The Philosopher Kings Read Free Page B

great length and with no originality whatsoever. Mother and Father both argued with him. Almost everything I know about how the Festivals of Hera actually worked when we had them here comes from those arguments, as I won’t be able to read the Republic until I’m an ephebe. Alkibiades thought it was a wonderful arrangement to have a simple sanctioned sexual union with a different girl every four months forever. Mother’s question of what happens if you fall in love and Father’s question of what happens if you don’t fancy some particular girl you’re drawn with didn’t give him any pause at all. He answered every problem they mentioned by saying that if they’d kept doing it properly, the way Plato wanted, it would have been all right. I had only been thirteen at the time, and about as uninterested in love and sex as anyone could be, but I could see both sides. Having it all arranged without any fuss had advantages. But people did just naturally fall in love. Look at Mother and Father. It would have been cruel to stop them being together.
    After Alkibiades left, our house got a lot quieter. I was sorry because he had always been my favorite brother—he was more generally prepared to put up with me than any of the others. He even took the trouble to say goodbye, though I didn’t realize it until afterward—he took me to Sparta for a meal with some of his friends, and bade me joy afterward as I ran off to work in the fields. I didn’t know until I got home late that night that he had left. He had left on my bed a copy of Euripides he had won as a school prize—they don’t allow drama at all in Athenia, or even Homer.
    Next in age come Phaedrus and Neleus, who both still live at home in Thessaly. Phaedrus is Father’s son by Hermia, who lives in Sokratea. I’ve never met her, but she once sent Phaedrus an amazing skin drum which we still have. He looks a lot like a darker jollier version of Father. He excels at wrestling—he has won a number of prizes. He also sings beautifully—we sing together sometimes. He’s a gold. Phaedrus’s epithet is “Merry,” because he is—he’s the most fun of all my brothers, the readiest to laugh, the fastest to make a joke. It’s not that he can’t be serious, but his natural expression is a grin.
    Neleus is his complete opposite. He’s Mother’s son by somebody called Nikias, whom I’ve also never met because he left with Kebes. He must have been dark-skinned, because Neleus is darker than Mother. He unfortunately inherited Mother’s jaw and flattish face, so his Homeric epithet could have been “Ugly,” but in fact it’s “Wrathful” because he’s so quick to anger and he bears grudges so well. He never forgets anything. He’s a swimming champion, again like Mother, and he can’t sing at all. He’s a gold. He had a close friendship with a boy from Olympia called Agathon, and since that broke up a few months ago he has been worse-tempered than ever.
    I have three more brothers, but I don’t know them very well. Euklides and his mother Lasthenia live in Psyche. He visits for a few days every summer. Porphyry and his mother Euridike live in the City of Amazons. He’s been here to visit twice. I always feel shy with both of them. I know Euklides better than Porphyry. He is a silver. Porphyry is a gold, and I don’t know all that much about him. And I have another brother, somewhere, whose name I don’t know and who I’ve never met at all. His mother Ismene went off with Kebes before he was born.
    It’s a complicated family, when I write it down like this, but most of the time in Thessaly we’ve just been five Young Ones with Mother and Father.
    To begin again, I was born in the Remnant City fourteen years after it was founded, and I am now fifteen years old. If you consider that is too young to write an autobiography