CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Palatine Hill,
Rome
July 15th, 166 CE
Imperator Caesar Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Augustus entered the room with a slight internal sigh behind a suitably impassive face. He would have preferred to confer with his advisors in the old way, strolling through a garden or a peristyle, as the great philosophers he admired would have done. He was in hard good condition for a man of frail constitution in his forties, ate sparingly of fare as simple as an Emperor could—no great hardship given his frequent stomach pains—and drank only well-watered wine. But his daily duties didn’t give him as much exercise as he’d have liked.
And he would have liked to do the walking and conversation in one of the villas near the city, if only because the summer stink of Rome’s million-strong population wafted even up here to the Imperial palaces, despite all that the world’s greatest net of sewers and aqueducts could do, even to flushing the wastes that piled up on the paved streets into the river in man-made miniature floods. For that matter, the Tiber stank all year ’round for many miles downstream of here, halfway to Ostia.
Everyone in the city who had a country place was there by now if they could, in the hills or at the seacoast.
Still, duty is more important than sweet smells, even the scent of cut grass and flowers. Though those are aids to thought, I find.
His predecessor, uncle and adoptive father Antonius Pius had preferred to hold such meetings sitting down, especially in his later years. And he’d stuck to Rome and a narrow area around it for the whole of his long reign, letting his proconsuls and procurators and legates handle everything else, unlike his energetic and widely traveled predecessor. That had been a sign of the peace, the peace of strength, that the soldier-Emperors Trajan and Hadrian had established.
It looked as if Marcus’ reign, and that of his co-Emperor Verus, would be far more . . . active. Verus was in the east, winning victories . . . or at least his legates were . . . but the Parthians weren’t giving up just yet despite the sack of their capital, Ctesiphon, though it couldn’t be long now.
This news of trouble on the Danube was deeply unwelcome; there had been serious incursions in Upper Germany and Dacia too. The whole barbarian part of Europe seemed to be seething. Everyone knew that transferring three entire legions and large detachments from the others away from the northern frontier to the Parthian campaign was a calculated risk; the problem was that Rome’s other enemies knew it too and apparently intended to take full advantage.
The details of the reports from Pannonia Superior were increasingly bizarre, as well, even though they told of a Roman victory that was very welcome indeed. For now he’d continue the custom Antoninus had established and discuss it around a table with his comites, his close advisors and the men in charge of important parts of the government.
The room was quietly sumptuous, with opus sectile marble work on the floor in patterns of gold and green edged with black and red and a rendering of a naval battle—it was Actium—on those walls that didn’t open through pillars onto a broad terraced balcony with pruned trees and flower bushes in pots and troughs of polished stone.
Some remote part of his mind noted critically that Queen Cleopatra was shown in the mural as a beautiful but evil Egyptian sorceress in the middle of casting a spell. Though in fact she’d been a big-nosed Greek of nearly pure Macedonian descent and a hard-headed, intensely clever politician.
Ruling Egypt didn’t make you an Egyptian. In fact, she’d been the first of her Lagid dynasty in three hundred years to even bother learning how to speak Egyptian.
Braziers with incense joined in the flowers’ struggle to make the air sweet.
Praetorian guardsmen came to attention and saluted with a clank of pilum on shield boss as he entered; the half-dozen men around the table rose and bowed slightly. Those not in military dress were wearing togas; by way of contrast the Emperor was in a rather plain tunic, with only the Imperial purple and a little goldwork to mark it out, and a diadem wreath on his head. He slept on a simple pallet too—he was indifferent to luxury, as a Stoic should be, despite being raised at court.
He strove not to be puffed up about it, either, which was more difficult than skipping nightly banquets which his stomach couldn’t take and beautiful courtesans or mistresses who did not move him to desire. Plain living could be as arrogant as extravagant luxury, if approached in the wrong way.
Marcus Aurelius winced sometimes in retrospect at how priggish he’d been about it as a youth in the first flush of his love affair with Stoicism.
Insisting on sleeping on the ground in a cloak until dear Mother talked me out of it. Insufferable!
