“So your ideal for your cities is self-sufficiency?” Erinna asked, swallowing another honey cake.

“It takes a while,” Aristomache admitted. “And they’re not big cities, compared to the Just City, never mind the Boston I remember. Most of our cities are about a thousand people. Marissa has eight hundred citizens, and almost that many children.”

“Do the children have to pass tests to become ephebes?” I asked. I was thinking about my own looming adulthood tests, to be taken on my return.

“Just swear their confirmation oath,” Aristomache said. “And we sort them into Platonic classes, of course. And they can vote in the Assembly then, the golds and silvers, and they’re eligible for election to the Council when they’re thirty. And nine of the Council are elected Kings every three years, and they make up the Committee of Kings. You have tests?”

“We have an oath too, but we also have to pass lots and lots of tests in all sorts of things. And then we swear, and do our military training, and read the Republic, and after two years we can vote in the Assembly, when we’re eighteen, all of us, not just the guardians. But only the guardians serve in Chamber. My brothers are all adults, and I’ll become an ephebe this year.”

Maia was looking about the hall. It had frescoed walls that showed pleasant farming scenes with nymphs and shepherds lolling in fields and under trees, feasting on food very like the food we were enjoying. “You know, Plato was right,” she said.

This was such a characteristic remark for Maia to make that I giggled, and so did Erinna beside me. We might have been drinking too much of the excellent wine.

“What was he right about?” Aristomache said. “A great many things, indeed, but what specifically are you thinking of?”

“He’s right that there was a golden age in his past when people in Greek cities governed themselves properly according to the precepts he described. Nobody has ever believed a word of it. But he was right. It happened. And this is it.” Maia laughed with an edge of hysteria. Ficino looked over to us, concerned. She took a sip of wine and went on. “It will deteriorate to timarchy, and then oligarchy, and so on, exactly as Plato wrote.”