Dominus

by Steven Saylor

  Galen snorted. “And that is why, here in Rome, many a fellow who calls himself a physician was six months ago a barber, or a shoemaker, or a dung-collector!”

  “The man charged a handsome fee,” muttered Lucius.

  “Unlike myself. The first time I correctly diagnosed an illness and cured a patient, I knew I would never desire to do anything else for the rest of my life. Medicine is my passion and my calling, but it is not and never will be my livelihood. I never charge for my services, having no need to do so.”

  Lucius liked the sound of that.

  “Someone told my husband that you used to treat … gladiators,” said Paulina with a slight shudder. The idea seemed to both fascinate and repel her.

  “Indeed. After my studies I returned to Pergamum and was appointed chief physician for all the municipal gladiators. In some ways, my education was just beginning. The terrible wounds I sewed up, the complicated surgeries I performed! And the dissections—”

  “Of humans?” Lucius said, taken aback.

  “Of course not. Human dissections haven’t been allowed anywhere for hundreds of years, not since the first Ptolemies ruled Alexandria, when the physician Herophilus was allowed to cut up condemned criminals—some, it’s said, while they were still alive.”

  Little Gaius’s eyes grew wide at this detail. His parents stiffened but maintained stoic expressions.

  “When I say dissection,” said Galen, “I refer to the animals I’ve dissected, and also vivisected. The exotic creatures imported for shows in the arena at Pergamum were kept near the gladiators, so I had easy access to them. Some were quite unusual indeed, and all had much to teach me. Monkeys are the most interesting, since their insides most closely resemble those of humans.”

  Lucius frowned. What had wounded gladiators and vivisected animals—monkeys, indeed!—in common with a young Roman maiden who was wasting away? On the other hand, the young physician from Pergamum seemed very sure of himself; so sure, in fact, that he proceeded to put forth conditions.

  “If I am to treat the patient,” said Galen, “it is absolutely essential that you answer any and all questions I may ask, no matter how irrelevant or presumptuous they may seem to you. You must be completely honest with me at all times, even if you find the truth distasteful or embarrassing.”

  “What has my honesty to do with your ability to cure my daughter’s illness?”

  “A true and full picture of the circumstances is essential to my understanding.”

  “Do you not take my husband’s honesty for granted?” asked Paulina.

  Galen cocked his head and assumed the sardonic look that Lucius would come to know so well in the ensuing years. “You might be surprised at how often my patients and their carers try to mislead me, sometimes quite deliberately. For most people, bodily functions and trials of the flesh cause no end of squeamishness and embarrassment.”

  “Does nothing embarrass you, or make you squeamish?” asked Lucius.

  “If such a thing exists, I have yet to encounter it. Shall the examination commence?”

  * * *

  In the privacy of the girl’s room, with the physician’s assistants and her parents present, Galen examined the listless, apathetic Pinaria, peering into her eyes, nose, ears, and mouth. The girl sat on her bed, wearing a long-sleeved tunic that covered her from neck to toes, her only ornament an amulet of some sort worn on a necklace outside the tunic. Both the amulet and the chain from which it hung appeared to be made of gold. She avoided Galen’s gaze and when questioned about any discomfort she might be experiencing, responded with mumbles and shrugs. When her mother told her to speak up, the girl shut her mouth tightly and stared into space, her eyes bright with tears. Galen took her pulse several times, carefully noting the frequency and rhythm of the heartbeats and dictating his observations to one of his assistants, who scribbled on a wax tablet.

  “I’ll need to take her pulse again, an hour from now.”

  Lucius wondered if this was just a ruse to cadge a bit of food and wine. He could hardly host a visitor, even a physician, for an hour without offering something. “Shall we go back to the garden, then?”

  “You needn’t entertain me, Senator. If you have some books, I should be glad to pass the hour reading.”

  Lucius brightened. He was very proud of the family’s library. “Follow me to my study. I have a number of scrolls having to do with science and anatomy, including what I’m told are some rather rare volumes of Aristotle.”