He’d have preferred a retired life of study and thought, in fact. He’d been adopted by his uncle the previous princeps when still a young man, only seventeen, and had never wanted the purple. One of the few good points about monarchy, considered in the abstract, was that someone born to a throne wasn’t necessarily obsessed with power for its own sake the way someone who plodded through the whole of the cursus honorum had to be.
But duty comes first, always.
“Gentlemen,” he said, after their greetings were done.
Those were kept as simple as possible as well. Emperor Domitian had insisted he be addressed as Dominus et Deus—Master and God. Besides the absurdity of it . . .
The slave who empties the Imperial chamber pots knows better, he thought.
. . . Marcus reminded himself frequently of what had happened to Domitian in the end.
Such a small difference, between Domine—
Which was the standard address for a respectable Roman citizen from those who didn’t call him by his praenomen, his first name.
—and Dominus; only the vocative and nominative cases of the same word, but Domitian found out in the end that a declension can be a matter of life and death!
Octavian, the original Augustus, had scrupulously respected the old Republican forms in public . . . and unlike Julius Caesar or Domitian, he’d died old and in bed of natural causes, not under an assassin’s knife.
He took his seat at the head of the gleaming stone table; his chair was the only one with back and arms, and it was slightly raised as well, on a one-step plinth. The others remained standing until he had seated himself.
“So,” he said.
Leaning forward and coming to the point; ceremony was something he endured when necessary and seemly, not one of the pleasures of his life. A clerk took station behind him, stylus poised over the wax on the polished ebony tablet, ready to take notes. Another from the office of the Ab epistulis, the chancellery that handled the Emperor’s correspondence, stood ready to pen drafts of any decrees and orders.
The Emperor went on: “What do we know of the events in Pannonia? Know with reasonable certainty, that is?”
The Praetorian Prefect was here, the commander of the Guard and a number of other functions; Sextus Cornelius Repentinus was a dark hard-faced man whose family were prominent landowners near Carthage in the Province of Africa. His bright white military dress tunic had the two narrow purple stripes of a knight; that was an equestrian position, mainly because it would give a man of senatorial rank too much power.
With him was his subordinate the Princeps peregrinorum, who managed the Frumentarii throughout the Empire: they had started as commissary agents, but by now were news gatherers, spies, and at need assassins.
The spymaster spoke:
“Imperator Caesar Augustus, I have three separate reports of the battle on the banks of the Danube between Legio X Gemina, its auxiliaries, and a considerable host of Marcomanni, with numbers of Quadi and smaller contingents from several other tribes joining them. They all agree with the legate of the Gemina’s claim that the barbarians were defeated with enormous losses, and their remnants chased into the Danube, along with many thousands of living prisoners taken for sale.”
There was a chorus of relieved nods around the table. The Emperor nodded too.
“This is most welcome.”
Which was an understatement. He frowned in thought, then looked at the clerk from the correspondence chancellery.
“To Legatus Augustus pro praetore Sextus Calpurnius Agricola”—who was the current governor of Britannia, an ex-consular and hence a senator, and from Cirte in Numidia originally, in the central part of northern Africa—“notifying him that he is unlikely to be required to send vexilliationes from his three legions to the mainland, and hence he will not be required to withdraw forces from northernmost Britannia as was planned.”
If you could read between the lines, Sextus Calpurnius had been very unhappy when that was proposed; he’d been in charge of the advance from Hadrian’s Wall to the shorter one further north known as the Vallum Antonini. He’d also had a distinguished career and hated the thought of an inglorious retreat. This should mollify him . . . and he was a man whose opinion was respected in military circles.
The clerk’s stylus moved over the wax. The spymaster took a deep breath and continued:
“And the reports all agree—in substance though not in every detail—on how this victory was won, sir.”
There were nods at that too, this time half unconscious; any intelligent man of rank knew that no two accounts of the same happenings were ever identical unless someone coordinated them. Suspicious uniformity was one of the ways you could tell that an underling was selectively editing what got through to you. Then, of course, you had to wonder if someone was doing that . . . but was clever enough not to make the reports suspiciously uniform.
