Marius the Epicurean — Volume 1

  CHAPTER III: CHANGE OF AIR

  Dilexi decorem domus tuae.

  [27] THAT almost morbid religious idealism, and his healthful love ofthe country, were both alike developed by the circumstances of ajourney, which happened about this time, when Marius was taken to acertain temple of Aesculapius, among the hills of Etruria, as was thenusual in such cases, for the cure of some boyish sickness. Thereligion of Aesculapius, though borrowed from Greece, had beennaturalised in Rome in the old republican times; but had reached underthe Antonines the height of its popularity throughout the Roman world.That was an age of valetudinarians, in many instances of imaginaryones; but below its various crazes concerning health and disease,largely multiplied a few years after the time of which I am speaking bythe miseries of a great pestilence, lay a valuable, because partlypracticable, belief that all the maladies of the soul might be reachedthrough the subtle gateways of the body.

  [28] Salus, salvation, for the Romans, had come to mean bodily sanity.The religion of the god of bodily health, Salvator, as they called himabsolutely, had a chance just then of becoming the one religion; thatmild and philanthropic son of Apollo surviving, or absorbing, all otherpagan godhead. The apparatus of the medical art, the salutary mineralor herb, diet or abstinence, and all the varieties of the bath, came tohave a kind of sacramental character, so deep was the feeling, in moreserious minds, of a moral or spiritual profit in physical health,beyond the obvious bodily advantages one had of it; the body becomingtruly, in that case, but a quiet handmaid of the soul. The priesthoodor "family" of Aesculapius, a vast college, believed to be inpossession of certain precious medical secrets, came nearest perhaps,of all the institutions of the pagan world, to the Christianpriesthood; the temples of the god, rich in some instances with theaccumulated thank-offerings of centuries of a tasteful devotion, beingreally also a kind of hospitals for the sick, administered in a fullconviction of the religiousness, the refined and sacred happiness, of alife spent in the relieving of pain.

  Elements of a really experimental and progressive knowledge there weredoubtless amid this devout enthusiasm, bent so faithfully on thereception of health as a direct gift from God; but for the most parthis care was held to take [29] effect through a machinery easilycapable of misuse for purposes of religious fraud. Through dreams,above all, inspired by Aesculapius himself, information as to the causeand cure of a malady was supposed to come to the sufferer, in a beliefbased on the truth that dreams do sometimes, for those who watch themcarefully, give many hints concerning the conditions of the body--thoselatent weak points at which disease or death may most easily break intoit. In the time of Marcus Aurelius these medical dreams had becomemore than ever a fashionable caprice. Aristeides, the "Orator," a manof undoubted intellectual power, has devoted six discourses to theirinterpretation; the really scientific Galen has recorded howbeneficently they had intervened in his own case, at certainturning-points of life; and a belief in them was one of the frailtiesof the wise emperor himself. Partly for the sake of these dreams,living ministers of the god, more likely to come to one in his actualdwelling-place than elsewhere, it was almost a necessity that thepatient should sleep one or more nights within the precincts of atemple consecrated to his service, during which time he must observecertain rules prescribed by the priests.

  For this purpose, after devoutly saluting the Lares, as was customarybefore starting on a journey, Marius set forth one summer morning onhis way to the famous temple which lay [30] among the hills beyond thevalley of the Arnus. It was his greatest adventure hitherto; and hehad much pleasure in all its details, in spite of his feverishness.Starting early, under the guidance of an old serving-man who drove themules, with his wife who took all that was needful for theirrefreshment on the way and for the offering at the shrine, they went,under the genial heat, halting now and then to pluck certain flowersseen for the first time on these high places, upwards, through a longday of sunshine, while cliffs and woods sank gradually below theirpath. The evening came as they passed along a steep white road withmany windings among the pines, and it was night when they reached thetemple, the lights of which shone out upon them pausing before thegates of the sacred enclosure, while Marius became alive to a singularpurity in the air. A rippling of water about the place was the onlything audible, as they waited till two priestly figures, speaking Greekto one another, admitted them into a large, white-walled and clearlylighted guest-chamber, in which, while he partook of a simple butwholesomely prepared supper, Marius still seemed to feel pleasantly theheight they had attained to among the hills.

