Callias: A Tale of the Fall of Athens

by Alfred John Church

  CHAPTER XXVI.

  INVALIDED.

  Callias found it very hard to sit out the banquet and the entertainmentthat followed it. He had felt a headache before sitting, or to speakmore correctly, lying down, and this grew so bad during the evening thathe gladly took the earliest opportunity of leaving. The fact was that hehad been ailing for some days; the excitement of the games had carriedhim through the labors of the day, but he suffered doubly from thereaction, and before nightfall he was seriously ill.

  And now he found the advantage of having followed Xenophon's advice andtaken up his quarters in the town. Had he been reduced to such nursingand attendance as the camp could have supplied, his chances of movingwould have been small indeed. At the house of Demochares, on thecontrary, he had everything in his favor, an exceptionally good nurse,and an exceptionally skillful physician. In those days neither branch ofthe healing art, for nursing has certainly as much to do with healing asphysicking, was very successfully cultivated. Women nursed the sick,indeed, often with kindness and devotion, for woman's nature wassubstantially the same then as it is now, but they did it in a blind andignorant fashion. As for the practice of medicine it was a mass ofcurious superstitions and prejudices, leavened here and there with a fewgrains of experience, and, if the practitioner happened to have thatinestimable quality, of good sense. Of systems there was only thebeginning. The great physician Hippocrates had indeed acquired a vastreputation, and was beginning to influence the opinion of the facultythroughout Greece; but the medical profession has always been slow toadopt new ideas--what profession, indeed, has not?--the means ofcommunication, too, were very limited, and as yet his teaching had hadbut little effect.

  But Callias happened to be exceedingly fortunate both in his nurse andin his doctor. The house of Demochares was kept by his sister, a widow,who after her husband's death had returned to her old home, and haddevoted herself to a life of kindness and charity. The young Athenianhad won her heart, not only by his sunny temper and gracious manners,but by his resemblance to a son of her own whose early death--he hadbeen slain in a skirmish with the barbarian neighbors of Trapezus--hadbeen the second great sorrow of her life. His illness called forth hertenderest sympathies, and nothing could have exceeded the devotion withwhich she ministered to her patient.

  The physician, Demoleon by name, was a very remarkable man. He was anative of the island of Cos, and was at this time between fifty andsixty years of age. He had been one of the first pupils of the famousHippocrates, who was a native of the same island, and had lived on termsof great intimacy with his teacher whom he assisted in his privatepractice. When Hippocrates was summoned to the plague-stricken city ofAthens, Demoleon accompanied him, and, by a curious coincidence, in thecourse of his residence there had treated the father of Callias.Whatever the benefit that followed the prescriptions of Hippocrates, itis certain that the fact of his being called in to administer them bythe most famous citizen of Greece, largely increased his reputation, andthat even beyond the border of Greece. The great physician's return fromAthens was speedily followed by an invitation from Artaxerxes, King ofPersia.[78] The plague that had devastated Greece had passed eastward,and was committing destructive ravages throughout the Persian Empire.Artaxerxes implored Hippocrates to give him and his subjects the benefitof his advice. He offered at the same time the magnificent _honorarium_of two talents of gold yearly.[79] The patriotism or the prudence ofHippocrates led him to refuse this offer, tempting as it was. He wouldnot, he said, and doubtless with sincerity, give the benefit of hisadvice to the hereditary enemy of his country. At the same time, we maysuppose, he reflected to himself that he would be putting himself,without any possibility of appeal, at the mercy of a tyrannical andunscrupulous master. But one of the Persian envoys succeeded in doing alittle business of the same kind on his own account. He found the pupilless resolute against the temptations of a great bribe than the masterhad been. Accordingly he engaged Demoleon to come in the capacity ofphysician to himself and his household. The King would have theopportunity of availing himself of his advice if he pleased. Artaxerxeswas disappointed at the refusal of Hippocrates, but he did not disdainthe help of a man who had shared his practice, and was probablyacquainted with his system. Demoleon prescribed at Susa and Persepolisthe remedies which his master had employed at Athens, the burning ofhuge fires in the street and squares, and the use of an antidote. Thepestilence either yielded to these influences, or, as is more probable,had exhausted its force. At any rate Demoleon got the credit of havingvanquished the enemy, and was rewarded by a munificent present from theKing and by an enormous practice.

