“In Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro, he puts words into my mouth, as usual,” Sokrates said. “And they are more interesting than most such words, though I never said them. I am talking with this man, famous for his piety, and Plato depicts him quite as I remember him, as a bit of an ass. ‘Tell me then, oh tell me,’ Plato has me say, ‘What is the great and splendid work which the gods achieve with the help of our devotions?’ What is it, Pytheas, Athene? You say you care, about us, about the world. What are you doing? How can we help you? What is the great and splendid work?”

“We have projects,” Grandfather said. “This city was one of Athene’s. I’m going to be working on more of them. You can definitely help, all of you. You can learn new things.”

“But what is the great work?” Sokrates asked. “What is it for?”

“I’ll have to sing it.”

“Sing, Far-Shooter,” Athene said.

And Grandfather sang, there in the garden of Thessaly, and we listened, and I did understand, as much as anyone human can. And although I wept, I was not the only one.

III. Jason

We were out in the garden of Thessaly, where so much of the history of the Republic has been made. A little while after Pytheas had sung. I realized that Marsilia and Thetis were both not-looking at me in the same way. They’d be talking, and looking somewhere, and then one of them would catch sight of me, or glance at me, perfectly normally, and then immediately look away as fast as they could. I’d probably have noticed either one of them doing it, but when it was both of them it wasn’t a thing I could overlook. And that got me thinking, as we were out in the garden talking to Neleus and Crocus and the gods. I kept thinking about what Hilfa had said, that I wanted Thetis but Marsilia wanted me. I’d never thought about Marsilia wanting me, or wanting anyone, really, she seemed so self-contained. She had her life in order. She didn’t behave as if she wanted me. We were friends, comrades. And she knew how I felt about Thetis; she teased me about it. But the way she wasn’t looking at me now, maybe she did want me, maybe like I wanted Thetis, and maybe we should have talked about this before. Well, we weren’t gods, we couldn’t go back and talk about it any earlier than now, but we could talk about it now. We go on from where we are.

So after I’d worked this out, I waited until there was a suitable pause, and said: “I think our pod should go to Hilfa’s house and talk.”