Caesar Dies | Page 7

that had been guided twenty years ago by
Hadrian's engineers in curves of exquisitely studied beauty. From
between Corinthian columns was a view of nearly all the temple
precincts and of the lawns where revelers would presently forget
restraint. The first night of the Daphne season usually was the wildest
night of all the year, but they began demurely, and for the present there
was the restraint of expectation.
Because there was yet snow on mountain-tops and the balmy air would
carry a suggestion of a chill at sunset, there were cunningly wrought
charcoal braziers set near the gilded couches, grouped around a
semicircular low table so as to give each guest an unobstructed view
from the pavilion. Pertinax--neither guest nor host, but a god, as it were,
who had arrived and permitted the city of Antioch to ennoble itself by
paying his expenses--stretched his long length on the middle couch,
with Galen the physician on his right hand, Sextus on his left. Beyond
Galen lay Tarquinius Divius and Sulpicius Glabrio, friends of Pertinax;
and on Sextus' left was Norbanus, and beyond him Marcus Fabius a

young tribune on Pertinax' staff. There was only one couch unoccupied.
Galen was an older man than Pertinax, who was already graying at the
temples. Galen had the wrinkled, smiling, shrewd face of an old
philosopher who understood the trick of making himself socially
prominent in order to pursue his calling unimpeded by the bitter
jealousies of rivals. He understood all about charlatanry, mocked it in
all its disguises and knew how to defeat it with sarcastic wit. He wore
none of the distinguishing insignia that practising physicians usually
favored; the studied plainness of his attire was a notable contrast to the
costly magnificence of Pertinax, whose double-purple-bordered and
fringed toga, beautifully woven linen and jeweled ornaments seemed
chosen to combine suggestions of the many public offices he had
succeeded to.
He was a tall, lean, handsome veteran with naturally curly fair hair and
a beard that, had it been dark, would have made him look like an
Assyrian. There was a world of humor in his eyes, and an expression on
his weathered face of wonder at the ways of men--an almost comical
confession of his own inferiority of birth, combined with matter-of-fact
ability to do whatever called for strength, endurance and mere ordinary
common sense.
"You are almost ashamed of your own good fortune," Galen told him.
"You wear all that jewelry, and swagger like the youngest tribune, to
conceal your diffidence. Being honest, you are naturally frugal; but you
are ashamed of your own honesty, so you imitate the court's
extravagance and made up for it with little meannesses that comfort
your sense of extremes. The truth is, Pertinax, you are a man with a
boy's enthusiasms, a boy with a man's experience."
"You ought to know," said Pertinax. "You tutored Commodus.
Whoever could take a murderer at the age of twelve and keep him from
breaking the heart of a Marcus Aurelius knows more about men and
boys than I do."
"Ah, but I failed," said Galen. "The young Commodus was like a
nibbling fish; you thought you had him, but he always took the bait and
left the hook. The wisdom I fed to him fattened his wickedness. If I had
known then what I have learned from teaching Commodus and others,
not even Marcus Aurelius could have persuaded me to undertake the
task--medical problem though it was, and promotion though it was, and

answer though it was to all the doctors who denounced me as a
charlatan. I bought my fashionable practise at the cost of knowing it
was I who taught young Commodus the technique of wickedness by
revealing to him all its sinuosities and how, and why, it floods a man's
mind."
"He was a beast in any case," said Pertinax.
"Yes, but a baffled, blind beast. I removed the bandage from his eyes."
"He would have pulled it off himself."
"I did it. I turned a mere golden-haired savage into a criminal who
knows what he is doing."
"Well, drink and forget it!" said Pertinax. "I, too, have done things that
are best forgotten. We attain success by learning from defeat, and we
forget defeat in triumph. I know of no triumph that did not blot out
scores of worse things than defeat. When I was in Britain I subdued
rebellion and restored the discipline of mutinying legions. How? I am
not such a fool as to tell you all that happened! When I was in Africa
men called me a great proconsul. So I was. They would welcome me
back there, if all I hear about the present man is true. But do you
suppose I did not fail in certain instances? They praise me for