Had he been wrong to withhold these facts, Luke wondered. But after all, he told himself, they were the words of only one man. And how could one man’s words affect a people and an empire?
XI
Probus had opened an apothecary shop just off the island containing the palace of the governor, and when Luke told him of the need of Ambassador Gallio for the powdered crocus leaves which had so effectively relieved the gout for Sergius Paulus, he immediately procured a supply and took it to Gallio himself. Relief was immediate, and Gallio was so grateful that he sang the praises of both Luke and the apothecary to all he met. In addition he had them both as his guests at a state dinner, where they were introduced in extravagant terms as experts in the diagnosis and treatment of all diseases. As a result the shop of Probus had more business than it could handle, and Luke quickly became the favorite physician of the Roman officials and the rich Syrians through whom they ruled the city and the province.
Probus thrived on popularity and gold poured into his shop in return for the medicines he compounded. But as the months passed, Luke felt a strange unrest stirring within him again. He recognized it as the same dissatisfaction which had moved him to leave Pergamum at the end of his five years of instruction rather than remain there in the post of priest–physician. The busy life of the Roman military expedition into Cilicia and Paphlagonia had for the time being dissipated the unrest, but now it returned in full force.
The sun was shining brightly and the air was warm with the promise of spring one morning when Luke came out of the palace, where he had been treating a mild indisposition of the governor’s wife. It was only a short walk to the palace of Theophilus and his small surgery at the edge of the grounds but he turned instead toward the bridge that led from the insula into the city itself. To the east, in the famous grove of bay trees that marked the suburb of Daphne, the Temple of Diana shone like the snowy top of Mount Silpius in winter, the pristine purity of the marble walls quite at variance with the rites practiced there.
Almost directly ahead, bearing only slightly west, was the broad colonnaded street that bisected the city, the Via Caesarea, ending where the foothills of Mount Silpius led upward to the craggy peaks of the mountain itself. On one of these summits towered the castle which the Romans had built long ago to dominate the city and guard it from invasion. On another crag stood the beautiful Temple of Jupiter Capitolinus, and to the eastward were the luxurious baths and the aqueduct constructed by Julius Caesar in honor of his defeat of Pompey.
The apothecary shop which Probus had opened was on the north bank of the river. Luke strolled past the magnificent homes of the Romans and the luxurious shops catering to their whims and stopped before a small building over which a sign announced:
SEPLASIA
PROBUS MAXIMUS—MEDICAMENTARIUS
Medicamentarius was the Latin term for a dispenser of medicines prescribed by a physician, in contrast to the Greek pharmacopeus, who was often a quack and a poisoner as well. Probus saw Luke standing outside and came to the door. “Luke,” he cried, embracing the young physician. “You must come in and inspect my establishment. I have enlarged it since last you were here.”
Luke entered the shop and looked around admiringly. “You certainly have a complete stock of medicines,” he observed.
“The most complete in the whole empire,” Probus admitted modestly. “Here are the malagmata.” He pointed proudly to jar after jar of ointment arranged on shelves. “And here are the eucharista, to be applied as embrocations. On this shelf,” he continued, “are the katapotia. See, there are all sizes of pills among them and all the usually prescribed drugs.”
He moved off to another section. “Here I have a special room for treating the eyes and all manner of collyria for the purpose.”
They were at the door of a room in which a half dozen men sat, all bald or partially so, and all richly dressed and obviously well to do. “What are you treating here, Probus?” Luke asked.
“It is a new cure for baldness,” Probus admitted. “I was preparing to give some treatments, so you may watch if you like.”
A slave waited in the room, standing near a small table filled with jars of ointment. Upon the table lay a strange object, a rectangular piece of hard yellowish substance with a fragment of woolen cloth beside it. Probus indicated an empty chair beside the table and said, “Paganos, the merchant, can be the first today.”