“Legionary Legate Sextius Lollius Tiberianus underestimated the enemy, and marched out from Vindobona with a force of less than six thousand men, more than half of them auxiliaries, and only realized when engaged that he was facing five times his own numbers. At least five times. The position he assumed was good—on the advice of his primus pilus—but by the afternoon of the day of battle and after about six hours of combat they had suffered loses of one in eight or nine killed or seriously wounded, there were no more uncommitted reserves and they were facing defeat and slaughter. Which would have left the whole province open to devastation and ruin. Then . . . ”
He swallowed. “Then a party of civilians with six carroballistae of a new pattern intervened. Under the leadership of one Lucius Maecius Josephus, a Jewish merchant, and a newcomer to the area named Lucius Triarius Artorius, who was granted Roman citizenship late last year together with four of his clients, who arrived with him. Arrived from outside the Empire’s borders, and not from any of the client kingdoms either—they claim to be from an island realm in far western Oceanus.”
“Hibernia?” the Emperor asked in surprise; he hadn’t heard that part before.
Hibernia was a proverb for squalor and backward savagery, full of chanting robed Druids making human sacrifices and tattooed, head-hunting lunatics with lime-bleached hair, still driving war chariots to battle.
“No, sir, west even of Hibernia; they call it America. The ballistae set up on a hill at the extreme left flank of our position, just as a large Marcomannic force was about to break the line, and . . . and here all the reports become very strange, Caesar Augustus. They speak of . . .
The man halted, obviously reluctant to continue.
“Go on,” Marcus said gently and evenly. “You are speaking of reports you received. You cannot vouch for them personally because you were not a witness to these events.”
“They speak of, of thunderbolts like those of Iuppiter Fulgur Fulmen, and of the barbarians slain in huge numbers in the blink of an eye with flashes of red light and smoke smelling like Hades. And of Prince Ballomar, the Marcomanni leader, being slain by this Artorius in single combat and his head put on a spear; that most definitely. Then the First Cohort of the Tenth counterattacked through the gap the . . . the thunderbolts . . . created and it was a slaughter. The barbarians were demoralized, they ran, and our men killed until they were too weary to lift a blade; if we had had more cavalry on hand, not one would have escaped. All of the German raiding parties were cleansed from our territory over the course of the next week after doing relatively light damage.”
Though unpleasantly heavy to anyone who fell to their spears, the Emperor thought. Still, it could have been much, much worse.
The spymaster concluded: “Probably no more than a third of the barbarians returned alive across the Danube. Those who ran first and fastest.”
He looked around the table. “All the reports from my men . . . each of whom was unaware of the others’ presence . . . and the official report of the legate agree on this. As I said, only differences of detail and emphasis.”
Silence stretched, and Marcus was aware of the eyes on him.
“And what of this Artorius?” he said.
“He was first seen, with four companions—two men, one a Jew, and two women of very unusual appearance, a Nubian and one with the looks of those from the furthermost east—”
“I still await the report of the embassy I sent there two years ago,” the Emperor said, staring into the distance. “No matter. Continue.”
“—in Vindobona in June of last year, in company with Josephus the Jewish merchant. Then a few weeks later they traveled to an estate named the Villa Lunae south of Carnuntum, property of—”
He checked the page before him. “Sextus Hirrius Trogus, an eques of old family and of some wealth by provincial standards; he owes Josephus a large sum of money, but they appear to be on friendly terms nonetheless.”
“Another magical miracle!” one of the men at the table said, and subsided when the Emperor glanced his way with a frown.
“There Artorius introduced many changes and improvements, some of which have already been copied by others in Pannonia.”
“Improvements?”
“In horse gear, farming gear and methods, and the manufacture of new products such as, ah, superwine, a new and superior form of papyrus somehow made from local reeds and ordinary straw, a method of having an open fire in a room without problems from the smoke, and others. Some saw this as evidence of sorcery.”
There were snorts from around the table, except from a few of the notoriously superstitious, who touched amulets or made apotropaic gestures for protection. Sorcery did exist, no doubt, but the commons saw it under every rock and behind every bush, and it was not a view limited to the illiterate.
