Kallikles is the bravest of us. I used to call him “Bold Kallikles” as a kind of Homeric epithet—I have Homeric epithets for all my brothers, which I made up as a kind of revenge for the way they used to chase me. Kallikles fell and broke his arm climbing the tower on Florentia when he was twelve. His arm healed just fine, and when it was completely better he climbed the tower again, and didn’t fall off that time. He has a girlfriend called Rhea who is a blacksmith, which means she’s a bronze, which is a bit of a scandal as he’s a gold. We don’t actually have laws about that, the way they do in Athenia and Psyche, but it’s definitely frowned on. He lives with her, but they’re not married, and so nobody takes official notice of their relationship. Even so, it’s awkward, and kind of embarrassing for me.

Next after him comes Alkibiades, whose Homeric epithet is “Plato-loving.” His mother is the runner Kryseis. Alkibiades lives in Athenia, and he didn’t leave quietly—the rows must have shaken the city. He said he thought Plato’s original system was the best—and he said it at great length and with no originality whatsoever. Mother and Father both argued with him. Almost everything I know about how the Festivals of Hera actually worked when we had them here comes from those arguments, as I won’t be able to read the Republic until I’m an ephebe. Alkibiades thought it was a wonderful arrangement to have a simple sanctioned sexual union with a different girl every four months forever. Mother’s question of what happens if you fall in love and Father’s question of what happens if you don’t fancy some particular girl you’re drawn with didn’t give him any pause at all. He answered every problem they mentioned by saying that if they’d kept doing it properly, the way Plato wanted, it would have been all right. I had only been thirteen at the time, and about as uninterested in love and sex as anyone could be, but I could see both sides. Having it all arranged without any fuss had advantages. But people did just naturally fall in love. Look at Mother and Father. It would have been cruel to stop them being together.