  “In that case I should like my assistants to come with me, should I come across a passage worth copying.”

  Paulina and Gaius stayed behind while Galen followed Lucius down a short hallway and into a room lined with pigeonhole bookcases full of scrolls. The furnishings were sparse but exquisite. Lucius sat and invited Galen to do likewise. As there were only two chairs, the assistants sat on the floor, keeping still and quiet.

  “I noticed that your daughter wears an amulet.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m curious about the shape. It looks a bit like a cross, such as some Christians wear.”

  “I assure you it is no such thing!” said Lucius, with such vehemence that Galen was taken aback.

  “Do you have a personal grudge against the followers of Christ?”

  “I despise those atheists no more and no less than any other gods-fearing Roman. What makes you think I have a grudge against them?”

  “Ah, you see, this is precisely why I must have full and honest replies to any question I ask. The relevance is for your physician to decide. Let me explain. What if, in fact, you were engaged in a feud with some Christians? What if they wished to exact revenge on you, or had some other malicious intent?”

  “Are you saying my daughter might be the victim of some sort of spell or curse? I thought the Christians had only disdain for magic.”

  “Who knows what such people are capable of,” asked Galen, “living as they do outside ordinary society and beyond the restraints of normal religion? In my experience, all sorts of people cast spells and curses for all sorts of reasons, or pay someone else to do so. I pursue this line of questioning because your daughter wears an amulet, intended, I presume, to protect her from something.”

  Lucius sighed. “That amulet, as you call it, is an ancient family heirloom—so ancient and so weathered that its original form is no longer recognizable. You aren’t the first, and will not be the last, I’m sure, to remark on its resemblance to a cross. In fact it is, or was, a winged phallus.”

  “Ah! What you Romans call a fascinum.”

  “Yes. All such amulets represent the god Fascinus, the first deity known to the earliest people of Rome, older even than Saturn. Before all the other gods, there was the winged phallus that was seen to hover over the hearthfires of our ancestors.”

  Galen nodded. “And all these years later, you Romans put such amulets in the cribs of infants, to protect them from the Evil Eye—the malicious gaze of the envious. I am familiar with the custom.”

  “A rather larger fascinum is kept by the Vestal virgins, who bring it out on only one occasion, to be placed under the chariot of a commander celebrating a triumph. There, too, it deflects the Evil Eye.”

  “I see such charms everywhere I go.”

  Lucius shook his head. “The fascinum of the Pinarii is much more than a simple charm. It may in fact be the very first such amulet ever fashioned in Rome, modeled directly upon the god Fascinus, in that mysterious age before Prometheus gave the gift of writing to mankind. This is not just family lore. The emperor Marcus saw me wearing it on the day we both put on our manly togas, and took an interest in its history. He wrote a small treatise on the fascinum, drawing upon previous research done by no less a scholar than the emperor Claudius, the greatest of all Roman antiquarians.”

  “I had no idea,” said Galen.

  “But…”

  “Yes?”

  “There is … in fact … a small link to the Christians in the history of the fascinum.
I had a great-great-uncle who was … a Christian.” Lucius drew a deep breath. “For a while he wore this charm, perhaps thinking—mistakenly!—that it represented the cross upon which his so-called savior died. After the great fire, he was among the Christians arrested by Nero. The fascinum was taken from him—rescued, I should say—just before he was burned alive. It’s a distasteful story, not something I would ever casually discuss. What was it you said about your patients being embarrassed or squeamish? I suppose I feel both, thinking of that sordid episode of our family history. But now you understand why I’m so sensitive to any intimation that I or any other member of my household has any link whatsoever to the Christians, which we most certainly do not.”

  Galen nodded. “The fascinum didn’t protect your great-great-uncle, then. Nor does it seem to be a cure for your daughter’s ailment.”

