Empire (63 page)

“You’re suffering, my friend,” said the man.

“Yes.” Lucius saw no point in denying it.

“Such suffering is like a flower that blooms. It opens all at once and
engages all our senses, but soon enough it fades and falls away. You will remember it always, but it will no longer be present before you. Take heart, my friend, for the time when your suffering will fade and fall away is very near.”

“Who are you?” Lucius frowned. He was still on his knees. Anyone seeing him now would assume that he was kneeling to honor the man before him, despite the fact that the man was barefoot and dressed like a beggar, wearing a threadbare, ragged tunic. Strangely, the idea did not displease Lucius. He stayed on his knees.

“My name is Apollonius. I come from Tyana. Do you know where that is?”

“In Cappadocia, I think.”

“That is correct. Have you heard of me?”

“No.”

“Good. Those who have heard of Apollonius of Tyana often have certain preconceptions about me, which I am not interested in fulfilling. What is your name, friend?”

“Lucius Pinarius. Are you some sort of wise man?” Cappadocia, with its weird desert cities carved from rock, was famous for breeding hermits and seers.

The man laughed. The sound was very pleasant. “I am whatever people choose to call me. When you know me better, Lucius Pinarius, you will decide what I am.”

“Why are talking to me?”

“All men suffer, but no man should suffer in secret, as you do.”

“What do you know of my suffering?”

“You loved a person whom law and religion decreed you should not love, and her separation from you has caused you much pain.”

Lucius gasped. “How can you know this?”

The man smiled. There was no mockery in his smile, only gentleness. “I suppose I could put on airs of mystery and pretend that the stories about me are true—that I can read men’s minds, that I have occult means of gaining knowledge—but the truth is much simpler. I’m a visitor to Roma. Before this morning I never passed though this particular neighborhood, but even a casual visitor will quickly be told by the locals what happened
on this spot a year ago. When I observed a man standing here, clutching a rose and staring for a long time at the ground, I knew you must have had some relationship with the Vestal who was buried here. When you knelt and placed the rose so carefully, heedless of your own bleeding wound, I knew you must have loved her. Anyone with eyes could have seen this, but in such a busy spot, where everyone is passing by in such a hurry, I alone observed your suffering.”

“Who are you?” said Lucius.

“You asked me that already. I am Apollonius of Tyana.”

“No, I mean—”

“Here, why don’t you stand, my friend?” Apollonius offered his hand. “Let’s take a walk.”

Lucius said little. He listened to Apollonius, who spoke of his travels. Apollonius talked about these journeys in an offhand way, as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world for a man to have gone to Egypt to learn what the priests there could teach him about the hieroglyphs on the ancient tombs, and to Ethiopia to meet the naked sages who live at the source of the Nile, and even all the way to India to consort with the fabled wise men of the Ganges.

A light rain began to fall. They had wandered into an area of fine homes on the Quirinal Hill. Lucius was looking for a tavern or eatery where they might take refuge when Apollonius noticed that the door of a nearby house was open. He cocked his head.

“Do you hear that?” he said.

“I hear nothing,” said Lucius.

“No? I distinctly hear the sound of weeping, coming from that house.” Apollonius walked toward the open door.

“What are you doing?” said Lucius.

“Going inside. Where there is weeping, there is need for comfort.”

“Do you know these people?”

“I’ve never been on this street before in my life. But all streets and all people are the same. Once a man knows that, he is a stranger nowhere.”

Apollonius stepped inside the house. Against his better judgment, Lucius followed him.

Beyond the vestibule, in the atrium, a drizzling rain fell from the open
skylight into a shallow pool. Beyond the pool, on the tile floor, lay the body of a young woman. She wore a white bridal gown with a purple sash around her waist. Gathered around the body were several women, all dressed for a wedding. They looked stunned. Some quietly wept. Farther back stood a group of men who looked helpless and confused.

