Gods and Legions

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by Michael Curtis Ford


  Like you, Brother, he was a philosopher, pursuing many of your own intellectual paths, while at the same time he was a sensualist like me, seeking knowledge of astronomy and the healing arts. But here the differences between you and me, Brother, become truly apparent, beginning with our own, individual impressions of him, for when you and I spoke about him in later years I found that we could not even agree on his physical appearance. Whereas I saw a not uncomely man of medium height, with intelligent eyes and a straight, aristocratic nose, you saw a gaze that was wild and wandering, and nostrils that breathed hate and scorn. Where other men saw a perfect runner's build and a regal bearing to his head and shoulders, you foresaw that nothing good could come of a man with such a weaving head and shifty feet. Where I saw a well-trimmed and fashionable beard, neat hair, and a fleshy, sensuous mouth, you saw pride and contempt in the lineaments of his face, senseless, disordered thinking, opinions formed with no basis in reason or morality. 'What a monster,' you wrote, 'the Roman Empire is nourishing within itself.' It is perhaps wrong of me to complain, for your premonitions as to Julian's fate have certainly been more accurate than my own. Even the rabble at Antioch years later, who laughed as he strode through their streets, referring to him as a Cecrops, one of Zeus's mythical apes, because of his simian beard and broad shoulders, have more reason than I to boast of the truthfulness of their impression. Yet at that time, he was more to be pitied than feared, more to be admired for his intellect than derided for his stubborn dogmatism, and his was a friendship that I valued, as I still cherish its memory.

  His family — father, uncles, even his brother Gallus — had been murdered by his cousin, the Emperor Constantius, as soon as they came of age or rose to sufficient rank as to be perceived a threat by the paranoid emperor. Only Julian survived, due to the Emperor's view of him as a harmless moron interested only in philosophy and books, and perhaps also to the protectiveness of his early guardians, the saintly Marcus of Arethusa and his brother ascetics. These good men raised the poor boy in a devout Christian setting within the silent cloisters of their monastery, imbuing him with the spirit of such stirring models as the holy Nicholas of Myra, the patron saint of children, who even as an infant was known to be so pious as to observe Church fasts by refusing to suck the breasts of his mother, to her great awe and even greater discomfort, and the child martyr Saint Lucia, who died during the persecutions of the Emperor Diocletian, in horrible depiction of which she is portrayed in her icons as smiling beatifically, with her lovely eyes sitting beside her in a bowl.

  A more naive traveler to Athens than Julian you never did see. He had been so sheltered by the overwhelming protectiveness of his tutors that his ignorance upon arriving in the worldly city was almost comical. Until his arrival in Athens, the Scriptures and Homer had been his entire life, and indeed his lack of worldliness may go far toward explaining why he was perhaps the only intelligent man in all of Athens not deeply disappointed by the city's faded glories. Rather, he praised his good fortune, as though some great feast were being celebrated, quoting his precious Iliad in having gained 'gold for bronze, the value of a hundred oxen for the price of nine.'

  Nevertheless, for one so abstemious as Julian in his sensual pleasures, he was remarkably open-minded in his spiritual ones. Before I made his acquaintance, he had even spent several months studying in Pergamum and Ephesus, ancient centers of pagan learning and dark magic, where he had developed a taste for the rather exotic side of human spirituality. He was forced, however, to remain discreet in this regard, out of deference to his role as the closest living male relative of Constantius, the Defender of Christianity, who was of mixed mind about the wisdom of allowing any pagan sects to practice their ancient rites at all. The Emperor, a devout Christian, had in the past meted out harsh treatment to officials who had displayed too personal an interest in the gods of their ancestors, and he would not have taken kindly to even the slightest whisper of Julian's interest in these affairs.

  Despite the Emperor's dictates, however, the common people continued to follow age-old custom. That autumn, as had been the case for a thousand autumns past, the squares and streets of the Eleusis temple sanctuary, eleven miles from Athens, thronged with masses of worshipers celebrating the Greater Mysteries, reenacting the myth of the two goddesses Demeter and Kore. This was perhaps the one occasion during the year when the ancient cults even came close to regaining their glories of old. For the rest of the year, a priest's dedication to the service of the pagan gods was an exercise in misery and hunger, of begging alms and fruitlessly urging passersby to return to the old religions.

