“I don’t think so either, but I don’t know how to convince Pytheas of that. He calls it justice, but it’s vengeance he means. He just won’t listen—he seems to listen and then he just goes on as if I hadn’t said anything. I don’t understand it. After my father died I didn’t want revenge. But then, there wasn’t anything to revenge myself on—he died of disease. If there had been something, maybe it would have been different. It’s natural to grieve.”

“But it’s not natural to howl?”

Maia shook her head. “It may be natural, but it’s not philosophical. And Simmea was a true philosopher. I miss her too.” She hesitated. “I don’t think any of us understood quite how much Pytheas needed her. This excessive grief doesn’t seem like what I’d have expected of him. He has always been so calm.”

My brothers were no help at all. They had their own grief, of course. “Why did I fight with her so much?” Kallikles asked rhetorically.

“I wish I’d told her how much I loved her,” Phaedrus said.

“I keep wanting to tell her things, and then realizing she’s not there to tell,” Neleus said.

But none of them could really understand how I felt, or how Father felt. They all wanted to join his revenge, once he organized it. I did too. Wrestling and throwing weights in the palaestra gave me a temporary relief. I did feel sometimes that it might have made me feel better to go out with a spear and something clearly marked as an enemy to stick it into. But I knew enough philosophy already to know that it wouldn’t help much. Mother would still be dead no matter how many enemies we sent down to Hades after her. And how could it be just to want vengeance, to return evil for evil?