The Corpus Conundrum

by Albert A. Bell

  “How did you become separated from your father?” Tacitus asked. “Were you traveling?”

  “We’re all on a journey, aren’t we?”Apollodoros replied. “A journey from birth to death and then to—”

  “Did your journey begin in Alexandria?” I asked. Pseudo-philosophers prattling about the mystery of life quickly exhaust my patience.

  “This stage of it, yes.”

  “What other stages have there been?”

  “My mother’s family came from India to Alexandria. That’s where my father met her.”

  “So you are a half-Greek,” Tacitus said.

  “Yes, a Greekling, not a Greek. My father is a Greek and a citizen of Alexandria.”

  “From what town in India did your mother’s family come?”

  “They came from Bucephala, in the far east of India.”

  “That place Alexander named after his horse?” Tacitus said. “I don’t think Caesar ever went that far.”

  Apollodoros smiled. “Caesar’s modesty becomes him. Yes, the town is Alexandria Bucephala, to give it its full name. It’s where the Macedonian’s beloved steed died in a battle. But Alexander won, of course. That’s why there’s a town of Alexandria Nicaea just across the river, celebrating his victory.”

  One of the hounds sniffed the back of Apollodoros’ leg. He jumped and the servant holding the animal tightened his grip on the leash.

  I couldn’t understand the dogs’ reaction to this man, compared to their reaction to Aristeas. If they were father and son, wouldn’t the dogs have sensed something similar about them? “The man I saw didn’t look old enough to be your father.”

  “I’m not sure how old he is.”

  “People often don’t know their exact age,” Tacitus said. “My father didn’t. All we could put on his tombstone was ‘He lived about sixty years.’ How old are you?”

  “I would have to ask my mother.”

  Another evasive answer.

  “Your father’s name is Aristeas, you say?” Tacitus asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Tacitus rubbed his chin. “There is something vaguely familiar about that name. Would I have heard or read about him somewhere other than in Pliny’s work?”

  “Have you read Herodotus’ history?”

  “Of course.”Tacitus sounded like he’d been insulted.

  “There is a story about my father in there, near the beginning of the fourth scroll, the one that opens with the account of the Scythians.”

  Tacitus stopped so abruptly in his tracks that one of the dogs ran into him. “But Herodotus wrote ... five hundred years ago.”

  “Yes”—that damnable smile again—“and my father was old even then.”

  IV

  Our arrival at the house brought my mother and Naomi, along with almost every female servant I owned, into the atrium. They flocked around Apollodoros the way women in Rome throng around gladiators and actors, giggling and reaching out to touch him. He accepted their attention as though he were entitled to it.

  While they installed him in a room off the atrium and got him a clean tunic and something to eat, Tacitus and I headed for the library on our way to the bath.

  “What makes them act that way?” I wondered. “They look like a pack of wolves going after raw meat.”

  “He is a handsome young man,” Tacitus said with a lingering glance back at him. “One could even say exotic.”

  “You’ll have to fight your way through that crowd of women to get at him.”

  “Hmm. Fighting my way through a crowd of women?” He pantomimed placing his hands here and there. “That idea has its own appeal.”

  I took Tacitus’ arm and drew him toward the library. His penchant for partners of either gender was the one thing about him that caused me some uneasiness, although he had never made any overtures to me. He either sensed I wasn’t interested or didn’t find me appealing in that way. I’m content not to know which.

  “You are aware that my mother disapproves of men like you who are so ... so ...”

  “Versatile?”

  “That’s one way to put it, I suppose.”

  “Then she would have disapproved of Scipio Africanus and a number of other notable men in Rome’s history. Even Julius Caesar was ‘every woman’s husband and every man’s wife’.”

  “She’s not much impressed by historical examples. I’ve never won an argument with her by using them.”

  “I need to give you some lessons in disputation.” Tacitus was already gaining fame among orators in Rome. “At least she always seems happy to see me. You haven’t said anything to her, I take it.”

