“She says she hasn’t been the same since she had babies. And she says it has been better for her, because she used to be vain about it. But anyway, back then when she tried to be friends with Pytheas because he was beautiful too, he never had any time for anyone except your mother. And he’s not just beautiful, he’s so good at everything. I always felt that I wasn’t good enough for him. Children are supposed to outdo their parents, but how could I ever outdo Pytheas?”

“You have your own excellence,” I said. “You just have to develop it. I never heard we were supposed to outdo our parents, or compare ourselves to anyone else, just that we had to work to become our best selves, the best that it’s possible for us to be.” I looked up at him. Porphyry was tall. “Do you know about Father?”

“Know what? He’s hard to get to know. Especially when I didn’t see much of him.”

I lay back and stared up at the blue sky through the dappled leaves. I had to ask him whether he wanted to go to Delos, but if he didn’t know who Father was that made it very difficult. “If you could have divine powers, but you had to keep them to yourself, would you want to?”

“Would I have divine responsibilities too?”

“What a good question! What do you mean?”

“Well, what kind of powers are we talking about?” Porphyry asked, treating the whole question as an abstract Platonic inquiry.

“Flight. Healing.”

“Right. So say I could heal people, would I have a responsibility to go around healing everyone all the time? Of course I would, nobody could have that power without. With flight I suppose I’d have a responsibility to take messages rapidly everywhere, and rescue people from burning buildings, and that kind of thing.”

“Yes,” I said. “Assuredly, Sokrates, that must be the case.”

He laughed. “Your mother said Sokrates hated it if they said that.”

“I know.” I was thinking about whether I had a responsibility to take messages quickly around the world. If I did, it could explain where my language skills fitted in. But I didn’t much want to be a messenger god. Besides, did the world need another?

“I don’t know if I’d want divine powers. It would be so disruptive. But it could be fun. And it would give my life a purpose. I wouldn’t have to worry about what my excellence was, I’d know.”

“No you wouldn’t,” I said. “What if you had them and couldn’t tell anyone.”

“You mean I could heal people but they wouldn’t know I was doing it?”

“Yes.”