“Excellence must always be our priority,” Crocus said.

“Pursuing excellence will lead to everything else,” Dad said.

The gods, the owl, and Sokrates nodded in unison.

“I’ll sing the song for you tomorrow, and then you’ll understand,” Grandfather said.

“But that way Jason and Hilfa and I won’t hear it,” I said. “Or is it a song that only philosophers should hear?”

Grandfather looked at me. “Do you want to know?” he asked.

“Of course I do! How could anyone not want to know what the gods want of us?” I asked.

“She is a philosopher too,” Sokrates said, and exactly as it had when he had made this claim the night before, it simultaneously filled me with happiness and confusion. I knew I wasn’t really a philosopher, not the way Marsilia was, but I did love wisdom, and I did want to know the answers to questions.

“Everyone in the cities is more of a philosopher than even philosophers are elsewhere,” Athene said.

“That’s one of the fascinating results of your experiment,” Ikaros said. “Did you intend it?”

“Did Plato intend it?” she asked.

“Plato divided people by class because he believed souls really divide up that way,” Ikaros said.

“There are some people who are completely incurious, even here,” Athene said. “So to that extent he was right.”

“But the education here encourages inquiry.” Ikaros was grinning.

“I wondered about that, and about Plato’s intentions, and I let the Masters decide from the beginning where Plato was ambiguous, about how the Irons and Bronzes should live,” Athene said.

“Montaigne suggests—”

“Yes, but nobody had ever really—”

“Abelard, but I suppose that doesn’t count. Heloise herself—” Ikaros was completely intent on Athene.

“Kellogg says—” she interrupted.

“Ah yes, but even when there’s a wide liberal arts education it’s limited, so—”

“Boethius really managed to preserve so much of what was really valuable—”

“And the Dominicans, except that they got—”

“Yes, politics is always the problem. Marcus Aurelius couldn’t make Commodus—”

“And Poliziano couldn’t make Piero, some people—”

“Well, but Tocqueville—”