  I shook my head. “I prefer to stay out of other people’s bedrooms.”

  “Unfortunately, my wife wants me to stay out of hers since she lost the baby.”

  “In the time I’ve known you, you’ve never lacked for partners.”

  Tacitus stopped and took one more look at Apollodoros. “No. I’ll respect Julia’s wishes, but I’m not going to live like some celibate philosopher. And that is a beautiful young man. I wouldn’t mind playing Zeus to his Ganymede.”

  “Even though he’s a bald-faced liar?”

  “I don’t imagine Zeus and Ganymede did a lot of talking beyond ‘bend over’. And I get the feeling Apollodoros has heard that phrase a number of times himself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He looked at me in a way that ... well, in a way that I recognize. I believe he would find a partner of either gender equally appealing.”

  “Could you concentrate on the problem at hand?”

  “And what is that?”

  “Apollodoros’ father—whoever he is—can’t possibly be someone who was mentioned by Herodotus.”

  As we turned a corner and lost sight of the handsome Greekling Tacitus seemed to awaken. “No, of course he can’t.”

  “Then why would he say such a ridiculous thing?” I pulled open the door of the library harder than I intended, slamming it against the wall.

  “Don’t get yourself so agitated, Gaius Pliny. I’m sure we’ll uncover ... I mean unmask him.”

  Hylas wasn’t in the library. I would have to find him and set him to looking through the Natural History for whatever my uncle had said about Aristeas. It wasn’t a task I would want to undertake. While I searched for the scrolls of Herodotus, Tacitus examined the work on my scribe’s table.

  “This is a lovely scroll of Catullus. And rather old, I believe.”

  “Hylas found that in a neighbor’s library recently.” Catullus’ poems, more than a hundred years old, had fallen out of favor soon after his death. I had become aware of them a few years ago and had introduced Tacitus to them.

  “He’s making a fine copy, even adding some pictures.”

  I interrupted my search to look over the new scroll. Beside the poem in which Catullus expresses his envy of the pet bird his mistress, Lesbia, is playing with, Hylas had sketched a woman with a bird perched on her finger. Her gown was flimsy enough that the outline of her delicate body could be seen.

  “He obviously grasps the poet’s underlying meaning,” Tacitus said, tracing the contours of Lesbia’s breasts. “If you’re inclined to give me a present for the Saturnalia this year, you could have him make me a copy. And I can think of some of the poems I’d especially like to have illustrated. ‘Mellitos oculos tuos, Iuventi.’ In fact, why wait? Could I purchase this copy?”

  Judging from what Catullus wrote, he had been as flexible in his tastes as Tacitus. Several of his other poems praising the beauty of young men would fit with the one Tacitus had quoted, but many others expressed his passionate love for Lesbia and his despair when she broke off the affair. “I’ll consider it. Right now, help me look for Herodotus. The Greek writers are over here.”

  With his incredible memory, my uncle never had to be fastidious about sorting his scrolls. He could recall where any particular item was, no matter how disorganized the library. I’ve told the scribes in each of my houses to wor
k on establishing some order in my collections. Hylas, beyond grouping the Greek and Latin texts on opposite sides of the room, hadn’t made much progress on that task, but I finally found the nine scrolls containing Herodotus’ history. Tacitus and I rolled up the two copies of Catullus and laid Herodotus out on the work table.

  “He said the fourth scroll, didn’t he?”

  “Yes, about the Scythians.” Tacitus glanced at the opening of one scroll and set it aside. “That’s not it.”

  “Here it is,”I said, unrolling the second scroll I picked up. “He said it was near the beginning.”

  I ran my finger over the lines, not really reading, just looking for a name. It took only a moment before I found it and began to read:

  There is additional information about this part of the world in a poem by Aristeas, son of Caystrobius, a native of Proconnesus. He says he was inspired by Phoebus Apollo to travel to the land of the Issedones, beyond whom live the one-eyed Arimaspians,and beyond them the griffins—guardians of gold—and beyond the griffins the Hyperboreans, whose land reaches all the way to the outer sea.

