Gods and Legions (3 page)

Despite my effort to pull straight back, the surprising weight of the long iron tip and socket created some torque, and I heard an audible snap from the already weakened rib as the weapon popped out. Julian twitched, his right arm flailing blindly and his mouth contorting into a grimace, even in his swoon. The piercing bled freely, though no more than would be expected from such a wound, and the blood showed a bright, clear red, a good sign.

I held the point of the spearhead up before my face, viewing its symmetrical, deadly outline against the pale sky. For a long moment I stared at the tip, at its beautifully cast smoothness and blackness, the carefully balanced barbs, the razor sharpness of its point and edge undulled by its recent impact with hard bone, its effectiveness unimpeded, its deadly potential yet unfulfilled...

I glanced down at my unconscious patient, face streaked with sweat and dust, expression contorted with pain, and I hesitated. Great evil was afoot in the world. Vows had been taken, oaths had been sworn, and these could not be discarded lightly. It is not often that a common man, a humble physician, has a chance to affect the very course of history, and I prayed to God for courage to be worthy of the opportunity. I glanced up at the guards, making sure they had secured the area and were remaining on vigilant watch against any possible recurrence of the Persian attack.

I then bent to complete my work.

II

But I have moved far ahead of myself, Brother, for truly this is the very end of my story, not the beginning, and I shall have to return to it again in due course. My only excuse is that it was this momentous event that first prompted me to consider recording my thoughts on the matter. The chronological beginning is the only proper place for a narrative to start, for thus commence even the Scriptures themselves –
In principio...
– and though far be it from me to compare this hurried journal to our sacred texts, certainly one is not ill-advised to seek to emulate them. Let us therefore start this effort again, not at the conclusion of our story this time, but at its foundations, its very roots – in the beginning.

It was in Athens that our paths first crossed, as well you know, for you were there too, having been sent by Father to pursue your philosophical studies at the Academy. I, by a happy coincidence of timing, had at the same time been referred to the city's learned physicians by the Emperor Constantius, Julian's elder cousin, in recognition of my studies at Alexandria and my promising future as the Emperor's court physician.

We roomed together, you and I, in modest yet adequate lodgings hard by the malodorous fish market, though there were few moments that we actually spent with each other. You were engrossed in your learned discussions, sitting on the roof of our apartment disputing obscure points of theology till dawn, fasting every other week. I, on the other hand, was immersed in the physicality and sordidness of medicine, trolling the streets for subjects of study or up to my elbows in the putrid abdominal contents of a recent plague victim in the autopsy hall. I had no time or inclination for the ephemeral, spiritual realm you inhabited, while you, on the other hand, had no desire to delve into the filth and the ecstasy of my worldly existence.

We met Julian at the same time, through the same small circle of mutual acquaintances. He and his guardian Mardonius rented rooms not two streets away from ours, and he often frequented the same taverns, eating houses, and public baths as did we. From almost the very moment Julian and I clasped each other's shoulders in greeting, we recognized a link, a connection that extended beyond the normal levels of shifting friendships and alliances. We saw in each other an honesty and sincerity, a desire for truth and knowledge, a disdain for frivolity; in short, a purity, if you will, unlike that prevailing among our general circle of acquaintances. It seems strange now for me to look back on those days, but I can scarcely remember a time when I did not know Julian, though I was well into my adulthood when I first met him.

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.'

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.'