  “Perhaps it’s of no use because of her gender. By tradition the fascinum is passed from father to son. Until Gaius turns fifteen, and receives the fascinum on the day he puts on his manly toga, the amulet is for me and me alone to wear. That is the tradition. But Pinaria’s ailment seems so intractable, so mysterious, I thought, perhaps, if I let her wear it…”

  “In my experience, no amulet ever cured any wearer of any disease.”

  “No?” said Lucius. “I’ve heard of cases where—”

  “The things one hears about, and the things that actually occur, are often two different things entirely. But let me correct myself. No amulet ever cured a wearer by means of some invisible, intangible, inexplicable—that is to say, magical—power. In Alexandria I encountered a boy who suffered from epilepsy, whose mother gave him an amulet to wear, rather crudely carved to resemble a crocodile, and thereupon he suffered no fits for five months. Then, through carelessness, the boy lost the amulet and straightaway the fits returned. Then his mother found the amulet, put it on the boy, and his fits again receded.”

  “But there you have it!” said Lucius. “It’s obvious that the amulet, or whatever demon or god it represented, must have—”

  “No, no. The amulet, you see, was not made of metal or stone, or carved from some common wood, but from a peony root. I carried out an experiment. I took the amulet from him, whereupon the fits returned. I found a fresh piece of peony root and had him wear that around his neck instead—and his fits ceased! It was something about the peony root that cured his epilepsy, not the amulet or whatever supernatural power the amulet was meant to represent. Why the peony root worked, we have no way of knowing, but I hypothesize it might be the action of minute particles released by the root, which the boy either inhaled or absorbed through his skin, for he was in the habit of touching it. So you see, the ‘obvious’ answer is not always the correct one. The skillful physician must not only learn the arts of medicine compiled over many centuries—the received knowledge of the past—but must also learn to observe, and to draw deductions from his observations.”

  “I see. But is medicine then just a matter of substances—of poisons and cures? Do the gods play no role in healing?”

  “I never said that. Belief in magic is misguided. Genuine worship of the gods is another matter. I noticed in your vestibule, besides the busts of your ancestors, two other statues—a bearded old man and a beautiful youth. In front of both were bronze dishes in which bits of incense had been burned. The youth is the god Antinous, of course. And the old man must be Apollonius of Tyana.”

  “Yes, in this household we devote special worship to Antinous. My late father became the first priest of his temple at the villa of the divine Hadrian. He actually saw Antinous in the flesh, here in Rome, before the young man perished in the Nile, sacrificing himself in place of Hadrian to thwart a curse. The priests in Egypt told Hadrian that his lover had become immortal and had joined the gods. Hadrian set up temples for the worship of Antinous. I’m told that such temples are all over the empire.”

  “Oh yes, I’ve visited many of his temples and seen many images of Antinous, first in my native Pergamum, and then in Alexandria, and in Antioch, and in every city I visited on my way to Rome. I think sometimes men and women go to those temples just to stare at the god’s statue.”

  Lucius, who missed the man’s sardonic tone, nodded and smiled. “Without boasting, I can tell you that many of those statues—certainly the best of them—come from my family’s workshop. The original statue, of which all others are copies, was done by my father, from the living model, at the request of Hadrian himself. My father also executed many statues of Hadrian, and then of his successor, Antoninus Pius, and many more statues of the rest of the imperial family, in both marble and bronze. Nowadays we produce an endless number of images, from life-size to trinkets, of both emperors, Marcus and Verus. The demand is greater than we can accommodate. Every Roman in the world wants an image of our beloved emperors in his house.”

  “You do such work yourself?” It was rare that Galen encountered any Roman of the upper classes who did anything a normal man might consider physical labor.

  “Do I deign to work with my own hands, you mean? Do I end the day covered in marble dust? My father certainly did, and he taught me to handle a chisel and drill as well as any other man. But nowadays we have a large workshop and a foundry with many artisans; it’s at the foot of the Aventine Hill, near the river. We also own several quarries and mines that produce the fine marbles and the metals for making bronze. I myself sculpt the most important designs and give final approval to all others, and I personally inspect the quality of every work that leaves the shop, from fluted columns to imperial portraits. Nothing leaves the workshop without my personal certification. Many is the day I arrive home with my face and hands and toga covered with marble dust, even if I never touched a chisel.