“These novelties enriched both Josephus and Sextus Hirrius Trogus; Josephus also used funds borrowed from Artorius to buy considerable quantities of grain and rush it to Vindobona, where it was bought by the camp prefect of the Tenth to fill the fort and city granaries. On the Villa Lunae Artorius made the carroballistae and their . . . well, whatever it is that they throw, over the winter past, and was able to use them at the battle in May.”
He looked up again. “Artorius and his companions were at first thought to be barbarians themselves, for they spoke Latin with a heavy, unfamiliar accent on their initial appearance, but more recent reports say that they now speak it very well. In fact, in a scholarly way, like a rhetorician or a senator. They certainly read it, and several of them are also fluent in Greek, including Artorius himself.”
“Nobody can improve their command of a language that quickly, not de novo,” the Emperor said. “Hmmm.”
Then he tapped his fingers on the right arm of his chair.
“Unless they already knew Latin well, but only from books . . . that would be possible. With respect to Greek, it happens sometimes with students from the farthest western parts of the Empire, Britannia or Lusitania or the German provinces, for example, who go to Athens for the schools without much contact with spoken Greek. They also often improve very rapidly. And they also often speak Greek in an old-fashioned way, having learned from books written centuries ago. But where would someone from the West learn Latin only from books? Hmmm. A puzzle. But continue.”
“They were granted citizenship by the provincial governor, Marcus Iallius Bassus, immediately after his appointment, at the urging of Sextus Hirrius Trogus.”
Marcus stroked his beard. Bassus he knew well, and it seemed the man had done a routine favor to a locally prominent man, granting Roman citizenship to the provincial grandee’s favored clients. An effective governor had to be firm, but also to keep the respect and support of his province’s men of influence, which usually meant the larger landowners. He’d appointed Bassus late last year, as a man able to deal with the threatened emergencies.
The Emperor stroked his beard again, and sighed. If it weren’t for these multiple reports of thunderbolts and strangers with odd powers, he’d be inclined to remain in Rome, where information was most easily available and orders moved quickly. This new pestilence in the east was very worrying, each report of it more alarming than the last as it spread. But as it was—
“I will go to Vindobona myself,” he said, and the men looked at each other, recognizing the tone of a decision made firmly. “The northern frontier needs the attention of an Emperor and it cannot wait. The Barbaricum is stirring; the other border incursions prove that. One reverse inflicted on the barbarians, even a bloody one, will not see the end of this, so we’ll be campaigning north of the Danube next year. And the matter of this battle in the spring must be looked into. With this degree of agreement, something . . . something truly extraordinary . . . must have taken place. It is imperative that we know precisely what.”
He turned to the Praetorian Prefect. “I will take as many of the Praetorians as can be spared, commanded by yourself, Prefect Repentius; prepare them rapidly. Also, the legates of the VII Gemina, IX Hispana, and II Traiana Fortis are to be informed that they may be called on for vexilliationes on short notice, unless it proves possible to divert forces from fighting Parthia, which Mars and all the other Gods grant. Send enquiries to my colleague Imperator Caesar Lucius Aurelius Verus Augustus”—which actually meant to his legionary legates and governors—“as to what forces can be immediately marched back to the Danube frontier without endangering his victories or giving the Parthians new heart.”
Clerks scribbled frantically. Verus was regrettably given to putting his own pleasures first, but he would of course be informed at the same time. He wasn’t a total wastrel, just . . . not as dedicated to duty as he might be.
“And set preparations in hand for raising more regular troops,” he said. “A full legion, and as many new auxiliary units. Legate Fronto, I will put that in your capable hands.”
One of the financial officials actually whimpered slightly; two extra legions, Legio II and Legio III, both named Italica because that was where they’d been recruited, had been commissioned early last year under Fronto’s direction. They were in the later stages of their training, and could fight now at a pinch; next year they would be as ready as men could be without actual battle experience.
“We will dispatch the second and third Italica to Pannonia, immediately,” the Emperor added.
