Across the Waters of Time- Pliny Remembered

by Ken Parejko

  I swim as hard as I can, dodging flotsam and bodies. I reach shore, crawl onto the beach. From across the lake, strewn with the wreckage of ships and men, comes a steady, roaring wind. On the beach I finds myself amidst the fallen columns of a great ruin, which seem to be the ruins of the Forum. I collapse, close my eyes. The wind is the sound of my breathing. It stops. There is only silence. I open my eyes.

  On the lake the bodies have become roses, bobbing in the waves. From the center of each shines a tiny sun. The sky is brilliant with their light, almost blinding. One by one the roses sink, the suns go out.

  I am aware of someone nearby. I feel their presence. Then I see her, seated amongst the fallen ruins, a woman on a golden throne, beside her a long, coiled serpent. She is old, and ugly; then she is young, and very beautiful. She opens her mouth, as though to say something. I strain to hear. But out of her open mouth, like a gigantic cave, comes a deafening laughter, the laughter which echoes at the end of the world.

  Chapter 9

  Rome, under Nero, 57 C.E.

  There was nothing more highly admired

  than an intimate knowledge of plants,

  in ancient times.

  Pliny, Natural History, V.81

  I tossed my History of the German Wars into the steady stream of histories which flowed from the houses of senators, consuls and equites. It was read, commented on, and as such things tend to be, in a few weeks forgotten. I bumped into some small fame in the process, but in my heart I felt a failure. Failure, that is, at having found the truth and having told it, of having lost the battle against uncertainty and prejudice. But realizing I’d failed at the impossible eased my mind. Then I thought: what a great thing it would be to read a History of the German Wars written from the German side.

  While keeping my dream-promise to Drusus I’d trained myself in the hard subtleties of truth and also learned some writing skills. But my interests took me now in a different direction, towards the natural world, mostly undiscovered and undescribed, in fact a world most seemed perfectly willing to ignore.

  Yesterday as I stepped out of the Augustan library a flock of a dozen or so crows landed among the pines. I stopped to watch them. Surely, I thought, there must be some order to their lives. Surely their caws and yawps, like the guttural grunts of the German tribes, meant something to them. The closest bird to me, perched on a low branch, seemed to be studying me, its head cocked to one side, its dark piercing eye trained in my direction. For an instant there was a flash of recognition between the two of us: the toga'd equestrian and the big black bird who lived alongside but not among the men who flocked the Palatine. I shocked myself, and the few passers-by who happened to hear me, by spontaneously mimicking the bird's raucous calls. Caw! I said. The crow stared at me. Not very good, was it? Yet maybe it meant something to him. Or her, that is. Was it possible to learn their language?

  Crows and their kin were common throughout the capitol. Some were said to have learned Latin. Some years before, as the sun rose each morning one would flap to the Forum's rostrum and sit patiently awaiting Tiberius' arrival. The moment it saw Tiberius coming up the Via Sacra, it would announce him in clear clarion voice: Tiberius! Tiberius! it would cry. Over time it learned to recognize Germanicus and Drusus, too, and greet them by name. In a way it bolstered their authority, that even birds recognized them.

  But away from the Forum this herald-crow was just another bird, making a pest of itself stealing bread and fruit, hanging around the vendors' shops, sometimes squirting a pasty jet of waste in unwelcome places. One day a shoemaker aimed a rock in its direction and to his surprise down came the crow. Word quickly got out that the Herald Crow had been killed. The bird was placed on a litter and covered with flowers. Two tall Nubians lifted the litter and led a long procession down the via Sacra and out the city gates. Crowds gathered to watch the ceremonious funeral pyre of a crow.

  How much do they know about us, these fellow-citizens of Rome, the crows, foxes, eagles, owls, or even the mice with whom we share our houses? More than we know of them, I thought, just as my crow-mate launched itself out of the pine into a graceful dive, pulling up and landing on the grass beside the temple of Apollo. Unless I was fooling myself, the crow seemed curious about and interested in this human who had just attempted, however comically, to speak its language.