  The agreeable sense of all this was spoiled by one thing only, his oldfear of serpents; for it was under the form of a serpent thatAesculapius [31] had come to Rome, and the last definite thought of hisweary head before he fell asleep had been a dread either that the godmight appear, as he was said sometimes to do, under this hideousaspect, or perhaps one of those great sallow-hued snakes themselves,kept in the sacred place, as he had also heard was usual.

  And after an hour's feverish dreaming he awoke--with a cry, it wouldseem, for some one had entered the room bearing a light. The footstepsof the youthful figure which approached and sat by his bedside werecertainly real. Ever afterwards, when the thought arose in his mind ofsome unhoped-for but entire relief from distress, like blue sky in astorm at sea, would come back the memory of that gracious countenancewhich, amid all the kindness of its gaze, had yet a certain air ofpredominance over him, so that he seemed now for the first time to havefound the master of his spirit. It would have been sweet to be theservant of him who now sat beside him speaking.

  He caught a lesson from what was then said, still somewhat beyond hisyears, a lesson in the skilled cultivation of life, of experience, ofopportunity, which seemed to be the aim of the young priest'srecommendations. The sum of them, through various forgotten intervalsof argument, as might really have happened in a [32] dream, was theprecept, repeated many times under slightly varied aspects, of adiligent promotion of the capacity of the eye, inasmuch as in the eyewould lie for him the determining influence of life: he was of thenumber of those who, in the words of a poet who came long after, mustbe "made perfect by the love of visible beauty." The discourse wasconceived from the point of view of a theory Marius found afterwards inPlato's Phaedrus, which supposes men's spirits susceptible to certaininfluences, diffused, after the manner of streams or currents, by fairthings or persons visibly present--green fields, for instance, orchildren's faces--into the air around them, acting, in the case of somepeculiar natures, like potent material essences, and conforming theseer to themselves as with some cunning physical necessity. Thistheory,* in itself so fantastic, had however determined in a range ofmethodical suggestions, altogether quaint here and there from theircircumstantial minuteness. And throughout, the possibility of somevision, as of a new city coming down "like a bride out of heaven," avision still indeed, it might seem, a long way off, but to be grantedperhaps one day to the eyes thus trained, was presented as the motiveof this laboriously practical direction.

  "If thou wouldst have all about thee like the colours of some freshpicture, in a clear [33] light," so the discourse recommenced after apause, "be temperate in thy religious notions, in love, in wine, in allthings, and of a peaceful heart with thy fellows." To keep the eyeclear by a sort of exquisite personal alacrity and cleanliness,extending even to his dwelling-place; to discriminate, ever more andmore fastidiously, select form and colour in things from what was lessselect; to meditate much on beautiful visible objects, on objects, moreespecially, connected with the period of youth--on children at play inthe morning, the trees in early spring, on young animals, on thefashions and amusements of young men; to keep ever by him if it werebut a single choice flower, a graceful animal or sea-shell, as a tokenand representative of the whole kingdom of such things; to avoidjealously, in his way through the world, everything repugnant to sight;and, should any circumstance tempt him to a general converse in therange of such objects, to disentangle h
imself from that circumstance atany cost of place, money, or opportunity; such were in brief outlinethe duties recognised, the rights demanded, in this new formula oflife. And it was delivered with conviction; as if the speaker verilysaw into the recesses of the mental and physical being of the listener,while his own expression of perfect temperance had in it a fascinatingpower--the merely negative element of purity, the mere freedom fromtaint or flaw, in exercise [34] as a positive influence. Longafterwards, when Marius read the Charmides--that other dialogue ofPlato, into which he seems to have expressed the very genius of oldGreek temperance--the image of this speaker came back vividly beforehim, to take the chief part in the conversation.

  It was as a weighty sanction of such temperance, in almost visiblesymbolism (an outward imagery identifying itself with unseenmoralities) that the memory of that night's double experience, thedream of the great sallow snake and the utterance of the young priest,always returned to him, and the contrast therein involved made himrevolt with unfaltering instinct from the bare thought of an excess insleep, or diet, or even in matters of taste, still more from any excessof a coarser kind.