Fronto nodded, his sun-browned hawk face pensive. “They can be there in . . . to be pessimistic . . . no more than sixty days from the date of departure. Possibly a few weeks less. A good long forced march will help finish up their training,” he added thoughtfully. “So will a winter in a field camp they build themselves, and some skirmishing would be excellent. They’ll be ready for field service by next campaigning season. But the new legion won’t, sir,” he added warningly.
Raising new legions was a hideously expensive proposition, besides adding to the standing army that ate at least three-quarters of the Imperial revenues every year.
“We will call the new unit Legio IV Italica,” Marcus Aurelius said, nodding. “Begin preparations immediately. It will be fit for garrison duty by next year? To relieve an experienced legion for field service?”
“Certainly, sir; frontier garrison duty will help with bringing them thoroughly up to scratch quickly. If I might suggest . . . ”
The Emperor nodded permission to go on.
“ . . . early next year we could send the new Italica unit to relieve the Ninth Claudian Legion at Durostorum; the Claudia would then be available for Pannonia, especially if the detachments fighting the Parthians can be returned, since it isn’t far from Durostorum to Pannonia Superior . . . and it’s closer to the east, too, which would help with getting their cohorts back quickly. They could be shipped by sea from ports in Syria and thence through the Bosporus and to the mouth of the Danube. The Claudia is first-rate. We wouldn’t want more than two newly raised legions in a field army anyway.”
Recruiting legions wasn’t just a matter of money, or even finding good recruits; you needed a solid cadre of tried and tested centurions, optios and capidoctores—instructors in all the arts a soldier had to learn. Which included but were not limited to drill in maneuver and weapons skills; a legion had to be able to build when it wasn’t fighting, and supply specialists for a dozen arcane trades.
Durostorum was on the lower Danube, near the Black Sea. And Fronto had commanded the Claudia himself late in Antoninus Pius’ reign, not too many years ago, so he’d be a good judge. He’d commanded successful actions against the Parthians, too, governed provinces well, and done a good job with the new units; and his family were reasonably prominent in the Senate.
Decision firmed.
“Excellent suggestion, Legate Fronto; make the arrangements, and you will join me in Pannonia with the Claudia next year as my second. Keep me closely informed of progress on this matter.”
Fronto nodded briskly and stood to salute, with the hint of a carnivore grin if you knew how to read men’s more subtle expressions. That would give him a command even more prestigious than the one he’d held early in the Parthian war, and a chance to shine directly under the Emperor’s eye.
Marcus Aurelius raised a hand: “You may leave, gentlemen, and prepare for this movement. I wish to depart personally for the north within no more than seven days, and make the journey with all practical speed.”
Nobody looked cheered by that thought, particularly the ones who’d be going with him. Some Emperors traveled in what was effectively a mobile palace; he was not among them. The fiscal officials, on the other hand, were always unhappy these days. Wars were expensive.
Not as expensive as defeat, he thought. Not as expensive in money, and not in the lives and goods of those it is our function to protect. The State exists for its citizens, though of course all individuals must be ready to sacrifice for it.
“Galenos, please remain,” he added, shifting effortlessly to fluent and accentless scholar’s Greek, and the physician did. The clerks left too, at a wave of his hand.
Some of the others gave Aelius Galenus—the Latin form of his name—from Pergamum covert glances as they left, despite how inconspicuous he’d been. Suddenly becoming a court physician, and discussing philosophy with an Emperor known to have a lifelong fascination with it was one thing, but being invited or commanded to attend a private meeting of the Emperor and his comites was another. A completely private audience afterward . . . that was even more so.
Fronto and the Praetorian Prefect Repentius and several others were deep in conversation by the time they reached the door; they’d be extremely busy now, as an explosion of messengers and aides went out from Rome. Legions would march, and many, many lives be forever altered, because of what he’d just said.
A sobering thought. But what must be done, must be done. Not to act is also to act . . . and badly, generally speaking.
When they were alone, Marcus leaned forward and went on:
“And what of your recent correspondence with this mysterious Artorius, oh man who loves wisdom?”
