The Just City (Thessaly Book 1)

“Sooner or later they will have to teach us to sail them,” he said. “We will make for somewhere, either a civilization where we can live free, or a deserted island where we can found our own city.” “What city could be better than this?” I asked. “A free city, Lucia, where we could use our own names, and would not be forced into the molds of others.

one of the things Plato says in the Republic is that the purpose of the city isn’t to make the guardians the happiest people in the world, it’s to make the whole city just. It’s absolutely true that you might be happier if you could have one lover or if you could know which was your own child. But the whole city would be less just. Think about that

I couldn’t tell it apart from Crocus except by where it was standing, and had no idea how Sokrates could. “Joy to you,” I said.

“The real trouble with Christianity is that the morality can do so much harm.”

Nothing mortal can last. At best it can leave legends that can bear fruit in later ages.”

Everyone agreed that birth was a female mystery. I agreed myself. Nobody wants men around at a time like that.

Being a mortal was strange. It was sensually intense, and it had the intensity of everything evanescent—like spring blossoms or autumn leaves or early cherries. It was also hugely involving. Detachment was really difficult to achieve. Everything mattered immediately—every pain, every sensation, every emotion. There wasn’t time to think about things

It was the thing in my life that made me feel most like an animal. I was so caught up in it, in the pain, in the urgency of it, that there was no getting away from it. Against pain like that, against the body’s mystery, there is no philosophy.

Sokrates spoke again, and at once Athene’s eyes were back on him. “It’s a slippery argument to say that our souls gave consent before birth, because it would be possible to use that to justify doing anything to anybody. We don’t remember what our souls chose or why. We don’t know what part of our lives we wanted and what part we overlooked, or agre