Death at Pergamum

by Albert Noyer

  "Harmless," Apollonios commented. "Hygeia feeds the god's sacred serpents. Panacea soothes the ill with her music."

  "They are your daughters?"

  He nodded and glanced up at the darkening circle of sky in the oculus. "We may just have time to see Hadrian's library. Come, Aristides."

  Accompanying the physician outside, Getorius felt Arcadia's absence. She should be here to see the temple and library, noticing things I miss, asking Apollonios questions. She told me to trust her, so I'll try to be more understanding when I get back.

  The library was located beyond a monumental entrance to the Asklepion that faced the Sacred Way Lydia had pointed out. The donor's name, Klaudius Charax, was on the pediment inscription. Although it was late afternoon, several pilgrims still tried to enter. After priests questioned each one, most were turned away. Getorius noticed. "Apol-lonios, why aren't they letting everyone in?"

  "That entrance separates the profane world from the sacred precinct. Women far along in pregnancy and those with no hope of a cure are not allowed inside."

  "So, no possible still births or deaths in the god's presence?"

  "You might put it so," Apollonios stiffly conceded, then indicated the two-story building ahead. "Our library is not as magnificent as that at Ephesos, nonetheless, we have an excellent collection of writings, even papyri from an ancient acropolis library."

  "Up there?" Getorius looked toward buildings on the rise of land to the northeast. Trajan's temple was tinted light ochre by the late sun. "Herakles tried to tell us about the acropolis."

  Apollonios grunted, "Ancient Pergamon, continually sacked by barbarians."

  "Thus providing work for 'arrow removers'?"

  Getorius's sarcasm was lost when Aristides opened the library's bronze doors and warned, "You have little time, Master. Incubation candidates await you at the theatre."

  "Then look inside quickly," Apollonios ordered. "In that far apse is an image of the deified Hadrian. Around the walls are two levels of cabinets that hold the writings. Reading tables are in the center."

  "I had hoped to study medical texts at Constantinople. Here, perhaps?"

  "If your Greek is learned enough."

  "Master."

  "Yes, Aristides, let us go dispense hope to those at the theater."

  Ignored without a parting word, Getorius trailed after the two, passing pilgrims who limped or were being carried on stretchers to the theater. When he was close, he estimated that the semi-circular seats could hold three thousand persons, but fewer than a hundred waited to hear Apollonios speak. Incredibly, Getorius recognized the nasal voice of Basina Bobo complaining loudly about the time she had spent waiting on cold marble for something to happen. She had seated herself in the front row, wearing an elegant white tunic with floral decorations and gold threadwork around the neckline and sleeves. Colored glass pendants dangled from her earlobes. Hermias sat next to his mistress, holding the medicine case on his knees. On her other side, Flavius slumped down, his straw hat tilted against the lowering sun.

  While I was in the villa, Basina must have pestered Herakles about bringing her here. She's dressed up to impress the priests with her importance. He spotted the guide three rows behind her and started up side stairs to sit alongside him.

  "I didn't expect you to be here with Basina Bobo."

  "Asterios, I told her we would visit the Asklepion tomorrow, yet she was like water wearing away a stone, demanding that I bring her."

  "You did the correct thing otherwise we would have heard her complaints throughout the night."

  "She will sleep in the women's dormitory tonight, to dream of cures for her imagined illnesses. Apollonios will explain."

  "I did meet him. He doesn't think much of me as a surgeon, but it could just be arrogance in letting me know he's a Pergemene physician."

  "Pergemene? Ah, no Asterios, like me, Apollonios is Thracian by birth."

  "Thracian? That explains a Latin accent I couldn't place."

  "A great physician, yet if a man is too confident, that man will be destroyed."

  "That sounds like a paraphrase of lines from Rhesus."

  Herakles grinned. "I, too, Asterios, have seen Laertes perform."

  Getorius glanced around the area. "What is the tunnel entrance across the field? It leads to the larger of the round buildings."

  "Yes, to what you Latins would call a sanitarium. Patients walk barefoot through long tunnel darkness. Their gradual passing from brightness, in which they knew illness,

  to one of darkness and mystery, prepares their psyche to accept healing."

  "Psyche?"

