In Plato’s Republic, as never in all of history, my sex would have been no impediment. I could have been an equal to anyone. I could have exercised freely, and learned philosophy. I wished fiercely that it existed and that I had been born there. He had written two thousand three hundred years ago, and never in all that time had anyone paid any attention. How many women had led stupid wasted unnecessary lives because nobody listened to Plato? I was furious with all the world except Plato and my father.

I went back to my seat and took up the book again, reading on faster and faster, no longer wanting to disagree with Socrates, saying yes in my heart, yes to everything; yes, censor Homer, limit the forms of music, why not; yes, take children into battle; yes, by all means exercise naked if you think it better; yes, indeed, begin with ten-year-olds—how I would have loved it at ten. Yes, please, please, dearest Plato, teach the best of both sexes to become philosopher kings who discover and understand the Truth behind this world. I turned up the gas lamp and read most of the night.

The next morning Aunt Fanny complained that I looked fatigued, and said that I should not exhaust myself. I protested that I was very well, and an outing would revive me. The guide took us to see the Trevi Fountain, a huge extravaganza which Anne admired, and then on to the Pantheon, a round temple to all the gods, built by Marcus Agrippa and since reclaimed as a Christian church. The dome leads the eye up inexorably to a circle of clear sky. I looked at all the Catholic clutter of crucifixes and icons down below and saw it as impious in this place which led the heart to God without any need of it. Surely the philosopher kings would have divined God in the Truth. Surely nobody could come in here without apprehending Him, even the pagans who had built the place. Surely behind the façade of the mythology they understood, perhaps without knowing what they understood. They had no saints and prophets. Their gods were the best way for them to comprehend the divine.

My thoughts turned to the Greek gods, and to the idea of the female principle within God that had struck me in Florence. Without in the least intending it I found myself praying to Athene, the female patroness of learning and wisdom. “Oh Pallas Athene, please take me away from this, let me live in Plato’s Republic, let me work to find a way to make it real.”

I am sure that the next instant I would have realized what I was doing, and been shocked at myself and fallen to my knees and begged Jesus to forgive me. But that next instant never came. I was standing in the Pantheon looking up and praying to Athene, and then without any transition I was on Kallisti, in a pillared chamber full of men and women from many different centuries, all as bewildered as I was, with grey-eyed Athene herself standing unmistakably before us.

4

SIMMEA

I have never known what year it was when they bought me in Smyrna, or even what century. The masters wanted us to forget our old homes, and when once much later I asked Ficino, he said he could not recall. Perhaps he truly could not. He must have been on many of those voyages, into many years. They gathered up ten thousand Greek-speaking children who appeared to them to be ten-year-olds. I have often thought since how much better it would have been for them to have gathered up the abandoned babies of antiquity—but then they would have needed wet nurses, so perhaps that would not have worked either.

We spent two nights on the Goodness before we came to the city on the afternoon of the third day.

My first sight of the city was overwhelming. The masters brought us out in groups to see it as we approached. Kebes and I were among the last to come out, when we were almost in the harbor. The ruins at Smyrna had impressed me. The city was intact, was new made, and it had been positioned for maximum beauty and impact. Coming to it from the sea I saw the great mountain rising behind it, smoking slightly, and below that the slopes of the hills cupping the city. The city itself shone in the afternoon light. The pillars, the domes, the arches, all of it lay in the balance of light and shadow. Our souls know harmony and proportion before we are born, so although I had never seen anything like it, my soul resonated at once to the beauty of the city.

Immediately in front of us lay the harbor, with the mole curving out before it. This reflected in miniature the balance of man-made and natural elements in the city and the hills. I stood in awe, moved beyond words by the wonder of it. Kebes poked me in the ribs. “Where are the people?” he asked. “And what’s that?”

I looked where he was pointing. “A crane?” I suggested.

“But it was moving.” Indeed, it was moving. None of us had ever seen a worker before. This one was the color of bronze, with treads and four great arms, each ending in a different kind of hand—a digger, a gripper, a claw, a scoop. It was easily twice the height of a man. I would have assumed it a kind of beast, except that it had nothing that could be considered a head. It was trundling along the harborfront ready to help us tie up, so we saw it very well as we came inside the mole. We were all asking each other what it was, and at last one of the masters came and told us it was a worker and that we were not to be afraid. “They’re here to do the heavy work and help us,” he said, in his strange slurred Greek.

Once the Goodness was tied up we were taken ashore in groups of fourteen, seven boys and seven girls. We were led off in different directions through the streets. I was glad Kebes was with me, and even more glad to be in the group led by Ficino. Whatever Kebes said, I already felt that Ficino was a friend. I looked about me eagerly as we went through the streets. They were broad and well-proportioned, and lined with pillared courts and houses and temples with statues of the gods. We passed the occasional worker, some the same as the first but others shaped very differently. We saw no people until we had been walking for some time, when we heard the sound of children playing. We walked for some time more before we passed the palaestra where they were exercising—the sound had carried in the empty city. “Where are all the people?” I asked Ficino boldly.

“You are the people,” he said, looking down at me. “This is your city. And not all of you are here yet.”

A little while after that, a young woman came out of one of the houses. She was wearing a blue and white kiton with a key pattern around the borders, the first I had ever seen. She was fair-skinned, and her fair hair fell down her back in a neat braid. “Joy to you,” she said. “I am Maia. The girls should come in here.”

I lingered on the threshold as Ficino led the boys on. I did not want to lose track of the only people I knew. I was relieved to see them turning into the next house along the street.

“This is Hyssop house,” Maia said, inside. I turned and went in. Inside it was cool. It seemed dark after the street, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust to the light that came in through the narrow windows. I saw that there were seven beds neatly lined up, one beside the door and three on each side of the room. A chest stood beside each one. Beyond them lay another door, which was closed. The walls and floor were marble, the roof had wooden beams.

“There is hyssop growing outside, by the door,” one of the girls said, a tall girl as dark-skinned as my grandmother.

I hadn’t noticed the hyssop. Maia nodded, clearly pleased. “Yes. All of the sleeping houses have their own flower or herb.” Her Greek was strange, extremely precise but with odd hesitations as if she sometimes had to think to remember a word. Most disconcertingly she pronounced her V as B. “Each sleeping house sleeps seven people—either girls or boys, never mixed. Now I will teach you about hygiene.”