The Orpheus Descent by Tom Harper

seeming to breathe, so that the opposing advocate couldn’t get a word in. It was a skill he demonstrated ad nauseam.
    ‘Why do you despise the world so much?’
    We were climbing over a spur of a mountain, part of the ridge that guarded the plain of Thurii. I’d blanked him out: it was only when he went quiet that I realised he actually wanted me to say something. He repeated the question.
    ‘I don’t despise the world.’
    ‘Then why are you so hostile to the sophists?’
    ‘I hate to tell you this, but despising sophists isn’t the same as despising the world.’
    ‘But it’s our worldliness that offends you. While philosophers sit on their mountaintops drawing triangles, we’re down in the law courts and the Assembly wrestling with the problems of real life.’
    ‘
Real
life?’ I echoed. ‘There’s nothing real about it. You don’t try to explain the world: you argue it whichever way you’re paid. You’ll happily claim that black is white, bad is good and the weaker argument is actually stronger.’
    ‘If enough people can be made to believe that, then perhaps the weaker argument isn’t as weak as you suppose.’
    ‘It’s not a question of being weak or strong. It’s about true and false.’
    He smiled indulgently. ‘Do you think that anyone would believe something he knew was untrue?’
    ‘Of course not.’
    ‘Then if something’s demonstrably untrue, how could I possibly persuade anyone otherwise?’
    I backtracked. ‘Socrates said at his trial, “Anyone who really cares about justice, and wants to stay alive for any length of time, needs to keep out of public life.”’
    ‘“
Socrates said …
” You go around quoting him like Homer. Why don’t you just say what
you
think?’
    I rounded on him. ‘What
I
think? Do you really want to know?’
    ‘Very much.’
    ‘I grew up being told that it was the best men who should rule the state because
we
were the best educated. That
we
were the only ones wise and clever enough to really understand justice. Then
we
took charge – as you know – and butchered our opponents like sheep. Anyone who disagreed, anyone who argued – and once those were out of the way, anyone
we
didn’t like the look of. No trials, just daggers in the night. They even tried to force Socrates to carry out an execution, just so they could discredit him.’
    They also came to me
. Not
for
me,
to
me. They played on my vanity. They made me think that the killings and torture were necessary evils to protect Athens, that soon the cancer would be cut away and then we could heal the city. They flattered me that I could use my learning, if only I would help them, to set up the sort of perfect society we’d always talked about.
    And the worst of it, my eternal shame, is that I was tempted. When they offered me the blade, I very nearly took it. I saw the surgeon’s scalpel, not the murderer’s knife. I was blinded. Only Socrates had the wisdom to help me see through the illusion.
    ‘And then the democracy was restored. The new men said we should let the past lie; they passed an amnesty law. It all seemed very just. But they still needed a scapegoat, a sacrifice to appease the people. They executed Socrates, which even the junta didn’t dare to, because democrats hate having their hypocrisy exposed even more than tyrants. And do you know who did the dirty work? Who brought the charges against Socrates? A poet, a businessman and a sophist.
    ‘That’s why I despise your
real
world. Because men fight over it like a tug of war, trying to pull it to their advantage without any regard for what’s really
true
.’
    A second later, I realised I’d conceded Euphemus’ original point. But if he noticed, the look on my face made him think better of mentioning it.
    At the side of the road, a boundary stone said we were ten miles from Thurii.
    For any philosopher thinking of taking up a public career, Pythagoras’ life offers a cautionary tale.
    One hundred and fifty-odd years ago,