Across the Waters of Time- Pliny Remembered

by Ken Parejko

  “I only go to the plant market. Senator’s wives are of no interest to me.”

  We saw so many remarkable plants in his garden: from Africa, India, and even from the north a little patch of the skirret which Tiberius had so loved, and which had found its way into my dream of Drusus. And many local plants which most people, though they lived among them, never noticed. But of all the exquisite varieties in his garden, Castor was most proud of a patch of a not very pretty herb towards which we were now headed, back in the garden’s far corner. As we rounded a bend in the walk Castor stopped and stood by the plants as a priest might stand before a statue of Jupiter.

  With ten steps we might circle them, the little plot of tall, coarse stalks bearing fine alternate leaves, and at the height of the stalk the broad dull-white umbelliferous flowers. I stood speechless, til I said almost reflexively, “Laserwort!” Castor smiled. Laserwort was the source of the resin I carried with me for my asthma. Laser was made from it by cutting small incisions in the plant's stem and collecting the milky juices, then forming it into soft, gum-like balls. The Greeks called the plant silphium.

  “It’s nearly extinct,” Castor said. “Maybe it is already, in the wild.”

  “Yes, I know,” I said, standing astonished before this plant which according to Theophrastus could not be cultivated.

  “Sheep grazed on silphium make a mutton once considered a delicacy. It has a unique, but to me not very pleasant flavor. Have you tried it?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “Well, I’m not surprised,” Castor continued. “You can’t buy silphium-flavored mutton any more. It once grew in profusion in Cyrene, until the farmers, to get rich, turned their sheep loose in it. When sheep are done, they leave behind a desert. Now, no one knows if there is any silphium left at all.”

  “I know about this plant,” I said. I reached into my purse and pulled out a tiny ball of greenish-black resin. “My lungs trouble me. Laser is the best for them.”

  Castor sat on a stone bench opposite the silphium. I sat beside him. The plants gave off a faintly sulfurous odor. Some called laser devil’s dung. “Yes, some say laser is nature’s most precious gift,” Castor said. “I use it as a laxative. They say it cures boils and warts and corns, and gout, too, a disease thankfully I’ve never suffered.”

  “The demand for Cyrenaic juice, the resin dissolved in water,” I added, “rose as our countrymen’s morals fell. Wives used it, to prevent conception, and to kill the already-conceived. It is, or should I say, was, very popular.”

  “Yes,” Castor agreed. “Husbands, afraid of raising children who were not their own, bought it for their wives. Or for their mistresses, so as not to raise children who were their own.”

  “Yes. As often for their mistresses. But you know, I haven’t seen real laser in the markets for several years. What I find isn’t real laser. The laser dealers have no conscience. They lie about it, promise it's the real thing from Africa, only the very best, and charge you an arm and a leg. But what they’re selling is phony. It’s not that hard to tell. What I have isn’t real laser,” I said, showing the resin to Castor. “I know because real laser, which I could find a few years ago, works much better on my lungs.” I squeezed and broke the ball of resin open. “See, this is green clear through. Real laser has a reddish tint on the outside and inside it’s white. And when you squeeze it, the juice is clear, not cloudy like this. This is Persian laser. Sometimes they’ll even try to sell me magydaris or asafoetida as laser.”

  We sat silently watching as tiny bees and flies worked the delicate umbels of the silphium flowers. This was amazing. I sat in front of a plant I’d been convinced had gone extinct. “I’ve tried every kind of doctor and herb and quack-cure there is, and mind you they’re more than willing to take my money, but nothing works like laser. I have to be careful not to exert myself, or my lungs act up. And as you see, I’m growing fat, for lack of exercise. I go sleepless nights. Sometimes I suffer terribly, trying to breathe. In a way, I can already breath easier, knowing it’s not extinct.”

  “These plants,” Castor added, almost in a whisper, his voice wearing out, “I started from seeds, almost ten years ago. Seeds from Cyrenaica. I lost many over time, but finally I have these few. I had soil brought from their native land. I believe there is some life-giving property in the soil the plant needs to survive. It’s the fussiest plant I have. In my old age my help does most of the gardening. But not here. Only I tend the silphium.”