  As I watched the crow hopped lightly on the grass, searching for insects. I stepped toward it, one small step. The bird stopped, considered me and my motives. I stepped forward again. Now the bird flushed back up into a tree. Though I didn’t know it at the time, in those few steps that afternoon I had crossed a frontier of sorts. Behind me were Augustus' palace and library, the temples of Apollo and Cybele, the altar of the Roman genius, just over the hill the great Forum and all the history and fictions it represented. Ahead of me was a new and fecund wilderness. Through the dark eye of a crow I’d taken my first hesitant steps toward other truths, truths to be found in the natural world.

  The next morning in a market-place below the Esquiline I ran across my tutor Pomponius Secundus, who I hadn’t seen for over a year.

  "Gaius!" he said, taking my hand. "I’ve heard your History is done?"

  "It is."

  "Congratulations. When do I get a copy?"

  "Yes, of course. I’ll see to it."

  "And what next?" Pomponius asked.

  A thin, mangy white cat slinked between us, then bounded suddenly up the street .

  "Natural philosophy, I think."

  "Very good, my boy." I was not a boy. I was thirty-five years old. But in Pomponius' eyes I’d always be the energetic and curious lad who’d been handed to him for forming. "You know, I'm not surprised," Pomponius remarked, still holding my hand. "You always had an eye for the flowers and birds. Now look, I have to be going, but before you travel too far in that direction I want you to meet an old friend of mine. His name is Antonius Castor."

  "Castor, yes, of course, I've heard of him."

  "He's an old man even to me. Why if I remember right this year he'll be a hundred. But no one knows plants better than he. They say that every morning for more than sixty years he’s shown up at the Forum Holitorium, looking for new plants from the outskirts of the empire. You've heard of his garden?"

  "Yes," I said. Gardens were a passion in the city-- from the rustic hortus, the small kitchen garden which originated in the country farmstead but was now found beside many of the city's houses and apartments, to the grander peristyle gardens, more floral than practical, adorning the villas of the wealthier classes, to the huge and lavishly landscaped gardens of the very wealthy which displayed exotic plants brought in from across the empire. And hanging from the balconies and windows of even the poorest tenements one saw potted plants, tiniest gardens of all.

  Pomponius smiled knowingly. "You’ll not see another like it."

  "What do you mean?"

  "You’ll see." On a scrap of papyrus Pomponius drew a map with directions to Castor's villa at the edge of the city.

  That afternoon I wrote to Castor, asking if I could come to see the garden. I waited several days for a reply. None came. I decided to try my luck. I had a litter brought round: though I could us the exercise, lately I walked less and less. While on the litter I could read. Walking wasted time, the gods' most precious gift to us. I grabbed some pears and grapes and a jug of water and gave Lucius the rest of the day off.

  Once underway I unrolled the reading material I'd brought with me, the first books of Theophrastus' Historia Plantarum. In the opening paragraphs Theophrastus distinguished between sensual or observational knowledge and rational knowledge, and pointed out the dangers of relying too heavily on either. I shared that with his mentor Aristotle and with Theophrastus too, that I was no fan of Plato's idealism, which denigrated the world we experience in favor of some rational, ideal construct. Yet there was no denying that nature presented us with patterns which begged to be understood. It seemed the first step in understanding the natural world was cl
ose observation, then somehow making sense of the patterns which rise out of those observations. This was not an easy thing. While no two swamps, forests or lakes were identical, two swamps had more in common than did a swamp and a forest. These shared qualities included the moisture, soil, plants, insects, animals, birds. Which of these told you the most about a place? Theophrastus argued that it was the plants. Of the living things, only the plants couldn’t get up and leave, and so they best reflected the living conditions of that place.

  This was fascinating. I found in Theophrastus a close cousin to the historian Polybius. Both insisted on meticulous observation. Only then, if you were careful, could you build a fair model of either nature or history. As my sedan moved slowly, step by step, through the city, I set the papyrus aside. What could I learn about nature in the city? Scanning the plants and trees growing around me told me little about nature -- the pines on the Aventine and scattered here and there around the city were some of the few surviving remnants of the native flora. Even outside the city's walls it became, almost day by day, harder to find undisturbed natural places.

