Justice is rightly placed among the stars.
P
On my next visit to Alcaeus, I took my clay animals and placed them in his hands, describing each, one by one. He felt them carefully—too slowly—a sad expression on his face.
“So Aesop made them?” he said. “It’s good you have them...proof that his world is still here. I wish I could remember his...his faith...”
Taking the figures from Alcaeus, I put them on a table between us: we three had sat at a table like this, in exile, planning, planning: those worries swept back again, distorted. Confused, I could feel myself trapped. I knew that in those eyes opposite me, death sat there, at least a part of death, the same death that was in those clay animals.
Our hands met across the table.
P
Villa Poseidon
It is useless to cross-examine Alcaeus. He will not discuss Charaxos.
“Here, do me a favor, read me something from Hesiod,” he says, and hands me the poet’s advice to his brother.