  Castor looked at the plants proudly. “In a way it’s not Latium they’re growing in, but Africa,” he said. “Sometimes I, too, have trouble sleeping. Sometimes I lie awake in a pool of terror, wondering if these are the last silphium plants on earth. I have nightmares of coming around that bend and finding them dead. Then in the morning I hold my breath as I come to them, afraid of what I’ll find.”

  I understood. “Have you made any laser?” I asked. “It would be priceless.”

  “No. I’m afraid to cut them. They’re too precious to milk. Maybe some day. They’re healthy. See, for the first time, they’re blooming. I’ve cleared a piece over there,” he gestured beyond the silphium to where a plot of ground lay worked up and bare, “and had more soil brought in for a new patch, from any seeds I get. Some day, perhaps, I will make laser.” He paused a moment to catch his breath. “But I’m no longer a young man.”

  We sat quietly a few moments, listening as it were to the story the plants were telling. Then Castor spoke. “I have another surprise for you. Only to earn it, you must first pass a test.”

  What a morning it had been. I rose to the challenge. “Please.”

  “What year did Sulla capture Athens?”

  That was easy. “Six sixty-seven.”

  “What manuscripts did he bring back with him?”

  “Well, many,” I answered. “Sulla’s library, which he stole from Athens, was legendary.”

  “The most famous?”

  A starling sang from a nearby tree whose shade was just creeping over us. From outside the garden we could hear, over towards the Campus Martius, the shouts of workmen, the bite of their saws in wood and the banging of their hammers, the sounds of the city going through its growing-pains. But here with Castor I’d found an oasis against that change, an island of stability in the current of time. Here was peace, and calm, and planting ourselves in this peace, we could grow and stretch toward the light of knowledge, which was all around us, though it astonished me every day how most people didn’t seem to see it, or even care.

  “Why, Aristotle’s originals, of course,” I said.

  “Very good. Go on.”

  It was one of my favorite stories, the history of Aristotle’s works. I offered Castor a short version. “After he died, the master's writings, in his own hand, were the most priceless manuscripts in the world. He’d willed them to his favorite student Theophrastus, who I was reading on my way here. Theophrastus in turn willed them to his favorite student, Neleus. The library at Alexandria wanted them for their collection. They tried to convince Neleus to sell them. He wouldn't, but after long negotiations, he agreed. The contract said that for a certain sum of money Neleus would sell them Aristotle’s books.”

  “And?” Castor knew the story, but relished hearing it again.

  “Neleus kept his word. He sent Aristotle’s books to Alexandria. But when they opened the boxes, they found not the master’s original manuscripts, but Aristotle’s private library, of other books.” I could see that Castor was pleased. “The Alexandrians raised a great stink, claimed they’d been the victims of fraud. They hired the best lawyers. But the judges ruled the phrase ‘Aristotle’s books’ could mean ‘Aristotle’s library,’ and that rather than being defrauded the Alexandrians had simply been out-witted.”

  Castor clapped his hands. “Yes. It’s a wonderful story. Aristotle himself would have loved it. So my good friend. You know your history. But now tell me what happened to Aristotle’s manuscripts.”

  I had to dig
deeply. I thought a moment, and now I spoke with less confidence. “Pergamum, I seem to recall, meant to build a library as impressive as Alexandria’s.”

  “Yes, and this resulted in the the invention of....?”

  “Of parchment, of course. Egypt had a near-monopoly on papyrus, and to thwart Pergamum’s attempt to build a library as great as Alexandria’s, they banned the export of papyrus.” Now the story came back to me. “So in Pergamum they put their best minds to work on perfecting the production of parchment from finely-tanned calf-skin. So their library would be a collection of books copied onto parchment, not papyrus.”

  Castor’s eyes were alight, the eyes of a young man imprisoned in an old man’s body. Even his body, thin and fragile as it was, seemed to glow with youthful energy. “Back to Aristotle then,” Castor said.

