really? You must tell me all about it. And so thin.’ He pinches my stomach like a clucking mother. ‘You must be the only man to come back from Italy having lost weight.’
‘It didn’t agree with me.’
‘And the sophist? What became of him?’
‘He died.’ I’ve planted a gravestone for him on the road out of Athens, next to the one I bought for Agathon. I don’t know what Dionysius did with Euphemus’ body. I suppose Diotima would say it doesn’t matter.
Philebus’ eyes bulge. ‘How tragic. Was it the food? Some other kind of … excess?’
‘He tried to murder the tyrant Dionysius, and was strangled to death.’
He doesn’t know what to say to that. Being at a loss for words is a painful state for him to be in, a sort of constipation of the lungs, so he makes his excuses and leaves.
Glaucon comes up to me, his mouth sticky with a honey-cake. I think he was hanging back to avoid Philebus. ‘Are you regretting coming back, yet?’
‘It’s as if I never left.’ But that’s not true. Athens may be the same, but I’m not.
‘This is where I’m going to come,’ I tell Glaucon. ‘This grove.’
He looks puzzled. ‘You’re already here.’
‘Pythagoras had his school in Croton. Socrates had the agora. I need somewhere to instruct my pupils.’
It’s a good place to start again. A measured mile from Athens – out of its intrigues, but near enough to be visible. The gymnasium brings plenty of young men here, who might want to exercise their minds once they’ve exhausted their bodies. And when the sun gets too hot, you can always retreat into the shade of the trees to rest.
‘Are you going to take up teaching?’ It’s the first he’s heard of it.
‘We can’t abandon the world to people like Philebus. We have to offer another way.’
‘Socrates tried that. Look where it got him.’
‘Socrates tried to fight error. I’m going to look for Truth.’
‘You’ll have your work cut out.’
‘And we won’t make Socrates’ and Pythagoras’ mistake: we’ll write it down.’ I point out a boy, about fourteen, standing by the colonnade watching the jumpers. He’s in the bud of adolescence, aware of his beauty but not yet sure enough of it to be vain. He pretends not to notice the men prowling in the shadows, watching him and planning their attacks. One’s already wobbling over to start a conversation. Philebus. The boy gives a shy smile, flattered to be noticed.
‘That boy wasn’t even born when Socrates died. People are already forgetting the things he said: soon he’ll be no more real to them than Theseus or Orpheus. As for Pythagoras, all people know now is the triangles. If we’re going after Truth, we need to make sure it gets remembered.’
What is knowledge, after all, but the memory of something we once understood to be true?
A year has tempered my optimism. I can still see the shining ladder leading into the heavens, but it seems higher than ever. I’m not sure if I’ll ever reach the top. But I can point the way for others, and hope they’ll get further. Even if Archytas is right, and the top of the ladder is only an infinitely receding paradox, it’ll be worth it. You go further when you know where you’re going, whether you get there or not.
‘We’ll talk about it later.’ A wrestling match is about to start and Glaucon wants to see it. Left alone, I sit on the steps of the colonnade between two pillars. I want to think, but there’s something uncomfortable sticking into my buttocks.
I reach down and pull it out. It’s a wax tablet, covered in tiny writing, and a stylus.
The letters swim in front of my eyes. For a moment, my mind insists it’s the text from the gold leaf; I scan the crowd feverishly for Diotima, in case she put it there, but don’t see her.
I look at the writing again. It isn’t the golden text, it’s numbers. The gymnasiarch must have been doing his accounts.
The sun hasn’t set yet: there’s still enough light in the sky to see by. I smooth the wax with my palm, and start to write.
I went down to the Piraeus, yesterday, with Glaucon …
As for all the writers, past or future, who may claim they understand the deep mysteries I devoted my life to – whether from what they’ve heard or read, or from their own research – this is what I have to say for them:
They don’t know a thing.
Plato, Letter VII
Acknowledgements
Beyond philosophy, Plato’s dialogues stand as a monument to the pleasures of conversation and the search for enlightenment. For enlightening me with their wisdom, knowledge and conversation, I’d like to thank: Angelo Strano, who guided me up and into Mount Etna; Dr Andrew McGonigle of Sheffield University, and Professor Alessandro Aiuppa of the University of Palermo, who explained what’s under the volcano; Professor Dora Katsonopoulou and the Helike Project for an unforgettable fortnight’s digging; my archaeology buddies George, Savannah, Rund, Sandra, Courtney, and especially Sara Wilson, who answered all my questions afterwards; at the Foreign Office: Iona Thomas, Amy
Cumming, and especially Clive Correa, who told me about missing persons; Seth Kim-Cohen, for good beer, stories about life in the band and permission to quote his song; Julia Kim-Cohen, for arranging an amazing six weeks in New Haven; Lucasfilm Ltd for their very kind permission to quote Raiders of the Lost Ark; the Saul Bass Library at Yale, the British Library in Boston Spa and London, and the JB Morrell Library at York University; Michael Ridpath, for encouraging me not to fear philosophy; Virginia Stewart-Avalon, for permission to use her elegant translations of the Orphic Hymns; Penguin Books, for permission to quote from Adam Beresford’s translation of Plato’s Meno; Oliver Johnson, for his Socratic wisdom and Syracusan banquets; the wonderful team at Hodder for all their efforts, especially Anne Perry, Kerry Hood and Ellen Wood; Jane Conway-Gordon, the Voice of Reason; my sons Owen and Matthew, who followed me down into caves and up over volcanoes; and my wife Emma, who is Beauty Itself.
There have been (and still are) various excavations at Sybaris/Thurii, and several Orphic gold tablets have indeed been found there. The dig in the book is not based on any real-life excavation. Plato and his brothers, Socrates, Archytas, Eurytus, Dion and the two Dionysiuses really existed; all the other characters and their organisations, past and present, are simply shades of my imagination.