“Plato was imagining a Just City in the real world. Not that this world isn’t real, sorry! I mean he was imagining it being in Greece, a city-state with other city-states around it, not a city in isolation on an island—or a planet—without connections. There’s something that feels strange about an isolated city—I could never have imagined one, and I don’t suppose Plato could either. He traveled much more than I did. I hardly left Athens, except once to go to the Isthmian games, and the times when I was on military service. Yet any day walking around Athens I was constantly meeting people from all over Greece, and barbarians too.”

“But does being connected in the world necessarily mean war?” Jasmine asked.

“Well, it did for Athens, whether the Persian Wars or the Spartan ones. It has for most people for most of history,” Sokrates said. “Whether that’s for good or evil, or whether it can be avoided, I don’t know. But it doesn’t surprise me that Plato expected warfare as an unavoidable part of life, or that you had these wars, these art raids, once you had more than one city. What surprises me is rather that you stopped and that the twelve cities have lived in peace since the Relocation. That’s much more unusual. How do you account for that?”

“Partly it’s because the environment is hard here, I think. Humans don’t have as much energy for fighting in the cold,” Sixty-One said. “They unite against the elements.”

“No, the art raids stopped because of Pytheas’s song,” I said.

“But the song doesn’t prescribe peace, rather it prescribes only fighting for what is important,” Jasmine said. “They always sing it to open the the Festival of Exchange of Art, so I have heard it many times.”

“I look forward to hearing it,” Sokrates said. “It must be an impressive song if it can stop war. Perhaps Apollo put some of his divine power into it—or some of his divine skill, as he had no power while he was incarnate.”

“It’s a choral ode,” Sixty-One said, parenthetically.

“Neleus thinks the Olympics also help keep the peace,” I said, remembering the conversation earlier. “He thinks that the young people who used to join in raids focus on sport instead. It’s true that the victors in the Olympics get to choose first what art will go to their city.”

“I always thought them very dull,” Jasmine said. “It’s hard to take much aesthetic interest in watching humans compete physically.”

“I think Neleus may be right that it is a calming factor,” Sixty-One said.