The Philosopher Kings

 

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About the Author

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This is for Ada, who has the best thoughts.

 

Quid me mihi detrahis?

—
O
VID
,
Metamorphoses
, Book VI

What a wondrous and sublime thing it is to be human, to be able to choose your state, whether among the beasts or among the angels.

—G
IOVANNI
P
ICO
DELLA
M
IRANDOLA,
Oration on the
Awesomeness of Humanity (Oratio de Hominis Dignitate)

I am voyaging too.

We will need the foundation as much as the dome

For those worlds to come true.

—A
DA
P
ALMER
, “Somebody Will”

Nothing befits a man more than discourse on the soul. Thus the Delphic injunction “Know thyself” is fulfilled, and we examine everything else, whether above or beneath the soul, with deeper insight.

—M
ARSILIO
F
ICINO
, letter to Jacobo Bracciolini

I had a queer obsession about justice. As though justice mattered. As though justice can really be distinguished from vengeance. It's only love that's any good.

—E
LIZABETH
V
ON
A
RNIM
,
The Enchanted April

 

1

APOLLO

Very few people know that Pico della Mirandola stole the head of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. In fact he stole it twice. The first time he stole it from Samothrace, before the rest of it was rediscovered. That time he had the help of my sister Athene. The second time was thirty years later, when he stole it from the Temple of Nike in Plato's Republic. One of Plato's Republics, that is; the original, called by some the Just City, by others the Remnant, and by still others the City of Workers, although by then we only had two. In addition to our Republic, there were four others scattered about the island of Kallisti, an island itself known at different times as Atlantis, Thera, and Santorini. Almost everyone who had been influenced by living in the original Republic wanted to found, or amend, their own ideal city. None of them were content to get on with living their lives; all of them wanted to shape the Good Life, according to their own ideas.

As for me, I suppose I wanted that too, but with rather less urgency. I was a god, after all—a god in mortal form, for the time being. I had become incarnate to learn some lessons I felt I needed to learn, and although I had learned them I had stayed because the Republic was interesting, and because there were people there that I cared about. That was primarily my friend Simmea and our Young Ones. When we'd first come here we'd been doing Plato's Republic according to Plato, as interpreted by Athene and the Masters: three hundred fanatical Platonists from times ranging from the fourth century
B.C.
to the late twenty-first century
A.D.
From the time we Children were sixteen, we'd held Festivals of Hera every four months in which people were randomly matched with partners. There were six such festivals before the Last Debate, and all six such matings I'd participated in had produced sons. Simmea had one son from that time, Neleus. And between us we had a daughter, Arete, born after the revisions that made it possible for us to be a family.

Making the Republic work had been harder since Athene stalked off at the end of the Last Debate. She had taken with her both her divine power, and all the robots except two. In the twenty years since the Last Debate a lot of things had changed. Worst was the constant warfare with the other cities.

The art raids had started because we had all the art, and the other cities wanted a share of it, and we didn't want to give any of it up. The real problem was that Plato had imagined his Republic existing in a context where there would be wars, and so training everyone for warfare was a big part of the way he had imagined his city. The guardians, golds, and auxiliaries, silvers, had been training to fight since they were ten, and yet had never fought anyone except in practice until the art raids started. The raids provided a pretext for the warfare it seemed a large number of people had been wanting. While many of us felt they were futile, they were popular, especially with the Young Ones. A city would raid us and take away some statue or painting. Then we'd raid them back and try to recapture it. They began as something like games of capture the flag, lots of fun for everyone involved, but of course the weapons and training were real. By the time it came to real wounds and death, everyone was committed to them. People who had read Plato on war and bravery and the shame of turning your back on the enemy couldn't see any way to back down. So the five cities of Kallisti existed in a constant state of raids and shifting alliances.

The Temple of Nike stood on a little knoll just outside the south gate of the original city. By the time I got there, summoned urgently, the raiders had fled, taking the head with them. I didn't know or care about the head until afterward. Right then I was entirely focused on Simmea. She was still alive, but just barely—the arrow was in her lung, and frothy blood was coming out with every breath. “We thought it best not to move her,” Klymene said. I barely heard her, although she was right, of course—moving her would have been fatal. They hadn't even drawn out the arrow.

