Dear and Glorious Physician Read Free Page B

constantly being invaded by rough seamen from hundreds of nameless and doubtful barbarous places. He had a conspicuous aversion for them, and would shudder at them fastidiously. But he had a small and pleasant house of his own, with cool stone floors and bright woolen curtains and arches and gardens, and it was far enough away from the larger house of Diodorus to give him the illusion that he was a master of land in his own right. Much of this pleasure, however, was spoiled frequently for him when he came into contact with Diodorus and was forced to listen in silence to the Roman’s soldierly expletives and coarse language.
     
    Diodorus was even lonelier in Syria than he had been in Rome. His wife, Aurelia, was a buxom young woman who devoted herself to her household and its slaves and her husband and her young daughter. She was pious and virtuous in the manner of an old Roman matron. But she was unlearned and only shrewd, and as naturally unpolished as her husband was naturally if secretly polished. She chattered about the slaves, her daughter, the newest fashions from Rome, suspected depredations in the kitchen, the climate, the health of her family, and the dishes she herself concocted under the eyes of the cooks. There was no doubt that she was an estimable woman, and there was no doubt that though she was a trifle too fat she had much prettiness of round pink face and large brown eyes and luxurious black hair. Diodorus would listen to her fondly, and then would retire to his library, there to bring books out of assiduous hiding and read until midnight, long after all in the household had retired. He especially delighted in poetry and history and philosophy. He would whisper a whole poem to himself, with a kind of wanton abandonment to phrases and cantos.
     
    It never occurred to him, as an anachronistically moral Roman, to seek some sexual diversion in the teeming brothels of Antioch, nor did he consider it proper to gather together with some fellow Romans in the city for gaming or cockfighting or even simple companionship. A man’s place, after his work, was in his home, according to Diodorus, no matter how trivial his wife’s conversation. He drank very little at the table, and believed drunkenness to be one of the major sins, so he had no escape except in his work.
     
    Aurelia had women friends among the Roman families in Antioch, but they were as virtuous and ordinary as she herself. She and they would gossip about the more emancipated women of their acquaintanceship, and would deplore them with shivers. They were all completely and innocently unaware of the depravity of their nation, its corruption and its moral viciousness, its licentious manners and mores, and they criticized other women for conduct which was common in Rome, and accepted. Their lares and penates were the most important things in their lives, and their gossip was as exciting as a bowl of stewed beans. But they were happy; they had husbands and children and gardens, and they were industrious and devoted.
     
    It was among the simpler soldiers in Antioch that Diodorus Cyrinus found some respite, and he talked with them easily of military matters, to the smothered vexation of his junior officers. The officers themselves considered that they were exiles in this country, and they longed for the delights and gaiety and vices of Rome, and they thought of their superior officer with wonder and secret derision. They never doubted his morality, but this did not inspire their respect; rather, they believed him a fool. Even his stern justice, which was never overcast by a moment’s pettiness or caprice, was, to them, something inhuman. He would punish an officer as quickly as a common foot soldier, no matter his family or his standing in Rome. Aeneas sympathized with them, and when they would wink at him over some rigid order of Diodorus’ he would pompously pretend to hide a smirk.
     
    Matters had been particularly perplexing and obnoxious today.