Dear and Glorious Physician (38 page)

Lucanus could not know that he had been given a great honor in being permitted to see Caesar alone with no one present, not even a guard. He could not know that the astute Tiberius had seen at once that here was a young man who could be absolutely trusted. Lucanus himself was quickly judging Tiberius. A ruthless and resentful man: what was it he resented? His faithless wife, his friends, his burdens, Rome? Lucanus felt a quick compassion.

Somewhere in the gardens beyond the library peacocks screeched, and there was the distant sound of higher music. But in the library the two men, one the mighty Caesar and the other only a physician, looked at each other frankly. Lucanus sniffed; a faint but disagreeable odor from the unguents on Tiberius’ pimpled face came to him. He wished to speak, but he remembered that Caesar must always speak first. Tiberius, in his turn, saw that Lucanus did not fear him in the slightest. He wondered, for a moment, if the young man were a fool. Nevertheless, he was impressed by Lucanus’ appearance.

Tiberius said, watching Lucanus closely, “May I commiserate with you, my good Lucanus, over the death of your father? A just and simple and heroic man. The last of the great Romans.”

His voice, though grating and reluctant, carried sincerity with it. Lucanus smiled in gratitude. It was probably no secret to Tiberius that Diodorus had disdained his military qualities, yet Caesar could speak most kindly of him, and Lucanus, though his sorrow was renewed, thought that Tiberius was, himself, a just man. Tiberius leaned back in his chair and stared at the open window, which was ablaze with the sun.

“I have commanded that a statue of him be struck for the Senate portico,” he said. He idly scratched at an irritable spot on his face. Lucanus smiled at this irony. The senators would have the doubtful pleasure of always seeing the statue of the one who had denounced them on their very threshold, armed with his marble sword. “Sire, you are very subtle,” he said. Tiberius raised his black eyebrows. The young man was not a fool, then.

He said, “If I had ten thousand men like Diodorus Cyrinus in Rome then I should sleep well at night. But enough. I am concerned, Lucanus, with doing all in my power to alleviate the grief of the family, and to do honor to the memory of the tribune. I do not understand your letter. I have appointed you Chief Medical Officer in Rome, to the growling of the older physicians, and you have asked me to withdraw the appointment. I am curious to know why.”

Lucanus colored. He was not aware that it was not only incredible, but dangerous, to refuse what Caesar offered. It was as if a moth had defied an eagle. He said, gravely, “Rome does not need me. That is what I wrote you, Sire. But the poor and the enslaved have need of my services in the provinces.”

Tiberius was silent. His eyes narrowed and fixed themselves intently on the young man’s handsome face. He plunged into thought. He was confronting something he could not understand, and which seemed mad to him. He thought of the old philosophers who had commanded that man treat his fellows kindly. Too, the priests in the temples of Rome exhorted the people to be gentlehearted and, in the names of the gods, to be just, honest, and merciful. However, that was all mouthings. No man of sanity believed in it, considering the world as it was and had always been. Tiberius’ mouth quirked in a smile.

“You are a physician, a citizen of Rome, the adopted son of a great and honorable man, the possessor of wealth,” he said. “The doors of patricians and Augustales are open to you. What I have offered you is only the threshold. Yet you would give it all up for the purpose of ministering to the worthless poor and beggars and slaves!”

Did Lucanus belong to some strange obscure sect of Stoics, or was he dedicated to a peculiar and foreign god? Lucanus said, “Yes, for all else is as nothing to me.”

“Why?”

Lucanus colored again. “Because otherwise my life would have no meaning.”

Tiberius frowned. What meaning was there to life except power and wealth and position? He reflected on his own life, and his narrow features revealed an involuntary pain. What meaning was there to his own life? he asked himself in stark revelation. He had done what he could; he was a careful administrator; he had tried to arouse pride in the obdurate Senate and had wished to return its power to it. Tacitus disliked him, but agreed that he was a man of sound judgment. He, a soldier, wished for peace along all the borders and the frontiers. He had added no extra taxes, in spite of the voracious demands of the Roman rabble for new benefits. When courtiers complained of personal injustices he coldly advised them to take the matter to the courts and would not interfere himself.

He was trying, at this time, to save Rome, to restore some of the qualities which had made her great. But a depraved people would not accept their liberty and their former discipline and their character. He could feel a terrible premonition that their pollution would eventually pollute him, and that, in anger, he would strike back at those who insisted on corrupting him. He thought of his wife; he thought of those who hungered for his throne. He thought of his only son, Drusus, a young man of violent passions but limited mind, at present clumsily setting the Germanic tribes against each other in Illyricum, believing, in his simple way, that the gate of peace could be attained only through blood.

