Now he looked up, and it was Neleus he looked at. “You are indeed her only son. She loved you very much. It almost killed her soul having you. She hated to give you up. She was so glad to get you back! I remember it so well, when we first brought all of you here.” He looked around the room, shaking his head at the memory. “She loved all of you, but Neleus was indeed her only son.”

Then he looked at me, and I saw he must have been aware of the little noise of protest I made. “You are her only daughter, and the only child of her milk.”

“What difference does milk make?” I asked, puzzled.

“All the difference in the world,” he answered, as if he thought I should know this already. “Mothers give their milk to their children, and with it their strength and their stamina, their ability to survive disease. There’s a bond in that milk.”

“And I didn’t have her milk?” Neleus asked in a small voice.

Phaedrus answered quickly. “You know you didn’t. You’ve read what Plato says, no mother shall set eyes on her own child—they went to the nurseries when their breasts were full and fed some random child who was there.” Phaedrus shook his head. “She might have fed me, but never you.”

Everyone except me had read the Republic. Reading it was now part of the adulthood rite for our city.

“She fed you the night you were born, Neleus,” Father said. “She told me so. But after that you were fed by any woman but your mother, and the same for the rest of you. No doubt Plato meant it to even out the advantages given by the milk, so that all could share with all.”

“Plato was crazy on some subjects, and that was one of them,” Kallikles said dismissively. “Father, where are you going with this line of argument?”

Father hesitated. “I don’t remember.” He looked over at Mother’s bed, where Phaedrus was sitting, and then quickly away. Mother often used to be able to see when Father got ahead of himself and give him his next point. She had a way of laughing as she did it that I could almost hear. Father wiped his eyes with the corner of his kiton. “I just can’t lose all of you as well as her.”

“You’d be lost too,” Phaedrus pointed out.

“I’d be back on Olympos, and you’d all be in Hades after having achieved very little in this life. You’re heroes. Arete asked what that means. It doesn’t mean anything if you don’t live like heroes.”

“I’m going,” Neleus said, stubbornly. “I’m not a hero, but I am her son, and I am going on this voyage.”