Worlds That Weren't

“You can rely on me to get these terms accepted in this polis,” Alkibiades answered. How much the people of Athens would have to do with that, he didn’t know. His own position was…irregular. He was not a magistrate. He had been a general, yes, but the campaign for which he’d commanded was over. And yet, he was unquestionably the most powerful man in the city. Soldiers leaped to do his bidding. He didn’t want the name of tyrant-tyrants attracted tyrannicides as honey drew flies-but he had everything except that name.

“I would treat with no one else,” Agis said. “You beat us. You shamed us. You should have been a Spartan yourself. You should breed sons on our women, that we might add your bloodline to our stock.” He might have been talking of horses.

“You are gracious, but I have women enough here,” Alkibiades said. Inside, he laughed. Would Agis offer his own wife next? What was her name? Timaia, that was it. If King Agis did, it would insure that Alkibiades’ descendants ruled Sparta. He liked the idea.

But Agis did no such thing. Instead, he said, “If we are to have no more war, son of Kleinias, how shall we live at peace? For both of us aim to rule all of Hellas.”

“Yes.” Alkibiades rubbed his chin. Agis might be dour, but he was no fool. The Athenian went on, “Hear me. While we fought, who ruled Hellas? My polis? No. Yours? No again. Anyone’s? Not at all. The only ruler Hellas had was war. Whereas if we both pull together, like two horses in harness pulling a chariot, who knows where we might go?”

Agis stood stock-still for some little while, considering that. At last, he said, “I can think of a place where we might go if we pull in harness,” and spoke one word more.

Now Alkibiades laughed out loud. He leaned forward and kissed Agis on the cheek, as if the King of Sparta were a pretty boy. “Do you know, my dear,” he said, “we are not so very different after all.”

Kritias strode through the agora in a perfect transport of fury. He might have been a whirlwind trying to blow down everything around him. He made not the slightest effort to restrain himself or keep his voice down. When he drew near the Tholos-in fact, even before he drew very near the Tholos-his words were plainly audible under the olive tree in front of Simon’s cobbler’s shop. They were not only audible, they were loud enough to make the discussion already under way beneath that olive tree falter.

“Us, yoked together with the Spartans?” Kritias raged. “You might as well yoke a dolphin and a wolf! They will surely turn on us and rend us first chance they get!”

“What do you think of that, Sokrates?” a young man asked.

Before Sokrates could answer, someone else said, “Kritias is just jealous he didn’t think of it himself. If he had, he’d be screaming every bit as loud that it’s the best thing that could possibly happen to Athens.”

“Quiet,” another man said in a quick, low voice. “That’s Kritias’ kinsman over there by Sokrates.” He jerked a thumb at Aristokles.

“So?” said the man who’d spoken before. “I don’t care if that’s Kritias’ mother over there by Sokrates. It’s still true.”

Sokrates looked across the agora at the rampaging Kritias. His former pupil came to a stop by the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton near the center of the market square. There under the images of the young men said to have liberated Athens from her last tyranny, his fist pumping furiously, he harangued a growing crowd.

With a sigh, Sokrates said, “How is a man who cannot control himself to see clearly what the good is and what it is not?” Slowly and deliberately, he turned his back on Kritias. “Since he is not quite so noisy as he was, shall we resume our own discussion? Is knowledge innate and merely evoked by teachers, or do teachers impart new knowledge to those who study under them?”

“You have certainly shown me many things I never knew before, Sokrates,” a man named Apollodoros said.

“Ah, but did I show them to you for the first time, or did I merely bring them to light?” Sokrates replied. “That is what we need to…”

He stopped, for the others weren’t listening to him anymore. That irked him; he had an elegant demonstration planned, one that would use a slave boy of Simon’s to show that knowledge already existed and merely wanted bringing forth. But no one was paying any attention to him. Instead, his followers stared out into the agora, toward the statues of Harmodios and Aristogeiton and toward Kritias.

Part of Sokrates didn’t want to look, not when he’d already turned away. But he was no less curious than any other Hellene: was, indeed, perhaps more curious about more different things than any other Hellene. And so, muttering curses under his breath like the stonecutter he had been for so long, he looked back into the market square himself.