  When he awoke again, still in the exceeding freshness he had felt onhis arrival, and now in full sunlight, it was as if his sickness hadreally departed with the terror of the night: a confusion had passedfrom the brain, a painful dryness from his hands. Simply to be aliveand there was a delight; and as he bathed in the fresh water set readyfor his use, the air of the room about him seemed like pure gold, thevery shadows rich with colour. Summoned at length by one of thewhite-robed brethren, he went out to walk in the temple garden. At adistance, on either side, his guide pointed out to him the Houses ofBirth and Death, erected for the reception [35] respectively of womenabout to become mothers, and of persons about to die; neither of thoseincidents being allowed to defile, as was thought, the actual precinctsof the shrine. His visitor of the previous night he saw nowhere again.But among the official ministers of the place there was one, alreadymarked as of great celebrity, whom Marius saw often in later days atRome, the physician Galen, now about thirty years old. He wasstanding, the hood partly drawn over his face, beside the holy well, asMarius and his guide approached it.

  This famous well or conduit, primary cause of the temple and itssurrounding institutions, was supplied by the water of a spring flowingdirectly out of the rocky foundations of the shrine. From the rim ofits basin rose a circle of trim columns to support a cupola of singularlightness and grace, itself full of reflected light from the ripplingsurface, through which might be traced the wavy figure-work of themarble lining below as the stream of water rushed in. Legend told of avisit of Aesculapius to this place, earlier and happier than his firstcoming to Rome: an inscription around the cupola recorded it in lettersof gold. "Being come unto this place the son of God loved itexceedingly:"--Huc profectus filius Dei maxime amavit hunc locum;--andit was then that that most intimately human of the gods had given menthe well, with all its salutary properties. The [36] element itselfwhen received into the mouth, in consequence of its entire freedom fromadhering organic matter, was more like a draught of wonderfully pureair than water; and after tasting, Marius was told many mysteriouscircumstances concerning it, by one and another of the bystanders:--hewho drank often thereof might well think he had tasted of the Homericlotus, so great became his desire to remain always on that spot:carried to other places, it was almost indefinitely conservative of itsfine qualities: nay! a few drops of it would amend other water; and itflowed not only with unvarying abundance but with a volume so oddlyrhythmical that the well stood always full to the brim, whateverquantity might be drawn from it, seeming to answer with strangealacrity of service to human needs, like a true creature and pupil ofthe philanthropic god. Certainly the little crowd around seemed tofind singular refreshment in gazing on it. The whole place appearedsensibly influenced by the amiable and healthful spirit of the thing.All the objects of the country were there at their freshest. In thegreat park-like enclosure for the maintenance of the sacred animalsoffered by the convalescent, grass and trees were allowed to grow witha kind of graceful wildness; otherwise, all was wonderfully nice. Andthat freshness seemed to have something moral in its influence, as ifit acted upon the body and the merely bodily [37] powers ofapprehension, through the intelligence; and to the end of his visitMarius saw no more serpents.

  A lad was just then drawing water for ritual uses, and Marius followedhim as he returned from the well, more and more impressed by thereligiousness of all he saw, on his way through a long cloister orcorridor, the walls well-nigh hidden under votive inscriptionsrecording favours from the son of Apollo, and with a distant fragranceof incense in the air, explained when he turned aside through an opendoorway into the temple itself. His heart bounded as the refined anddainty magnificence of the place came upon him suddenly, in the floodof early sunshine, with the ceremonial lights burning here and there,and withal a singular expression of sacred order, a surprisingcleanliness and simplicity. Certain priests, men whose countenancesbore a deep impression of cultivated mind, each with his little groupof assistants, were gliding round silently to perform their morningsalutation to the god, raising the closed thumb and finger of the righthand with a kiss in the air, as they came and went on their sacredbusiness, bearing their frankincense and lustral water. Around thewalls, at such a level that the worshippers might read, as in a book,the story of the god and his sons, the brotherhood of the Asclepiadae,ran a series of imageries, in low relief, their delicate light andshade being [38] heightened, here and there, with gold. Fullest ofinspired and sacred expression, as if in this place the chisel of theartist had indeed dealt not with marble but with the very breath offeeling and thought, was the scene in which the earliest generation ofthe sons of Aesculapius were transformed into healing dreams; for"grown now too glorious to abide longer among men, by the aid of theirsire they put away their mortal bodies, and came into another country,yet not indeed into Elysium nor into the Islands of the Blest. Butbeing made like to the immortal gods, they began to pass about throughthe world, changed thus far from their first form that they appeareternally young, as many persons have seen them in manyplaces--ministers and heralds of their father, passing to and fro overthe earth, like gliding stars. Which thing is, indeed, the mostwonderful concerning them!" And in this scene, as throughout theseries, with all its crowded personages, Marius noted on the carvedfaces the same peculiar union of unction, almost of hilarity, with acertain self-possession and reserve, which was conspicuous in theliving ministrants around him.