How had Apollonius heard the sound of the women weeping, when Lucius had not? For an old man, his hearing was very acute, thought Lucius.

Apollonius looked down at the young woman. “Is this her wedding day?” he said.

One of the kneeling women looked up. There was an expression of shock on her face. “Yes. This is my daughter’s wedding day—and the gods see fit to strike her down!”

“What happened?” said Apollonius.

The woman shook her head. “We were organizing the procession to set out for the bridegroom’s house. We were in her room and I was tying the sash around her waist, and she complained I was pulling too tight. She said she couldn’t breathe. But the sash wasn’t too tight; I slipped a finger under it to show her. Still, she couldn’t catch her breath. She said her face felt hot. A servant told us it was raining. Without a word she pulled away from me and ran here, to the pool. I thought she wanted to cool her face. I told her she mustn’t get her gown wet, and then . . . she collapsed. She fell, just as you see her now.”

“Perhaps she only sleeps.”

“She has no heartbeat! She isn’t breathing!”

“Alas,” whispered Apollonius. He looked intently at the girl, then at the huddled women. He waved his hands before him—to get their attention, Lucius thought, but then the old man continued to move his hands, making signs in the air. Apollonius had the full attention of everyone in the room, including the men who stood farther back. They all stared at him. The women who had been weeping were now silent.

“Stand back,” said Apollonius.

Without a word, the women drew back. Apollonius circled the pool and knelt beside the girl. He put one hand on her forehead and passed the other hand over her body, not touching her. He whispered inaudible words.

Apollonius snapped his fingers. In the quiet room, where the only other sound was the fall of drizzling raindrops on the pool, the noise echoed like the breaking of a small branch. He paused, then snapped his finger twice more.

The girl shuddered, drew a deep breath, and let out a sigh. She opened her eyes, “Where am I?” she said.

Her mother cried out. The women gasped, uttered exclamations of thanksgiving, and shed tears of relief.

Some of the men began to weep as well. One of them stepped forward.

“Stranger, you brought my daughter back to life!” The man was giddy with joy.

“Your daughter is indeed alive, but I am no stranger. I am Apollonius of Tyana.”

“How did you work such a miracle? What god did you call upon?”

Apollonius shrugged. “I merely spoke to your daughter. ‘Awake, young woman!’ I said. ‘The rain is about to stop, and you shall be late for your wedding. Breathe deeply and awake!’ And then, as you saw, she woke. What girl wants to be late for her own wedding?”

“But how can I repay you? Here, you must take these.” The father fetched a pair of drinking cups. “Solid silver,” he said, “decorated with bits of lapis. And not just any lapis, but the special variety flecked with gold that comes only from Bactria.”

“The workmanship is exquisite,” said Apollonius.

“They were to be a gift to my daughter and her new husband. But here, I want you to have them.”

Apollonius laughed. “What use have I for cups, when I never drink wine?”

“Drink water from them, then!” The man grinned. “Or sell them. Buy yourself a tunic with no holes in it!”

Apollonius shrugged. “A few more holes in this garment, and I shall be as splendidly arrayed as the naked sages of Ethiopia.”

The man looked puzzled but was so happy that he burst out laughing.

“I see that your daughter is on her feet again,” said Apollonius. “Go to her. She won’t be yours for much longer. You should enjoy every precious moment.”

“Precious, indeed!” said the man. “How precious I never knew until this day. Thank you, Apollonius of Tyana! May the gods bless you!” The man joined his wife, who was making a great fuss over their daughter.

Amid the hubbub, Apollonius discreetly withdrew. Lucius followed. On the way out, they passed a young Vestal who was just arriving to take her place in the procession. The sight of her sent a chill through Lucius. In the street he had to pause to collect himself. Apollonius stood by, observing him with a sympathetic smile.

“I don’t understand what happened in there,” Lucius finally said. “Was the girl dead or not?”

“Ah, wedding days! They bring out a great deal of emotion in people.”

“Are you saying they only imagined she was dead?”

