The Just City by Jo Walton Read Free Book Online Page B

have only original art or allow copies. This was an issue on which passions ran high, and on which Ficino, Ikaros and I were united—the children should see only originals if they wanted to learn excellence. We should ask Athene to allow us to rescue lost and destroyed art to adorn the city. Copies, especially copies created by workers and more than once, would make them see art in entirely the wrong light.
    Atticus and some of the others argued against us. “We have already decided that the eating houses will be copies of buildings in the cities they are named for,” he said. “If the workers can build them, and if it won’t harm the children to see a hundred and forty-four copies of architecture, then how can art be different?”
    â€œIt would be better if we could get the original buildings too,” I said. “But it’s not possible. It is possible to get the art.”
    â€œIt might be possible to get some buildings,” Ficino said. “Sophia isn’t just wise, she’s powerful as well.”
    â€œWere there enough suitable buildings that have disappeared?” I asked. “I don’t know about Greece, but when I was in Rome it looked as if every brick and piece of marble was being reused in some other building.”
    Ikaros shook his head. “It’s completely different. It wouldn’t be better if we could get original buildings, because the real problem then would be that the buildings wouldn’t be so suited to our purposes as the ones we will build. The design for the sleeping houses, for example, is elegant and ideal.” He was on that committee as well, of course. “We want them to be identical and classical and useful, and that’s how they are. We don’t want the city to be full of repetition because that would teach the wrong lesson. The sleeping houses will all be the same; the palaestras where the children will exercise will be functionally the same, but have different decoration, for variety. And the same goes for the eating houses, temples, libraries, and practice halls. We want everything to be as well-suited to what we need it for as can be. Making new buildings in the style of old ones is best for that, for buildings. They won’t really be copies, not functionally.”
    â€œFunctionally?” Atticus repeated, frowning.
    â€œThe buildings for our city have different functions from the buildings in any existing city. Even if we had all the choice in the world, it would be difficult to find sufficient buildings with big eating halls and kitchens and rooms of the right size for classes,” Ikaros explained. “Ideally they’d all be new designs by wonderful architects, but as it is, we’ve decided to take the features of the old buildings, in the styles of the cities the halls are named after, and have the workers reproduce them on our buildings.”
    â€œBut why couldn’t we do that with art as well?” Atticus asked. “The workers could just as easily reproduce that.”
    â€œBut the original art best fits the Platonic purpose,” I said.
    â€œPlato says art should show good people doing good things as an example to the children,” Atticus said.
    â€œYes, and also be an example of beauty, to open their souls to excellence,” I added.
    Ikaros looked approvingly at me. “Yes! And when it comes to art, the best is definitely the originals.”
    â€œJupiter!” Atticus swore. “They won’t be able to tell if they’re originals or copies.”
    â€œTheir souls will,” Ficino said.
    Eventually we won the day, which the three of us celebrated at dinner with cold water and barley porridge. Ficino and Ikaros shared memories of wines they had drunk together in Florence, and discussed how long it would be before the grapes the workers had planted could produce a vintage. We pretended to be mixing our water with wine, in best classical practice, and