Apollonius sat on the floor. The prisoners gathered around him. He described rivers and mountains and deserts he had seen. He talked about the people he had met and their exotic customs. The men listened with rapt expressions, some closing their eyes, transported by the Teacher’s narrative to faraway places, freed from their prison cell by the pictures he painted in their imaginations. Lucius closed his eyes and listened with them.
Apollonius spoke of finding the spot, high in the icy mountains of the Caucasus Indicus, where even Alexander the Great had not ventured, where the gods had chained Prometheus for his crime of giving fire to mortals.
“I discovered the very manacles which had held the Titan. Gigantic they were, so big that a man could stand inside one with his arms outstretched and barely touch the sides. The manacles were set into either side of a narrow gorge – thus, one could see just how enormous Prometheus must have been. The Titan himself was long gone. The locals told me that Hercules, on one of his many journeys, came upon Prometheus even as Jupiter’s eagle arrived to perform the daily torment of tearing out the Titan’s entrails. Hercules took pity on Prometheus and shot the eagle out of the sky. In the ravine below, I found the bones of an enormous bird, larger than any other bones I had ever seen. Hercules broke the manacles and set Prometheus free. Indeed, I could see that the metal was severed and twisted, but strangely it was not covered with rust. Vulcan must have forged those manacles of some alloy unknown to mortal men.”
Exhausted by the day’s events and lulled by the Teacher’s voice, Lucius was almost dozing. He chanced to open his eyes, just enough to peer through the lashes, and saw that Apollonius was using each hand to rub the wrist of the other, stretching the tendons and massaging the soreness caused by the manacles – which were gone.
Lucius’s eyes shot open and he uttered an exclamation of amazement. The others, most of whom also seemed to be half dozing, bolted upright and followed his gaze.
“His shackles!” said one of the men. “He’s taken off his shackles.”
“Have I?” Apollonius looked around absentmindedly, as if he had misplaced something. “So I have. Ah, but it would never do for the guards to see me this way. They’d be terribly upset.” He turned his back on them for a moment and engaged in a series of peculiar movements, hunching over and twisting from side to side. When he turned back, the shackles were again around his wrists.
“There, that’s better,” said Apollonius, shaking his manacles so that they made a dull clang. He began a new story, this one about the time he had spent in Babylon in his younger days, where he met the Parthian king, Vardanes, and his Chaldean astrologers.
Lucius looked down at his own manacles. He turned his hands this way and that and tugged against the shackles. There was no way he could possibly take them off. And yet it seemed that the Teacher had slipped out of his manacles without even thinking, as a man might shuffle off a pair of loose shoes. Or had Apollonius only created the illusion of doing so? Or had he never been placed in the manacles at all?
They passed many days in the cell. The accommodations were foul and the food was poor, but the regimen was not harsh; they were not physically harmed or made to do labour. Lucius received a visit from Hilarion, who assured Lucius that everything was running smoothly in his absence. It occurred to Lucius not for the first time that he was an incidental part of his own household, which was entirely capable of running itself without him.
Apollonius also received visitors, including a delegation of distinguished men headed by Marcus Nerva, an elder statesman of the Senate. Nerva looked the part, with his narrow, ascetic face, his high, broad forehead, and his neatly groomed white hair. Lucius knew the senator to be a friend and correspondent of Dio of Prusa.
Nerva asked after the prisoner’s health; Apollonius responded by asking after the senator’s health, since Nerva looked considerably more frail than he did. From their easy manner with each other, Lucius realized that the two were old acquaintances. Lucius never ceased to be surprised at the great number and variety of people Apollonius knew. To know Apollonius, it seemed, was to be only a step or two removed from almost anyone in the world.
Nerva and Apollonius conversed about inconsequential matters – prison food, the weather, and which of them had whiter hair. Apollonius asked Nerva about his hometown, the village of Narnia, which was said to be in the exact center of Italy and was one of the few places Apollonius had never visited; Nerva assured him that it was a charming town. It seemed to Lucius that Apollonius must have given Nerva a sign early on that an informer was present, and that their conversation should be guarded. Or were they conversing in code?
After the visitors left, Lucius expressed surprise that Nerva and the others had dared to pay a call on Apollonius. Domitian was always seeing conspiracies among the senators. Did these men not risk arousing the emperor’s suspicion by visiting a man arrested for disrespecting the emperor’s majesty?
“Not so,” said Apollonius. “By coming to see me so openly, those fellows protect themselves from suspicion. If I were indeed seditious, and if they were colluding with me, would they come to chat with me about the weather? They came here as Roman statesmen, to pay a courtesy call on a man who once counselled the Divine Vespasian and the Divine Titus. Conspirators would not come to see me at all, but would lurk in the shadows. Thus, by their boldness they disarm Domitian’s fear.”
“I see. Nerva didn’t look that clever to me.”
“Don’t let his manner fool you. Nerva is a very canny fellow. I have high hopes for him.”
“High hopes for a frail old senator?”
“To all appearances, there was never a more robust man than Titus, yet those who put their hopes for the future in Titus saw those hopes dashed. So why not look to a frail old man to deliver a brighter tomorrow?”
One day passed into another, until one morning a Praetorian arrived and told them they were to be taken before the emperor, who was ready to try them and pronounce judgement.
Lucius had done his best to prepare for this moment, striving to emulate the Teacher’s equanimity. Still, he felt a thrill of panic.
“Teacher, what will become of us?”
“Lucius, what do you fear? That we shall be tortured and killed? Every living thing must die, and there are things far worse than the suffering of physical pain. How much more terrible if we should comport ourselves disgracefully and lose our self-respect; then we should truly be damaged, and the harm would have been inflicted by ourselves.”
Lucius breathed deeply. “I shall look to you, Teacher. I shall follow your example.”
“And I shall do my best to make that example a good one, Lucius. To know that your eyes are on me will give me strength.”
They were taken first to an antechamber adjoining the reception room. Their shackles were removed. A group of slaves appeared, charged with making them presentable for the trial. Basins of water were brought. Their faces and hands were scrubbed clean. They were dressed in clean tunics. They were also given shoes, but because these were made of leather, Apollonius would not wear them. Lucius followed the Teacher’s example and remained barefoot.
When the attendants were finished cleaning and dressing them, they were put in shackles again.
A figure in the sumptuous robes of an imperial courtier entered the room and approached them. To Lucius’s surprise, it was his old friend and protector Epaphroditus. Lucius had seen him very little since the death of Cornelia. His old friend had aged a great deal.