  It’s as though we humans are a crowd painted marvelously into a lovely ancient landscape, I thought. But we’re alive, and as we live and move around, without meaning to we destroy the very artwork of which we are part. So that by now the landscape around us has been scratched and rubbed away almost beyond repair.

  I sighed, wondering what the landscape I was embedded in had been like, before the city. Swamps, I expected, meadows and hills, wolves, wild goats and eagles. I imagined myself moving through that landscape instead of the busy streets packed with people and their wares, mangy dogs and cats, and the smelly refuse of civilization.

  I turned again to Theophrastus, but had only a few moments before the litter stopped in front of Castor's house. I stepped down onto the street. Castor's residence seemed nondescript enough, a bit run-down if anything. I lifted then dropped the heavy brass ring embossed with a twining acanthus-vine onto the door. The doors swung open and a servant let me into the atrium, a cool, calm refuge from the bustling street-life. I was left alone in a dusty, dirty room which emanated a slow, natural decay. Plants grew all around me, on stands, from pots on the floor, and hanging from the ceiling, making up a kind of miniature jungle.

  Suddenly Castor appeared ghost-like from a side-room and swept up the peristyle toward me through the thicket surrounding the impluvium, a small, very thin and very old man -- born before Julius Caesar was murdered. I read warm hospitality in his smile.

  "Gaius Plinius Secundus," I introduced myself. "I sent a letter, a few days ago. Pomponius, who was my tutor, suggested I should visit your garden."

  "Pomponius? Ah. A good man." The old man’s skin was parchment-thin, fine, revealed the living flesh under it. His voice was thin, too, and equally fine, with a gentle bell-like quality to it, clear and pure. Physically he seemed very frail, yet he emanated a kind of strength. He spoke quietly, but with the authority which comes with age. And because of his age, and having to save his energies, he wasted no words.

  "Yes, a very good man,” I agreed. “I was fortunate he took me on. A few years ago I published his biography. Have you seen it?"

  "No. I hardly read any more.” It seemed that at any moment the man before me might slip off into the other world, he seemed so frail. Yet he remained there, an almost glowing presence. “My eyes...But anyway why read?” Castor asked. “My plants tell me what I need to know. What they can’t teach me, I’ve no interest in.”

  I was in the middle of one of those exceptional moments when I felt myself in the presence of an important life-force who would in some way impact my destiny, and at the same time somehow being aware of that.

  “Come."

  Castor gave me his hand, a hand which was soft as an infant's. He seemed so light he was almost transparent. He lead me through the peristyle, alive with exotic blossoms. As we passed the air was full of strange and pleasant odors, rising off herbs carefully placed to warm in the morning sun.

  "The sun warms one, then another. It’s a concert of smells," he said. The peristyle was an entire library of plants, half of which were new to me.

  "Later," Castor said quietly, as though reading my mind. "First the garden."

  The garden and peristyle were as one; plants flowed in a great stream far back beyond where one could see. Enclosed in a high stone wall camouflaged by vines, except for the emperor's and Sallust's, this was the largest garden in Rome. But Castor's garden had not been created to provide him with either food or aesthetic or sensual pleasure. There were no topiaries or formal settings. There seemed hardly any order at all, large trees of many kinds scattered among low grasses and herbs. My host swept down a winding pathway. For his age he moved quickly and gracefully. The air we walked through was calm, soft, moistened and perfumed by the plants' breath.

  Castor stopped under a tall cypress. "This is the oldest part of the garden. As you see it's mostly trees. Many years ago I laid this all out in rectangles. Over there, by the wall, was my Academy, and another path over there I called the Stoa." He spoke quietly, as though not to disturb the plants. "Then I started listening to the plants. They told me straight lines were a human obsession. So to please them I had the paths dug up and now, as you see, they wind around among the trees."

  "How old is the garden?" I asked.