  He might have accumulated great wealth but for an unlucky complicationfor which he can scarcely be considered to have been to blame. Necessitysometimes compelled a departure, in the case of the physician, from thestrict rules of seclusion with which the Persian women were surrounded.Demoleon was called in to visit the daughter of a Persian noble. She wasa beautiful girl, or rather would have been beautiful but for the factthat she was blind. It was a case of cataract, and the Greek physician,who was as bold as he was skillful, ventured on an operation which atthat time had scarcely been attempted, or even thought of. It provedentirely successful. The gratitude of the father was shown by amunificent present of gold and jewels; that of the daughter by the giftof her heart. One of the very first objects on which her eyes restedwhen the bandage was permitted to be removed was the form of the youngphysician who had restored to her one of the greatest joys of life.Under any circumstances it was likely to please her; and Demoleon was inthe bloom of early manhood, and his fair complexion and golden hairshowed in attractive contrast to the swarthy hues of her countrymen. Theresult was that she fell deeply in love. Demoleon was not withoutprudence, and would have hesitated to listen to any promptings of hisown heart, for he too had been greatly impressed by the beauty and graceas well as by the pathetic patience of the sufferer. Amestris--that wasthe young lady's name--guessed readily enough that the physician wouldnot venture to speak, and she took the matter into her own hands. Shedid not speak herself; for that, passionate as was her affection, wouldhave been impossible; but she got some one to speak for her. Hernurse--the nurse was generally the _confidante_ of antiquity--undertookthe task of communicating with the young man. One day she gave him apomegranate, saying at the same time that he would find the fruitespecially sweet. Her words would have seemed ordinary enough to any onethat might have happened to hear them; but the young physician, whosefeelings made him susceptible, suspected, he could not say why, aparticular meaning. Opening the fruit he found a ring engraved with asingle Greek word--_Be Bold_. The next day he thanked the giver of thefruit with emphasis. "It was sweet to the core," he said.

  After that the affair proceeded rapidly. The young man, who, as may beguessed, did not hurry the case of his patient, found an opportunity ofdeclaring his love, and in the following summer the two lovers fledtogether. All the arrangements had been carefully made. The girlfeigned sickness, and the physician prescribed a residence among thehills and a simpler life and plainer diet than the patient was likely toget in her father's house. Her foster-mother was the wife of a sheepmaster who rented some extensive pasture on the hills of SouthernArmenia, and it was settled that Amestris should pay her a visit. Thelady was sent off under a small escort, no one dreaming that the familyof an influential noble would be molested on its journey. Yet, curiouslyenough, a band of brigands was bold enough to enter the caravanseraiwhere the party was lodging on the fourth night after their departurefrom Susa. Certainly the keeper of the inn, and, possibly, the commanderof the escort, had been bribed--Demoleon's successful practice had puthim in the command of as much money as he wanted. For a long timeAmestris absolutely disappeared. Her father searched everywhere andoffered munificent rewards for information, but he could find and hearnothing. No one knew that a couple of travellers, who might have beentwo brothers journeying in company and followed by three well armedservants, were in fact Demoleon, Amestris, and the preten
ded robbers.The party followed much the same route as was afterwards taken by theTen Thousand, and, after not a few hair-breadth escapes, arrived insafety at the same destination,--the city of Trapezus.

  Three years of happiness followed. Then the beautiful Persian died. Shenever repented of having given her heart to the young physician, who wasthe best and most affectionate of husbands. But she missed her familyand all the associations of her early life, and pined away under theloss. Return was impossible; she could not go back without her husband,and to return with him would have been to expose him, if not herself, tothe certainty of death. The hopelessness of the situation broke herheart; and all her husband's skill, even the more potent influence ofher husband's love, failed to work a cure.

  The widower could not prevail upon himself to leave the place where hehad enjoyed his short-lived happiness. He might have gained wealth andfame in larger cities, but he preferred to spend the rest of his days atTrapezus. There, indeed, he was almost worshipped. He had a singularlylight and skillful hand; his experience, though, of course, not so largeas he might have collected elsewhere, was always ready for use; and hehad the rare, the incommunicable gift of felicitous guessing--guessingwe call it, but it is really the power of forming rapid conclusions froma number of trifling, often half discerned indications. Anyhow heachieved some very marvellous cures; performed with success operationswhich others did not venture to attempt; diagnosed diseases withremarkable skill, and was extraordinarily fertile in his expedients. Itwas specially characteristic of him that while he was never satisfiedtill he had thoroughly enquired into the causes of disease, he wasunwearied in his efforts to relieve the inconvenience and painfulness ofa patient's symptoms.

  So alarming did the condition of Callias become after his return fromthe banquet, that Demoleon was called in without loss of time. All thathe could do at the moment was to give a sleeping draught, intending tomake a thorough examination of the case next morning.

  Shortly after sunrise he was by the bedside. Callias was consciousenough to be able to describe his feelings; what he said indicatedplainly enough that his illness had been developing for some days past,and had been postponed by sheer courage and determination. It was infact something like what we call gastric fever; and the experiencedphysician saw enough to convince him that he should have a hard battleto fight. The patient was young, vigorous, apparently sound ofconstitution, and, as far as he could learn, of temperate habits. Allthis was in favor of recovery; but it was not more than was needed togive a glimpse of hope.