Paganos waddled over to the chair and sat down. His hair was gone except for a fringe over the temples and extending around the back of his head. Probus began to rub the rectangular piece of yellowish material with the woolen cloth. “This is called elektron,” he told Luke in a low voice. “Actually it is a form of amber which exhibits special properties when rubbed with a woolen cloth.” He held the piece of amber about an inch above the merchant’s head and began to move it back and forth. Before Luke’s startled eyes the individual hairs fringing the man’s scalp began to rise, as if attracted to the substances called elektron, although they touched at no point. As the amber block was moved back and forth over Paganos’s head the hair rose and fell in a wavelike motion. Like Luke, the onlookers were agape, eyes popping.
Probus finished the treatment and handed Paganos a jar of ointment. “Rub this into the scalp daily,” he directed. “And return in a week for another treatment with the elektron.” The merchant got up, and digging into a fat purse, handed Probus a gold piece which Luke noted was as much as he usually received for treating an entire illness.
Probus treated each of the remaining patients in the same way, stopping to rub the elektron before each treatment, and receiving a substantial fee in each case. When he finished and the patients were gone, Luke asked, “How does this stone obtain its peculiar properties, Probus?”
“It comes from the rubbing, I am sure. Almost any piece of amber will perform in the same way.”
“But how does it help to grow hair?”
The apothecary smiled. “Bald men usually have bald fathers, but a vain and wealthy man will pay well for anything which he thinks will give him his hair and make him look younger.”
“And the ointment?”
“It is a prescription I had from an Egyptian magician, who found it in the tomb of an Egyptian queen, and contains equal portions of date blossoms, the flesh of an Abyssinian greyhound, and asses’ hoofs boiled in oil and evaporated to a solid.”
“It sounds formidable enough.”
“I have another, in case you ever want to treat baldness, made from a mixture of the fat from a horse, a crocodile, a hippopotamus, a cat, a snake, and an ibex.”
Luke laughed. “I shall leave the top of the head to you, Probus. I have enough to do, treating gouty toes and the imaginary complaints of rich women.”
Probus looked at him keenly. “They pay you well, do they not?”
“Of course.”
“Then why are you unhappy about it?”
“Money is not the prime concern of a physician,” Luke protested.
“Not yours, perhaps,” Probus corrected him. “But you know very well that most of your brothers in Asklepios are money grabbers of the worst sort. You need a change. Why not take up a religion?”
“A religion? Why should I?”
“Everybody should have a religion. I have been studying Mithraism. It is an interesting faith and one practiced by our richest people, so it is not bad business to be a believer in Mithras.”
Luke shook his head. “I have business enough. No, it is not religion that troubles me.”
“Well, it will not hurt you to see a Mithraic ceremony,” Probus insisted. “I am going to a taurobolium this morning. Why not come along?”
“Taurobolium? What is that?”
“The most colorful and interesting ceremony in the Mithraic faith. I can guarantee that you will be diverted, to say the
least.”
“But I should visit some patients.”
“Let them wait,” Probus said airily. “Remember the words of Hippocrates: ‘The physician visits a patient suffering from fever or wound and prescribes for him. On the next day, if the patient feels worse, the blame is laid upon the physician; if, on the other hand, he feels better, nature is extolled and the physician reaps no praise.’”
“All right,” Luke agreed, laughing. “Perhaps a change will do me good.”
Neither Mithras nor any other of the new cults which were gradually supplanting the old gods in the religious life of the Greeks and Romans boasted such fine temples as those of Diana, Apollo, and the others. But the Mithraeum to which Probus took Luke was large for that cult, capable of holding perhaps two hundred people, Luke estimated as they stood just within the grottoed building before a gate which held them back from the temple itself.
The room, seen through the bars of the gate, was really a grotto, carved from the rock of the hillside against which the building stood and roofed over with timbers that rose in graceful arches. Stone benches stood empty, waiting for the sodalicium, as the congregation was called, to enter when the gate was opened. Tapers burned in brackets against the wall, lighting up the interior.