Tiberius could feel the inexorable forces about him, which would destroy him as a just man, which would degrade him to the level of a Roman dog, out of their greed, their cheap politics, their exigencies, their lusts, and their own urge to power. They had, he thought with awful clarity, made of his life a nothingness, all of them, his wife, his son, his generals, and the Senate. But more than all else, the contemptible mobs of Rome, the insatiable, polyglot mobs who looked on their Caesar as a deity equipped with a cornucopia of endless benefits to reward the lazy, the weak, the worthless, the irresponsible, the bottomless bellies who would feed at the expense of industrious neighbors. Soulless beasts! Suddenly Tiberius hated Rome.

He stared at Lucanus, who had spoken to him like a schoolboy of meaning to life! “Must life have a meaning?” he asked. “Even the gods have not given man a meaning for his existence.”

“Yes, Sire, that is true.” Lucanus’ face tightened. “But we can assign some meaning to our lives ourselves. The meaning I have given myself is to alleviate pain and suffering, to save the dying, to prevent the encroachment of death.”

“For what purpose?” asked Tiberius. “Death is the common lot. And pain, also, whether of the body or the mind. Too, of what worth are the poor and the slaves?”

“They are men,” said Lucanus. “It is true that pain and death are inevitable. But often pain can be avoided, death made more comfortable, or delayed. Who can look upon the world of men without pity, and without desire to comfort it?”

Tiberius thought of Rome, and smiled darkly. Here was certainly a schoolboy prattler, a fresh-bearded amateur philosopher. He knew all about Lucanus, who had lived such a sheltered life, had never been part of a military campaign, and who had spent his years in a virtuous and peaceful household and in schools. He pitied the young man. He spoke of the stinking rabble as ‘men’. He spoke of slaves as ‘men’.

No doubt he would even consider a venal senator a ‘man’! The nostrils of Tiberius contracted.

“Are you dedicated to some obscure god who has not as yet made his debut in Rome?” he asked Lucanus, with a faint and mocking smile.

He was surprised when Lucanus answered with extraordinary vehemence, “I am dedicated to no god!”

“You do not believe in the gods?” asked Tiberius.

Lucanus sat in silence for a moment, looking down at the vast marble table before him. Then he said, “I believe in God. He is our Enemy. He afflicts us without reason. Even an executioner reads out to his victim the crimes of which he has been accused, and for which he must die. He has not told us why we must suffer. He sentences us to death for being what we are, He who made us what we are.”

“So you would console those who have been deprived of a consoler,” said Tiberius. He was much amused. He again thought that Lucanus was more than simple-minded. He said, “You have studied in Alexandria. No doubt you encountered Jewish teachers there. When I was in Jerusalem I heard the people talk of a Messias, that is, a Comforter, a Redeemer, one who will deliver the Jews from Rome and set them high on thrones to govern the world. Is it not a foolish thought? But you will see that all men are alike, wishing power.”

He unrolled Lucanus’ letter and scanned it musingly. Then he said, not looking at the young man, “When I was younger, and on one of my campaigns, we were astonished to see a great star in the sky one night. It was at the time of the Saturnalia. It moved eastwards and then disappeared. My astronomers tell me that the star was seen everywhere, and was a Nova, and the astrologers spoke of a great doom to come upon the world. But I have heard from the East that the star led to the birthplace of a god. That was fourteen or more years ago. If a god had been born then, surely we should have known it by this time. You will see how superstitious men are.”

Lucanus was seized by some great emotion. He remembered Joseph ben Gamliel and his story of the peasant boy who had disputed with the learned doctors and scholars in the Temple. He shook his head in denial.

Tiberius put down Lucanus’ letter. Then he reached out for a large flat object wrapped in yellow silk. He carefully removed the silk and displayed the object. It was made of heavy gold in the form of a shield. Lucanus leaned forward to see it more closely. He saw the face, in profile, of Diodorus embossed on the golden shield, and below it a hand grasping a drawn short sword. Under it was a quotation from Homer in Greek:

Without a sign, his sword the brave man draws,

And asks no omen but his country’s laws
.

Below it was a line from Horace, in Latin:

Non omnis moriar
[I shall not wholly die].

Lucanus’ eyes filled with tears. Tiberius said, with grim satisfaction, “This I have ordered made to be hung behind the lectern in the Senate.”

Their eyes met with complete understanding.

Tiberius smoothed his hand gently over the shield. He said, “Have you considered what Diodorus would have wished you to do? He would have desired for you to serve Rome, as he served it.”