  “Well, I don’t know. After Neleus, what?”

  “Exactly. After Neleus, what?”

  The starling’s song grew more and more lovely, warbling and trilling its heart out. We listened for a while in silence. Castor began, slowly, quietly. “The affair with Alexandria tipped Neleus off to the value of what he owned. It’s said he put the manuscripts in a cask then buried them in his backyard. It wasn’t such a good idea. The worms found them, as they will find us, though they will do a more thorough job on us. After Neleus died, his grandson dug up the back yard til he found them. Damp and worm-holed, but the master’s crimped hand was still legible, and of course a priceless treasure.” Castor paused a moment. The bird above us paused, too, and the silence seemed rich and deep. I couldn’t have been happier, here in the city I loved, surrounded by a treasure-garden of plants, in stimulating conversation with this wise old man.

  “There’s not much more,” Castor went on. “Neleus’ grandson sold them to Apellicon of Teos, who gave them as a gift to the tyrant Athenion. Now, here is where Sulla comes in. As his army conquered Athens, Sulla searched the city for Athenion, who he found hiding in his library. It was there Athenion had decided to die, among his most-treasured possessions.”

  We sat for a while in silence, as though exhausted by this mad rush through the byways of history. At last Castor spoke. Behind his quiet carefully-chosen words lay a great depth of feeling. “I saw them, you know.”

  “Saw them?”

  “The originals. I’ve seen Aristotle’s own hand.”

  I was astonished. I’d not imagined there was anyone alive who’d lain eyes on Aristotle’s manuscripts. What a remarkable day this was: finding this plot of silphium within the very walls of Rome, and now here I was with a man who’d read Aristotle in the original. Cheap editions of Aristotle were on almost every street-corner and in all the city’s bookstores. I was surprised to even find him far up the Rhine. Every edition is a pirated version, so full of interpolations and mistakes that one could never be sure what Aristotle had actually written. But to have seen the originals!

  “I was but a child,” Castor explained. “My father was interested in natural philosophy. Perhaps I inherited my passion for plants from him, though his interests lay towards animals, especially of the sea. Sulla had brought his Aristotles back to Rome. When he died, he left them to his son Faustus, who spent money he didn’t have. To curry favor with the wealthy he’d invite them to see the manuscripts. They say Cicero visited them, many times."

  Castor seemed to be gathering energy from the story he told. A pair of his workers passed by, hoes and shovels in hand. “Faustus married one of Pompey’s daughters. My father had some connections with Pompey, so he was invited to see the manuscripts. He spent whole days there, pouring over what he could find about this crab or that eel. He tried to raise them, eels, you know. It was one of his many little failures. He threw himself at them with such enthusiasm. He had more enthusiasm than sense, my father.”

  Castor’s eyes turned inward. “Maybe I’m more like him than I care to admit. Well, as I was saying, when I was six or seven, I asked if I could go with him, to Faustus’ study.”

  Castor’s mind carried him back to that place, almost a century before, when he was a wide-eyed youth, and the world was huge and new and a wonderful mystery.

  “It was evening,” he said. “The shadows were long. Spring-time, before the heat of the summer. I was excited. My father seldom took me anywhere. But somehow, and I am still grateful to him, somehow he recognized what this might mean to me. We walked hand in hand out of the street and into Faustus’ atrium, then around the corner into the study. Faustus had hired a servant to protect the manuscripts. He followed us and watched our every move. Otherwise we were alone. Faustus was out drinking, throwing away his father’s fortune. On a big wooden table under a window lay a papyrus, partly unrolled. It was brittle, and faded, and partly worm-eaten, but it was heiratica, the highest quality papyrus.”

  “Father lifted me up so I could see the book. I remember the fine uncial hand, here and there a word or phrase so faded you could barely make it out. I didn’t yet know how to read Greek. But the sound of it, as my father read, then translated, fascinated me. After a while we walked out into the cool evening. I was a changed person. Unknown to myself, I had caught a glimpse of my own future. Shortly after that Faustus, deeply in debt, lost the manuscripts. It’s said he traded them to a whore for one night's pleasure. After that no one knows what happened to them.”

