The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  “You didn’t know what to look for,” Theogenes told him in a lofty tone.

  “You didn’t see anything at all,” his friend responded. “You were out in the courtyard.”

  “I’m not sure there was anything to see,” I said, a bit reluctantly. “I think maybe Hippocrates got that one wrong.”

  “What!” exclaimed Theogenes, grinning. “The immortal Hippocrates made a mistake?”

  “Well, he never did any dissections, did he?” I replied, smiling. “They had even more trouble about them in his day than we do in ours. He made the best guess he could without cutting anyone open.”

  “Hippocrates also said that in a man the vessels go through the testicles,” the other student went on, a bit hesitantly but as though Theogenes hadn’t spoken. “And that that’s why eunuchs can’t have children, because the passage is destroyed when the testicles are removed.”

  He looked at me curiously. An awkward silence fell, and everyone stared at me. Theogenes looked embarrassed. “How did they do it to you?” my questioner demanded. “Did it hurt much?”

  I felt isolated again, and quite sober. “I don’t remember,” I said after a moment. “I was very young when it was done.”

  My questioner looked down. “Sorry,” he said. “I was just curious.” I knew he was thinking of all the unpleasant things he’d ever heard about eunuchs.

  “You were brought up in Ephesus, weren’t you?” one of the others asked, in the uncomfortable silence. It could have been a casual question, but somehow it sounded probing, suspicious. “Why did you come to Alexandria?”

  But an Alexandrian pagan named Nikias came to my rescue before I had to answer that. “You didn’t need to ask whether he was Asian,” he said in a tone of forced lightness. He was one of the ones who’d looked sour when I arrived, and he watched me now with a glint of malice on his smooth plump face. “A more perfect Asian lisp I have never heard in my life. ‘Hippocrateeth seth that’ — no, I can’t do it.”

  On the face of it the words were an innocent joke, but I could feel the undertone of dislike, as I’d felt the test in the earlier question. My face went hot, and I began to get angry. After all, I’d been invited here, and I was as good a student as any of them. They had no business asking me embarrassing questions and making fun of me. I looked round at the faces in the lamplight, all watching me to see what I’d do. Theogenes still looked embarrassed, as though he alone had the grace to be ashamed of his friends’ bad manners. That checked my anger, and I forced a smile.

  “My accent’s the worst you’ve heard?” I said. “You’ve obviously never been to Ephesus. You should hear some of my fa— . . . my patron’s friends. ‘My dear and motht ethteemed Nikiath, the horthe that you were mentioning is thuch a treathure; I’d run her in a moment, only she jutht happenth to be in foal at the minute; really, my dear fellow, I’ve no nothion how she managed it!’ ” The voice was one Thorion and I had amused ourselves with since we were small, and its original was in fact old Pythion, but you didn’t have to know him to find it funny. The tension broke, and the other students roared with laughter.

  “By my head, that’s good,” said Theogenes. “Did your patron run horses, then?”

  “In Ephesus they called him master of the races. Maybe you’ve heard of him — the clarissimus Theodoros.”

  Theogenes shook his head, but one of the others, a Sidonian, immediately exclaimed that he’d seen some of my father’s horses win a race in Tyre, and the whole conversation shifted to chariot racing and the favorite drivers at the local hippodrome. When the group broke up and went home, the others wished me good health with all the warmth of old friends. I responded in the same tone. I had enjoyed the evening as a whole, and I felt that I’d passed some difficult test. But I also resolved to be careful with the others, and never drink too much in their company. I would need to keep my wits about me when I talked to them.

  I put off writing to Thorion for another month. But when September had begun, I knew I had to write something, anything, to let him and Maia know that I was safe, before the winter came and it became impossible to send letters. I knew too that Thorion would certainly be in Constantinople by then. So one clear, warm evening I sat down in my room, took out a sheet of papyrus and some pens, and wrote “Chariton of Ephesus to his patron Theodoros, son of Theodoros of Ephesus. Very many greetings.” Then I sat and stared at the papyrus for a few minutes. Through the window I could see my neighbor sweeping her room; she waved to me and I waved back. I had to be careful what I said. I would send the letter on a grain ship, and it was not unknown for the sailors to open correspondence to amuse themselves during their voyage. I chewed the end of my pen. Maia would have deplored the habit. “You get plenty to eat at your proper meals!” she’d say. “You don’t need to go gnawing at reed pens like a mouse!”