  But the ceremony of the Greater Mysteries was different. A number of preliminary rites were performed openly in the streets: the public procession of initiates to the sanctuary of Eleusis, their purification in the bay of Phalerum, and other secondary rites. Julian, of course, could only observe these public celebrations of the Eleusinian mysteries from afar, as a bystander. Yet his scholarly interest in the event did not allow him to completely avoid participation 'for research purposes,' as he said, although not, I suspected at the time, without some youthful rebellion at the constrictions of the Emperor. He secretly sought out the chief minister of the rite, the hierophant, convincing the old man of his sincerity in wishing to be introduced to the community of Eleusinian worshipers, and gaining permission to actually participate in several of the secret culminating rituals. The ceremony he attended lasted three days, taking place in the interior of the sanctuary. When he described it to me after the fact, I was astonished.

  'Julian — you're a Christian!' I exclaimed. 'Why do you participate in these pagan practices?' The whole notion was distasteful to me in the extreme.

  He shrugged, though not without a hint of defiance, as if it were merely an excess of uncut wine in which he had indulged. 'I am a scholar, not a religious partisan. I seek to understand. Surely you can't deny me that.'

  'But not only do you risk your head, if Constantius were to even discover it, but you risk corrupting your faith.'

  'Nonsense,' he retorted. From the way he began to flush and get worked up, I felt I had clearly struck a nerve.

  'I study paganism as well as Christianity because I'm interested in both,' he continued. 'Even Seneca said one should make a practice of visiting the enemy's camp — by way of reconnaissance, of course, not as a deserter. Worship of the ancient gods is the history of our culture — Caesarius, it is our culture! Out of it all our triumphs have flowed — our literature, drama, art. A thousand years, two thousand, perhaps, of glory! Christianity is our present. It is practically new, and has had no cultural effect. Look at the proportions — there is nothing there for a scholar to study, even a Christian one!'

  'You could study the Scriptures, for a start,' I remonstrated, but he scarcely heard.

  'The Scriptures. Caesarius, I have studied the Scriptures since I was eight years old. But I'm not a priest. My vocation is to be a scholar, a philosopher. You tell me — where should I best dedicate my time in order to be a knowledgeable, cultured man? On two millennia of glory, albeit pagan glory? Or on one generation of Christianity since my uncle Constantine legalized it? One generation alone — a generation that saw every male member of my family killed by Christians.'

  I protested at the conclusion he was implying. 'You can't blame Christianity for the murders of your father and brothers,' I challenged. 'That was not the triumph of Christianity, but its absence.'

  Here I saw Julian's expression soften, and he unaccountably began chuckling. I realized, with some embarrassment, that my own face and words betrayed at least the same level of earnestness as I had wondered at in him only a few moments before. To him, however, my sober words were humorous. This only exasperated me further.

  'Don't play the Sophist with me, Julian,' I continued. 'If you're arguing merely for argument's sake, I will have none of it. If you wish to sharpen your rhetorical skills, pick a topic other than religion — or go to my brother Gregory. Case closed.'

&
nbsp; In an effort to distract him from such distasteful studies, and to focus him on the more worldly miracles of the One True God, I once invited him to attend one of my clandestine autopsies, which he accepted with eager relish, somewhat to my surprise. Our research subjects were normally collected on a rather irregular basis, whenever I or my fellow students were fortunate to hear of the death of an indigent somewhere in the city. Only rarely were we able to acquire a cadaver in appropriate condition for research, for our quest at all times involved a race against not only the city's other medical schools, of which there were a considerable number, but against the Church. You and I have discussed this before, Brother, how the Christian presbyters are scandalized at what they view as the medical schools' desecration of the dead. As for myself, I feel that there could not possibly be anything more holy than to advance man's medical knowledge and reason, which must serve as the basis for true and lasting faith, in order to better serve the living. Julian was shocked and then delighted at the whiff of illicitness about the whole affair.

