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XLIII. What Counts Is In The Heart
Petasus opens his cloak and releases you. Thirty years have passed since you first set foot in the library of Ulpian to meet his librarian (or was it two? You can’t seem to remember, and the very effort of thinking about it makes the answer fade yet another scintilla closer to oblivion). Your mysterious guardian, savior, companion, whom you only know by the type of hat he wears (the ordinary petasus, everyday garb of Latin peasants, and later of popes) gives you one last mysterious smile, a wave of the hand, and turns. He fades from side in a swirl of his cloak the way some wall paintings depict the Latinic god Mercurius (rough equivalents the Etruscan Fuflun, and Roman Hermes), and the way modern American popular mythology depicts its comic book superheroes. Thanks won’t be necessary, his look assures you. His job satisfaction rests in knowing that justice has been done, Time preserved, and the flow of history practically unaltered. If you try to say "Thanks for saving my life" he might say simply "I did it because it preserved integrity. Your demise would have altered the course of history more than your safe return. Go to your modern age, which will one day be someone else’s ancient time, and forget all this." Whoosh, and away he goes, cloak flying, fists extended before him, firm of jaw and eagle of eye.
It is the age of Constantine and the dawn of Christianity as the state religion, but it is also the last hour of the long day of Rome. The twelve centuries of the Latin nation are nearly over. Rome, in the height of her glory, stands in the late afternoon of her life. Rome lies before you, the city that is almost a modern metropolis. By most standards, she belongs more in the modern world than in the Medieval or Renaissance worlds. It’s Crapper’s dream. Until the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, her accomplishments in plumbing and other areas will remain unrivaled. Once the barbarians burn her libraries, destroy her government and records, shatter the armies that keep order, and perhaps worst of all, turn off the lamps of education, Europe becomes a backwater for many centuries. Not only that, but people stop bathing, and that really stinks.
The mysterious guardian, the Watchman of Time, a new comics hero from ancient mythology who fits into the modern landscape like a cell phone or a martini, and who ties together the real Vercingetorix via comix to Asterix, has brought you back to the library of Ulpian. The place does not look substantially different at first glance. The house still has that familiar smell of hot cooking, of salt and fish sauce and onions perhaps with a little bit of rabbit or a fat hen braising in an iron pot. You hear the happy chatter of kitchen slaves far away in the main villa. Outside, the noise of Subura is, if anything, more intense as the empire briefly basks in its new union, the population is swollen beyond earlier numbers, and commerce flows through her ports and temples in torrents. Yet, when your new host comes strolling down the corridor to meet you, there is a mixture of both happiness and melancholy in his eyes. "Greetings!" he says, grasping your hands in his and pulling you to a small circle of seats nearby. You remember the youthful enthusiasm, the fervent search for spiritual values, the mix of impish questioning and daring skepticism.
"Marcellus," you say in a voice choking with sentiment at the knowledge he has gained and lost, and which you will soon forget. "You remember me."
"Of course I remember you," he says. "It has been a long time, and I often wondered what became of you and your companions, what were their names?"
"Darwin and Amalthea."
"Oh yes. And wasn’t there some other fellow here--I can’t quite recall, but it seems at the time there was a librarian who took a rather brisk interest in your visit."
"You must be mistaken," you say sincerely. "Seems to me you were in charge, the youngest philosopher anywhere entrusted with the care and loving of such a major collection of texts from around the world."
He shrugs diffidently. Slave children bring a large service of wine in a chilled flask, with a circle of goblets; a crystal bowl filled with fresh fruit; and smaller bowls with such delicacies as filets of roast fish; tidbits of dormouse; chopped onions and vegetables; and as always jars of pungent fish sauce for dipping. You continue your conversation and barely notice these bright interruptions. The children run away down a sunny corridor with their tunics flapping in the wind, and their laughter is the last thing you recall of the people of Rome. It’s a fitting end to your journey. (No, this was not a dream; it doesn’t end with ‘and then you wake up’).
Marcellus lingers a while in your consciousness. "I had a wonderful dream," he says. "It’s all very dim when I am awake, but in my dreams when I sleep it’s all very vivid. I wander the cemetery at night which was the Roman Forum, then just a haunt of ghosts and owls, foxes and lost souls. I walk on the river and see primordial Tiber flowing fast, his shoulders rippling and yellow with the rich silt from the mountains. I dream of visiting Alba Longa, and hearing the ancient Sibyl foretell the glory of Rome and the eventual victory of one God over many gods. Best of all, I dream that I fought bravely beside Lord Romulus." He laughs. "Can you imagine that, a mousy little librarian like me, a great warrior in antiquity when the gods walked among men?"
You rise, because something inside tells you the journey is almost over. You laugh also. "These are wonderful dreams, Marcellus, and they tell us much is possible." It is an urge that tears at your heart, like the homesickness that gnaws at those who journey in faraway places and tells them it is time now. Some inner spirit calls you to come to the garden between the library and the villa.
He rises, sensing your urgency. He looks vaguely confused, but not unpleased. "This is all so baffling, but I am glad to see you once again in my advancing years. For thirty years I have wondered if you were not a dream, or maybe a playful last butt from the old gods."
"So the old gods are finished?" you ask.
He shrugs. "The Emperor won a great victory at the Milvian Bridge, where he defeated his competitors much as Diocles snatched victory from the jaws of Carinus. The Emperor, Constantine, has announced total religious tolerance for all faiths, and he himself remains open to all streams of spirituality including those of Isis and Mithra as well as the ancient Roman gods that Diocletian tried in vain to revive." He shrugs again. "Something very large has happened. The people are tired of the old gods and want something entirely new. Now, in a great irony, those who were driven underground and persecuted now sit by the Emperor’s left and right sides and advise him in making bridges to heaven."
