I didn’t know what to say. I liked Phila, but she owned slaves, and what’s more she couldn’t have managed without them, nobody could at that level of technology. It was one thing to read about it and another to see it. Hermes was murmuring something about it being no inconvenience. The slaves came back carrying chairs. I sat down in the chair offered me. “Thank you,” I said. The slave ducked away from me. His cringe reminded me of the serving woman in Lucia, but it was much worse, more exaggerated. “Aristotle was wrong about slaves too,” I said.

Phila frowned. “There are many people whose minds are not capable of higher thought,” she said. The slaves brought wine, and cups in red-figure ware, very fine, as good as anything I had seen at home, and set them beside the statue. A young boy, not quite old enough to be an ephebe, came out and began to mix the wine.

“Yes, and Plato agreed with that, people who should be classified Iron and Bronze. My sister is an Iron.” The slaves came back with a table and a cloth, which they spread over it before scurrying back in. “It should be determined by aptitude, not accident of birth.”

“Marsilia,” Hermes began, in a warning tone.

“Does this displease you?” Phila asked him, deferentially.

“This is important,” I said.

“Very well, speak freely,” Hermes said, with a sigh.

“Then perhaps, ideally, it should be determined by aptitude,” Phila said to me. She looked uneasily at the slaves now as one set down oil and bread, and the other cheese and preserves. I was impressed how quickly they had brought us such a substantial meal. “But in practice, our lives are determined by where we are born.”

“Some people have to do the heavy work, but it’s wrong for one person to own another,” I said.

“How could we make them do it, if we didn’t own them?” she asked.

“You could pay them,” I said, with only a hazy idea how this could work, or how payment motivated people to do work they disliked. “Or you could find people who enjoyed that work.”

She snorted. “It may be unjust, but it couldn’t be changed.”

“But you could change it. You have power.” The boy brought us cups of wine. I took mine and held it in my hand.

“I?” Phila shook her head. “My father had power. My brother does. My father-in-law, my husband. Not I. I could free my own slaves, but then I’d need to buy more. And my family would think I was insane and lock me up if I freed them all.”

“You could make conditions better for them, and give them education,” I suggested.

“Widening education is one of my intentions, once things are established and the wars are over,” Phila said, taking up her own wine. “Drink, eat, be welcome, my guest-friends.”