  On this occasion, fortunately, I was able to spare him the mad dash through the city upon hearing of an indigent death, and the clandestine walk back, skulking through alleys carrying the cadaver as best we could wrapped in rags and sheets, to avoid contact with sharp-eyed priests and other observers not favorable to the cause of science. Athens had at this time just emerged from the grip of a cholera epidemic, and for the first and only time of which I was aware, the small cellar of my medical school was well stocked with appropriate subjects for examination. Six or seven, in fact, had been acquired over the past several days alone, laid in hastily assembled pine boxes. In a somewhat careless effort at preservation, we strove to maintain a constant temperature in the boxes by packing the bodies tightly with wood shavings and sawdust swept up from the floor of the joinery next door, in exchange for which the carpenter jokingly made us promise not to collect his body should we ever come across it in the streets.

  As Julian and I, along with several others, arrived at the door of the school that night at the agreed-upon time, I swore him to secrecy, and briefly described for him the procedure he was about to witness, so that he would not be needlessly shocked and repelled. Our assignment this evening was to verify the observation made three centuries ago by the physician Apion, that the human body contains a delicate nerve that starts from the left ring finger and travels to the heart. It is for this reason, he claimed, that it is most appropriate to favor that finger above all others when wearing a wedding ring, in view of the close relationship between it and the principal organ.

  One or two of my colleagues, however, expressed hesitation at allowing an outsider such as Julian to view our work. Pharon, a tall, thin young pagan from Alexandria who claimed proud descent from a long line of Egyptian priests and who therefore was most skilled in the preservation of the dead, was particularly vocal in his objections. I explained who our guest was.

  'Pharon — he's not just a friend; he's the cousin of the Emperor. If he understands and approves of our work, he could be of assistance to us in the future.'

  The Egyptian peered down his long, aristocratic nose at Julian, blinking at him skeptically. 'I don't care if he's the sun god Ra. It's not right for him to view the procedure.'

  I was annoyed at Pharon's blatant disrespect, but when I glanced over at Julian he did not seem dismayed in the slightest. After several moments of hurried negotiations and argument in the middle of the street, the Egyptian finally shrugged grudgingly. 'Very well,' he said, 'but, Caesarius — our safety is on your head.'

  I assured him I took full responsibility, and then unlocked the door.

  We entered and felt our way down the stairs in darkness, assisted only slightly by the diffused light of the half-moon shining weakly through a high, narrow window. A lantern would not be lit until the very last moment, to avoid detection from curious passersby, and then would be snuffed as soon as the hasty procedure had been completed.

  By the unwritten rules of our group, at those times when we were blessed with more than one cadaver for study, students were required to first use the older one, by which I mean the one that had been stored the longest in the cellar, to prevent its going to waste. I was dismayed to be reminded by one of my students that this meant that, despite our recent fruitful harvest from the city streets, we were obliged to perform our examinations on a fellow who had died a good eight days earlier. Although the cellar was cool, and he had been carefully packed in sawdust, nevertheless I did not relish the anticipation of the cadaver's odor and physical condition, and I warned Julian of what was to come.

  Drawing the sealed box out from its shelf and carefully laying it on the examining table in the dim light, a strong stench of decay seeped through some crack in the planks. I forged on, nevertheless, though when I encountered difficulty prying the nails out of the lid, I called for Julian to uncover the ember we had brought sealed inside a small ceramic jar, and to light up a tallow for light. There was a pause as he fumbled to open the container in the dark, and then Pharon shouted, 'Stop!' in a panic, nearly causing the rest of us to jump out of our skins. After fearful shushing all around as we listened carefully for footsteps outside our door, I turned to Pharon in annoyance.

  'What the hell was that for?'

  'Don't light the candle,' he said. 'Open the box and let the gas dissipate first.'

  'Gas?' Julian asked nervously. 'Caesarius, I thought you said he was dead.'

