Death at Pergamum

by Albert Noyer

  Lydia led the way to the mortuary along a row of shops and merchandise booths that faced an empty field. On its far side, a colonnaded street led to the Asklepion.

  On noticing the four, the owner of one booth hurried out, holding up a pottery cup and dish. "Hellenikoi? Christianoi?" he asked, then, seeing the two strangers' tunics, spoke Latin. "Dishes hold food for dead. More cheap than on Asklepion Sacred Way."

  Lydia rebuked the vendor in an Anatolian dialect and walked past, yet that did not stop the next man from calling out, "You, Latins, more cheap here than on Sacred Way! I have all gods and Christian holy people statues! Bury in grave for good fortune to dead!"

  Annoyed at the blatant offers, Getorius said, "The dead don't need good fortune."

  "Ah, Latin you will see," the man badgered amiably. "At Resurrect you will wish for one in Hall of Hades. You, Deaconess," he taunted with a snicker, "I have bone of Holy Thekla. Tooth, too. You buy?"

  When Lydia ignored him, Getorius asked, "What is this Sacred Way they both mentioned?"

  She pointed to the far wall. "Over there. The colonnade leads to the shrine. There is little I can do to stop this merchandising and it is worse near the Asklepion."

  The coffin-maker's workshop next to Britto's smelled pleasantly of pine and cypress wood from new caskets set upright against the front wall. Others lying in a field across the roadway seemed water-stained and cleaned of dirt. The carpenter looked up from smoothing a board with pumice, nodded to Lydia, and scanned the strangers with her.

  Next door, Britto's mortuary was identified by the faded mural of a jackal-headed Egyptian deity bending down over a mummy with a wand. Painted urns and doves inside an ivy border decorated the lower walls around an open door. No one was in the anteroom.

  "Britto would be in the preparation rooms downstairs," Lydia said. "Too many of the ill who come to the Asklepion die in Pergamum."

  "I'm a surgeon," Getorius told her. "What do you mean?"

  "Apollonios and his priests do not treat hopeless patients." She indicated a door at the far side of the room. "Down those stairs."

  Dimly lighted by high windows, the basement level was a series of low-vaulted spaces. From somewhere in the distance came a sound of gurgling water. Dank subterranean air smelled of spices that barely tempered a stench of putrefaction.

  Lydia found the embalmer and an assistant mixing gypsum plaster in a small barrel. An open coffin stood on a stand nearby. A corpse shrouded in white linen lay inside. Britto, a burly, copper-haired man in late middle age, boasted a full beard of the same reddish strands. He glanced up at the unfamiliar trio with inquisitive, bloodshot eyes.

  The deaconess told him, "These are visitors from Constantinople. The presbyter wishes to anoint Epiphania."

  "Epiphania?" Britto eyed the strangers, unconsciously flexing and un-flexing plaster-covered fingers. "You're not from th' East. Your clothes give y' away."

  Getorius noticed a strong accent in his Latin similar to that of Valentinian's Britannic palace guards. "No, we're from Ravenna."

  "Ravenna?" The embalmer chuckled in remembrance. "Long ago I was in a legion of th' Britannic rebel, Constantine Three. After we lost out at Arelate, I found a galley going t' Ravenna an' settled there awhile."

  "I see. What are you doing with that gypsum?"

  Britto took a swig from a plaster-stained leather bottle before answering, "We had a custom in Britannia of coverin' important persons before burial."

  "Why do that?"

  "Preserves them for th' final resurrection."

  "Britto," an assistant warned. "The gypsum."

  "Right, Rufinus, it's hardening. Presbyter, y' got here just in time." Britto glanced over at Lydia. "We were about t' pour this over poor Epiphania."

  "I'll need consecrated oil," Tranquillus told him.

  "I keep some around here." The embalmer hesitated and asked Lydia. "Y' sure, deaconess?" At her nod, he ordered, "Rufinus, go bring that flask while I undo th' shroud over her face."

  Arcadia moved closer to the coffin. "The poor woman, what a horrible death."

  "Oh, she's not that bad," Britto alleged with a chuckle. "Not like th' diseased dead ones."

  Lydia stepped away. The others watched as the embalmer pulled back the white linen. Although the light was dim, the corpse's features were unmistakably those of a stout, matronly woman whose graying hair framed a blotched, fleshy face.