Simmea's eyes met mine, and they were full of love and trust—and even better, that edge they had that said she loved the truth even more than she loved me. She tried to speak with what breath she had. She said my name, “Pytheas,” and then something I couldn't make out.

I made a plan immediately, almost as fast as I would have made it normally. In mortal form, I didn't have access to my powers, and as things were, there weren't any gods who were going to pay attention to me or help, at least not in time. So I drew my dagger. If I slit my wrists it would take minutes for me to bleed to death, but if I slit my throat only seconds. As soon as I was dead I'd have plenty of time—all the time I wanted, once I was safely outside it. I'd go down to Hades, take up all my powers again, and manifest back here a heartbeat after I'd left. Then I could heal her. Indeed, healing her would be fast and easy. I would have lost this incarnation, but I'd been mortal and incarnate for almost forty years now. It had been fascinating and wonderful and terrible, and I'd be sorry to stop, but Simmea was going to be
dead
if I didn't save her.

“Pytheas, no!” Klymene said, and grabbed for the knife. It wasn't that that stopped me.

“Pytheas, don't be an idiot!” Simmea said, perfectly distinctly. And as she said it, or immediately thereafter, she took hold of the shaft sticking out of her chest and pulled the arrow out.

Before I could so much as cut my throat, she was dead, and not only dead but vanished. One second she was there, blood, arrow, and dear ugly face. The next the arrow was lying in blood on the mosaic floor of the temple. Her body had gone back to the time Athene had snatched her from—back, I believe, to the waters outside Smyrna, at the spot where the ship that brought her here had moved through time. Her body would have appeared there, somewhere in the eastern Aegean, and sunk between one wave and the next. She loved to swim, she was a swimming champion, she had taught me and all our Young Ones to swim; but she wouldn't be swimming among the wine-dark billows, she'd just sink down in their embrace. (I've often tried to find her since, to see her for just that one moment more, but it's like looking for one particular helium atom in the sun, trying to find an instant like that without knowing either the exact place or time. I keep on looking now and then.)

Death is a Mystery. The gods can't undo it. Her wound would have been a trivial thing for me to fix if I'd had my powers, but once she was dead, that was the end of it.

Klymene had my knife, and I was prone on the ground clutching the arrow. Simmea's soul too would have gone back to the time she left, and from there it would have gone down to Hades. Unlike most human souls, she knew precisely what to expect. We'd talked about it a great deal. She knew how to negotiate the underworld, and she knew how to choose her next incarnation to maximize her excellence. I wasn't at all worried about any of that. But after choosing her next life, she'd pass through the river Lethe, she had to. Once in Lethe she'd have to at least wet her lips, and once she drank from Lethe she'd forget this life, and me. Souls are immortal, but souls are not personality. So much of personality is memory. When mortal souls pass through Hades they go on to new life, and they become new people with fresh beginnings. I suspect that may be the whole purpose of death. No doubt it is a splendid way for the universe to be arranged. Her soul will continue to pursue excellence for life after life, becoming more and more excellent and making the universe better. But she wouldn't be Simmea anymore, she wouldn't remember this life. She wouldn't remember me and all the things we'd shared.

Once I was back in my real form I'd be able to find her, watch all her different lives if I wanted to, and I did want to. But none of them would be my Simmea. Death of mortals I love is always hard for me to deal with. But this one was worse than the others. Since I was incarnate, I'd been there the whole time. There were no moments of Simmea's life left for me to experience. I had been in time for all of them. I'm bound by Necessity. I can't go back to times I've already visited, none of us can. I'll never be able to speak with her again, or see her rolling her eyes at me, or hear her calling me an idiot. She knew I was the god Apollo. She'd known for years. It just didn't make any difference. When she found out, practically the first thing she said was that it must be why I was so hopeless at being a human being.