Empire (64 page)

Apollonius did not engage in sexual intimacy with others, which he called an illusion and a trap; fleeting moments of pleasure led only to endless agitation and suffering. Lucius asked him if copulation was not a virtue, since it was necessary for procreation. Apollonius, who believed in reincarnation, replied, “What is the virtue of creating more human beings, and thus more mortal life, and thus more suffering? If there were to be no more human beings, eventually the population would vanish, and would that be a bad thing? If we possess spirits, those spirits will still exist; they will simply be freed from the onerous process of transmigrating from body to body, wearing out one after another, endlessly suffering the pains of mortal decay. With or without humanity as we know it, the Divine Unity will continue to exist. This sentimental attachment to creating endless replicas of ourselves is yet another illusion, another trap. Procreation only perpetuates the cycle of suffering. There is no virtue in it. It is a vice.”

As far as Lucius could determine, no other wise man, whether philosopher or religious savant, had ever declared universal chastity to be a virtue. At first, Lucius was dubious of following this example, but in fact he was already practicing it. Since the death of Cornelia, he had withdrawn from seeking intimacy with anyone else. It required no real change on his part to emulate Apollonius, and once he made a conscious decision to do so, he felt a great sense of freedom and relief.

Apollonius held the great and powerful in no special esteem. Nor did he fear them. During his first visit to Roma, in the reign of Nero, he had attracted the attention of the emperor’s henchman Tigellinus, who had put a watch on him. Apollonius gave the informers no cause to arrest him, until he happened to hear Nero sing one day in a common tavern. The emperor was incognito, wearing a mask, but there was no doubt that it was him. Tigellinus was in the audience, also in disguise, wearing a hooded cloak and an eye patch. After Nero’s performance, he asked Apollonius’s opinion.

“Was it not fit for the gods?”

“If the gods like it, we must strive not to think less of them,” said Apollonius.

Tigellinus was incensed. “Do you realize who that was? You’ve just heard Caesar sing one of his own compositions. Was it not divine?”

“Now that it is over, I do feel closer to the gods.”

“Stop speaking in riddles and say what you mean! I say the singing was wonderful. What do you say?”

“I say I have a higher opinion of the emperor than you do.”

“How is that?”

“You think it is wonderful if he sings. I think it is wonderful if he simply remains silent.”

Tigellinus charged Apollonius with impugning the dignity of the emperor and arrested him. As the trial approached, he realized that he needed stronger evidence than the ambiguous statements made by Apollonius. He put an informer up to writing a series of charges against Apollonius and had the charges notarized, so that when they were produced in court they would appear to come from an outside witness. All sorts of false statements were imputed to Apollonius, of a nature seditious enough to have him put to death.

In the court, before Nero and the magistrates, Apollonius was called
forth. Tigellinus produced the sealed scroll upon which the accusations were written and brandished it like a dagger. But when he unrolled the scroll, his jaw dropped and he stood speechless.

Nero demanded to see the scroll for himself. “Is this a joke?” he asked Tigellinus. The parchment was completely blank. Nero ordered Tigellinus to set Apollonius free, with the stipulation that he should leave Italy at once.

“Nero thought I was a magician,” explained Apollonius. “He feared that I would exact a supernatural revenge if I were to be imprisoned or executed.”

“But, Teacher,” asked Lucius, “how did it happen that the scroll Tigellinus produced was blank? Had the original scroll been taken and another substituted? Had the scribe been given a special ink, which faded away? Or did you call upon some supernatural power to make the lies on the parchment vanish?”

“I can think of another possibility,” said Apollonius. “What if those who looked at the scroll simply did not see the writing that was there?”

“But, Teacher, how could that happen?”

“Very often, when a thing is inexplicable, it is simply a matter of seeing or not seeing. Just as it is possible to open a man’s eyes to what is before him, simply by directing his attention, so there are ways to make a man blind to what is before him.” That was as clear an explanation as Apollonius would give.