Galen lifted a leather container from beside his feet, set it on the table, unlaced the cover, and took out various objects. The Emperor suspected he’d remained in Rome last year mainly because the man Artorius had written him, but he’d brought it to the attention of the Imperial court quickly as well, and they had become friends thereby. And it was always best to have multiple sources for important information.
“First, kyrios,” he said.
Using the Greek for lord, which Marcus preferred to the usual Greek translation of Imperator as Autokrator.
“There is the covering letter that arrived with the packages; it is from Artorius himself, and written in his own hand. Which is a good one as I have noted before, but with some odd turns of phrase and even odder . . . ways of writing.”
“Ways?” the Emperor prompted.
“His use of capitalis quadrata like those on an inscription in a cursive text, for the first letter of certain types of words . . . personal and place names, a few others . . . and for the word at the beginning of a sentence; at the end of the sentence he places an interpunct, not in the middle of the line but at the lower right of a word. And his constant use of a uniform spacing between words . . . which incidentally I find makes silent reading much easier. It is not simple error, it is far too consistent in all his letters and the wording itself too fluent. My guess would be that he is using some at least of his native language’s . . . habits of text.”
“Which would imply that his native tongue is not Latin, nor Greek, and that it also has a written form,” Marcus Aurelius said thoughtfully. “One similar to ours . . . using the Latin alphabet, perhaps . . . but with differences too.”
Galen nodded. “This letter is on the new papyrus, and there was a bundle of fifty blank sheets with it for me to examine, as I had requested. It is of more uniform quality than even the best Egyptian scrolls, takes ink better, and apparently is much cheaper. Now to the letter itself.”
Galen read it aloud. Marcus closed his eyes in thought.
“So, he claims in response to your doubts that he will prove all his assertions, and as an example invites you to use the therapies he outlines.”
“With details of each under separate cover, lord.”
“And he is . . . rather blunt. Grammatically fluent, very much so, quite scholarly. But abrupt to a degree odd in a man of such obvious education.”
“Yes, lord. He outlines two new therapies; the first for wounds, which as you know I dealt with extensively as physician to the gladiators in my native city of Pergamum. The second is for inflammations of the bowels which induce diarrhea. In both cases, he said that I should establish two groups, one to receive this new treatment, and the other not, but to be cared for by doctors using the best standard methods. He calls the latter a control group or reference group.”
“It seems a clever way to quickly assess these new methods without as much time-consuming trial and error as one would normally expect.”
“Yes, lord, it is—and possibly of more general application, I think, for testing any new treatment, because it isolates the new elements and so clarifies cause and effect. In both cases I put ten in one group, ten in the other, assigned to one or the other by throwing dice. And the results were just as Artorius predicted. In those suffering wounds or requiring surgery, far more infections in the . . . the control group, where my standard therapies were applied. The treatment for the second group of wound patients involves the application of doubled superwine, which came with the letter.”
He put two corked glass containers on the table. One was full of a pale yellow liquid, the other of something more nearly colorless.
“Superwine—the yellow fluid here in this bottle”—he tapped the colored one with a finger—“is made by a process of concentration involving heating and then the condensation of vapors.”
“But the active spirits of wine are not thickened or concentrated by boiling, if I remember correctly,” Marcus Aurelius pointed out.
“Indeed, kyrios. Boiling drives them off; but apparently the active element is evaporated at a lower temperature than water, and they may be separated by this. The process catches the vapors in a coil of copper tubing cooled by water, and is called distillation.”
That was obviously the past-participle stem of distillare, “to trickle down in minute drops.”
“A clever coinage,” Marcus Aurelius said approvingly; skill with words was at the heart of a gentleman’s education.
“The initial material can be wine, or other fermented substances, in this case peaches but any sweet fruit would do, possibly even a grain mash such as is used to make beer. I have sampled it; it merely makes you drunk much faster than an equal quantity of unwatered wine, and gives an especially vile hangover.”
“As always, immoderation carries its own punishment . . . eventually.”
