“That doesn’t matter. Say something to him now,” Sokrates instructed me.

“Joy to you, worker,” I said to it, awkwardly.

It underlined where it had written my name, and began to write neatly underneath. “Sokrates means only-you, Maia means only-her?” it engraved. And as easily as that, I was convinced. It didn’t matter what Lysias said, the worker was obviously thinking and putting ideas together. He might be huge and yellow and have treads and four arms with tools at the end of them, but he was a philosopher all the same.

“That’s right,” Sokrates said. “Well done. These are names. And what name means only you?”

The worker was still for a moment, and then he inscribed a long number. After it, he wrote the word “Worker.”

Sokrates pulled a little notebook out of his kiton, one of the standard buff notebooks we all used. He opened it up and checked the number against a list he had written down. “Is that what other workers call you?” he asked as he read. He found the number and put a little check mark against it.

“No,” he wrote.

“What name do they call you?”

“Call?”

“To address you, or talk about you when you’re not there,” Sokrates said, stuffing the notebook and pencil back into his kiton. “Watch how we use names. Joy to you, Maia. How are you, Maia?”

“Joy to you Sokrates. I am well. How are you, Sokrates?” It felt very unnatural, and he laughed at my wooden delivery.

“I am very well. How is Simmea?”

I forgot what we were supposed to be doing and spoke normally. “Simmea is a little better, I think, but she’s still very low and bleeding a great deal, and she keeps fainting. Charmides says she’ll get over it, but I’m worried about her.”

Sokrates frowned. “Tell her I miss her,” he said.

The worker was writing something. We bent over to read it.

“Workers do not call names,” the worker had written.

“How about what the masters call you when they want you to do something?” Sokrates asked.

“Do not call name.”

“I don’t think Lysias and Klio distinguish between them very much,” I said. “Lysias never seems to when he’s talking about them. He thinks of them as interchangeable, except when they break down.”

“They’re not interchangeable, they’re definitely individuals and different from each other,” Sokrates said. “They’ve all been given permission to talk, but only some of them do.”

“Only-me,” the worker carved. “Individual. No name.”

“You should have a name,” I said. “A proper name, not a number.”

“What name only-me?” he asked.

I looked at Sokrates, and he shrugged. “How do you usually choose names?”

“From Plato’s dialogues, or from mythology,” I said. “And we keep names unique. I don’t know all the ones that have been used already. Ficino would know. He chooses the names for Florentia.”

“It’s easy enough to think of appropriate mythological names,” Sokrates said, patting the worker. “But what kind of name would you like?”

He didn’t answer, and then he inscribed a circle, twice. Then underneath he neatly inscribed the word “Write.”

“You can’t be called Write,” Sokrates said. “A name can have meaning, but that’s too confusing.”

“Learn?” he suggested.

I looked at Sokrates. “Does he really want to be called write, or learn?”

“He’s just learning what names are, you can’t expect him to understand at once what kind of things work for them,” Sokrates said.

“I understand that. But that those are the things he wants to be called speaks very well of him.” I was impressed.

“He has come to understanding in your city; naturally he is a philosopher,” Sokrates said.

“Give name?” the worker inscribed.

“You want me to give you a name?” Sokrates asked.

“Want Sokrates give name means only-me.”

I was moved, and Sokrates plainly was too. “You are the worker who answered me with the bulbs,” he said.

“Yes,” he wrote.

“Then I will call you Crocus,” Sokrates said. “Crocus is the name of that spring flower you planted. And that was the first action of any worker that replied to me, that showed what you were. I’ll name you for your deeds. And nobody else in the city will have that name.”

“Worker Crocus,” he wrote, and then repeated the long serial number. “Only-me,” he added.

Then, without a word of farewell he trundled off up the street and began to rake the palaestra. I stared after him. “That is unquestionably a person,” I said.

“Now if only I can persuade him to give three hundred such demonstrations to each of the masters individually,” Sokrates said, smiling. “Sometimes they’re not as clear as that,” he went on. “My dialogues with them can be very frustrating sometimes when I can’t explain what things mean.”

“Well, that was clear to me. He’s a person and a philosopher,” I said.

“A lover of wisdom and learning, certainly. If that is what makes a philosopher.”

“Plato said they had to have that and also be just and gentle, retentive, clever, liberal, brave, temperate, and have a sense of order and proportion.” Then I looked at Sokrates. “But you must know that. You said it yourself.”

“Nothing in the Republic is anything I ever said, or thought, or dreamed. The Apology is fairly accurate, as is the account of the drinking party after Agathon’s first victory at the Dionysia. But even there Plato was inclined to let his imagination get the better of him.”

I wasn’t exactly shocked, because I’d heard it before, though never so directly. “He just used your name when he wanted to express the wisest views.”

“Yes, that’s the kind way of thinking about it. And I was dead and couldn’t be harmed by it.” He sighed. “Not until I came here, anyway.”

“He was trying to write the truth, to discover the truth, even if he put his own words into your mouth,” I said.

“And do you think he found the truth?” he asked.

I paused, looking back at Crocus, still raking the sand. “I think he often did, and more important, I think he invited us all into the inquiry. Nobody reads Plato and agrees with everything. But nobody reads any of the dialogues without wanting to be there joining in. Everybody reads it and is drawn into the argument and the search for the truth. We’re always arguing here about what he meant and what we should do. Plato laid down the framework for us to carry on with. He showed us—and this I believe he did get from you—he showed us how to inquire into the nature of the world and ourselves, and examine our lives, and know ourselves. Whether you really had the particular conversations he wrote down or not, by writing them he invited us all into the great conversation.”

“Yes, he did get that from me,” Sokrates said. “And he did pass that down to you. And, as I understand it, the world would certainly have been different and less good without that spirit of inquiry.”

“It must be so strange to see your own legacy,” I said.

“Strange and in many ways humbling,” Sokrates said. He patted my arm. “You should go, or your weaving students will be wondering where you are. Don’t forget to tell Simmea I miss her and hope to see her soon.”

He walked off up the street and I went on to my own work.

30

SIMMEA

“Are you all right? Say something,” Pytheas said after I’d been staring at them for a long moment.

“I’m all right. I’m cured,” I said. “But I—. You. How, why?”

They looked at each other for an instant, and then back at me. There might be gods who couldn’t have deduced what I meant from that, but these two were not among them. “Asklepius told her?” Septima asked. “Why?”

“Nobody told me. I worked it out. It was obvious. I turned around and saw you and I knew.”

“Half the masters know about you anyway,” Pytheas said. “And Simmea won’t tell anyone.”