  A person's soul or mind as the center of consciousness." Herakles laughed at Getorius's quizzical look. "You are thinking, Asterios, that I do not sound like myself. I will be honest. I have heard the physician say this many times to patients."

  Onstage, Aristides clapped his hands for silence to introduce Apollonios.

  The sun cast his long shadow across the floor toward a small temple about three-hundred paces beyond the theater. A light breeze carried the noxious stench of burned chicken feathers and skin from its altar to the theater.

  Herakles snickered, "Sacrifices at the Temple of Hygeia and Panacea. As are serpents, the cockerel is sacred to Asklepios."

  "And not bad eating for the priests," Getorius quipped. "Herakles, I'm in a totally pagan, Hellene, as you say, environment. Was Epiphania's the only Christian church at Pergamum?"

  "A vacant basilica stands at the lower acropolis market," Herakles said. "This district continues its decline year after year. At Elaea, the harbor silts up. Acropolis dwellings are unfit for humans, and half of Roman Pergamum is abandoned ruins. Yet our Basileus does nothing."

  "Is that why you're with the Blue Faction?"

  He turned away. "The Physician will speak to the ill now."

  Apollonios had put on a golden tunic and draped a white veil over his head. Backed by a low stage wall, the physician raised his voice to resonate through the crowd as he explained the causes of illnesses.

  "The great Hippocrates taught that the effects on the body of cold, warmth, sun, air, and climate cause diseases. For Plato and Aristotle these were divine manifestations. Apollo is the sun, his offspring, Asklepios, is air. Apollo adapts his course to the seasons and imparts to the air its healthfulness. Indeed, as Thales tells us, 'All things are full of gods.' I am privileged to be part of a sacred priesthood."

  "When are you going to examine us?" Basina interrupted, her harsh voice carrying through the audience. "We don't need to know all that nonsense." As she looked around with a smug grin, a few in the crowd called out approval.

  "Domina," Apollonios said evenly, "you became ill over a period of time. Have patience now."

  "I always been sick," she retorted, "and no jack mule physician ever helped me."

  Flavius leaned over and whispered to his wife, but she pulled away and shouted, "I'll say what I want. I'm paying to be here."

  Suppressing annoyance at the woman's rudeness, Apollonios continued, "The art of healing has three factors. The disease. The patient. The physician. The disease is an imbalance. A practitioner is a servant of the art, thus the patient must cooperate with him in his treatments. Some believe diseases are brought on by the wrath of the gods or by demons. They assert that evil spirits can be cast out by incantations, a pretension that is rejected by all competent physicians. Hippocrates recognized that epilepsia, 'The Sacred Disease,' is largely hereditary and no more divine than any other. He called pseudo-physicians, 'magicians, purifiers, and charlatans'."

  "Like that jack-mule in Greece," Basina jeered.

  This time no one supported her outburst. A palpable sense of expectation had taken hold of the crowd. Getorius also felt it. This pagan priest has cast a spell of hope that reflects in the faces of the ill. Look at the attention they're giving Apollonios, as if each person considers him- or herself about to be cured.

  "We at the Asklepion look into the entire person,
" the physician continued. "Body, mind, and what we call psyche. Here, diseases are treated by music, drugs that are applied both inside and outside a patient, and dream interpretation." He glanced at Getorius. "Rarely by use of the knife. Close is the connection between the body and mind of a patient, and thus between physical and mental illnesses and their remedies."

  Basina stood up and pointed beyond the stage toward long, wooden buildings. "I heard that we sleep over there in one of those places, dream, and are cured. True?"

  Apollonios replied in a caustic tone, "Domina, my next instruction. Indeed, the dream-healings we call 'incubations,' are important aspects of our therapy."

  "How does that happen?" a sallow-faced man called down.

  "Either Asklepios reveals the method a patient must follow as a cure, or he or she is immediately cured. Yet even Hippocrates admits that dreams are divine and must have priests who interpret them and understand the art of healing through such signs."

  Basina demanded, "When do I go there?"

  A patient, emboldened by the woman, demanded, "What other healing sites are here?"

  "Sir, the sanitarium treatment rooms are across the courtyard, where therapies take place. Also sacred springs and a healing mud pool."

