The Bull Slayer (35 page)

“All that, I can mend,” the healing woman said. “Was it you who found her?”

“My son. He and his brother were out looking for our scattered livestock.”

“Here, dearie, sip this.” She held out a cup of boiled herbs to the figure that lay on a bed of rushes in the little hut

“So many of our own are injured, why bother with her?”

“Money in it maybe? Look at her fine clothes.”

“If we knew who her people were.” The headman got off his haunches and went out.

“Now, dearie,” the healing woman leaned close and whispered, “just who are you?”

FINIS

Appendices

I. The Roman Calendar

In the Roman calendar, each month contained three ‘signpost’ days: the Kalends (the first day of the month), the Nones (either the fifth or the seventh), and the Ides (the thirteenth or fifteenth). After the Kalends was past, the days were counted as so-and-so many days before the Nones, then before the Ides, and then before the Kalends of the following month.

The story takes place from the second half of September to the beginning of December. The signpost days with their English equivalents are as follows:

II. Roman Time-Keeping

Romans divided the day, from sunup to sundown, and the night from sundown to dawn into twelve
horae.
As the length of the day and night varied throughout the year, one of these ‘hours’ could be as short as forty-five minutes or as long as seventy-five. In September, when the days and nights are of about equal length, the
hora
came closest to our standard sixty minute hour. The first hour of the day in September was about 6 am. The sixth hour was noon; the twelfth hour, sundown. And similarly, the first hour of the night was about 6 pm, the sixth hour was midnight, and the twelfth hour was the hour just before dawn. By December, the daylight hours were several minutes shorter and the nighttime hours correspondingly longer.

III. Greek and Roman Money

The smallest unit of Greek coinage was the obol. Six obols = one silver drachma. 100 drachmas = one mina. Sixty minas = one talent. A Roman silver denarius was roughly equivalent in value to a drachma. Four bronze sesterces = one denarius. Large amounts of money were generally expressed in sesterces.

Glossary

Agora
: marketplace in a Greek city

Archon:
a senior magistrate of a Greek city

Capsa:
a cylindrical tube for holding scrolls

Chlamys
: a Greek man’s cloak

Cursus publicus
: the public post

Eques
: a member of the equestrian order, the lower rung of the Roman aristocracy

Fasces:
the bundle of rods enclosing an ax carried by
lictors

Fides
: faith, loyalty

Garum
: a condiment made of fermented fish parts

Gynekeion
: the women’s quarters in a Greek house

Hetaera
: a paid female companion/entertainer

Insula
: a tenement building

Janitor
: a door slave

Krater
: a large bowl for mixing wine and water

Latrunculi
: Literally ‘brigands’, a board game something like checkers

Lictor:
a Roman magistrate’s bodyguard

Ludus Magnus
: the imperial gladiator school in Rome

Mathematicus
: astrologer

Matrona
: a married woman

Megaron
: the central hall in a Greek house

Mehercule
: by Hercules!

Mentula
: penis (vulgar)

Mare Nostrum
: Our Sea (the Roman name for the Mediterranean)

Mystes
(plural
mystae
) : an initiate in a mystery religion

Nymphios:
bridegroom

Optio
: a Roman army rank second to a centurion

Palaestra:
exercise ground

Palla
: a Roman woman’s mantle

Paterfamilias
: the oldest male in a Roman family

Secutor
: a heavy-armed gladiator

Stade
: Greek unit of distance,approximately an eighth of a mile

Synposion
: a drinking party

Tabellae:
a pair of wooden leaves coated with wax and joined together with string

Tablinum:
the office or study in a Roman house

Theriac
: a compound believed to be a universal antidote against poisons

Tribunal:
dais on which a magistrate or judge sat

Triclinium
: dining room; arrangement of three couches, each holding three diners around a rectangular table

Univira
: a woman who has known only one man

Venator:
a gladiator who fights wild beasts in the arena

Vitis:
Centurion’s cudgel made of a vinestock; his symbol of authority

Author’s Note

Bithynia-Pontus

Pliny served as governor of the province of Bithynia-Pontus (in present day Turkey) in AD 109 or 110 with a special commission from the emperor to bring order to that troubled province. His dispatches to Trajan, and Trajan’s replies, are recorded in Book Ten of the
Letters
. Although our plot is fictitious, the background of embezzlement, waste, financial mismanagement, and political turbulence is abundantly documented, not only by Pliny, but in the orations of Dio Chrysostom (“Golden Mouth”), who is the model for the character of Diocles. It may be mentioned in passing that Nicomedia did suffer a severe earthquake while Pliny was governor. He describes it in a letter to the emperor and notes that the absence of a volunteer fire brigade (forbidden by Trajan’s injunction against voluntary associations) made the destruction that much worse.