Apollonius had also met Vespasian. This was when Vitellius was emperor. Legions supporting Vespasian were marching on Roma, but Vespasian himself was in Alexandria. Uncertain about the future and eager for advice, Vespasian had solicited the counsel of the most prestigious astrologers and philosophers in a city renowned for its learning. In his first meeting with Vespasian, Apollonius described a vision in which he beheld the final days of Vitellius, including the burning of the Temple of Jupiter and the narrow escape of Domitian. Vespasian was dubious, but a messenger brought news of these events to Alexandria the very next day. Vespasian was greatly impressed. “Either this fellow truly has visions of far-off events,” he remarked, “or else he has information-gathering capabilities superior to my own. Either way, I want his advice!”

“I took advantage of that the opportunity to encourage Vespasian in
his ambitions,” Apollonius told Lucius. “I could see he was a man of equable temperament, and the most likely candidate to restore peace and order to the chaotic state of the empire. But later, when he wrote me letters beseeching me to come to Roma to advise him, I refused.”

“Why, Teacher?”

“Because of his treatment of the Greeks. Nero had many faults, but he loved Greece and Greek culture; he bestowed many privileges on the Greek cities, allowing them a degree of dignity and freedom no emperor had granted them before. But Vespasian saw fit to revoke every one of those privileges. He deliberately and systematically returned the Greeks to their subservient state. He was a great disappointment to me. Whenever he wrote to me, I wrote a scolding letter back to him.”

“No!”

“Oh yes.”

“What did you say in these letters?”

“This was my final letter to him. ‘Apollonius to the Emperor Vespasian: A bad man redeemed himself by freeing the Greeks. A good man tarnished himself by enslaving them. Why should any man desire the company of a counselor to whom he will not listen? Farewell.’ ”

Given a letter of introduction by Vespasian, Apollonius had also met Titus. This was in Tarsus, after Vespasian returned to Roma as emperor and entrusted affairs in the East to his son.

“I liked Titus,” said Apollonius. “He was surprisingly modest and had a wonderful sense of humor. And at thirty, when many fighting men let themselves go, he kept himself very fit. Titus had a very stout neck, like an athlete in training. Once I grabbed him by the back of the neck and said, ‘Who could ever force such a sturdy bull neck as this under a yoke?’ And Titus laughed and said, ‘Only the man who reared me from a calf!’ His deference to his father was endearing, yet he had the makings of a better ruler than his father. Alas, we had the father for ten years and the son for only two.”

“Is it true that you foretold Titus’s early death?” said Lucius.

Apollonius smiled. “Sometimes, I know, I seem to speak in riddles. But about this I shall be as clear as I can. Imagine that you enter a dark cave. You strike a spark, and for just an instant you see the extent of the place. The details are uncertain, and the shape of the cavern is vague, but
you grasp at once if the cave is large or small. So it is, sometimes, when I first meet a person. In a flash I sense whether their time on this earth will be long or short. I knew from the moment I met him that Titus would not live to be as old as his father. He was like a lamp that burns more brightly than others but for a shorter time.”

“And his brother?”

“I haven’t met Domitian. But to me it seems he is not like a lamp at all. He is an extinguisher of lamps. He brings darkness, not light.”

“I wonder how much longer his reign of darkness will last.”

Apollonius shrugged. “The man is only forty-two.”

“That was the age at which Titus died.”

“Yes, but Vespasian lived to be sixty-two.”

“Twenty more years of Domitian!” exclaimed Lucius.

“Perhaps,” said Apollonius. “Or perhaps not.”

Lucius reclined on his couch in the garden, his eyes shut, smelling the flowers, thinking of how his life had changed in the year since he had met the Teacher.

He felt the warmth of the sun on his bare feet. Apollonius had taught him to go barefoot. What need had a man for shoes in his own house? Sometimes Lucius even went to the Forum barefoot. Others stared at him as if he were mad.

