“A request?” Plato said without turning to look at him. “How could I, your guest at this sumptuous reception, refuse you anything?”
The man’s face broke into a broad smile. “Isus is honored by your words,” the legate purred. He twisted around to give a hushed command to an old retainer who hovered behind him.
In the courtyard a woman was now dancing, having replaced the foreign warrior some time ago. She plucked a lyre even as she moved with windlike grace.
The old retainer led a tall, younger man up to the table.
Isus spoke. “Master Plato, this man is Eamos, head instructor at our college in Sais. He revealed to me some time ago his great desire to learn from you, the great philosopher, the true heir to Socrates. If you would be so kind as to oblige me by fulfilling this, Eamos’s one wish.”
The tall man bowed his head low before the seated philosopher.
Plato cursed inwardly. More than anything, he felt deceived. He knew it was popular, especially in places such as this where Eastern influences ran deep, for provincial legates to establish a so-called “college” in part of their villa where they kept pet philosophers and poets and the like in order to show off the refinement of their own noble education. This legate Isus would doubtless be thrilled to boast that his own resident scholar had studied at the foot of none other than the great philosopher Plato.
Plato turned his eyes away from the man and took a spoonful of honey-stewed lamb from a pot on the table.
“Go on, Eamos, go on.” Isus gave his own fledgling philosopher a shove on the hindquarters, pushing him toward the suddenly grim Plato. The poor fellow was rigid with nerves, and his limbs trembled violently.
“Ask your question.”
Plato’s thick brown beard framed his face harshly; in the glow of the flickering sconces, his sunken eyes seemed to burn with an unearthly light, and the lines of a weary frown across his brow made his visage suddenly fearsome. Isus’s philosopher startled at his look, staring like a hare in a trap, and he reddened with embarrassment. His eyes jumped to the courtyard beyond the table, as though trying to avoid the older man’s gaze. Plato looked down at his stew and said quietly, “You do have a question, do you not?”
His voice was gentle. He saw no point in shaming the man or spurning him. If scholarship is what this man has offered in exchange for receiving bread and board from this provincial noble, then he has done very well for himself, and who am I to judge another’s livelihood? Besides, I am sure there is Truth to be found even within a man such as this. He brought another spoonful of stew to his mouth and favored the scholar with a smile. Whatever he’s going to ask, he’d better ask it quick or his employer will fear his money wasted.
Suddenly, Eamos lifted his head. “A-are ideas unchanging?” he asked, thrusting the words out like fists.
There, that’s more like it.
Plato shifted in his chair so that his body was now facing Eamos. “Ideas have an objective existence. They are not the material of thought, but the object of thought, outside the thinker. The world we experience is a phenomenal world, a reflection of the world of ideas. The vicissitudes of life merely suggest that all things are in a state of flux because of the inherently unstable manner in which this world receives the Truth of ideas. Thus it falls to us to endeavor to see through that fluctuation to perceive that which is universal—that which exists objectively,” Plato explained, his voice deliberately assertive.
Eamos muttered something, but the words failed to pass his own lips. He looked up again. “And the ideal state?”
Plato noisily sipped at his stew and reflected on how this was the first time he had lectured in quite this manner. Of course, he often found himself pontificating on Truth and Beauty while drinking wine or soaking in the baths, but this game he played now followed an entirely different set of rules. In this game, not only was he expected to inform, he was furthermore obliged to award his participant a medal.
“The ideal state holds as its governing ideology a philosophy based upon the fundamental concepts of Truth, Goodness, and Beauty. In other words—” Plato took a swig of some pungent goat’s milk to wash down a lump of meat from his stew. “As reason is illuminated by the lens of wisdom, so does it develop from something experiential into something universal. Only with universal reason may we perceive the fundamental Truth shared by all things.” He cleared his throat. “Truth, mind you, is not some thing existing in a solid, unchanging state; it is universal objectivity itself. Now, while ‘will’ is the sum of the choices we make by virtue of our courage, the fundamental concept of Goodness is none other than the universal will. As for Beauty, that beauty which we perceive is limited, a mere projection of the phenomenon of a greater, limitless Beauty. Within men this quality manifests in the form of the passions and the moderation of arbitrariness. It is only by achieving harmony between these three fundamentals that the entire soul may take on the virtue of righteousness. This is a basic qualification for one who would rule, as it is for those who would aid him and, indeed, for all citizens of the ideal state.”
Plato spoke succinctly, one word after the other, as though he were speaking to a student at his own Akademia. Eamos stood with his head hanging low. He remained quiet as Plato finished, leaving his teacher unsure whether he had understood any of what he said. A sudden weariness came over Plato and he lifted his wine goblet. But Isus sprang to his feet, jumping like a boy at play, thanking him repeatedly. It was at that instant that Plato knew with certainty he would leave upon his journey to the west the next morning. He wanted to be alone. And he felt a longing for that great continent, touched by the wrath of the gods, alone in Poseidon’s endless sea, as though it were his own homeland.
It was a very long time before Plato forgot the events of that night. In fact, that banquet marked the last time he spoke on philosophy to another. Contrary to popular opinion, Plato did not write Timaeus or Critias himself. These were compiled by his followers in later years. What he began writing shortly after that night in Sais was an account of his long journey from Libya to Numidia and farther west, past the Atlas Mountains into Mauretania. It was these writings he sent in a great volume to his prized disciple Aristotle—though it remains doubtful whether his able pupil showed much interest in them.
In the face of pressure from Persia in the east, Carthage in the west, and the newly risen Macedonia in the north, mounting strife had worn away at the freedom and independence of the Greek polis. The evening bells of Greece were ringing when Speusippus—heir to the Akademia—and others of Plato’s disciples collected their master’s scattered writings into new works, ten of which remain to this day. Of these, Timaeus and Critias held but fragments of the records of his travels.
In 347 BC, in a chamber within his Akademia, built within the sacred grove of Akademos, Plato passed from this world. This is true. But there are few who know the other truth about Plato’s later years.
Gladius, Plato’s follower upon his journey to the West, who became Plato’s shadow and trusted assistant, spent his last days in solitude in Biskra near Carthage. For the most part, he avoided the company of others, yet there were times when, lips loosened by drink, he would tell stories. At these times he would claim that he had seen the hero Atlas from ancient myths with his own eyes. That Atlas was indeed a titan who held up the world from his glorious country of Atlantis. And that his master, Plato, had gone on to heaven in search of the true titans.