In the original city, where Sokrates and Tullius and Manlius and Ficino and all the other older Masters were there to sit on him, Ikaros couldn’t do much about his religious theories except have occasional debates. His debates were always very popular with everyone, but he had to find people who wanted to debate with him, and his metaphysical theories were never a particularly popular topic. Athene never showed up for them, though she almost always came to his debates on other topics. Most Platonists are quite happy with Plato’s metaphysics. Tullius was a Stoic. Even so, Ikaros is such a powerful orator, impassioned and fast-thinking and funny, that he could sometimes find people prepared to take on the more esoteric subjects. Even here, where everyone is trained in rhetoric, he stands out as surpassingly excellent. He’s good at coming up with memorable images and working them all the way through an argument. He has always been a joy to listen to, in either language.

Once we were in the City of Amazons there was nobody better—nobody even as good. Klio was very good, and so were Myrto and Kreusa. Myrto was his most effective opponent. It wasn’t until after she died, in the sixth year, that he gained complete sway over the city.

I could live in a city that has Ikaros in it, even though I disagreed with him a great deal. But I couldn’t live in a city that required me to follow his crazy religion. I could be a Christian—I had been for the first eighteen years of my life. Or I could be a Platonic pagan, as I had been for the next eighteen. I had met Pallas Athene, talked to her. I had no doubt that the Olympians were real. I knew the way we worshipped them in the City was acceptable to Athene, who existed, who had set up the City and brought us the Workers, and then lost her temper and turned Sokrates into a gadfly and took the Workers away again. In Athenia they think she was right. I don’t go as far as that, but I think what she did was understandable in the circumstances.