Читать онлайн «The Philosopher Kings»
Автор Джо Уолтон
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This is for Ada, who has the best thoughts.
Quid me mihi detrahis?
—OVID,
What a wondrous and sublime thing it is to be human, to be able to choose your state, whether among the beasts or among the angels.
—GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA,
I am voyaging too.
We will need the foundation as much as the dome
For those worlds to come true.
—ADA PALMER, “Somebody Will”
Nothing befits a man more than discourse on the soul. Thus the Delphic injunction “Know thyself” is fulfilled, and we examine everything else, whether above or beneath the soul, with deeper insight.
—MARSILIO FICINO, letter to Jacobo Bracciolini
I had a queer obsession about justice. As though justice mattered. As though justice can really be distinguished from vengeance. It’s only love that’s any good.
—ELIZABETH VON ARNIM,
1
APOLLO
Very few people know that Pico della Mirandola stole the head of the Winged Victory of Samothrace. In fact he stole it twice. The first time he stole it from Samothrace, before the rest of it was rediscovered. That time he had the help of my sister Athene. The second time was thirty years later, when he stole it from the Temple of Nike in Plato’s Republic. One of Plato’s Republics, that is; the original, called by some the Just City, by others the Remnant, and by still others the City of Workers, although by then we only had two. In addition to our Republic, there were four others scattered about the island of Kallisti, an island itself known at different times as Atlantis, Thera, and Santorini. Almost everyone who had been influenced by living in the original Republic wanted to found, or amend, their own ideal city. None of them were content to get on with living their lives; all of them wanted to shape the Good Life, according to their own ideas.
As for me, I suppose I wanted that too, but with rather less urgency. I was a god, after all—a god in mortal form, for the time being. I had become incarnate to learn some lessons I felt I needed to learn, and although I had learned them I had stayed because the Republic was interesting, and because there were people there that I cared about. That was primarily my friend Simmea and our Young Ones. When we’d first come here we’d been doing Plato’s Republic according to Plato, as interpreted by Athene and the Masters: three hundred fanatical Platonists from times ranging from the fourth century B. C. to the late twenty-first century A. D. From the time we Children were sixteen, we’d held Festivals of Hera every four months in which people were randomly matched with partners. There were six such festivals before the Last Debate, and all six such matings I’d participated in had produced sons. Simmea had one son from that time, Neleus. And between us we had a daughter, Arete, born after the revisions that made it possible for us to be a family.