The altar was made of stones, smoothed flat and lying across stone supports. Beneath the altar a pit had been dug to perhaps the depth of a man’s waist, with the dirt piled up on either end, as if it were to be filled up again at the end of the ceremony or as though someone were to be buried in the sanctuary itself. Around the walls of the altar recess candles burned in banks, illumining the carved bulls’ heads forming a frieze just under the vaulted timbers that supported the roof. Bordering the altar itself was a smaller frieze of exquisitely carved heads of bulls.
A young bull was lashed securely upon the altar, eyes wide open and bulging with fear as it strained against the ropes. In front of the large altar was another, smaller one on which lay a gleaming sword, as long as a man’s arm, with a richly chased hilt of ivory into which precious stones had been set. To one side of the two altars stood a low throne over which a covering of rich velvet had been placed, draping and almost hiding the stone chair itself.
“Today’s candidate must not be rich,” Probus said in Luke’s ear. “I never saw a smaller bull for the tauorbolium.” Mithraism, Luke already knew, was the favorite religion of the Roman soldiers, and since they were poorly paid, it boasted no such elaborate ritual as did the ceremonies honoring the older gods, whose temples and priests were rich from centuries of votive offerings.
“What is the significance of it all?” Luke asked.
“The ultimate step in all these rituals,” Probus explained in low tones, “is the ritual of death and rebirth to immortality. The ceremony of the taurobolium is the highest grade of Mithraic worship, that of ‘Father.’ Most worshipers never get beyond the ‘Soldier’ grade. Look, there comes a priest to begin the ceremony.”
On a small table to one side of the large altar a fire was burning in a brazier. The white-robed priest now took a brand from the old brazier and turned to a small altar which Luke had hardly noticed, for it was in a corner of the open space where the bull lay. The small altar had been prepared with some readily inflammable substance, for it took fire at once and flared up brightly. And as the flames danced, a choir of some ten persons filed into a choir stall beside the altar and began to chant in a low tone.
“Watch this,” Probus said softly. Slowly, moved by no force that Luke could see, the gates of the Mithraeum began to open, sliding back into the wall. There was a murmured “Ah!” of amazement from some of the spectators, but Probus said contemptuously, “An old trick. A Greek named Hero invented it two hundred years ago.”
“How does it work?”
“The heat of the fire causes air to expand in a pig’s bladder and activates levers which open the gates.”
The congregation poured into the sanctuary. On either side of the wall stood a curious-looking machine. Luke saw several people stop before the machine and drop a coin into a narrow slot in the wooden cabinet. Each time a spray of water spurted from the machine upon them, again without any visible human agent. “The worshipers think it is a magic machine activated by Mithras,” Probus whispered. “When the coin strikes a lever, it opens a tank and douses them with sacred water. Then the coin rolls off and shuts it off again. Hero invented that too.”
As the temple filled with the waiting crowd, the chant of the choir rose steadily in volume. Luke could distinguish the word “Mithras” repeated again and again, as if they were invoking the deity to appear. Then a massive gong sounded inside the Mithraeum, its reverberations jarring even the walls, and a bizarre figure appeared behind the altar. The lower part was that of a man; a priest clad in flowing robes, but the entire upper half of his body was hidden by a great mask simulating the head of a bull. For a second Luke was reminded of some mythical beast, like the centaur Chiron so revered in the ritual worship of Asklepios, but he could see this was only a man wearing the mask of a bull’s head, from the nostrils of which smoke curled thinly.
“Mithras! Mithras!” the worshipers chanted with the choir. “The god himself,” Probus explained. “Or as near as he has ever come to actual existence. Look! The virgines.”
Four white-robed young women emerged into the open space around the altar, leading a tall man who wore a robe of rich silk, corded at the waist in gold, with golden tassels and a crown of garlands upon his head. They took him to the low throne and seated him reverently, then knelt, touching their foreheads to the floor. As the music of the choir and the distant orchestra of flutes, lyres, and cymbals rose in a hymn of adoration, the priestesses rose and began a slow dance about the throne.