  "How old? Old. Very old. But of course, not as old as I," Castor answered, smiling, running his life through the stages of the garden as a parent might re-run the life of a child. "First there were the trees. This cypress during Augustus' reign, the year Drusus died. I call it my Drusus tree." We stood in the shade of a tall, healthy cypress. It was a poignant moment, stumbling upon Drusus again. I wanted to tell Castor about my dream, and my History, but he had moved on, and I hurried to catch up with him as we walked up the path past firs and fig-trees, maples, oaks and laurels, a quiet forest in the middle of the busy city.

  From up ahead I could hear a fountain splashing. A little farther and I could see it, in the middle of a wide pool where a bronze Pan, sprouting short horns from his long hair, stood tipsily on goat's-feet and sprayed water from out of his flute, making a kind of water-music. Smaller jets of water sprayed from the mouths of green ceramic frogs perched on the pool's edge. Beside Pan at the pool’s center were two white marble herms, busts of Aristotle and Theophrastus on serpentine columns.

  Castor sat on the edge of the pool. He bent down to touch a plant growing in the water's edge. "Do you know it?" he asked. I didn’t. "Phleos. The dried fruit is added to soap, for astringency."

  "I recognize the bulrushes," I said.

  "Yes. From Egypt. From a single plant out of Sallust's garden."

  I knew some of the water-plants from my childhood on Lake Larius. "Galingale, and these, they’re sedges," I said. Castor nodded. There were different kinds of reeds, farther out in the pond, some only knee-high but some taller than us. "The reeds are lovely," I added.

  "Yes." Castor looked longingly across the pond. "I spend many hours here, keeping this pond. I built it with my own hands the year Augustus finished the Aqua Marcia. You know, before then we could only plant trees. There wasn't enough water for flowers and pools, which nowadays everyone takes for granted. That reed there is my favorite for making pens. They’re strong and the tip is fine and flexible. That's water chestnut," Castor said, pointing to a low plant. A small flock of finches came flying in from over the wall and noisily settled to drink and bathe among the reeds., chittering over who would get the best perches.

  "The other reed," Castor said, pointing to a luxuriant plant which grew to one side of the pool, "is from Greece, from Pelekania. It’s best for making pipes."

  “You mean the syrinx?” I asked. It was from Pan’s syrinx, made of wood or hollow reeds, that came the ecstatic music which was said to be the sound of the forest itself singing.

  “Yes. And from higher up, where the reed flattens, for the tibiae.”

  “I heard some
, just the other day, drums and tibiae, in a procession of Cybele.” I didn’t like the tibiae, whose raspy reeds demanded attention but offered little subtlety.

  “The emperor’s musicians come every year. I give them a few. It is a small price I pay to be left alone.”

  It was lovely here by the pool. It felt so cool and relaxing. But I’d come to see the whole garden. “Can I see more?” I asked. “Or are you too tired?”

  “I don’t get tired here, in the garden,” Castor said, “only when I’m not in it.” I helped him stand, and we started down a path. “This part came later,” he explained. “A filthy tenement when I bought it.” We stopped a moment, could hear the finches still arguing back in the pool. “Two years to get rid of the rats. I hauled the best soil I could find, and planted and planted. So much work. Some are our own, you know, from all around Latium. More and more I love them, our own. Others are from the far corners of the empire. Many are the only of their kind in the city.” We passed by one of Castor’s men on his hands and knees, weeding around a small tree.

  “Wait,” I said, and leaned to touch the little tree, “what’s this?”

  “A young balsam,” Castor said. We stood admiring the tree, only waist-high. Balsam resin was used in the most expensive perfumes. “I’ve a friend in Jerusalem,” Castor said, “in the Royal Gardens. The Jews say the trees there are the originals, the ones brought by the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon.”

  “A little prince, then, in your own garden,” I said, gently patting the sapling. “How is he doing?”

  “He’s already twenty. He’ll survive, I think, but not thrive.”

  It would be good, I thought, if we grew our own balsam. It might keep us out of the swamp of Judean politics. On the other hand, I reconsidered, perfumes are already over-used, and cheaper balsam would only worsen that. “Have you noticed,” I asked Castor, “how wealthy women, even senator’s wives, compete at smelling like whores.”