  The thought made me smile. Dear, proper, worrying Maia; dear Thorion, scowling with concern. I dashed off the rest of the letter.

  I wished to write to Your Excellency beforehand, but was in doubt whether you would yet be in Constantinople. I hope you are well, and that no tiresome persons have troubled you with their enmity. For my part, I am very happy here in Alexandria, and cannot think of any greater contentment than to live as I live now. The doctors of the Museum think well of me, and say I am making great progress in my studies. I am assistant to one Philon, a Jew affiliated with the Museum, and I lodge at his house, near the Gate of the Sun. He is a skilled and kind master, and I owe much to him. Greet Maia for me. Accept, dear Theodoros, my great esteem. I remain your obedient servant.

  It wasn’t much of a letter. But if I sent this, he would know that I was safe and happy and be able to write back to me. And to say more, to describe to him how I was living, would be simply to show him the gap that had opened between us, something I was afraid to do. So I folded the sheet over, sealed it, and addressed it to His Excellency Lord Theodoros son of Theodoros, at the office of the praetorian prefect. That should reach him.

  I got up, poured myself a drink of water, then went downstairs, carrying the letter. It was the evening before the Sabbath, and the rest of the household was downstairs setting out candles. Philon observed the Jewish laws carefully, as I’d told Theogenes, and the Sabbath was kept by everyone in the house, even the pagan slaves, though they and I did not go to the ceremonies. Philon was not one of the missionary Jews one sometimes meets preaching in the marketplace, and he never tried to convince me to take part in any Jewish rites — though from what I could see, the Jewish ceremonies weren’t so very different from the Christian ones with which I was familiar. Jews read the Scriptures in the same translation and sang the psalms to some of the same tunes. Their synagogues were covered with paintings and mosaics depicting many of the same scenes I knew from church, and they prayed in the same style. Of course, the Alexandrian Jews are a race apart. Many of the educated ones are Platonists, as are many of the educated Christians. Like Adamantios, they are well read in the pagan classics, and they interpret their Scriptures allegorically. Philon was of another type, of some stricter Jewish sect which didn’t like pagan literature or pagan philosophy. But he seemed rather embarrassed about it, and certainly never tried to impose it on anyone else.

  Deborah smiled at me. “Going out?”

  “I have a letter to my patron; I’m going down to the harbor to post it,” I told her. “Is there anything you want me to fetch along the way?”

  “Could you buy some olives and some fresh cheese?” she asked. “That will save us wanting on the Sabbath. I’ll give you the money for it — here. Thank you.”

  I looked at Philon. He pulled at his lip. “There’s that preparation for old Serapion . . .”

  “Olives, fresh cheese, bryony, and opium,” I said. “A good Sabbath to you, then.”

  The Eunostos Harbor was on the other side of the city from the Gate of the Sun. But I was used to long walks now, and used the time to think about medical problems. The streets were crowded again; the cool dusk b
rought people out to buy or sell or just to stroll about gossiping and looking at the world. Whores of all prices were looking for customers. The common girls stood in the porticoes and smiled, pulling up their thin linen tunics to show off their legs and inviting passing men to come have a drink with them; occasionally an expensive courtesan dressed in fine silk rode past in a gilded sedan chair, looking scornfully at her poorer sisters. I picked up an admirer as well, a nervous old man in a garish orange tunic who followed me from Soma Square down to the end of the Tetrapylon and then ran after me to offer me an alabaster flask of frankincense if I’d come home with him. “You’re a beautiful boy,” he told me, making sheep’s eyes. “I’ll be good to you.”

  “No thank you,” I told him. “I’m a eunuch and a medical student.”

  “But I don’t mind that!” he said, laying hold of my arm. “I’m not available,” I told him firmly, and jerked my arm away.

  He looked woebegone, and I smiled, nodded politely, and set off toward the harbor at a brisk walk. He followed me a bit further, then gave up; I saw him heading back to Soma Square to look for someone else. I remembered how shaken I’d been by similar offers four months and a lifetime before, and smiled again.