“Are you dreaming?” said Apollonius. He had excused himself for a moment to empty his bladder in the small latrina off the garden. The Teacher had a body just like those of other men, and was subject to the same needs to ingest and expel as dictated by the endlessly repeating cycles of mortal flesh.

“The others will arrive soon,” said Lucius, wishing it were not so. He treasured time alone with the Teacher, listening to his stories, asking him questions, simply enjoying his tranquil presence. But Apollonius had many friends, and it sometimes fell to Lucius to play host to the others in his home. He was expecting perhaps fifty men and women. They would be of all social ranks, from freedmen to patricians like himself. There would probably be a few senators among them, but also shopkeepers and artisans
and bricklayers. No one who wished to hear Apollonius speak was turned away.

Lucius looked at the Teacher and smiled. To a careless observer, Apollonius might appear to be nothing more than a doddering old man. But such were the illusions of the material world: appearances meant nothing. Emulating Apollonius, Lucius had begun to eschew the services of his barber. His hair had never been so long, and never before had he sported a beard. At the age of forty-six, Lucius had only a few touches of silver in his hair, but someday he might hope to have a beard as fleece-white as that of the Teacher.

“What story will you tell the gathering today?” asked Lucius.

“I was thinking I might talk about my time in Ethiopia.”

Lucius nodded. The Teacher’s stories about Ethiopia were among Lucius’s favorites.

“I thought in particular I might tell the story of my encounter with the satyr, since most people nowadays have never seen a satyr and have various misconceptions about the creatures.”

Lucius sat upright. “You met a satyr in Ethiopia? I’ve never heard that story.”

“Could it be that I never told you?”

“Never! I’m sure I would have remembered.”

“Well, then. It was during my journey to the see the great lake from whence the Nile originates. On its shores one finds a colony of the naked sages, who are wiser than Greek philosophers but not quite so wise as the sages of India, to whom they are kin. They welcomed me heartily, but I could see they were in distress, and I asked the cause.

“Nightly, they were plagued by the visitations of a wild creature, a being that was goatlike from the waist down, with shaggy hind legs and hooves, and manlike from the waist up, but with goat horns and pointed ears. From their description I deduced it was a satyr, a being previously unknown in those parts. This satyr interrupted the sleep of the sages, tramping outside their huts and bleating in the middle of the night. When they confronted the satyr and complained, the creature made rude noises and obscene gestures. When they attempted to apprehend him, he proved to be swifter than even the swiftest among them, leaping and careening and causing them to trip over one another and make fools of themselves.

“The sages took me to a nearby village, where the elders informed me that the satyr’s incursions there were far more serious. At least once a month, always by night, he intruded upon the comeliest and most nubile of the women, muttering incantations in their ears while they slept, putting them under a spell and luring them into the woods. A few of the women had awakened from this spell and dared to resist him, whereupon the creature physically attacked them, strangling them and trampling them with his hooves. Two women had been killed in this way, and others had been seriously injured. The villagers were terrified of the satyr.”

“What did you do to help those people, Teacher?”

“I recalled my studies of a rare book left to us by King Midas, who was known to have a bit of satyr blood in his own veins, as could be seen by the shape of his ears. Occasionally his satyr relatives imposed on Midas’s hospitality, making chaos of his court with their wild behavior. But as a child Midas had been told by his mother of a way to deal with satyrs, which he put to the test. Wine has a peculiar effect on them. When a satyr imbibes, he becomes intoxicated, as men do, and eventually he falls fast asleep, snoring loudly, as men do. But when the satyr awakens from this drunken stupor, his animal nature has departed from him and he is as harmless as a child. Such a tame satyr is capable of being taught to speak and even to reason. The widespread reformation of satyrs is no doubt one reason they are so very rarely seen nowadays, since such satyrs are more afraid of humans than are humans of them.