  Tacitus snorted. “Mythological monsters and one-eyed people—that’s just so much nonsense.”

  “Where is Proconnesus?” I asked. Tacitus has a voracious appetite for information about places. He reads maps the way some people read poetry.

  “It’s an island, in the Propontis, south of Byzantium but closer to the coast of Asia. All those other places are figments of poets’ imagination, supposedly in the far north and east. I doubt there’s a word of truth to any of it.”

  I nodded. “Poets are allowed to lie. But there’s more about Aristeas.” I continued to read: “Since I’ve mentioned Aristeas, the author of this poem, let me record a story I heard about him in Proconnesus, and in Cyzicus as well.”

  “Another digression!” Tacitus said with a groan. “Herodotus never met a story he didn’t like. The more improbable, the better. I doubt he visited half the places he claims to have seen.”

  “Nonetheless, stop interrupting me.” I unrolled a bit more of the scroll so I could resume reading:

  Aristeas belonged to one of the noblest families in Proconnesus. One day he went into a fuller’s shop and, while he was there, fell down dead. The owner closed the shop and rushed to tell Aristeas’ family what had happened. But, as news of his death was spreading, a man from Cyzicus, who had just arrived from the nearby town of Artaca, contradicted the rumor. He claimed to have met Aristeas going toward Cyzicus and to have talked with him. He swore this was true and would not change his story, no matter how many people contradicted him. Meanwhile, Aristeas’ family were going to the shop to prepare him for his funeral. When they unlocked the door, the room was empty. There was no sign whatsoever of Aristeas, dead or alive.

  “By the gods, I know just how they felt,” I said. The similarities in that story and what I experienced since yesterday were startling. A man apparently dead for no discernible reason, the body in a locked room, people coming to prepare for his funeral, but he’s gone. Then I read on:

  Seven years later he reappeared in Proconnesus, wrote the poem the Greeks call ‘The Tale of the Arimaspians,’ then disappeared again. I must add something that I have learned happened to the people of Metapontum in Italy two hundred and forty years after Aristeas’ second disappearance. (I computed the time from records in Metapontum and Proconnesus.)The Metapontines say Aristeas came into their city and told them to build an altar to Apollo, and next to it a statue dedicated to Aristeas of Proconnesus, surrounded by laurel. He explained that they, of all the people in Italy, were the only ones whom Apollo had visited and that Aristeas himself had been with the god in the form of a raven. Then he vanished.

  “He’s a hard fellow to keep track of,” Tacitus said with a laugh. “Now you see him, now you don’t. Three times!”

  I sat down in Hylas’ chair, my breathing labored. Tacitus noticed and put a hand on my shoulder. “Gaius Pliny, what’s wrong?”

  “Didn’t you hear what Apollodoros said about the mark on Aristeas’ chest? It was a raven’s head.”

  “Did you see the mark? Is that what it looked like to you?”

  “Yes, I saw it, and it looked more like a raven than I want to admit. Hylas drew a picture of it. I’ll have him find it when he returns.”

  Tacitus suddenly became somber. “Does that prove anything?”

  “Perhaps not, but this morning, when we went out to the stable, there was a raven perched on top of the building. It flew off just as we got to the door.”

  “The raven is associated with Apollo,” Tacitus said, “just as Herodotus says. And the fellow we just found claims his name is Apollodoros.”

  “This is like a bad dream where nothing makes any sense.” I looked over what I had just read. “A man who’s mentioned by Herodotus can’t be alive today.”

  “Unless he’s ... not a man,”Tacitus said quietly.

  “But then what would he be?” I could hardly bring myself to ask that question when the answer might undermine the very principles of rational thought on which I based my life.

  “I hate to say it.” Tacitus ran his hand over the scroll of Herodotus. “But ...”

  “But what?”

