Aristomache paused for a moment, contemplating it. “If the gods will help us see the right metals in their souls, we’ll have done all right,” she said.

“Plato was so clearly only concerned with the guardians,” Kreusa said. “I know the list of qualities for the golds by heart.”

“Love of wisdom and the truth, temperate, liberal, brave, orderly, just and gentle, fast to learn, retentive, with a sense of order and proportion,” Aristomache reeled off. “You wouldn’t think it would be so hard to assess, until you were looking at a set of seventy sixteen-year-olds and weighing each of them for those qualities.”

I sighed. “It’s hard to find enough people who have them. The really difficult thing is getting the numbers right. But fortunately, with the ones we have to decide for, Ficino seems really sure in most cases. It’s the ones where he isn’t sure that are causing me anguish.”

“The difficult thing is deciding who’s iron and who’s bronze, when Plato gives no guidelines there at all,” Kreusa said. “And it’s hard to assess exactly what work each child has an aptitude for and ought to be trained for. Not to mention what work we need done. And who can train them for it.”

“I think the Committee on Iron Work will report on training skills tomorrow night,” Klio said.

“That’s a relief,” Kreusa said. “Thank you for telling me.”

“When I talk to the children, they seem to know where they belong,” Aristomache said.

“Well maybe you and Ficino can see into their souls, but it’s difficult for me,” Klio said. “There are always the ones on the edges. And getting the numbers, as you say—we have to have it done by the meeting by tribes on the Ides, when we’ll do the final adjustment.”

“Some of them are so certain and easy,” I said. “So unquestionably one thing or the other, with the metals in their souls so clear even I can see them. Others are more of a puzzle. And as you say, it’s so important. Such a responsibility. I’m very glad Ficino is so good at it. I’d hate to be doing it alone.”

We came to the gates of the city then and bade each other joy of the day, and divided to go our separate ways on our common task.

16

SIMMEA

“How many golds are there?” I asked Axiothea one day as summer approached.

“Two hundred and fifty-two,” she said.

I was thinking of Damon’s question. It would take only thirty-one years for every gold to be married to every other gold, discounting time lost for pregnancy and potential repetitions. Did I want that? Could I avoid it? “Are they divided equally by gender?”

“Mm-hmm.”

Then I stopped. “How many silvers?”

“Why do you want to know?” Axiothea asked, frowning.

I wanted to know because two hundred and fifty-two is such a very round number, considered as a percentage of ten thousand and eighty, but I wasn’t Sokrates with the privilege of asking anything. If I made myself too much of a gadfly, I’d get swatted.

“Just curious,” I said.

“Well, about a thousand,” Axiothea said, clearly having thought better of her precise answer. “And about two thousand bronze. Just approximately. Now, to get back to the calculus?”

Later, in Thessaly I asked Sokrates if he knew the exact numbers. “Two hundred and fifty-two doesn’t seem like a round number to me,” he said.

“It’s what you get if you divide ten thousand and eighty by exactly forty,” I explained.

Kebes sat up in surprise. “You think they’re not judging fairly?”

“Two hundred and fifty-two, divided equally by gender, can’t possibly be chance. There must have been some people they either included to make up the number, or excluded to get it down.”

“It could be chance,” Pytheas said.

“Just barely possible,” Sokrates said. “Numbers are difficult evidence. You can make them mean so many things.”

“There are masters here who are obsessed with making them mean different things,” Pytheas said.

“Not Axiothea,” I protested.

“No, not Axiothea. I was thinking of old Plotinus, may he be reborn in this city. And some of his friends. Proclus. Hermeios. Even Ficino can get all starry-eyed about the mystical significance of numbers.” Pytheas shook his head.

I nodded. “We need to find out how many silver and bronze. Exactly how many.”

“I shall find out,” Sokrates said. “Meanwhile, I tried an experiment today. I talked to a worker that was cleaning the street of Apollo early this morning.”

“What did you say?” Pytheas asked.

“I asked it what it was doing and why, and whether it liked the work or preferred other things.” Sokrates smiled. “It didn’t reply.”

“They don’t talk,” Kebes said. “I’ve told you before.”

“Maybe they don’t talk because nobody ever talks to them,” Sokrates said. “I intend to persist. Perhaps they will find a way of answering.”

The next day he had an answer to the question of numbers—there were eleven hundred and twenty silvers, and twenty-two hundred and forty bronzes.

“Leaving six thousand five hundred and eight iron,” I said.

“Those are not random numbers,” Kebes said.

“No,” Sokrates said. “So we should revisit the question of how the masters decided to divide you up.”

I had been thinking about it constantly since Axiothea had given me the number. “I think they must have had lots of dubious cases,” I said. “I mean, take Klymene.” I looked over at Pytheas, who didn’t seem upset that I’d mentioned her. “She displayed cowardice once. But since then she has faced up to everything, she made herself brave. She’s a gold. But they must have thought more than twice about whether she should be. If there had been somebody more deserving, somebody who had never showed cowardice, it wouldn’t have been wrong for them to have set Klymene among the bronze, or more likely iron, because I don’t think she has many artificing skills.”

“But they didn’t say,” Klebes said.

“No,” I agreed.

“Just no?” Sokrates asked.

“They didn’t say, and they should have said. It makes a difference. We thought they were only thinking about our own worth, and actually they must have been thinking about numbers too.”

“They had to make it gender-even,” Pytheas said. “In every class. Because otherwise the weddings wouldn’t work.”

Kebes sighed.

“And is that so important? That everyone has a partner of their own rank?” Sokrates asked. “Could you not choose for yourself, as people did in Athens?”

“Women?” I asked. “Did women choose?”

“Their parents tended to arrange marriages,” Sokrates said. “But they knew their own children.”

“The masters know us. And the marriages are to be only for one day, not stuck forever, the way they usually were in other cultures. Were you happy in your marriage?” I knew he had not been.

“It’s very difficult when people are married and don’t like each other,” Sokrates admitted.

“Did your parents like each other?” Kebes asked me.

I thought about it. “Yes. But they led very separate lives.”

“My parents loved each other, and they loved me,” Pytheas said. It was the first time I had ever heard him mention his parents. Sokrates too looked at him in astonishment. “They’re still alive as far as I know, in the time I came from. They had a farm up above Delphi.” He caught Sokrates’s expression and laughed. “Not so far above Delphi! That’s where I was born, sixteen years ago. In the hills, half a day’s walk from the Pythian shrine.”

“Would you like to have a marriage like they had?” Sokrates asked.

It was Pytheas’s turn to look surprised. “I’d never thought about it.” He looked away. “It’s too hard to imagine.”

“How about you, Simmea? Are you looking forward to the one-day marriages, or would you want a life partnership?”

Involuntarily I looked back at Pytheas, who was still staring into space. Kebes was glaring as I met his eye as I turned to look back at Sokrates. “We can have friendships for life,” I said. “And friendships don’t have to be exclusive.” I smiled at Kebes, but he kept on frowning.