Sweat streamed down Sokrates’ face. Summer in Sicily was hotter than it ever got back home in Attica. He had a skin full of watered wine, and squirted some into his mouth. Swallowing felt good. A little of the wine splashed his face. That felt good, too.

“Pheu!” said another hoplite close by. “Only thing left of me’ll be my shadow by the time we’re done here.”

Sokrates smiled. “I like that.” He tilted back his helmet so he could drag a hairy forearm across his sweaty forehead, then let the helm fall down into place again. He tapped the nodding crimson-dyed horsehair plume with a forefinger. “This makes me seem fiercer than I am. But since all hoplites wear crested helms, and all therefore seem fiercer than they are, is it not true that the intended effect of the crest is wasted?”

Laughing, the other hoplite said, “You come up with some of the strangest things, Sokrates, Furies take me if you don’t.”

“How can the search for truth be strange?” Sokrates asked. “Do you say the truth is somehow alien to mankind, and that he has no knowledge of it from birth?”

Instead of answering, the other Athenian pointed to one of the rough little forts in which the Syracusans working on their counterwall sheltered. “Look! They’re coming out.” So they were, laborers in short chitons or loincloths, with armored hoplites to protect them while they piled stone on stone. “Doesn’t look like they’ve got very many guards out today, does it?”

“Certainly not,” Sokrates answered. “The next question to be asked is, why have they sent forth so few?”

Horns blared in the Athenian camp. “I don’t think our captain cares why,” the other hoplite said, pulling down his helmet so the cheekpieces and nasal protected his face. “Whatever the reason is, he’s going to make them sorry for being so stupid.”

“But do you not agree that why is always the most important question?” Sokrates asked. Instead of answering, the other hoplite turned to take his place in line. The horns cried out again. Sokrates picked up his shield and his spear and also joined the building phalanx. In the face of battle, all questions had to wait. Sometimes the fighting answered them without words.