The Beacon at Alexandria

by Gillian Bradshaw

  I’d spend the early part of the morning at the Temple, listening to lectures and debating with the other medical students. There were about a hundred of these, and they came from all over the Eastern Empire, though I suppose most of them were Alexandrians. During the first couple of weeks I kept quiet in discussions, still awed by their appearance of knowledge. For their part, both students and lecturers tended to sneer at me. It was clear they saw me as a pampered Asian eunuch who only fancied himself a doctor, and expected me soon to give up and go home, particularly as Philon was known to work “like a slave.” But at the beginning of June one of the students, a very talkative young Antiochene, made a public comment in which he confused the techniques of setting dislocations with those for muscle strains. No one else said anything about it, so I rather hesitantly suggested that my esteemed acquaintance had made an error, and quoted Hippocrates. My esteemed acquaintance looked confused, the other students laughed, and the lecturer looked surprised and applauded me. I realized that none of the other students had read the work in question. I could feel as free to talk as any of them, and didn’t need to keep quiet for fear of making a fool of myself. After that I began to make comments and ask questions more and more often, and the others began to take me seriously. Some of them liked me even less for being a rival instead of a joke, but others began to watch me with some respect. “And what would Hippocrates have said about it?” Adamantios would ask his classes; and he looked at me expectantly as he asked.

  Late in the morning I’d go back down into the city to meet Philon. We usually met at Soma Square, by a plinth carved with a dolphin. A grin and a word of greeting, and then I’d take his medical bag and we’d set off to see his patients, discussing medicine as we went. Sometimes the patients fed us lunch; sometimes we bought some wine and bread or fruit to eat from a shop or street vendor. Philon worked through the afternoon, even during the hot noontime hours when most people sleep: he said people often felt worst then. And he liked to spend his evenings at home with his family; we were always back home before sunset. We’d have a simple meal in the main room of the house, with its yellow tile floor and worn oak table, talking about medicine, the patients, or the gossip of the neighborhood. Then, after supper, Philon and his family would sit down to say prayers and read from their Law, and (after the first few weeks) I’d go up to my room and read medical texts or prepare medicines for Philon to use next day.

  I did find this life exhausting at first. For several weeks I was unable to do anything in the evening except go up to my room, bolt the door, and collapse on the bed. I suppose that Adamantios and the sneerers at the Temple were right: it was hard work, and someone who was unaccustomed to hard work was ill advised to do it. Only it didn’t seem like work. To spend the whole day, from dawn till night, on nothing but the art of healing — that was perfection and joy, not work. The feeling of weariness passed as I got used to my new life, but not the happiness. I hadn’t realized before just how confined my old life had been. I hadn’t been able to walk down the street by myself, or spend my own money, or even choose simple things like what I would read or wear or eat for lunch. It had all been arranged for me. And now the taste of freedom was delicious.

  The summer seemed to last years, I learned so much, changed so much. It began to seem natural to refer to myself as a man, and I lost the last of my maidenly modesty in the lecture rooms at the Temple. I bought and read books furiously. Some of them were on the different theories of medicine, but on the whole these were not very helpful. One writer would say that disease is an imbalance in the proportions of the four humors of the body, and that these are blood, phlegm, black bile, and yellow bile; another writer would agree as to the nature of disease but disagree about what the four humors are; yet another would disagree altogether, and say that diseases are caused by a disproportion between eating and excretion. None of this is any help when you are actually faced with a real patient, sweating and white with a real disease. I agreed with Philon, that practice is truer than theories, and I concentrated on learning to practice.

  I studied herbs, and asked questions about them; it was in the field of drugs that I felt most ignorant, since I knew nothing about them, and one of my responsibilities as Philon’s assistant was to prepare medicines — though that job was certainly easier in Alexandria than in most places. I did study the herbs in the Temple gardens as well, but the ones we used we bought in the marketplace, already boxed and bottled, so we had no need to wait for the right season, or collect the sap, or boil down the juice, or wander up into the mountains looking for the right kind of root. We just mixed the preparations with the required amount of wine, vinegar, or oil, and tried to estimate the right dose for the patient. Gentian and hemlock, melanthion and myrrh, crocus and cassia, opium, Greek cyclamen, oil of cedar — in Alexandria you could buy any herb in the herbal. And most of them were drugs that Hippocrates had never heard of. We do know more about the body and about nature than he did. But, as Philon said, he understood more than he knew. His method, and his inquiring attitude of mind, I found far more impressive than the doctrinaire statements of some later writers. And the question “What would Hippocrates have done?” was always worth asking. I certainly became notorious for asking it. My fellows at the Temple began to laugh at me every time I repeated it, but they stopped sneering altogether, and they asked my opinion.