  Castor’s voice came quietly, barely above a whisper, one phrase at a time. “I have only one wish. I have had a charmed life, my plants and I have been happy together. But I wish I could go back to that room and unroll the great books. I would feast my eyes on them and satisfy my hunger for the truth which lay set within them like priceless gems set in gold.”

  I sat quietly beside this Antonius Castor, a small legend in his own right, who considered himself only a tiny spur on the tree of knowledge, growing out of a trunk named Aristotle. There were few reliable touchstones by which to judge a man; but an honest, deep-felt humility in the face of Aristotle’s genius was certainly one.

  “They’re gone, I suppose,” I said. “Lost forever.”

  “Perhaps. Or maybe some will be found, somewhere. Who knows?” Castor sighed, and the intellectual fire which had burned away eighty years of his age grew dim, and again he was an old man, near death, in his own tiny oasis surrounded by a world gone bad. “Perhaps someone will find them, or pieces of them. One never knows. You are young. Perhaps you will.”

  Castor stood up, slowly. I steadied my new friend, who took a moment to adjust to the standing position, and swayed like a palm at the mercy of time’s winds. Castor’s eyes rested on the silphium. Focusing on the plants seemed to steady him.

  “Have you read his “Constitution of the Cyrenians?”

  “No.”

  It was an obscure work; some argued it was not by Aristotle at all. But Castor seemed to think it was.

  “He tells in it that the Cyrenian economy depended on silphium. So much they had an image of it on their coins. Theophrastus,” Castor went on, forcing himself with the little energy he had left, “says that in one of his journals Aristotle praised silphium’s many powers, and mentions hidden valleys in Cyrenaica where it grew secretly, and profusely.”

  “Theophrastus writes this?”

  “Yes. In an obscure essay on medicinal herbs. I have a copy in my library. Would you like to see it?"

  I took the old man’s arm, and together we started back. “I’d love to.”

  “Only not today, I’m worn out.”

  We entered the cool shade inside the house. Castor stopped, sat, held out his hand. “Thank you. I enjoyed our little talk. There aren’t many these days I can talk to.” He closed his eyes, would soon be asleep. “You’ll come back?”

  “Yes. Of course,” I promised. A servant let me out. I climbed into the litter. The bearers, who’d been napping in the shade, lifted me and started up the street. What a day it had been. I read my Theophrastus on the way home, and had a short nap. When I got back to our apartment, Lucius asked if I’d had a good vis
it.

  “Yes.” There was no way of telling him how good it had been. “Yes, very good."

  I returned often to Castor’s garden, where I learned botany first-hand from the country’s best botanist. Sometimes on my way I would see a pretty little herb growing in a tiny refuge among the dross of the city. I’d stop the litter and have one of my men bring me the plant. I'd ask Castor what it was. Most often he knew, along with a volume of lore around it. Sometimes, though, even Castor did not know the plant, and together the two of us would name it. I thought: How many of our plants, the ones we don’t use, don’t even have a name? There are whole plant tribes to be conquered, I told Castor one day, by naming them. And what a better use of our time that would be than marching and conquering the human tribes -- making a desert, as Drusus had said, and calling it peace.

  In Castor I’d found a direct descendant of Theophrastus. Together we bent over Theophrastus’ essay on silphium. The old man was right. Aristotle did speak of a valley in Cyrenaica where silphium grew in abundance.

  These months held some of the best days of my life. What pleasure it was to learn nature from nature, and from one of nature’s priests. What a contrast to the punishment I’d endured studying law.

  One day we stood admiring a myrtle which Castor had planted and was now twice my height. Its red stems and peeling gray bark made it a very pretty tree. Castor was telling me the details of how to grow myrtle, and its uses. “You know, you are a library yourself," I said. “Have you written any of this down?”

  “No. Time is too sweet to sit scribbling on a tablet.”

  “Someday, it will all be lost.”

  “Then,” Castor said, handing me a blossom from the myrtle, “you must write it.”