  In the central space, upon a pillar or pedestal, hung, ex voto, withthe richest personal ornaments, stood the image of Aesculapius himself,surrounded by choice flowering plants. It presented the type, stillwith something of the [39] severity of the earlier art of Greece aboutit, not of an aged and crafty physician, but of a youth, earnest andstrong of aspect, carrying an ampulla or bottle in one hand, and in theother a traveller's staff, a pilgrim among his pilgrim worshippers; andone of the ministers explained to Marius this pilgrim guise.--One chiefsource of the master's knowledge of healing had been observation of theremedies resorted to by animals labouring under disease or pain--whatleaf or berry the lizard or dormouse lay upon its wounded fellow; towhich purpose for long years he had led the life of a wanderer, in wildplaces. The boy took his place as the last comer, a little way behindthe group of worshippers who stood in front of the image. There, withuplifted face, the palms of his two hands raised and open before him,and taught by the priest, he said his collect of thanksgiving andprayer (Aristeides has recorded it at the end of his Asclepiadae) tothe Inspired Dreams:--

  "O ye children of Apollo! who in time past have stilled the waves ofsorrow for many people, lighting up a lamp of safety before those whotravel by sea and land, be pleased, in your great condescension, thoughye be equal in glory with your elder brethren the Dioscuri, and yourlot in immortal youth be as theirs, to accept this prayer, which insleep and vision ye have inspired. Order it a
right, I pray you,according to your loving-kindness to men. Preserve me [40] fromsickness; and endue my body with such a measure of health as maysuffice it for the obeying of the spirit, that I may pass my daysunhindered and in quietness."

  On the last morning of his visit Marius entered the shrine again, andjust before his departure the priest, who had been his special directorduring his stay at the place, lifting a cunningly contrived panel,which formed the back of one of the carved seats, bade him lookthrough. What he saw was like the vision of a new world, by theopening of some unsuspected window in a familiar dwelling-place. Helooked out upon a long-drawn valley of singularly cheerful aspect,hidden, by the peculiar conformation of the locality, from all pointsof observation but this. In a green meadow at the foot of the steepolive-clad rocks below, the novices were taking their exercise. Thesoftly sloping sides of the vale lay alike in full sunlight; and itsdistant opening was closed by a beautifully formed mountain, from whichthe last wreaths of morning mist were rising under the heat. It mighthave seemed the very presentment of a land of hope, its hollows brimfulof a shadow of blue flowers; and lo! on the one level space of thehorizon, in a long dark line, were towers and a dome: and that wasPisa.--Or Rome, was it? asked Marius, ready to believe the utmost, inhis excitement.

  All this served, as he understood afterwards [41] in retrospect, atonce to strengthen and to purify a certain vein of character in him.Developing the ideal, pre-existent there, of a religious beauty,associated for the future with the exquisite splendour of the temple ofAesculapius, as it dawned upon him on that morning of his firstvisit--it developed that ideal in connexion with a vivid sense of thevalue of mental and bodily sanity. And this recognition of the beauty,even for the aesthetic sense, of mere bodily health, now acquired,operated afterwards as an influence morally salutary, counteracting theless desirable or hazardous tendencies of some phases of thought,through which he was to pass.

  He came home brown with health to find the health of his motherfailing; and about her death, which occurred not long afterwards, therewas a circumstance which rested with him as the cruellest touch of all,in an event which for a time seemed to have taken the light out of thesunshine. She died away from home, but sent for him at the last, witha painful effort on her part, but to his great gratitude, pondering, ashe always believed, that he might chance otherwise to look back all hislife long upon a single fault with something like remorse, and find theburden a great one. For it happened that, through some sudden,incomprehensible petulance there had been an angry childish gesture,and a slighting word, at the very moment of her departure, actually forthe last time. Remembering this [42] he would ever afterwards pray tobe saved from offences against his own affections; the thought of thatmarred parting having peculiar bitterness for one, who set so muchstore, both by principle and habit, on the sentiment of home.

  NOTES

  32. *[Transliteration:] E aporroe tou kallous. +Translation:"Emanation from a thing of beauty."