  “That statue of Antinous that you saw in the vestibule was made by my father. Hadrian loved that statue. He declared it perhaps the most perfect of all the images of the young god. So great was my father’s ability to breathe life into stone that Hadrian gave him a nickname—Pygmalion.

  “Father also made that statue of Apollonius of Tyana, in whose honor we light incense every day at sunrise and sunset. There’s a family connection there, too, you see. My grandfather was once imprisoned alongside the great wonder-worker when both gave offense to the emperor Domitian, who ordered them to be shackled and thrown to the lions. Apollonius proceeded to make a fool of the emperor, shaking off his chains and vanishing into thin air.”

  “I’ve heard that story. And your grandfather?”

  Lucius, who had recounted this tale many times, especially enjoyed this part. “Grandfather possessed no such supernatural power, and was forced to face a lion in the Flavian Amphitheater, with all of Rome looking on. Thanks to the instruction and inspiration he had received from Apollonius, my grandfather stared that lion into submission. Domitian had no choice but to set him free. Thus my grandfather lived to see the end of Domitian and the rescue of the empire by Nerva, and all the good emperors who followed.”

  Could the story be true? Galen had grown used to hearing tall tales from the Roman elite, and this one seemed particularly far-fetched. However accurate the story, Galen was beginning to realize that Lucius Pinarius was a more important and well-connected man than he had thought.

  “I know you share a birthday with the emperor Marcus. Have you known him since childhood?”

  “Oh, yes. Hadrian and my father deliberately threw us together as boys. Hadrian hoped that my love of sport would rub off on Marcus, and Father hoped that Marcus’s love of learning would rub off on me. We hit it off. For a long time we saw each other almost every day. I think I may be the only person who still calls him Verissimus—the nickname given him by Hadrian because he was such a truth-seeker, even as a child.”

  “You’re close, then?” Galen had met a number of prominent men since his arrival in Rome, but never anyone with a direct link to the imperial household.

  Lucius thought for a while before he answered. “I can’t say we’re close nowadays, thou
gh I still see him on official business having to do with sculptures and such. Were we ever close, even as boys?” Lucius shook his head. “The emperor is not an easy man to know. Even as a child, he often seemed apart from those around him. Always very thoughtful, always very precise in his speech—and quite often disappointed when those around him were not as thoughtful and precise. Not the sort to tell a joke, or do more than politely laugh at one. His fellow emperor is quite another matter. Though I’ve spent far less time in his company than I have in Marcus’s, I always feel more at ease with Verus. Everyone does. His intellect is just as sharp—our tutors always considered him the equal of Marcus—but he wears his learning lightly. Not the type to quote Seneca, or even Homer, for that matter.” He sighed. “May the gods bring him safely home! And Kaeso, as well.”

  “Kaeso?”

  “My brother. Twenty years younger than I. The warrior in the family. Off with Verus, fighting Parthians.”

  “May they both come home covered with glory,” said Galen.

  Lucius hummed thoughtfully. “All I really know of war—real war, not just stories in books—is from Kaeso. He writes me as often as he can. He’s seen more horror than glory. There was peace for so long under Antoninus, people forgot how horrible war could be.”

  “Yes,” said Galen. “The stories I heard, before I left Pergamum! That awful business at Seleucia…”

  “My brother was there.”

  “Was he?”

  “Such … an unfortunate business. First the city was saved by the Romans, then sacked and destroyed by us. Kaeso saw it all. He says there’s virtually nothing left of the city.”

  “And what a beautiful city it was.” Galen felt a stab of homesickness, tinged with dread. If such a fate could befall Seleucia, it could happen to Pergamum as well. The Romans and the Parthians both claimed the current war was entirely justified and necessary, having been started by the other. How many tens of thousands of innocent lives had been lost? How many more would be lost before the war was over?