“Why do they revere him instead of the god?” Luke asked.
“The initiate, the tauroboliatus, pays for the ceremony. This is his religious birthday or natalicia, the day he becomes immortal through the taurobolium and a lesser god in the Mithraic dynasty.”
“It all sounds like gibberish to me.”
Probus shrugged. “There is much gibberish, as you call it, in all successful religions. People seek the mysterious and the unnatural, so that by claiming kinship with something superhuman they can rise above ordinary men. Thus the tauroboliatus, because he has money to buy a bull, rent the temple, and pay the priests and the choir, becomes immortal and a god.
“Watch this,” Probus warned in a sibilant whisper. “It is the symbolic burial of death before he is resurrected.”
“Tauroboliatus!” The voice of the priest issued from the bull’s-head mask in stentorian tones, magnified, Luke realized, by a cone inside it. The initiate stood and the white-robed virgines sank to the floor again while the chant of the choir rose in volume:
“Let all nature listen while we hymn our praises to Mithras, Lord of Creation. Let the heavens open and let the sun and the stars give praise to his great name. Hymn, O truth, the Truth, O Goodness, the Good. Life and Light come from thee, O Divine and Eternal Mithras, we receive blessing and the life eternal which we seek through the sacrifice of the blood.”
The chant died away and the tauroboliatus spoke:
“By thy spirit, O Mithras, I declare that I perceive. To the author of my new birth, I, mortuus, offer this reasonable sacrifice. O Mithras, Father of the Universe, and of the Sun, and the Stars, Lord of Creation, accept this sacrifice. Enter, thou, into my spirit and my thoughts, for thou art I and I, thou.”
The tauroboliatus stepped down from the throne now and entered the pit beneath the altar upon which the young bull lay. Sitting on the floor of the pit, he was barely visible as the virgines circled it in solemn funereal procession, tossing handfuls of earth upon him while the choir chanted a dirge. The symbolism was easy to understand. The initiate, having given up his life, was now being buried as a symbol of the finality of death for those now granted immortality by M
ithras. As the music died away, his voice, somewhat muffled, came from the pit once more:
“In this grave I die and am covered with earth, that through the divine blood of this taurus, which becomes thy blood, O Mithras, I may rejoice that even in my mortal body thou didst deify me, and grant to me eternal life through the vision of thyself.”
Suddenly the great cymbal clashed and the chant of the choir changed to a paean of joy. The women prostrated themselves before the bull on the altar, and the priest wearing the bull’s-head mask seized the sword and held it aloft as the music rose to a crashing climax. Looking around him, Luke saw that most of the worshipers really believed this gibberish, for they were quite carried away by the ritual. All eyes were intent upon the drama being played out before them, and at the end of one of the benches a woman, anticipating the climax, began to twitch, then rolled to the floor in a spasm.
A deep sigh from the crowd brought Luke’s attention back to the altar. As if realizing its fate, the bull had begun to struggle and one of the cords snapped. The sword in the hand of the priest plunged downward, entering the animal’s throat and searching deep inside the body for the heart. But the bull still struggled, and another rope snapped with the death agony. In another moment it might have crashed from the altar into the pit beneath, upon the tauroboliatus, but the priest, withdrawing the sword quickly, slashed across the animal’s neck, cutting the great vessels there.
“Mithras should get another butcher,” Probus whispered.
Blood gushed from the animal’s neck with the second stroke, spattering the robe of the priest, and poured down through the crevices between the stones of the altar to drench the tauroboliatus in the pit. The initiate, far from cringing, lifted his face so that the red tide poured down upon it and, opening his mouth, let the warm, sacrificial blood run into it with evident pleasure. He lifted his arms and allowed the blood to pour over his flowing sleeves and down over his shoulder. “Mithras!” he cried in ecstasy. “Mithras!”
The Road to Bithynia: A Novel of Luke, the Beloved Physician Page 16