“He was a great man, who believed in the freedom of the individual,” said Lucanus. “Though he would have disagreed with me, I know, he would still have desired me to do what I felt was right.”

“Nevertheless,” said Tiberius, “you should honor his memory enough to spend some time in Rome, serving the people. You have said in your letter that you wish to leave Rome at once. In justice to Diodorus I cannot grant this. I command you to remain here for six months. If, at the end of that period, you are still convinced that your duty lies elsewhere, I shall relieve you.”

The stubborn Lucanus was about to protest when he felt the force of the imperial eyes upon him, and he realized fully, for the first time, that this was Caesar, and that he was helpless before his decrees. For Tiberius was not smiling now. After a long moment Lucanus bowed his head.

“So be it,” he murmured. “In the name of Diodorus.”

“I wish you attached to this household during that period,” said Tiberius. He smiled tightly. “I may even consult you, personally, on a few matters.”

The thought of being virtually imprisoned in this immense palace appalled Lucanus, but he understood now that he could not protest.

“The public medical officers are becoming indolent,” said Caesar. “I should like you to inspect their work and to suggest improvements. Moreover, my household here is filled with slaves and freedmen and Praetorians. Your services to them will be appreciated. I am not entirely satisfied with my own physicians.”

Lucanus took a little heart. “If you will permit me, Sire, may I suggest that the treatment for your eczema is wrong?”

Tiberius’ eyebrows flew up. “Indeed? What would you suggest?” He was amused again.

“Oily unguents only increase the natural and infected oils contained in pimples,” said Lucanus, and he was a physician again. “I prefer a paste of water and flour of sulphur, applied after a strenuous washing with strong soap twice a day. This has a drying and disinfecting influence.” He hesitated. “I also believe that Caesar has some affliction of the blood. If you would permit me — ”

Intrigued, Tiberius nodded, and Lucanus rose and went to him. He forgot again that this man was the formidable and resistless power of a great and terrible empire. To Lucanus, he was only a man who was not in good health. With firm and gentle fingers he pulled down Tiberius’ eyelids, then opened his mouth and examined the pale membranes. Without permission he sat down again. “Are you conscious of a constant weariness, Sire? A lassitude? Does work tire you unduly? Does your breath become fast on the slightest exertion, and do you often feel faint and giddy?”

As the discussion of one’s health delights even a Caesar, Tiberius nodded. “You have explained it exactly, my good Lucanus.”

“Then you have anemia,” said the young physician. “Not a very serious variety as yet, though it can become serious. What is your diet?”

“I live sparely,” said Tiberius. “I am a soldier. I am no attender of orgies or banquets. I eat as a soldier, very frugally, some cheese, some goat’s milk, some bread, a plain red wine, fruit and vegetables, and, very occasionally, some meat or the leg of a fowl.”

“The diet is wrong for a man in his sixth decade,” said Lucanus, reprovingly. “I suggest fresh meat of bullocks three times a day, and a rich and heavy wine, and few vegetables and fruit only once a day. Fish is not very good for anemia, nor fowl. Best of all, I prescribe a large serving of the liver of a bullock at least once a day.”

Tiberius made a wry face. “My cooks make a delicacy of the fatted liver of female pigs which have been fed quantities of ripe figs. I detest it. Nevertheless, as you are now my physician I shall eat bullock’s liver for my evening meal.”

He leaned his hard chin on the heel of his right hand and stared at Lucanus. “You are young,” he said, “and you are possessed of extraordinary handsomeness. You are also wealthy and esteemed and a physician. Yet you are unhappy. If I were your age and endowed with your gifts, and were not Caesar, I should be the happiest of men. I see your distress. Why is this?”

Lucanus could not speak for a moment. Then he replied in a low tone, “One of life’s sorrows is the impermanence of all joy.”

Tiberius shrugged. “Even a schoolboy understands that. Shall we then deprive ourselves of pleasure, and joy, today because they are fleeting?”

Lucanus looked at him directly then, and knew, instantly, that here was a man deeply troubled, cynical, and despairing. And he was filled with an answering despair because he had no words to comfort this mighty man, and no hope to give him. As he himself had lost Rubria, so had Tiberius lost his love, and they shared a common desolation. Tiberius looked into his eyes and saw the welling misery and the desire to help, and the young man’s impotence to help him, and he was moved and was astonished that any creature could again move him.

He answered his own question quickly. “What the gods have given us is not to be refused, whether of good or evil, for what choice do we have? Even I cannot even drink myself into the temporary belief that the world is tolerable to a thinking man!”