"What did he see before the Milvian Bridge?"
Marcellus shrugs. "Some say it was a miracle. Others say it was just a momentary coincidence as the Sun crossed His light rays in an opening among black rain clouds. I didn’t see it, and those who did say it only lasted a minute or two. It doesn’t matter, does it? We should not waste our time counting the trees to determine if they are enough to make a forest. All the religious quibbling in the world isn’t worth one breath of fresh air, or a smile, or a sunny greeting to your neighbor."
"Still the philosopher as always," you say with a grin. You walk with Marcellus down the corridors to the garden between the houses. Alternate shafts of shade and sunshine stab at your moving figures as your sandals beat on the flagstones. "I see the wall niches are empty," you observe.
"Lord Ulpian passed away, confirmed in the old gods with Diocletian," says Marcellus. He points to a large wall niche in which a finely draped male figure resembling Ulpian rises with wonderful, enormous outspread wings. "We still honor his divine apotheosis, since we are as much people of the past as of the future."
Apotheosis, you recall (apo, near or toward + theos, ‘god’ or ‘gods’ or ‘godhood’) is one understanding among the early Romans of what happens to a person or an idea or a city or anything with a genius upon death. Perhaps it contributed some concept or legalism to Christian theology as the centuries marched forward. Apotheosis is a difficult term to define, since the winged representation (angel-like, messenger-like) takes on not just the person who is deified or brought into godhood, but the event itself, which is sacred, memorable like the rising of Christ from Hell to Heaven."
Marcellus continues: "His son, our young Lord, himself now in middle age, and all the household have adopted the new Christian ways. So the wall niches are empty while we wait for new statues." He laughs, and rubs his hands briskly together at the irony. "In the old days, we kept stone masons and pottery throwers busy making statues of Jupiter, Venus, and Mercury. Now we fill the empty niches with flowers and mosaics, while the same artisans send us new shiploads of Deus Pater, Maria, and Iesus."
"What of those who hate images and rituals?"
He shrugs. "The Gnostics, the Sophists, iconoclasts, there are a hundred new cults, and their numbers proliferate while the Holy Father and the Emperor struggle over who is to wear the keys of Peter. There are even some who would strictly embrace the writings, or dicker over which writings are holier than others, while rejecting the authority of the Apostolic Fathers who compiled them under divine fiat in the first place, which is like wanting to sit at the table but kicking its legs away." He stops to show you a wall niche. "There is the Holy Father. Great new mosaic, just finished. The grout is still wet." You look into the little grotto with its bright flowers and votive candles. The image is a familiar one: a fisherman spreads his net over a white sea filled with fishes that have human faces, under a blue sky in which rises a sun with a cross in its face. The fisherman is unmistakably the young man who stood beside you in the arena wielding a sword to save a woman and her children from the wild animals. "What is his name?" you ask.
"That’s Pope Sylvester. Constantine would like to be his co-Augustus, but God keeps Constantine in check." Marcellus grins. He uses his finger to trace around the Pope’s halo. "We are making new symbols by borrowing from the old. This artist borrowed the halo of Sol Invictus, the Unconquered Sun, to underscore the saintliness of the Holy Father."
"Some will say that is idolatry," you say as you stop to sip from a fountain beside the mosaic. Beautiful golden carp circle hungrily, thinking you have brought them something to eat. Like children, they are quickly attracted away to a dying bee that has become caught in the water’s surface and struggles on her back.
"It’s all a matter of opinion. What counts is in the heart." Marcellus accompanies you out into the sunshine of the garden, where banks of purple and red and yellow flowers, and flowers of every other color, tilt into the sunlight like jars spilling precious fragrances. It is a happy places of bees and flowers, and the slave children play hide and go seek with the Master’s children in the hedges, while the cooks bake and the librarians sing over their books and the carpenter whistles on his ladder under the eaves and all is well in the world of Classical Rome. "I can only offer you my personal opinion," Marcellus says quietly, and he looks about as if hoping not to be overheard. You wonder if that is a habit learned during polytheist times, or a habit adopted in the new theocracy replacing the old. "My opinion is that it doesn’t matter whether the bread is real or a symbol, and whether the wine is just wine or really blood. I only hope the new religion does not become a religion of state terror like the old one. I think it will be good if the soul becomes a garden of peace and sunshine for every human being, instead of a dark place like Avernus, a combat zone between hideous devils and frightening demons of light."
You think about the 1,700 years of history that stand between you and this humble philosopher in the garden of Ulpian, and you would rather not tell him what is yet to come. You look into the dark place and see the sealed stone box Ulpian gave Darwin for the transmission of Darwin's finds to the future. It will presumably still be in the ground in or under Darwin's Modern Roman townhouse--if you remember anything from this trip, you may dig it up and share his thoughts and discoveries with the rest of the world. Or, if you forget, it may slumber another two thousand years, so that its moldering contents will turn to dust.
Marcellus seems ready for anything. "I can only live my life, as lucky as I am to eat well and never have the lash on my back. I am a slave, but then maybe we all are. Each of us has to make for himself a garden, and be free in the moments of rain or sunlight. I think the new god said it best: Have faith like small children. Do good to the other, as you pray the other will do for you. What else is there?"
"Hurry!" a voice says.
You turn, and already the garden of Ulpian begins to blur in that circular, whirling form that tells you another leap in time is coming, or going. Marcellus is a smiling figure raising one hand in farewell. You turn, and there she is, the woman who brought you here, and who will bring you back through the next available crack in time.
"Amalthea!" you say, stumbling forward. "I thought you were dead."
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