  Seeing her, Arcadia turned pale and sucked in a breath.

  Getorius noted, "Epiphania's features are remarkably free of burns. I'd have thought..." He saw his wife move away toward the stairs and followed her. "Are you all right? You've seen dead persons before."

  "Come...come up the steps, Getorius."

  He followed her into the anteroom. "What is it? I can understand that you're upset."

  "Getorius, that isn't Epiphania!"

  "What? How would you know? You've never seen the woman before."

  "No, but at Pulcheria's the Augusta described Epiphania as young, feisty, more than a match for Apollonios."

  "And we just saw a middle-aged matron."

  "Exactly, Getorius."

  "So, where is this presbytera?"

  Arcadia trembled slightly as she speculated, "Lydia knows that isn't her and so does the embalmer. Britto hesitated about opening the shroud, but Lydia was sure we wouldn't know what Epiphania looked like and so allowed him to show that woman's face. Getorius, I don't want the widows to know about this, and certainly not the Bobos or even Herakles. Why would the deaconess be involved in this deceit?"

  "Let's go back down and ask her."

  In returning to the embalming room, they met Tranquillus coming up the stairs. "Interesting how Eastern rites differ from ours," he remarked. "Britto said the holy oil contains wine in remembrance of the Samaritan in Christ's story of the injured traveler. I'm glad to have anointed Ephipania."

  "That wasn't her!" Arcadia blurted out.

  'Not...." Tranquillus looked at her. "Domina, how would you know? You've not seen the woman."

  "No, but Pulcheria said that she." Arcadia caught herself and fell silent.

  "Said what?"

  "It's not important."

  "Then you can explain later. I'll get back to the widows and Droseria."

  Arcadia pleaded, "Please don't tell them about Epiphania just yet."

  "Very well, Domina."

  After he went outside Arcadia told her husband, "Tranquillus should be as stunned as I was to hear about a woman minister, but he didn't react that way."

  "As if he already knew that Epiphania was here?"

  "Exactly, and yet how could he?"

  "I'm not sure. That's why we should question Lydia."

  Britto and Rufinus had finished trowling wet plaster over the dead woman's face and now smoothed it down.

  Getorius glanced around the area. "Where is the deaconess?"

  "Went out my back entrance, th' one leading toward th' necropolis." Britto stepped back, wiped a hand on his apron, and took a gulp from his wine bottle. "This will set nice an' hard by t'morrow."

  Arcadia looked at the gleaming, white outline of the corpse. "If we had gotten here a few moments later," she murmured to Getorius, "we would have believed that was Epiphania encased in the plaster. What is her deception all about?"

  "Deception, Arcadia?" He led her by the arm up the stairway to the anteroom. "After all this secrecy about your visit to Pulcheria, and now her letter, we have a woman minister falsifying her death. That's a question I insist that you answer right now."

  At his rebuke, the inquiring look in Arcadia's green eyes hardened into anger. "Let go of me!" She pulled away from her husband's hold, then bolted out the anteroom door.

  CHAPTER X

  Getorius did not go after his wife. If Arcadia isn't ready to tell me everything, perhaps I can get some answers from Lydia.

  He went back to the embalming room. Rufinus was gone, but he asked Britto, "Where is this door to the necropolis?"

&
nbsp; "Down th' steps t' the lower floor and through my embalming rooms." He held up plaster-coated hands. "I can't help."

  "I'll find it."

  Getorius sprinted down stone stairs to a vaulted passageway where the air was colder and the putrid smell stronger than on the floor above. Daylight filtered into the next room from a high, dirty window. He entered, unwarned about two corpses laid out on tables: one an oldster with a horrific skin disease; the other a child's body. In a far corner water trickled from a pipe into a stone trough whose overflow entered a sewer grate. The room's tile floor glistened with wetness, reflecting black mold that streaked the disintegrating plaster along the bottom of walls. In a second room that smelled of cedar oil, two partly desiccated bodies lay in rectangular stone tubs, almost buried in a white, crystalline powder. Faded Greek letters on the sides spelled out NATPON.

  Startled by Getorius's entry, two dark-skinned men with shaven heads looked up from removing intestines from the corpse of an obese, middle-aged man. Equally surprised, Getorius managed to ask, "A woman just came down here. Where did she go?" His question was answered when one of the embalmers held the corpse's liver up and gestured to his left.