  "Where is that?"

  Apollonios turned to point. "There, near the men's incubation rooms, yet I caution that these must only be used under the supervision of shrine attendants."

  The sun was below the horizon now and a chilling wind arose as twilight set in.

  Apollonios stepped away to let Aristides assign dormitory rooms.

  The priest indicated attendants standing nearby. "Men with numbered room tokens may find a porter. Women will follow."

  "Where do we eat?" Basina demanded. "I didn't have any supper."

  Aristides told her, "To insure the induction of a propitious dream, patients take no food before falling asleep."

  "Rats," she muttered and poked Hermias. "Mix me a tonic."

  Her husband stood up, holding his room token. Basina pulled him back. "Bobo, you need to get rid of those ugly moles on your face. Where will you be?"

  He looked at his token. "Room five of the men's quarters, in case you need me."

  Basina rubbed the muscled arm of Hermias in a masturbatory motion. "Why would I need you? My slave has everything I want and he'll definitely be nearby."

  As the patients filed down to the dormitories, Getorius remarked, "Herakles, it would be difficult to imagine a more unpleasant woman. Her husband takes her abuse, and Hermias as a slave can't protest her treatment of him."

  "Asterios, he cannot speak."

  "What do you mean?"

  "Have you heard him say even a single word?"

  "No. Come to think of it, I haven't."

  Herakles explained, "The woman's husband told me that a former owner had the slave's tongue mutilated for some crime. The hair band conceals his slave brand, but she insists that Hermias wear a slave collar under his tunic."

  "Flavius told me how he bought him, but didn't mention anything else. That explains why the slave is so docile."

  "Yet, Asterios, even the smallest insect fights back when provoked." The guide stood up. "Now, I must return to the Poseidon."

  "I still regret that Arcadia didn't come with me. Even if she couldn't hear Apollonios speak, she would want to see the Asklepion. You said the mansio wasn't far away. Could you send Brisios here with her? It's still light outside."

  Herakles hesitated a moment before admitting, "Asterios, your wife is not there."

  "Not there? What do you mean?"

  "Just as I left with the Bobos, that deaconess came with a carriage for her and the widows."

  "What, Herakles? Where did Lydia take them?"

  He shrugged uncertainty. "Who can know the mind of a woman?"

  Getorius grasped his wrist and warned, "Don't play the fool with me! Why did you let her go?" He shook free, but said nothing. "In Hades's name, man, tell me where she went!"

  Nervous, glancing down at the hem of his tunic, Herakles mumbled, "I will be honest, Asterios. I...I have no idea where your wife has gone."

  CHAPTER XI

  The sour smell of spoiled food fouled the evening air, a stench that came from stalls along a portico facing the paved street. After a day of selling produce, vendors carried baskets of wilted vegetables back to their carts or left rotting fruit lying in the gutter.

  Arcadia, jostled alongside Maria in the darkening carriage, looked across at Lydia, determined to get answers. "Deaconess, why has Epiphania lied about being dead?" When Lydia made no response, she repeated, "Deaconess?"

  Without looking at her, Lydia replied, "The presbytera will explain."

  Seated next to Lydia, a nervous Melodia wrung her shawl. "We've only learned that Epiphania did not die in that fire. I don't at all like what's going on."

  "Indeed," Maria scolded, "this deception is poor incentive for us to endow a

  church."

  Melodia leaned over to look out the carriage window. "Where are we going?"

  "We're passing through Pergamum's marketplace," Lydia said.

  She threw her shawl down on her lap. "You know that's not what I meant!"

  "Epiphania will explain," the deaconess repeated.

  The carriage left the market area to enter a forum flanked by a temple, senate house, and basilica. None of the buildings looked well-maintained.

  It's futile to ask about our destination, Arcadia mused, but perhaps I can get Lydia to talk to me by telling her what I know. "Deaconess, when we met with Pulcheria and Ignatia, I was surprised to learn of women ministers, even bishops. They're almost unheard of in our Western church. On what do you base their ordinations?"

  "Epiphania will tell you everything."

  "Then you really don't know?"