  'Gas from the wood shavings, you dolt,' rejoined Pharon with a hiss. 'Organic material creates gas as it decays. Even ignorant Alemanni peasants know that — that's why they store grain in vented barns. You'll smell the gas when you open the box. The body stored with it also produces humors from the same process. The combination of the two could be dangerous.'

  I scoffed at this. 'That's absurd! Julian, light the candle.'

  'Wait!' Pharon hissed again, this time with increasing urgency. His large eyes shone brightly, in eerie contrast with the darkness of his skin and the shadows of the room. 'I once thought as you did, Caesarius, until last year, when I opened a casket the same way, and held a candle close to view the body. There was a burst of flame and a noise like a loud puff of wind, and it blew the candle out completely. I was blinded for a moment, and when I was able to relight the candle and look in the box again, I found that the flash had singed all the hair off the man's body. At least it made it easier to dissect him. Unfortunately, it did the same to my face. For three weeks I was mistaken for a Syrian eunuch. Believe me, it's better to let the gas dissipate.'

  I could hear stifled snickers breaking out from around the table and I stood stiffly, wondering whether to let this outrageous tale pass unremarked. By this time, unfortunately, Julian had had enough. His eyes wide and gleaming in the dim light, he begged my pardon and pleaded to be released back to the street. I consented, and he slipped out quietly the way he had come, stifling his nausea at the overpowering smell. Although that occasion gave rise to great merriment among my colleagues for many weeks afterward, it was also, I believe, the source of the great esteem, and possibly fear, that Julian held of the physician's skills and knowledge.

  Would that you held me in the same respect as did he, Brother.

  III

  Julian stayed in Athens less than a year. When in midsummer he was unexpectedly summoned by the Emperor to attend him at his residence at Milan, the command was anything but welcome. The day Julian received it, he wandered out of his apartments in a daze. It was only with great difficulty that I was able to find him hours later, lying prostrate in the semidarkness in the Parthenon before the enormous statue of Athena, mumbling unintelligibly.

  'Caesarius,' he said hoarsely, sitting up with a start and looking around when I touched his shoulder. 'What are you doing here?'

  I looked into his face for signs of illness, but seeing none I relaxed.

  'Gregory said you wandered out of the house looking like a poleaxed ox. I've been looking all over for you, friend — b
ut this was the last place I'd have thought to find you.' I looked suspiciously up at Athena, then smiled and thumped his shoulder cheerfully. 'Julian, it's Milan! The imperial court! If Constantius truly had evil designs he wouldn't be recalling you. What can be so bad as all that?'

  Julian's face reddened in anger. 'He's a madman! He killed my father and brother — and yet he asks me to attend him in Milan? I will not be… toyed with, Caesarius, like a mouse! Why doesn't he simply send his assassins here and do the job cleanly? Coward and madman!'

  I rolled my eyes at the melodramatics, but in truth Julian had good reason to be livid, knowing that it was just such a summons that had led to the torture and execution of his brother Gallus several years before. No doubt he also suspected that his indiscreet investigations into the worship of the ancients had finally been brought to the Emperor's ears. I placed my hand under his arm and lifted him to his feet, concerned that he not compound his troubles by being seen lying prostrate before an image of a pagan god. He stood looking about himself fiercely, planting his feet stubbornly as if determined to stay and give the assassins no occasion to find him in the street, to deny them at least that satisfaction.

  'Julian,' I whispered harshly, 'you'll call attention to yourself by lingering before Athena. You've suffered enough for one day, and no doubt the gods have had enough of your pestering, too. Come, I'll take you home; A cup of wine will cheer us both.'

  He stood motionless on the great marble-tiled floor before the statue, gazing up at the polished golden visage, before finally dropping his eyes to me, and with a great sweep of his arm, he indicated the vast, semidark colonnaded sanctuary around him.

  'I wanted only a beautiful spot,' he said hoarsely, 'a monumental spot, the most evocative spot in all Athens, one that I could take with me in my memory to Milan, in case… in case…'

 

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