  At the far end where the Egyptian pointed, daylight shown beyond the edges of a partly opened door. Getorius hurried to the exit, to look for the deaconess and breathe clean air. Outside, a stone stairway led up to a low brick wall where an iron gate opened into the necropolis. He scanned the burial site, but saw no sign of Lydia. Beyond the farthest wall, the densely packed houses of Pergamum caught the rays of a late afternoon sun. The deaconess could have gone anywhere, he realized, as he walked along a row of house-shaped mausolea set among stone sarcophagi with Greek inscriptions. Christian symbols decorated smaller grave markers. Dishes of food offerings, black with crawling insects, lay scattered on several monuments. Two slaves digging a grave paused to look over at him. No point in asking them if they've seen Lydia, they would lie to not be involved.

  The west gate of the cemetery opened onto the street that the coach drivers had taken to reach Thekla's basilica. At the charred ruins, Herakles was arguing with Basina, while her husband stood away from their confrontation.

  "Asterios." The guide sighed in relief when he saw Getorius. "I was showing Domina Bobo the villa of Apollonios near the shrine."

  "Have you seen Lydia?"

  "No. Is she not with you?"

  "She ran off. Apollonios you say? I'd like to meet this 'satanic' physician."

  "So would I," Basina grunted. "If he's half as good as I heard, he should cure me. Right, Bobo?" she called to her husband.

  "Indeed, dulceda. My fondest hope."

  "Well, guide, take me there."

  Herakles replied in a taut voice, "Apollonios only treats patients who are referred to him."

  "Well refer me, you stupid Greek! What am I paying you for?"

  The guide's strained smile covered another humiliation. "It will take time, surely until tomorrow. We should go back to the Poseidon for supper."

  "Supper?" Basina licked gross lips. "Maybe we should eat first, Bobo."

  "Dulceda, if you wish," he agreed, taking her arm. "I'll help you onto your seat."

  After the two had climbed into the coach, Herakles took Getorius aside to confide, "I cannot endure that unreasonable woman much longer. She insisted I take her to see the physician's house."

  "Perhaps the Asklepion priests will help her."

  "Asterios, her illnesses are not physical."

  "No. Is Arcadia with Droseria?" At his nod, Getorius said, "I would like to meet Apollonios. Might I go over and introduce myself as a fellow physician?"

  "If you wish, but tell him Herakles sent you." His jaw stiffened when Basina screamed for him to stop talking and take her back to the mansio. "The Poseidon, Asterios. Street of the Herons."

  "I'll find it." Disappointed that his wife had chosen to be with Droseria, Getorius strode across the field toward a gate in the wall around the physician's villa. In answer to the ringing of an entrance bell, the red-rimmed eyes of a gaunt-faced man peered through a barred window in the gate. Getorius assumed he was the physician's old porter.

  "I'm Getorius Asterius," he told him, "a surgeon from Ravenna here to see Apollonios. My guide, Herakles, said."

  The man abruptly turned away. Rude. Does the great physician know the kind of porter he has? After an interval in which Getorius thought the man would not return, he came back and unlatched the gate. Without speaking, he led the way through a garden and marble-paved atrium, then into a reception room lined with shelves of scrolls and bound volumes. A man of aristocratic bearing with a shock of wavy gray hair and dark eyebrows, stood up from a chair.

  Getorius thought, Apollonios is overly handsome, yet the perfect image of a

  philosopher-physician.

  Apollonios coughed as he squinted at the name on a wax tablet he held. "'Getorius Asterius, surgeon at Ravenna' is what my priest, Aristides, wrote." His Latin was flawed only by a slight accent. He glanced up at his visitor. "Is that correct?"

  "Sir, I'm surgeon to Galla Placidia, the Empress Mother."

  "Empress Mother?" Apollonios's tone and hint of smile suggested that he was mildly impressed, yet his eyes remained a cold gray. "Even though you seem young for such responsibility, you undoubtedly studied at the finest medical schools. Roma itself? Alexandria or Berytus? Perhaps all three?"

  Stung by the condescending tone, Getorius stammered, "Actually, my teacher was a legion surgeon."

  "Legion surgeon?" A sneer replaced his thin smile as Apollonios tossed down the slate. "An arrow-extractor? The wielder of a Dioclecean Kyathiskos?"