  When I arrived at the Eunostos Harbor, the Pharos was just being lit. The dock workers had finished the afternoon’s work and were heading noisily for the taverns or for home; the round-bellied merchant ships creaked against the docks, rising and falling with the small waves. I found a grain transport that was due to leave for Constantinople on the next day, and I gave my letter to the master, promising him that Thorion would reward him for his trouble in delivering it. Then I came back along the Canopic Way. It was dark by then. The porticoes of the Tetrapylon were all lit, shining with lamps and glittering with merchandise: I had no trouble finding the cheese and olives. The shop I usually visited for drugs was off the Soma Street, not far from the square. It was a narrow, dark little shop, its front covered with crumbling plaster, with nothing to show what it sold; Philon had pointed it out to me. Inside, the walls were covered with shelves full of lime-wood boxes of dried herbs and brass jars of eye ointments, glowing in the light of a single lamp. It smelled of myrrh, aloe, cassia, the strong aromatics drowning the scent of the less pleasant herbs. The shopkeeper was preparing something in the back room when I entered; I rapped on the counter and he came in, recognized me with a grin, and provided the opium and bryony without too much bargaining. I set off home.

  It was darker near the Gate of the Sun; the shopkeepers here had locked up and gone home. I walked more quickly, keeping the road between me and the wastelands of the Broucheion quarter. My feet seemed already to know the way to Philon’s door; it was odd how I felt at home there. When I came up to it I heard the family singing, welcoming the Sabbath, and I stopped to listen. It was such a glad song, ringing out into the dark, full of the warmth of the house, the happiness of the family.

  They stopped singing, and Philon said the blessing. Then I heard him ask Harpokration whether I was back yet. “I hope he didn’t have any trouble finding the bryony,” he said.

  “He shouldn’t walk about at night,” said Deborah. “It’s not safe, particularly for a foreigner and a eunuch. And to post a letter to his patron! Not much of a patron, letting him come here with nothing arranged in advance and no money. I wonder what the truth of that story is.”

  I’d been about to knock and announce myself, but this comment stopped me short. How suspicious did my story sound to them? Had they guessed anything? I stood where I was, the blood beating in my ears, my hand still raised to knock on the door.

  “You’re worried about him?” Philon asked in an amused tone. “Such a change in a few short months! You used to be worried that he’d corrupt and deprave Theophila.”

  It was the first I’d heard of that. Deborah had concealed her feelings well: she had never treated me with anything but courtesy and consideration.

  “Don’t tease,” she told her husband. “That was only at first. He’s a sweet boy, and the only thing Theophila could learn from him is some good manners. You can tell he’s from a noble house, he’s so polite — and he wouldn’t chew with his mouth open, Theophilion dear, do mind yourself! I do find it strange, though, that he was sent here with nothing arranged in advance, and obliged to sell his ancestral jewels to stay alive. Something in that house must have gone wrong. That, or his patron’s treated him shockingly.”

  I drew myself further into the archway of the door and listened. I felt that I had to know what they suspected, so that I could take steps to guard myself. The street was dark and empty, the wood of the door rough against my cheek; gold light seeped through a crack in it.

  “I think there’s more to it than he’s saying,” Philon said thoughtfully. “He’s a very bright lad, and very well educated: can quote Homer by the yard. It’s my guess that his patron didn’t want him to come here.”

  “Do you think he’s really a slave?” asked Deborah. “That he’s run off?”

  “Nooo. That’s what Adamantios thinks, but I’m inclined to disagree. Chariton doesn’t act like a slave — I don’t think he knows how to do so much as sweep a floor. But I don’t think his patron wrote those letters. I asked about Theodoros of Ephesus. He’s a wealthy man of consular rank, and all the family’s money comes from imperial service. There’s a son at court now, another Theodoros. He probably doesn’t think of medicine as a career at all, and didn’t want his client to take it up when a more lucrative career was available.”

  “So why would he come here against his patron’s wishes?” That was Theophila. “I feel sorry for him. It’s horrible what the Persians did to him. And he’s so good-looking.”

  Philon laughed. “And what do Chariton's looks have to do with it?”