  In early August, Adamantios did a dissection of a human subject. This was uncommon, even in Alexandria, where there is a tradition of such investigations. The authorities always suspect dissections of being sorcerous — though as to that, magical practices that would have brought the death penalty in Ephesus were done openly in Egypt, so I don’t know why they make such a fuss about medical dissections. The Hippocratic tradition has always been opposed to magic. But the authorities do sometimes make a fuss, and it’s hard to find a subject, and so dissections are not as frequent as one could wish. Whenever one of the Museum professors did manage to arrange one, the students all tried frantically to get a place near the table to watch. Adamantios had five student assistants of his own, and they naturally got the best places, but the next-best places caused considerable intrigue and elbowing among the rest of us. I ended up at the back near the wall, where I could see nothing whatever. But before Adamantios used his knife he looked around at his audience and noticed me. “Chariton,” he called, “can you see from there?”

  I admitted that I couldn’t.

  “Come to the front, then,” Adamantios said. “You’re still new here, and haven’t seen one of these before. And you’ll be able to make better use of what you see than most of this lot.”

  “Most of this lot” groaned — some looked genuinely angry — but they made way for me. I scarcely dared to breathe. I felt I had never been paid a higher compliment. I edged my way to the front and watched as though my life depended on it. When Adamantios put his knife into the body (it was an elderly woman’s; I think she’d been a friend’s slave) I felt a bit sick, but I soon forgot to be. The human body is a riddle, a mystery and a miracle, and I was fascinated. Adamantios worked slowly, lecturing, asking and answering questions as he went. The stomach and digestive tract, the liver, the diaphragm, the lungs, the heart . . .

  At this point one of Adamantios’ students, the young Antiochene, fainted. Adamantios put down his knife, looking exasperated, then came round the table and shooed the other students off. “Let him breathe!” he told us. He pulled the young man into a sitting position, checked that his throat was clear, then put his head between his knees. After a moment there was a groan and the head came up again.

  “It’s very hot and crowded in here,” Adamantios said tactfully. “Why don’t you go sit by the fountain until you feel better?”

  The Antiochene — his name, I remembered, was Theogenes — blinked, looked ashamed, picked himself up, and went outside. Adamantios went back round the table and went on with the dissection.

  I had to leave before Adamantios was completely finished; I
had to meet Philon before lunch. When I crossed the Temple yard, Theogenes was still sitting by the fountain, peering moodily into its depths. When he heard my feet hurrying over the paving of the court, otherwise empty in the noonday heat, he looked up, then shouted, “Hai! Chariton! Have they finished?”

  “Almost,” I answered, pausing. “He was just taking general questions when I left.”

  “I made a fool of myself, didn’t I?” said Theogenes, and grinned. He had a pleasant smile, all white teeth and good humor. He was a tall, thin young man, with thick, curling black hair and brown eyes; he moved his hands a lot when he talked, and he smiled often. “It was the first one of those I’ve been to — but it was your first as well, wasn’t it? And I’ve heard about things like that since I was so high, so I don’t have any excuse. Didn’t you feel sick at all?”

  “I did at first,” I admitted. “But I wouldn’t worry about it; it was very hot in there, and everyone was breathing down your neck.”

  “Weren’t they just! You’d think it was a chariot race, the way everyone was straining to see. ‘Go, Greens! Chop from the small intestine to the stomach!’ ”

  “Go, Blues! Up the aorta to the lungs!” I returned, grinning back. Father usually ran his teams under the blue colors, and I was used to cheering for them.

  “Never!” Theogenes replied. “Did they find out why she died?”

  I shook my head. “There was nothing obviously wrong.”

  “Poor old woman! Could you maybe tell me what they did find? I’ll treat you to lunch.”

  I was surprised, and very pleased at the offer. Even the students who had become polite hadn’t spoken to me outside discussions. Nonetheless, I had to turn it down. “I’m sorry, I can’t. My master will be waiting for me — I’m late already. Some other time?”

  “He makes you work in the afternoon?”

  “He always works in the afternoons. He has a lot of patients, and he likes to spend the evenings with his family.”

  Theogenes let out a whistle. “It’s a hot afternoon for working! Well, maybe tomorrow evening then — no, tomorrow the Sabbath starts.”

  “You’re Jewish too?”

  “Yes. My father’s a second cousin of Adamantios. But you’re not Jewish, are you?”

  “Oh, no. I’m a Christian. But my master’s Jewish, so I keep the Sabbath.”

  Theogenes laughed. “Your master sounds a character!”

  “He’s one of the best doctors in the city,” I replied sharply.

  Theogenes looked a bit surprised. “I only meant that it’s unusual for a Jewish doctor to have one lone Christian assistant keeping the Sabbath. Particularly . . .” He looked embarrassed and stopped.

  “Particularly if the assistant is a eunuch?”

  “Well, yes. No offense. Look, Chariton, I’d like to get your view of the dissection. Some of the others and I like to meet at Kallias’ tavern by the Castellum the evening after the Sabbath, to talk about things. You want to come then?”

