I groaned, but only because it was work. It sounded like a really interesting question to think about. I also wanted to talk to other people about it, most especially Maia, and Simmea. I bade farewell to Ficino, gathered up the plates, and took them to the kitchen, thinking about it. How would you measure the general level of philosophy in a population—or even in an individual? There might be simple tests, like how many times books were checked out of the library, but that would only show how many people were studying philosophy, not how philosophical they were. It wasn’t my turn to clean up, but they were short-handed so I helped for a while, still thinking about it. Some people were naturally philosophical. Others were not. That’s why everyone was divided into their rightful metals, gold and silver and bronze and iron. My friend Erinna said she was glad to be a silver, relieved and pleased.

How philosophical a city was could be simply measured by how many golds it had, except that originally in the City (and even now in Psyche and Athenia) the proportions were worked out numerologically rather than justly. That had been one of the more telling points Sokrates made in the Last Debate. But in Psyche and Athenia they believed that numerology was magical, that numbers described true Forms underlying the world. And Father said he didn’t know whether they did or not, and Mother said they had an inner logic and so perhaps they did, but not the way that Proclus and Plotinus wrote.

I hadn’t read the Republic yet, but Ficino had told us Plato said that a Just City would hold justice and the pursuit of excellence as the highest good. He said that as such a city declined, it would become a timarchy, meaning that the citizens would prize honor above justice. Sparta had been a timarchy, and Plato thought it better than oligarchy, the next stage of decline, where the citizens would prize money and possessions above honor. I wondered what the signs of starting to prize honor above wisdom and justice might be, and how that could be measured.