There was a roar of acclamation, and I had a lump in my throat. She was so sincere, and asking for nothing but instead offering to make and give. And her visible horror at the thought of the art raids helped us realize how barbaric they were. They’d been going on so long we’d almost become used to them.
Then Crocus raised one of his great arms. Neither of the Workers spoke often in Chamber. I called on him. He wrote his statement on a tablet, and Manlius read it aloud. “I will also offer free art equivalently, and extra work, whatever is needed, to stop the fighting.”
There was another great cheer. More people began to offer the same. Then there were a few other speeches. Some citizens of the original city said how attached they were to the particular art in their own eating halls, and Aeschines and Sixty-one talked about how frescoes and mosaics couldn’t be moved without damaging them. But nobody wanted to continue the art raids. When I called for a vote it was almost unanimous.
30
ARETE
When I came back from the missions I plunged straight into my adulthood tests, along with Boas and Archimedes, who were the other two people born in my birth month. When my brothers had become ephebes they had done it amid hordes of other Young Ones born in the same month, but for me there were only the three of us. Boas and Archimedes had been waiting more or less patiently for my return so that we could all do it together. They could have petitioned the Archons to go ahead without me, and I could have done it alone, but they had waited. Neither of them were philosophically inclined. Boas wanted to be a metal worker, perhaps a sculptor, and Archimedes loved growing things and was already working out at the farms for far more than the required time. We had very little in common but we got along well.
We all acquitted ourselves well in the palaestra, especially Archimedes, who was already getting broad shoulders. “They’ll make you a silver,” I said when scraping him off after the wrestling.
He shook his head and grinned. “They know where I belong.”
Then the conference began. Alkibiades, with his friend Diogenes, came to town with the Athenian delegation, and Porphyry came with the Amazons, so Thessaly was full to bursting point. I had no time to spend with them because I was being tested on the laws, and on rhetoric, and history, and music, and mathematics. It was an experience intended to be grueling, and it was. It was meant as a rite of passage. For Boas and Archimedes it unquestionably was. If I hadn’t been on the voyage I would no doubt have felt it that way too. As it was, I felt grown up already, as if this were just a necessary marker.
I wanted to know about the conference. Maia wouldn’t talk about it, but my brothers told me everything.
Ikaros had come to the conference. I asked Phaedrus to heal him while he was in town. He was reluctant. “He couldn’t help but notice!” Father had talked to us seriously about not being caught using our powers.
“He already knows about me. We can arrange it so that he thinks I’ve healed him,” I said. “Come on Phaedrus, think about it, he’s nearly blind and he loves reading.”
“He wouldn’t tell anyone,” Porphyry assured him.
“All right then. But not until after your initiation. You won’t have time to pretend it’s you until then.”
I had to be content with that.
The day after the conference was the Ides, and therefore the day set for me to swear my oath to the Republic, and become an ephebe and be given my metal. It wasn’t the grand affair it had been when the Children swore, or even five years ago when my brothers swore. Then there had been so many new ephebes that almost the whole city turned out to see them swear. But nevertheless, it was an occasion. Since all the envoys were still in town and many of them knew me and wanted to come, it was going to be a big public event, with a proper feast afterward, with a sheep roasted on a spit, and bannocks, and cream cheese, and plums stewed with honey. Hebe, one of my friends in the Florentine kitchens, told me about the preparations.
I had a new kiton, dyed orange and blue in the wool and woven in ocean pattern. Mother had been embroidering the hem when she died, and I had thought I’d wear it with the pattern unfinished. But Euklides had finished it for me while I’d been away. I could see where he’d taken it over, the lilies and scrolls were less even, and the colors less precise than the ones Mother had done. But it was wonderful that he had taken the time to finish it for me. I felt loved as I put it on for the first time on the morning of the Ides. I kept my hair loose for the ceremony.
I went to Florentia for breakfast, and as always when I went in my eyes sought for Ficino, and as always now failed to find him. I wondered whether I’d always do that, whether when I was myself ninety-nine I’d still half-expect to see him somewhere about the hall. Before I could sit down, Baukis and Erinna brought me a crown of flowers they had made. “Neleus and I collected the flowers and Baukis wove it,” Erinna said. It had tiny wild roses and long-stemmed daisies and little dark-blue hyacinths and their leaves. It was lopsided, but I didn’t care. Baukis hugged me, and I looked over her shoulder at Erinna. “Welcome to adulthood,” she said, awkwardly, and smiled. I put the wreath on, and then Maia came up and started to fuss with my loosened hair and straighten the wreath for me. I hardly had time to gulp down my porridge before it was time to go.
We walked to the Temple of Zeus and Hera in a big crowd. My whole family was there—Father, and all my brothers, including Porphyry and Alkibiades. Neleus was wearing Ficino’s hat. In addition we had Rhea and Diogenes, and Nikias, who probably should have been counted as family. All my close friends came—Maia, Crocus, Erinna and Baukis, and Baukis’s father Aeschines. Klymene showed up just as we were about to leave Florentia, wanting to be included in the family for the occasion. She hugged me, and I let her. Father didn’t want a feud. Kallikles was still very distant with her, and she was clearly hurt by this and trying not to show it. I missed Mother sharply and specifically then, because she would have known what to say to make it all right.
I patted the bronze lion as we went past it, for luck, and because Mother always did. It looked at me today as if it were hoping for something.
“I can’t believe how easily the conference went,” Klymene said to Maia. “Or how fast either. I expected it to take six or eight days.”
“Everyone was reasonable,” Maia said.
“You were a great judge,” Father said. Maia snorted.
We ran into Boas and Archimedes as we came into the plaza where the street of Demeter crossed the street of Dionysios, by the Temple of Demeter and Crocus’s great colossus of Sokrates laughing. They too had garlands and new kitons and clusters of family and friends with them. I was very glad to see them. We walked in our separate family clusters, like a procession.
“We don’t have all this fuss in Amazonia,” Porphyry said. “We do it individually, on our actual birthdays, in the agora, and our names are written down.”