  “Oh, nothing. I just feel sorry for him, particularly if his patron won’t help him, and he’s been so unlucky already. And I don’t see why he came here, if he could be supported at court and get very rich.”

  “ ‘The first requirement for the study of healing,’ ” Philon said, quoting our common master Hippocrates, “ ‘is a natural disposition to it.’ And that is certainly something our Chariton has. Even if he did run away, he was quite right to do so: a gift like that shouldn’t be wasted. He’ll make a great doctor. But I heard something else about this Theodoros.”

  There was a pause; I imagined Philon waiting expectantly for the rest of his family to ask him what. I waited too, holding my breath.

  “What?” demanded Theophila, as expected, and giggled.

  “It seems he has a daughter,” said Philon, “a very beautiful girl, with every expectation of a great dowry. The governor of Asia wanted to marry her. You’re too young to remember when Gallus ruled here, Theophilion, but you must have heard stories. Well, this Festinus is much the same sort, only instead of being noble he is of very low birth, and the family of Theodoros was extremely reluctant to marry the girl to the brute.”

  “Poor lady!” said Theophila. “So what happened?”

  “She disappeared a month before her wedding. That was last April, just before Chariton turned up here in Alexandria. There was a scandal about it through the whole province in Asia. The girl’s father claims to have no idea where she went; the governor is furious, but has to believe him.”

  I held my breath. The conclusion about myself seemed inevitable. I wondered fleetingly if Philon would still let me study with him. I thought perhaps not, not if he was certain of my sex. I wondered what he meant to do about it.

  “You think Chariton had something to do with the girl’s disappearance?” asked Deborah.

  “Mmm. He says he’s the cousin of her tutor. They say that her brother was involved in the disappearance, but to spirit off a young noblewoman, you need more than one person involved in the plot. My guess is that Chariton made some arrangements for her, or is suspected of having done so, and was sent to Alexandria to get him out of the governor’s way — perhaps by the brother, the younger Theodoros, an
d not the father. It would explain the suddenness of his arrival here, and the lack of money. I wonder which Theodoros he wrote that letter to? He wouldn’t be able to send it to Ephesus this time of year; my guess is it went to his friend, the younger man, in Constantinople.”

  They say that eavesdroppers never hear anything good of themselves, but I could prove that false. I had to stand on the step a moment longer, trying to contain my joy. How could they not suspect the truth? Was it just that I was good at medicine, that the truth was too outrageous for them to guess at? It didn’t matter: I was safe.

  I knocked on the door, and Harpokration opened it and let me in. “Greetings!” I told the family. “Olives, fresh cheese, white bryony, and opium. And here’s your change.”

  “Have you eaten?” asked Deborah. “Then sit down, have something. You look happy.”

  “I am,” I told them. “I was just thinking how much this city has become my home. Thanks to you.”

  That autumn I discovered why Philon had thought a Christian assistant would be particularly useful. We began to get a lot of quartan fevers, dropsies, and enteritic fevers among our patients, and particularly among those of the lower classes. A person with a reasonably large family, or even a slave in a good household, stands a good chance of recovering from these. But poor men or women falling ill often had no one to nurse or even feed them; they tried to keep on working, wore themselves out, and died unless they could be got into a hospital.

  The big hospitals of Alexandria were charitable establishments controlled by the popular archbishop, Athanasios. They were provided at the expense of the church, and in them many desperately ill people were nursed and fed until they either recovered or died. As such they were worthy and admirable institutions. But they gave Philon no end of trouble. The problem was that the attendants at these hospitals were nearly all monks. I hadn’t encountered monks before I came to Alexandria — there aren’t any in Asia. I’d heard them mentioned, but as dirty, stupid peasants, men who’d run away from their lands to avoid having to pay taxes. The Egyptians, however, greatly admired the monks — they admire all ascetics, pagan or Christian. After meeting a few, I had to admit that they weren’t just lazy tax evaders. They were the stuff that made the martyrs: passionately devout, single-minded, selfless, recklessly and patiently nursing the victims of the most contagious and dangerous diseases. But they were also dirty, illiterate, ignorant, and, worst of all, fanatical. They didn’t like taking patients on the recommendation of a Jewish doctor.