Mithraism

There is, at present, no archaeological evidence for the practice of Mithraism in Bithynia. Our cave and its locale are entirely fictitious. Nevertheless, one leading scholar of the religion places its origins in the Persian influenced region of Commagene in south-eastern Anatolia, and it would be odd if the cult entirely leapfrogged Bithynia on its way west. In any case, the early second century AD saw the remarkable burgeoning of the cult in areas as distant as Africa, Germania, Britain, and Italy. What we don’t know about Mithraism is a great deal more than what we do, and no detail of its ritual and theology is beyond dispute. If there were Mithraic scriptures, the Christian church made sure that they did not survive. If there was a Mithraic Saint Paul, he is unknown to history. Yet it is hard to imagine that the religion was able to spread as far and as fast as it did without energetic proselytizing by someone. Christians regarded Mithras as a blasphemous imitation of their own savior god (who also has strong solar associations). Although vestiges of the cult may have lingered in some places, it had effectively ceased to exist by the end of the fourth century AD.

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (circa AD 69 to circa AD 140) is well-known only as the author of
The Twelve Caesars
, the biographies of the emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian (the principal source for Robert Graves’
I Claudius
novels). But among the many other works attributed to him are
Lives of Famous Whores
,
Roman Festivals
,
Roman Dress
,
The Physical Defects of Mankind
, and
Greek Terms of Abuse
. None of these has survived in more than fragments. What a loss! Suetonius did serve under Pliny in Bithynia, though precisely in what capacity is not clear. In a letter to Trajan (X 94) Pliny writes: “For a long time now, my lord, I have admitted Suetonius Tranquillus, that most worthy, honorable, and learned man, into my circle of friends, for I have long admired his character and his learning, and I have begun to love him all the more, the more I have now come to know him from close at hand” [Trans. P. G. Walsh]. Suetonius went on to serve as private secretary to the emperor Hadrian—a post from which he was eventually dismissed for some impertinence to the empress.

Pancrates

The name is borrowed from a famous magus of Hadrian’s reign but I have modeled him mainly on the oracle-monger, Alexander of Abonoteichus, who flourished in the later second century AD. The Greek satirist Lucian, in a delightful essay, describes his encounter with the man and his oracular snake (see Bibliography). I have given to Pliny the stratagem Lucian employed to expose the charlatan.

The Sacred Disease

Epilepsy was described by Hippocrates (circa 5th century BC) in his essay
On the Sacred Disease
. The Father of Medicine argued that the disease was not ‘sacred’ at all but the result of an imbalance of phlegm, one of the four humors in his system of physiology. Needless to say, it continued to be regarded with superstitious dread up until the dawn of modern medicine (see Bibliography).

Bibliography

Primary sources:

Dio Chrysostom.
Discourses. Translated by H. Lamar Crosby. Loeb Classical Library, 5 vols. 1946

Lucian. “Alexander the Oracle-Monger” in
The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Translated by Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler. Forgotten Books, n.d.

Pliny the Younger,
Complete Letters. Translated by P. G. Walsh. Oxford U. Press, 2006

Selected secondary works:

Andreau, Jean.
Banking and Business in the Roman World. Cambridge U. Press, 1999

Beck, Roger. “The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of Their
Genesis.”
Journal of Roman Studies, 88 (1998), 115-128

Idem. “Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel.”
Journal of Roman Studies, 90 (2000), 145-180

Burton, G. P.
Proconsuls, Assizes and the Administration of Justice under the Empire.
Journal of Roman Studies, 65 (1975), 92-106.

Clauss, Manfred.
The Roman Cult of Mithras. Translated by Richard Gordon. Routledge, 2000

Jones, A. H. M.
The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian. Oxford U. Press, 1940

Jones, C. P.
The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom. Harvard U. Press, 1978

Knapp, Robert.
Invisible Romans.
Profile Books, 2011