As Kid Plato and I hurried down from the Temple of Hephaestus, I noticed what I hadn’t noticed on my way up: the wide flat steps doubled as seats. About twenty men were now sitting there, listening to a man giving a speech.
I thought I heard the orator mention Alcibiades so I slowed down to listen, but Kid Plato hooked his elbow in mine the way I had seen other men do. ‘Come on! Or we might miss him.’
We trotted past the ranked columns of two stoas, then vaulted the Great Drain and cut through a small grove of olive and bay trees. The trees had bits of wool tied to their branches. As we passed a square enclosure, I glimpsed an altar through a permanently open gap in the wall. Some skinny men were sitting in a small patch of shade at its base.
Kid Plato saw me looking and said, ‘That’s the Altar of Pity, where runaway slaves and other criminals can take refuge.’
I made a mental note to remember the Altar of Pity the next time I was being chased.
Emerging from the dusty shade of the little grove, we came back into blazing sunshine. Six paths met here and each had a herm. A few were wooden, but most were marble and all of them had the painted, bearded face of Hermes atop a short square column.
Kid Plato wiped his sweaty forehead with the back of his arm. ‘This crossroads is called the Herms, for obvious reasons. And that’s the Painted Stoa.’ He pointed straight ahead to a stoa with brightly painted lions-head rainspouts above the white columns. Men were spilling out of it and down the steps.
Kid Plato’s small shoulders slumped. ‘It looks as if we’re too late.’
‘Why?’
‘Here comes Hippias. And he’s blushing! The ultimate disgrace.’
‘Is it?’
Kid Plato nodded. ‘Here in Athens a man would rather die than lose face. I suspect Socrates is behind this.’
Hippias the sophist was a thin man with a nose like a hatchet and a wreath on his balding head. He was mopping his forehead with a corner of a dusty pink himation the same colour as his flushed cheeks. A group of grim-faced young men hurried after him.
‘Those are his students,’ whispered Kid Plato. ‘They’re the richest of the rich.’
In contrast with Hippias’s unsmiling entourage, the other men coming down out of the stoa were laughing and chatting happily. Some moved away into the Agora while others lingered by the columns.
‘Look,’ I said. ‘There’s your brother.’
Glaucon and his two friends stood on the top step in animated conversation.
We went up the steps, and Kid Plato tugged his brother’s himation. ‘What happened?’
As Glaucon turned, his smile became a scowl. ‘You shouldn’t be here!’ he hissed. ‘I told you to wait at Simon’s.’
But one of his friends – the one with straight hair – grabbed Kid Plato’s shoulders. ‘You should have heard it, Plato. Socrates was brilliant! He got Hippias to admit that Achilles is more cunning than Odysseus–’
‘–which was the exact opposite of Hippias’s original thesis,’ interrupted the other friend, the one with curly hair.
‘And then,’ said Straight Hair, ‘Socrates banged his staff on the floor and proclaimed: According to what you have just said, dear Hippias, a deceptive liar is the best sort of man.’
‘Oh Socrates! How can that possibly be true?’ harrumphed Curly, obviously imitating Hippias.
‘I don’t know,’ said Straight Hair as a beaming Socrates, ‘but we seem to have just proved it!’
Curly pretended to splutter and stammer.
Straight Hair imitated Socrates by leaning on an imaginary staff. ‘It’s no surprise that I, being ignorant and slow, have got in a muddle. But if a wise sophist like yourself gets confused then we have a grave problem, do we not?’
They all burst out laughing, even Glaucon. He ruffled his brother’s hair. ‘He’s still in there if you want to introduce your friend. But meet me at Simon’s in half an hour!’
‘Thank you, Glaucon!’ Kid Plato pulled me into the stoa before I could thank him too.
Coming out of the blazing sun into the shade of the stoa was a huge relief. It was almost cool and there was even a slight breeze. The space was still crowded with at least two hundred men, mostly wearing the light tablecloth himation. They were standing in groups, laughing and talking.
Kid Plato hooked his elbow in mine again and pulled me through the crowd. A few men glared at us or tutted, but most just moved aside. As we pushed past men, the combined stench of their sweaty armpits nearly overpowered me. I had to breathe through my mouth.
A stocky man dripping with sweat said loudly, ‘Socrates is nothing more than a sophist himself.’
Kid Plato stopped and turned. ‘You are wrong, sir. Socrates is different from the sophists in three respects. First, he never charges money. Second, he cares about the truth. And third, he uses words as tools to seek the truth. Unless he’s showing how hollow the so-called skills of the sophists really are.’
The man stared at Kid Plato, open-mouthed. ‘Should you even be here?’ he spluttered at last.
It was my turn to hook my elbow in Kid Plato’s and pull him on, but before we reached Socrates we heard another couple of men.
‘… serves that pompous sophist right. He charges a fortune to teach boys wool fluff.’
‘But Socrates has made a powerful enemy,’ said the other.
I could see Kid Plato pressing his lips together, but the last statement had made me think.
I leaned over and whispered, ‘If Socrates is so wise, why does he humiliate powerful men. Isn’t that dangerous?’
‘Yes. But he doesn’t care. He’s on a mission to expose pretentious liars. He wants people to think for themselves. He often compares himself to a horsefly stinging the sluggish city into wakefulness. And he cares more about virtue and truth than his own safety. You’ll see.’
When we reached the back of the stoa my eyes widened. The whole back wall was painted with a scene of Greeks dropping out of the Trojan horse and setting Troy on fire.
Kid Plato tugged my tunic again. ‘Look! There’s Socrates. Talking to those men.’
Some men moved aside and I recognised him immediately.
You know Santa Claus from the Coke ads? With his round cheeks and snub nose and jolly smile? Take off his hat and boots and all his clothes, send him to Muscle Beach for a year to lift weights under a blazing sun and then put him in a threadbare grey himation that shows off his hard-as-rock arms and his leathery brown skin.
That was what my first glimpse of Socrates made me think of: tanned Santa wearing nothing but a threadbare tablecloth and leaning on a staff.