  Stung by the rebuke, Lydia glared at Arcadia. "At the beginning of the Book of Apocalypse, John says he was caught up in the Holy Spirit and told to write to the Seven Churches in Asia. Pergamum was one of them. The Apostle wrote, 'Jesus Christ...he who loves us...made of us a royal house, to serve as priests of his God and Father.' Epiphania believes that 'made of us a royal house' means all Christians, thus both male and female, may serve as priests, just as God created them."

  Arcadia agreed, "I admit that does sound all-inclusive."

  "Epiphania says that women have served the Church in the past, and certainly Maria Theotokos, 'the Bearer of God,' gives special protection to Christian New Rome."

  "Special protection?" Arcadia wondered. "How is that?"

  "Epiphania points out that no barbarians ever breached the city's walls. A

  generation ago, Rome itself was violated. Look at our African provinces, where Vandals have captured Carthage."

  Maria asked about what else the Apocalypse had said concerning Pergamum.

  Lydia pulled a small bound Testament from her sleeve. She found a passage and held the page near her window to catch the waning light.

  "'To the angel of the assembly at Pergamum write: These are the things that he says who has the long, sharp two-edged sword: I know where you are dwelling, that is, where the throne of Satan is; and yet you keep on holding fast my name, and you did not deny your faith in me even in the days of Antipas, my witness, the faithful one who was killed by your side, where Satan is dwelling'."

  Puzzled, Arcadia asked, "I don't understand what that has to do with us."

  "Epiphania believes that Satan's throne is on the acropolis and that Apollonios and his shrine priests serve him, along with any bishop who refuses to ordain women."

  "She equates bishops with pagans? What else did John say?"

  "I won't read all of what was written to the angel. The passage ends, 'Therefore repent. If you do not I am coming to you quickly, and I will war with them with the long sword of my mouth.' Epiphania says she is waging that war."

  Arcadia reflected, "Epiphania says. Epiphania believes. Epiphania points out." The presbytera sounds like a fanatic and s
he certainly influenced Lydia. "Is your presbytera from Pergamum?"

  "No, Trapezus, in northern Anatolia."

  Arcadia recalled, "That's where Ignatia said she was sent. 'Exiled' was her word."

  Lydia permitted herself a slight smile. "The bishop is idolized by Epiphania. The presbytera's father was a Hun captured in that tribe's last raid into Roman Armenia. He was sold as a slave at Trapezus, then freed and married Epiphania's mother. Other children made fun of the half-Hunnic girl's looks."

  Lydia fell silent. At the end of the forum, Andros turned the carriage mules to the right. They went eastward, passing houses and apartments before reaching an area of abandoned buildings. Weeds and stunted trees overgrew ruins in vacant blocks. Arcadia felt uneasy about her blighted surroundings. Depressing. As Herakles said, most of Pergamum's activity is near the Asklepion.

  It was near full dusk now. The air was chilly enough for Maria and Melodia to draw shawls back over their shoulders. After about a mile, Andros veered the carriage left, onto a street that looked equally desolate. A short distance farther, torches burned at the entrance gate of a villa. The flames cast a feeble light on the brick walls of an immense, flat-roofed building just beyond.

  Astounded at its size, Arcadia asked, "Deaconess, what is that structure?"

  "The Serapion is an abandoned temple dedicated to Apis, an Egyptian god."

  "This is where Epiphania is hiding?" Maria demanded. "In a pagan temple?"

  Lydia's answer warned the trio, "None of you must tell that you came here."

  The carriage jolted to a stop at the near side of a courtyard. Andros opened the carriage door for the women to step out, and then took a torch from an iron holder in the enclosure's wall.

  Lydia said, "We follow the porter."

  The old man led the way toward the gurgling sound of a river beyond the wall's crumbled brickwork. Before reaching the waterway, Andros stopped at a side entrance to unlock a door. Inside, a barnyard smell of manure came from a stable where dark shapes of cattle and sheep were barely visible. To the right, the immense bulk of the Apis temple blocked out a square of twilight sky. The porter's torch revealed gigantic human sculptures supporting the colonnade of a smaller courtyard with twin rectangular pools. Both were drained of water. Beyond the rear portico, the pinnacle of a high round tower loomed black against the sky.