I shut myself into one of the little rooms and worked nonstop on the song for several hours. The last time I sang it through I was happy with it, but a song isn’t real until somebody hears it. I went home to Thessaly, and was astonished to find my son Euklides there, Lasthenia’s boy, who lived in Psyche. Phaedrus and Arete and Neleus and he were sitting in the garden by Sokrates’s statue of Hermes, under the lemon tree. They looked up when they saw me, and all of them tried to speak at once.

“Just listen to this first,” I said, and drew my lyre into place.

It couldn’t have been more different from the colosseum in Lucia, the banked rows of spectators, Kebes’s hate burning hot, the judges uneasy in their seats, and my own soul longing to escape. Now I was at home, my soul was sure of the work set before it, and the audience were my own children, who loved me. In my memory Sokrates and Simmea and Kebes also populated the garden. Simmea sat intent, leaning forward, bursting with ideas; Sokrates was running his fingers through his hair distractedly; Kebes was frowning and drawing breath to speak. I smiled and let go of them. All of their souls had gone on to start again and learn new things. It was the solid and present Young Ones I wanted to reach with this song.

“Simmea asked me to write this song when we were fourteen years old,” I said. Before she had met Sokrates, before we had discussed our agape, before we knew the Workers were people. “It’s called ‘The Glory of Peace.’”

I knew I had them before the end of the first verse. By the final chorus, they were all openly weeping. The best of it was, the song didn’t mention either Simmea or the art raids directly. It was all about the things worth fighting to defend and being our best selves.

Neleus, who had fought in art raids, was the first to speak after the last chord had died away. His voice was choked. “Is that really what we were doing? Were we going against Plato and making ourselves worse?”

“Yes, we evidently were,” Euklides said, wiping his eyes. I didn’t know him well, and I hadn’t known until that moment that he had fought in them.

“The art raids are a falling away from excellence,” Phaedrus said. “Toward timarchy. Fighting for honor instead.”

Arete looked at me with awe in her eyes. “Maybe you really could stop the art raids! If people hear that, they might understand. It gives us a different way to think about it. And it’s really true. The dreams shared with a friend,” she quoted.

“And that’s what Mother died for,” Neleus said.