Title Page

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Dedication

This is for Ada, who is not only wonderful but also real.

Epigraphs

What leaf-fringed legends haunt about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arkady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

—KEATS, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

Socrates: Tell me then, oh tell me—what is the great and splendid work which the gods achieve with the help of our devotions?

Euthyphro: Many and fair are the works of the gods.

—PLATO, Euthyphro

Answer me, answer me

Somebody answer me.

Oldest of questions and

Deepest of needs. Our

Mystery, mystery,

Teach us our history.

Lost all again

To the dark of the grave.

—ADA PALMER, “A New World”

And now the work is done that cannot be erased by Jupiter’s anger, fire and sword, nor the gnawing tooth of time. Let the day, that has power only over my body, end when it will my uncertain span of years. The best part of me will be borne, immortal, beyond the distant stars.

—OVID, envoi to Metamorphoses

1. Apollo

1

APOLLO

I have lived for a very long time however you measure it, but I never grew old before. I aged from birth to adulthood and stayed there, poised in the full power of glorious immortality. The mortal body I had taken up to experience and understand the joys and sorrows of human life aged as other mortal bodies age. My son Phaedrus, like my older son Asklepios, had healing powers. Our City had begun with a generation of ten-year-olds, and as our bodies aged he was kept permanently busy. Even with all he could do for us, aging was an undignified and uncomfortable process. Souls grow and flower and do not decline, so each mortal life inevitably ends with soaring souls enclosed in withered failing bodies. While death is necessary for rebirth, I could find neither necessity nor benefit in this slow ebbing of vitality.