“Yes, lord. The other, he says, is the result of doubling and redoubling the process. Applied as he specifies, with the other measures, involving boiling of water and surgical instruments and thread to close wounds cleansed in the boiling water, cleansing of bandages by high wet heat and drying in a protected container, repeated washing of hands with sapo and doubled superwine or the boiled water before touching the patient, careful removal of all foreign matter, and so forth, it reliably prevents infection in a large majority of cases. No or very little pus, laudable or otherwise. No spreading rot or gangrene in any of the cases, as opposed to several in the . . . control group.”
“Remarkable!” the Emperor said.
Usually some pus was inevitable if there was a deep cut or serious crushing, or if it was necessary to perform surgery.
“Yes, lord. This is a treatment of possibly enormous worth. It would cut wound fatalities massively, and enable surgical interventions with far less risk.”
“And the other? The diseases of the bowels?”
Those were always common, particularly in warm weather, in cities, and among children, though anyone could suffer from them and the elderly were almost as vulnerable as the young. Travelers often fell ill with them too, which was among the many miseries of voyaging far afield.
“The treatment for dysenteric illness involves strict bed rest, and the use of a decoction of boiled water—boiled in a covered container—then amended with honey and sea salt, and the mixture administered in large doses. Followed by a regimen of the same gradually combined with broth, then soup of soft materials, then regular soup, and then solid foods boiled to softness. The results are not as absolute as with the wound treatment, but they are definitely not random. The rate of fatality is cut by more than half, and recovery in those cases is usually much swifter than normal.”
“Why do these treatments give better results?”
Galen smiled thinly and bowed in his seat. “I have no idea, kyrios,” he said. “None. But I would very much wish to learn!”
Marcus Aurelius nodded slowly. “There seem to be many secrets this man . . . and his equally mysterious companions . . . possess. But he is ready to share them, and use them for the benefit of Rome and the State. Or the general good of humankind, in the case of the medical methods.”
Galen nodded, and his mouth twisted. “I confess I felt anger at his brusque manner at first, at being treated like an ignorant child . . . until I remembered how the physicians of Rome attempted to destroy me when I arrived here a few years ago, and demonstrated better treatments that had nothing to do with their auguries and superstitions. Treatments I had deduced from empirical study, not merely from a priori assumptions! Then I subdued my conceit, as a lover of philosophy should, and accepted my own ignorance—that being, as Socrates said, the beginning of wisdom.”
He sighed and turned the letter over. “And he says that if—he repeats that if—the new pestilence in the East is what he suspects it is, then he knows of a preventative treatment that will infallibly preserve people from falling ill with it. Though it will not cure it if already in progress.”
“There is a strange modesty to this man’s claims, odd though that seems,” the Emperor said thoughtfully. “For one reputed to throw thunderbolts like a God! Yet, he makes limited claims, with careful caveats laying out alternative possibilities and even admitting the possibility that he is in error or that in some circumstances he will be helpless.”
Galen nodded again. “Yes, lord, I had noticed that. And for those we can test, his claims are borne out just as he predicts, neither more nor less. Either a very clever deception, leading us by the nose somehow I cannot imagine, or he is simply telling the truth.”
“At least part of the truth,” the Emperor said thoughtfully. “Which can, itself, mislead.”
“Indeed. And if his secrets can smite armies and win battles, they are of . . . of sovereign importance, Caesar.”
A glance went between them. There had been no serious civil wars or usurpations in the Empire for more than seventy years, a long lifetime. Not since the assassination of Domitian and the providential succession of Nerva, which had not caused strife of the sort that had given Domitian’s father Vespasian and elder brother Titus the purple nearly a century ago.
That didn’t mean such times as the Year of the Four Emperors couldn’t come again. In essence the Divine Julius had been a successful warlord, after all, and also his successor, adopted son and great-nephew Augustus. The Emperor’s chair rested on spearpoints; everyone had known that from the first Augustus’ time, however much he’d tried to disguise it himself with soothing talk of restoring the Republic.
If an ambitious man secured the favor of enough troops . . . a man who had someone wielding the thunderbolts of Jupiter at his back, for example . . . he might be tempted to strike for supreme power himself.
“And this Artorius offers to lay all his secrets at my feet,” the Emperor mused. “You will accompany me to Pannonia, Galenos. And you will take exhaustive notes.”