  Getorius knew that physicians considered surgeons in low esteem,"Cutters who worked with their hands,"but defended his old mentor. "Sir, Nicias trained at Alexandria."

  "Did he indeed? Why are you here, ah, Surgeon?"

  This isn't going well. Apollonios seems a smug caretaker of his shrine, with only contempt for those not trained as he was.

  Impatient, Apollonios repeated, "Why did you come to Pergamum?"

  "At Constantinople my wife and I heard about the Asklepion. Herakles, our guide, suggested we see you."

  "Herakles? Yes, I purchase remedies from him." Apollonios coughed, then his tone softened. "You say your wife is with you?"

  "Yes. I'm training Arcadia to be a medica."

  "A woman physician?" Apollonios snorted, throwing up his hands in exasperation. "In the name of Asklepios where will this end! We have a presbytera ministering to Christians here. Others roam the countryside converting rustics. Even a female bishop in the north."

  Getorius decided to divert the man's annoyance before it turned to hostility and find out if he knew that Lydia had accused him of burning her church. "The presbytera you mentioned is Epiphania. Did you know she died in her basilica's fire?"

  Apollonios scrutinized his visitor. "Yes, an unfortunate death."

  "You knew her, of course."

  "Unlike our healing at the shrine, she worships a Galilean who 'cured' by magic."

  Getorius played a hunch. "Sir, have you seen Epiphania's body?"

  Apollonios shook his head as he coughed phlegm into his cloth. "I serve the living and leave the dead for Britto and his two dusky Egyptians."

  So he wouldn't know that it wasn't Epiphania in the coffin. "Do you have any idea why her church burned?"

  The physician scoffed at a naive question. "Fire is not an unusual occurrence with votive candles alight everywhere. A wooden altar and roof beams." Apollonios looked toward Aristides. "Our temple of Asklepios is entirely of stone."

  "Indeed, Physician."

  "Sir," Getorius ventured, "I hoped to see your temple and healing center."

  "Impossible. You are not ill and this is a sacred precinct open only to Asklepiads."

  "Asklepiads?"

  "The priest-physicians whom I direct. Emperors have come here for cures. The great Galen himself once served as a surgeon to gladiators. No, quite impos
sible."

  Getorius recalled Basina's insulting term. Pompous jack-mule. Why haven't you cured that chronic cough of yours? I'll wager you're open to flattery. "Sir, surely I might learn something from you that my ignorant legion mentor couldn't teach me?"

  Apollonios glanced at his assistant and the smile returned. "Perhaps I am being a poor host to a fellow practitioner, yet it is late and I must address patients who will stay overnight in our incubation dormitories."

  "A quick tour, Sir, so I can tell the Empress Mother of the magnificent work you do at Pergamum."

  His patronizing smile turned to one of conceit. "Very well. Aristides, we go to the temple first."

  Aristides went down a hallway to the rear of the villa and opened a door onto a vast, colonnaded enclosure. A scattering of pilgrims waited on covered walkways to avoid muddy ground saturated by recent rains. Only a few of the ill had ventured onto the soggy field to drink water gushing from a spring. Two washed in its basin. Aristides strode ahead toward the smaller of two domed buildings. A covered porch at the top of a flight of stairs led inside a temple.

  Apollonios boasted, "The home of Asklepios resembles Hadrian's Pantheon at Rome. That emperor built this temple smaller, yet of equal magnificence."

  Light came into the circular interior from an oculus, the open circle at the dome's top. Muddy footprints crisscrossed the marble floor. Rainwater lay in puddles on worn spots. At the far end, candles and oil lamps flicked at the base of a life-size wooden statue of Asklepios. The healing god, wearing sandals and carrying a staff entwined by a serpent, was depicted as a middle-aged man with a bare torso.

  Votive images of body parts: clay and silver legs, arms, eyes, hands, and breasts, hung along the curved wall that led toward the demigod. Hundreds of crutches dangled from pegs, with ex voto thank offerings for cures scribbled in various languages on the walls. On the plinth of the statue, wilted flowers and offerings of food or drink lay crammed among candles and lamps. A few patients lay on mats near a thin girl wearing a short tunic. She sat on a stool to strum a lyre. A second girl resembled the lyre player, but wore a full-length Greek tunic bound at the waist. She stood at the railing of a pit sunk into the floor, dropping bits of raw meat into a den of writhing serpents.