Apollonius shrugged. “I suspect they were less observant than they might have been. People often are. Did you notice, for example, how the women near the misty drizzle exuded a faint but visible vapor with each exhalation?”

“Are you saying you observed such a vapor coming from the girl’s nostrils?”

“I saw what there was to see. My eyes see no more and no less than those of other men.”

Lucius raised an eyebrow. “You did something with your hands. They all watched. Did you bewitch them somehow?”

“I made them take notice of me, and when I asked them to move aside, they did so. Does that sound like magic to you?”

Lucius crossed his arms. “Those cups he offered you were quite beautiful. Quite valuable, too, I imagine.”

“I had no use for them.”

“Nonsense! As the man said, you could have sold them. Those cups would have paid for three months’ lodging in a nice apartment on the Aventine.”

“But I never pay for lodging.”

“No?”

“I always stay with friends.”

“Who are you staying with now?”

“With you, of course!” Apollonius laughed.

His laughter was infectious. Lucius felt his suspicions of the man fade away. He began to laugh, too, and realized that it was the first time he had done so in more than a year.

So began his relationship with the Teacher.

Apollonius did not ask Lucius to call him the Teacher; that was Lucius’s decision. As Apollonius told him at their first meeting, “I am whatever people choose to call me . . . you will decide what I am.”

Apollonius was not a teacher in any traditional way. He did not cite authorities and recite from texts, as Lucius’s boyhood tutors had done. He did not construct edifices of logic leading to rational conclusions, like Epictetus did. He did not tell stories that led to some moral or theological conclusion, like the man-god of the Christians did. He did not create charts and diagrams or write long treatises, like the astrologers did. And he certainly claimed no special status for himself or any special connection to the gods, as did the priests of the state religion. Apollonius simply rose from his bed each morning and went about his day. He visited old friends and made new ones. By the example of his behavior, he showed that a man could move through the world without vanity or fear, never showing anger or despair, envious of no one, wanting for nothing.

When asked, Apollonius would state his opinions and preferences, but he never expounded on these to offer proof, and he never insisted that others should agree with him. He professed to believe in the gods, but only as shadowy manifestations of a higher, all-encompassing principle, and he claimed no special relationship with this principle beyond that which belonged to all living things, which were equally a part of the Divine Unity and had equal access to the blessings that radiated, like sunshine, from that being. “I am to that deity as I am to the sun, and so are you,” he would say. “I am no closer than you; it warms me no more than it warms you; it sheds no more light before me. Its blessing are for all, equally and in endless abundance.”

Often, it seemed to Lucius that Apollonius behaved in ways contradictory to what other men called common sense. When Lucius would question these seemingly perverse actions, Apollonius would patiently explain
himself; even so, Lucius could not always understand the Teacher’s words. But Lucius was ceaselessly amazed by the Teacher’s unfailing equanimity, and he came to trust the man implicitly. Even when Lucius could not follow Apollonius’s reasoning, he strove to emulate the Teacher as best he could, and to accept on faith that a fuller understanding might someday come to him.

Apollonius did not drink wine. Intoxication did not bring a man closer to the deity, he said, but interposed a veil of illusion. Lucius followed his example.

Apollonius did not eat meat, saying that all life was sacred, including that of animals. Nor did he wear anything made from an animal; there were no scraps of leather, bones, or ivory on his person. Lucius followed this example as well, and, like Apollonius, he came to see the slaying of animals as no different from the slaying of men. Men did not kill other men for food or for hides; nor should they kill animals. And just as civilized men had long ago given up the religious practice of human sacrifice, so it was time for men to give up animal sacrifice; the slaying of a beast could be no more pleasing to the gods than the slaying of a child. As for the killing of animals in the arena for sport, that was sheer cruelty and, if anything, was worse than the killing of humans for sport, for the animals did not possess speech and could not beg for mercy. Lucius, who had enjoyed hunting all his life, gave it up.