  “Oh!” I said, and stared stupidly at Theogenes. For the first time in weeks I felt shy, clumsy. I had been able to ignore the sneerers because I hadn’t been asking anything from them, and because I was spending most of my time with Philon anyway. Now Theogenes was offering some kind of comradeship, and I didn’t know what to say. Young ladies don’t frequent taverns. But I wasn’t a young lady, so why not? “Certainly,” I said, smiling nervously now. “Thank you.”

  He grinned again. “Right, then. It’s a big tavern, with a sign shaped like a horse’s head; you can’t miss it. See you there!”

  I arrived at Soma Square so late that I missed Philon and had to chase after him from patient to patient till I found him. But when I explained why I was delayed, he was pleased.

  “I asked Adamantios to give you a fair trial, for my sake,” he told me. “We studied under the same master, so he agreed. But he wouldn’t have asked you to the front unless he’d decided you showed promise. I thought he’d come round.”

  I felt as though I’d conquered the world.

  That evening when we came back, I enthusiastically told the household about Theogenes’ invitation, and all about the dissection. They were used to discussions of such things at the dinner table, and it didn’t affect anyone’s appetite.

  “Wonderful!” Deborah said, smiling tolerantly. “Does your patron know how well you’ve settled in here?”

  I was shocked into silence for a moment. The shock came from the realization that I’d scarcely thought of home for weeks. I muttered something or other in response — that I meant to write soon — and returned to a description of the dissected liver. But when I got back to my room, I worried. I’d put off writing to Thorion, uncertain whether he would be at Ephesus or in Constantinople; I couldn’t risk the letter going astray and arriving at Father’s house. I heard something of the news from Asia in the marketplace — Alexandria gets the news from all over the world. My disappearance a month before the wedding had caused a huge scandal. Festinus was said to be outraged; I imagined that Father was petrified with fear. If he knew where I was, he’d send someone to take me home at once, and once home, I’d be forced back into my outworn maidenly modesty, and perhaps even into the marriage. Where I’d been would be hushed up.

  But I had to write to Thorion and Maia. They must be worried by now. Only, what could I say to them? “I went to a dissection today; one of the other students has invited me to a tavern to discuss it. Yesterday my master let me lance and stitch up a carpenter’s abscessed finger”? They’d be horrified. I felt suddenly frightened. A huge gap had opened between what I had been and what I was, and I didn’t know what they would think of it.

  I went over to the table and poured myself a drink of water from the pitcher there, then sat down. There was a book out on the table, one of Herophilos’ anatomical tracts. I picked it up and looked at it idly, then something in it seemed relevant to the dissection and I began to read in earnest, forgetting, for the time being, my family and the looming necessity of a letter.

  Two evenings later I went to meet Theogenes and the others at the tavern. The building was, as I’d been promised, impossible to miss. It firmly faced the public square opposite the supplementary barracks of the Castellum, and besides the large gilded horse-head sign, a garishly painted frieze of bacchanals decorated its porch, which was full of amphorae of wine. I stood outside in the warm bright evening, almost sick with nervousness. From inside came the sound of voices, not many and not loud, since it was still early. It wasn’t a disreputable tavern anyway, but that didn’t matter. Here I was, the well-brought up daughter of a man of consular rank, about to go into a public tavern — and beyond that I was terrified of what the others would think of me, whether they’d be angry that Theogenes had invited me. I almost turned around and went home; only the thought of having to explain myself to Philon and his family stopped me. Well, I told myself, if they think you’re a conceited, overconfident eunuch, they’re wrong; and whatever they think, it can’t hurt you. I straightened my shoulders and went in.

  Inside there was a large main room, lit by a number of polished brass hanging lamps and filled with tables. I was still standing by the door looking about when Theogenes called my name, and I saw him and some half-dozen others sitting at the far end. I hurried over and Theogenes introduced the others breezily: I’d seen all of them at the Temple, and knew most of their names already. They were not, as I had expected, all Jews like Theogenes, but a complete mixture: Jewish, pagan, and Christian, students of several different doctors, and natives of several different cities. Most of them smiled and nodded to me as they were introduced, looking curious; one or two looked a bit sour, but no one remarked on my being there. Theogenes made room for me on the bench and I sat down.

  “Another cup for our friend, and some more wine, dear!” Theogenes said to the serving girl, and looked after her a moment as she trotted obediently off to fetch them. “She’s pretty!” he added, to no one in particular. Then, turning back to me: �
�We have one rule in our discussions here, Chariton: no talk about religion. Anyone who brings up a religious argument has to pay for the wine. Other than that, we split costs and please ourselves, though we talk medicine most of the time. Can you tell me what you made of that dissection? I’ve had a completely different description from everyone I’ve asked.”

  And he got a different description from everyone present. I forgot to be nervous, the discussion was so interesting. By the time we’d finished with the dissection (and I’d had a couple of cups of wine), I felt that I was among friends, and leaned back against the wall, relaxed and comfortable.

  “Your Hippocrates says that the vessels that carry a woman’s seed into her womb are the same as the ones that go to the penis in a man, and that they come from the head through the kidneys,” one of the other students told me as we were winding up. “I couldn’t see anything like that.”