“Just a little tired and sore from so much close work. It’s getting all the theses straight all day, and then working by lamplight translating Aquinas. I’m nearly done. At this rate I’ll be done by spring. Or next summer anyway.” He sighed, and squinted at me.

“You should try bathing them in warm milk at night,” I suggested.

“Does that work?”

“It’s what my father used to do.” I could remember him so clearly, dabbing at his tired eyes when we’d been poring over a book all day.

He smiled at me. “I’ve been using oil. But I’ll try it. Go on. You were going to give me the reason you don’t believe the angelic orders are perfect. Do you believe that God is perfect?”

“Plato talks about the world of Forms and the nature of reality, and the perfect God that is Unity. You think that’s the same God as the Christian God the Father, but I see no evidence for it.”

“It makes logical sense. Why do you want evidence?”

I shook my head. “Why do you deny the need for evidence, and try to explain away evidence that doesn’t fit your structure? We know Athene exists, and we know she’s pretty much the way Homer describes her, and so we can make a reasonable guess from that and from the way she behaved and the way she talked when she was here and from things like encouraging us building temples and having festivals and sacrifices, that the Olympians exist and are pretty much, if not exactly, the way the Homer described them. Plato was wrong about that. Plato would have censored Homer because of showing the gods behaving exactly the kind of way Athene behaved.”

“But the angels, and Homer’s gods if you want to call them that, are on a level between us and God.”

“Perhaps. What I think is that in the Allegory of the Cave, where we are the prisoners watching shadows flickering on the cave walls, perhaps the gods are the things behind the fire casting the shadows.”

“There are entire hierarchies of levels, with different angels, and the Forms are part of that.” He reached toward his eyes again, and again stopped himself.

“I’ve read your theses. I agree that the internal logic makes sense. You don’t have to go through it all again for me now.”

“But if you can follow the logic—”

“I can follow the logic and still continue to disagree, when the logic doesn’t fit the facts! What we know about Athene does not lead us to be able to deduce anything about unlimited omnipotent deities that may or may not exist, and may or may not be in overall control of the Olympians. You didn’t ask her about this, did you? You had plenty of chances. She came to almost all your debates.”