  Demochares, who had a strong regard for the young man, as indeed everyone had that had been brought into contact with him, intercepted thephysician as he was leaving the house after a prolonged examination ofthe patient.

  "How do you find him?" he asked.

  Demoleon shook his head. The gesture was not exactly despairing, but itindicated plainly enough that the situation was serious.

  "You will put him all right before long?" returned the merchant, alarmedat the gravity of the physician's manner.

  "All these things lie on the knees of the gods," said Demoleon, quotingfrom his favorite Homer. (It was a maxim of his that a man who did notknow his Homer was little better than a fool.) It may be said that thephysician was more than a little brusque in manner and speech. Twentyyears of solitary life had made him so, for since his wife's death hehad held aloof from all the social life of the place.

  "What ails him?" enquired the merchant.

  "A fever," was the brief reply.

  "Does it run high?"

  "Very high indeed."

  "You have bled him, of course."

  The physician's answers to enquiries were generally as short as therules of politeness permitted; occasionally, some of his questionerswere disposed to think, even shorter; but there were remarks that alwaysmade him fluent of speech, though the fluency was not always agreeableto his audience.

  "Bleed him, sir," he cried, "why don't you say at once stab him, poisonhim? No, sir, I have not bled him, and do not intend to."

  "I thought that it was usual in such cases," said the merchant timidly.

  "Very likely you did," answered Demoleon, "and there are persons, I donot doubt, who would have done it, persons, too, who ought to knowbetter." This was levelled at a rival practitioner in the town for whomhe entertained a most thorough contempt. "Do you know, sir," he went on,"where men learnt the practice of bleeding?"

  "No, I do not," said Demochares.

  "It was from the hippopotamus. That animal has been observed to bleedhimself. Doubtless the operation does him good. But it does not followthat what is good for an animal as big as a cottage is good also for aman. Doubtless there _are_ men for whom it is good. When I have to dealwith a mountain of a man, one of your city dignitaries bloated by richfeeding, by chines of beef and pork and flagons of rich wine, I don'thesitate to bleed him. His thick skin, his rolls of fat flesh, seem torequire it. In fact he is a human hippopotamus. But to bleed a spareyoung fellow, who has been going through months of labor and hard livingwould be to kill him. I wonder that you can suggest such a thing."

  "I am sure I am very sorry," said the merchant humbly.

  "Happily no harm is done," replied the physician, cooling down a little."And, after all, this is not your business, and you may be excused foryour ignorance, but there are others," he went off muttering in a lowvoice, "who ought to know better, and ought to be punished for suchfolly. It is sheer murder."

  I do not intend to describe the course of the long illness of which thiswas the beginning. There were times when even the hopefulness of thephysician--and his hopefulness was one of his strongest and most helpfulqualities--failed him. Relapse after relapse, coming with dishearteningfrequency, just when he had seemed to have gathered a little strength,brought him close to the gates of death.

  "I have done all that I can," said Demoleon one evening to Epicharis thenurse. "If any one is to save him, it must be you. If you want me, sendfor me, of course. Otherwise I shall not come. It breaks my heart to seethis fine young fellow dying, when there are hundreds of worthlessbrutes whom the earth would be better without."

  Epicharis never lost heart; for a nurse to lose heart is more fatal thanthe physician's despair. For nearly a week she scarcely slept. Not asingle opportunity of administering some strengthening food did shelose--for now the fever had passed, and the danger lay in the excessiveexhaustion. At last her patience was rewarded. The sick man turned thecorner, and Demoleon, summoned at last, to alleviate, he feared, thelast agony, found, to his inexpressible delight, that the cure wasreally begun.

  "You are the physician," he cried, as he seized the nurse's hand andkissed it; "I am only a fool."

  Winter had passed into spring, and spring into summer, before Calliascould be pronounced out of danger. Even then his recovery was slow. Somemonths were spent in a mountain village where the bracing air workedwonders in giving him back his strength. As the cold weather came on hereturned to his comfortable home in Trapezus. Though scarcely aninvalid, he was still a little short of perfect recovery. Besides it wasnot the time for travelling. Anyhow it was the spring of the followingyear, and now more than twelve months from the time of his firstillness, when he was pronounced fit to travel. Even then it was onlysomething like flat rebellion on the part of his patient that inducedDemoleon to give way. The young man was wearying for home and friends.He had heard nothing of them for several months, for communication wasalways stopped during the winter between Athens and the ports of theEuxine, while the eastward bound ships that always started after thedangerous season of the equinox had passed, had not yet arrived.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [78] Artaxerxes Longimanus, so called from the circumstance of his righthand being longer than his left. He reigned from 465 to 425.

  [79] About L5,200, ($25,000), if gold is to be reckoned at thirteentimes the value of silver. This is Herodotus' calculation, and itprobably held good in Greece for a century or more from his time, until,in fact, the enorm
ous influx of gold from the Asiatic conquests ofAlexander altered the proportion.