  “Stories about ... gods taking on human form have been around for as long as people have been telling stories. And I know you don’t want to hear that.”

  “No, I don’t. Because they’re just that—stories. Plato was right. If we ever want people to become educated, we need to keep those stories out of their minds. Next you’ll tell me that you believe Julius Caesar’s soul actually ascended to the sky and became a star.”

  “A member of the Roman senate swore he saw it happen.”

  I laughed in derision. “You mean some incompetent fool in the senate who was paid by Caesar’s family.” The instant I finished saying that, I looked at the door, hoping no one was lurking outside it. No one took such things seriously—Domitian’s father, Vespasian, had joked with his dying breath that he was becoming a god—but someone who was looking for a chance to attack me could pounce on what I’d said and turn it into an expression of disrespect that amounted to treason.

  Tacitus stepped to the door and looked both ways. Returning to the table, he shook his head. “But who would be paying Apollodoros to claim that his father is so old?”

  “No one, I’m sure. What would be the point? What would anyone gain by it? Perhaps he’s just an incompetent fool. Did his smile unsettle you as much as it did me?”

  “Yes, he has a wise but child-like air about him. Somehow not quite normal for a human being. It reminds me of the half-smile on a very old Greek statue. I wonder if he posed for one of those statues. Could he be that old?”

  “For that to be true, we would have to admit the enormous improbability—no, it’s an impossibility—that his father is over five hundred years old.”

  “Over seven hundred, actually.” Tacitus pointed to the scroll. “Herodotus wrote five hundred years ago and he says this incident in Metapontum happened over two hundred years before his time.”

  I looked up at him. “You’re not making me feel any better.”

  “The Jews tell of people living to be hundreds of years old in some of their books, don’t they?”

  “I’ll have to ask Naomi, but you’re still not making me feel any better.”

  “Maybe Apollodoros is just too simple-minded to understand what that amount of time means. My brother has no concept of time. It doesn’t matter to him whether I visit once a month or once a year. He always thinks he saw me yesterday. He may remember something that happened several visits before, but it was always yesterday.”

  I was sorry to draw encouragement from Tacitus’ misfortune, but I couldn’t help it. There had to be a rational solution to this conundrum and the example of his brother offered one. It even led me to another conclusion. “If his father is actually named Aristeas, he could have read the name in Herodotus and thought he was reading about his father,
if he doesn’t understand time.”

  Tacitus nodded. “Perhaps his father went along with him, as a sort of joke, thinking it wouldn’t make any difference. I never tell my brother it wasn’t yesterday when he saw me. I do it out of kindness because I’ve seen the distress on his face when I try to explain the truth to him.”

  “We’ll have to question Apollodoros more closely to see how clear his mind is.”

  “And to see if he can tell us how his ‘father’ could appear to be, as you said, lifeless but not dead. Are you sure it wasn’t just a very deep sleep?”

  “It could have been, but I doubt it. My uncle was one of the deepest sleepers you can imagine. But words fail to describe the racket he made with his snoring.” I gave a cacophonous imitation of my uncle, drawing a laugh from Tacitus. “People breathe when they’re asleep, and the man I found was not breathing. I’m not sure of much right now, but of that I am sure.”

  “I didn’t see him, so I can’t dispute what you say, but the fact is, he was gone this morning. We’ll have to see if Apollodoros is still here tomorrow, or if he disappears like his ‘father’.”

  I jumped up. “By the gods, my mother is with him.”

  “Calm down,” Tacitus said, pushing me back into my chair. “There’s no indication in these stories that Aristeas ever harmed anybody. And Apollodoros doesn’t seem dangerous. My brother may be simple-minded, but he wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

  “I have to be sure my mother’s safe.” Brushing his hand away and hurrying out of the library, I turned toward the atrium but stopped when I saw my mother coming from the direction of the bath. Naomi was pulling her as Mother kept looking back.

  “Are you all right, Mother?” I asked.