The Bull Slayer - By Bruce Macbain Page 0,101

against poisons

Tribunal: dais on which a magistrate or judge sat

Triclinium : dining room; arrangement of three couches, each holding three diners around a rectangular table

Univira: a woman who has known only one man

Venator: a gladiator who fights wild beasts in the arena

Vitis: Centurion’s cudgel made of a vinestock; his symbol of authority

Author’s Note

Bithynia-Pontus

Pliny served as governor of the province of Bithynia-Pontus (in present day Turkey) in AD 109 or 110 with a special commission from the emperor to bring order to that troubled province. His dispatches to Trajan, and Trajan’s replies, are recorded in Book Ten of the Letters. Although our plot is fictitious, the background of embezzlement, waste, financial mismanagement, and political turbulence is abundantly documented, not only by Pliny, but in the orations of Dio Chrysostom (“Golden Mouth”), who is the model for the character of Diocles. It may be mentioned in passing that Nicomedia did suffer a severe earthquake while Pliny was governor. He describes it in a letter to the emperor and notes that the absence of a volunteer fire brigade (forbidden by Trajan’s injunction against voluntary associations) made the destruction that much worse.

Mithraism

There is, at present, no archaeological evidence for the practice of Mithraism in Bithynia. Our cave and its locale are entirely fictitious. Nevertheless, one leading scholar of the religion places its origins in the Persian influenced region of Commagene in south-eastern Anatolia, and it would be odd if the cult entirely leapfrogged Bithynia on its way west. In any case, the early second century AD saw the remarkable burgeoning of the cult in areas as distant as Africa, Germania, Britain, and Italy. What we don’t know about Mithraism is a great deal more than what we do, and no detail of its ritual and theology is beyond dispute. If there were Mithraic scriptures, the Christian church made sure that they did not survive. If there was a Mithraic Saint Paul, he is unknown to history. Yet it is hard to imagine that the religion was able to spread as far and as fast as it did without energetic proselytizing by someone. Christians regarded Mithras as a blasphemous imitation of their own savior god (who also has strong solar associations). Although vestiges of the cult may have lingered in some places, it had effectively ceased to exist by the end of the fourth century AD.

Suetonius

Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus (circa AD 69 to circa AD 140) is well-known only as the author of The Twelve Caesars, the biographies of the emperors from Julius Caesar to Domitian (the principal source for Robert Graves’ I Claudius novels). But among the many other works attributed to him are Lives of Famous Whores, Roman Festivals, Roman Dress, The Physical Defects of Mankind, and Greek Terms of Abuse. None of these has survived in more than fragments. What a loss! Suetonius did serve under Pliny in Bithynia, though precisely in what capacity is not clear. In a letter to Trajan (X 94) Pliny writes: “For a long time now, my lord, I have admitted Suetonius Tranquillus, that most worthy, honorable, and learned man, into my circle of friends, for I have long admired his character and his learning, and I have begun to love him all the more, the more I have now come to know him from close at hand” [Trans. P. G. Walsh]. Suetonius went on to serve as private secretary to the emperor Hadrian—a post from which he was eventually dismissed for some impertinence to the empress.

Pancrates

The name is borrowed from a famous magus of Hadrian’s reign but I have modeled him mainly on the oracle-monger, Alexander of Abonoteichus, who flourished in the later second century AD. The Greek satirist Lucian, in a delightful essay, describes his encounter with the man and his oracular snake (see Bibliography). I have given to Pliny the stratagem Lucian employed to expose the charlatan.

The Sacred Disease

Epilepsy was described by Hippocrates (circa 5th century BC) in his essay On the Sacred Disease. The Father of Medicine argued that the disease was not ‘sacred’ at all but the result of an imbalance of phlegm, one of the four humors in his system of physiology. Needless to say, it continued to be regarded with superstitious dread up until the dawn of modern medicine (see Bibliography).

Bibliography

Primary sources:

Dio Chrysostom. Discourses. Translated by H. Lamar Crosby. Loeb Classical Library, 5 vols. 1946

Lucian. “Alexander the Oracle-Monger” in The Works of Lucian of Samosata. Translated by Henry Watson Fowler and Francis George Fowler. Forgotten Books, n.d.

Pliny the Younger, Complete Letters. Translated by P. G. Walsh. Oxford U. Press, 2006

Selected secondary works:

Andreau, Jean. Banking and Business in the Roman World. Cambridge U. Press, 1999

Beck, Roger. “The Mysteries of Mithras: A New Account of Their Genesis.” Journal of Roman Studies, 88 (1998), 115-128

Idem. “Myth, Doctrine, and Initiation in the Mysteries of Mithras: New Evidence from a Cult Vessel.” Journal of Roman Studies, 90 (2000), 145-180

Burton, G. P. Proconsuls, Assizes and the Administration of Justice under the Empire. Journal of Roman Studies, 65 (1975), 92-106.

Clauss, Manfred. The Roman Cult of Mithras. Translated by Richard Gordon. Routledge, 2000

Jones, A. H. M. The Greek City from Alexander to Justinian. Oxford U. Press, 1940

Jones, C. P. The Roman World of Dio Chrysostom. Harvard U. Press, 1978

Knapp, Robert. Invisible Romans. Profile Books, 2011

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, whores, Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. Schocken Books, 1995.

Schachter, Steven C., ed. Brainstorms—Epilepsy in Our Words: Personal Accounts of Living with Seizures. Raven Press, 1993.

Temkin, Owsei. The Falling Sickness: A History of Epilepsy from the Greeks to the Beginnings of Modern Neurology. 2nd ed. Rev. Johns Hopkins U. Press, 1971

About the Author

Bruce Macbain has earned a B.A. in Classical Studies from the University of Chicago and a doctorate in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania. He has taught Classics and Greek and Roman history at VanderbiltUniversity and BostonUniversity. His special interests are religion and medicine in the ancient world.

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