ANNOTATIONS: aspectu adulescens et, quantum ingenio, senex

Chapter 26.

... his (a physician's) wise student realizes that she (the comatose queen) is still alive.

1. cum discipulis suis ... and when the physician's clever student arrives (26.7 discipulus medici), he is introduced without a reference to the group mentioned here.

7. supervenit discipulus medici ... Here discipulus "student, apprentice" ... Like his teacher, the pupil is nameless.

aspectu adulescens et, quantum ingenio, senex: prodigious wisdom in ancient literature is often described by means of the puer-senex character, c.f. Virgil's Iulus (or Julus) in Aen. 9.311 ante annos animumque gerens curamque viriles: youth is explicitly compared to old age first in Flavian and Antonine literature: e.g. Sil. 8.464; Plin. epist. 5.162; Apul. flor. 9.38. In Christian literature see the expressions canities animae (Ambrose) or morum (Augustine), or sensuum (Cassian), and polios to noema (Gregory of Nazianzus). Discussion of the topos in Curtius 1953 98-101; Festugière 1960; Gnilka 1972; Carp 1980; Eyben 1993 10-11. For the use of the term adulescens in this context see Gnilka ibid. 50-1. Although the puer-senex character (the discipulus) is held in high esteem, he is not everyone's favourite type; cf. Inc. pall. 95. (=Apul. apol. 85.8) odi puerulos praecoqui sapientia; Quint. inst. 2.4.9.

Et (P, F,) here has slight adversative force (="but at the same time, and yet" OLD s. v. 14) There is no need to change (with Riese, Tsitsikli, Schmeling, and Kortekas) et to sed.

quantum ingenio: this is probably a case of contamination of an ablative of respect (cf. aspectu) and a relative clause of the type quantum ad... (sc. pertinet); cf. Ov. ars. 1.744 quantum ad Pirithoum, Phaedra pudica fuit; Sen. nat. 2.34.2. quantum ad hoc, par est (OLD s.v. quantum 7c). Schmeling emends to quanto ingenio, but also considers either deleting quantum or emending to quantum ad ingenium or <tantum> aspectu ... [sed] quantum ingenio (1994: 147)

8. speciosum corpus ... The same narrative situation occurs in our passage, although the perspective is now the young student's. The use of the adjective may be significant, as our author goes on to describe the young man's interest in the comatose princess/queen by means of an erotically coloured language; ...

1. Quod ut uidit iuuenis: uidere need not suggest perception with the eyes; the physician may notice the dissolving of the congealed blood by e.g. touching the body or taking the pulse; here uidere may also simply mean "to be a witness of an event" (OLD s.v. 11)

ut facilius mihi credas, ... This anounces the student's ensuing treatment of (the comatose princess) ...

Chapter 27

(no mention of the wise student in the summary)

2. tulit puellam in cubiculo, posuit super lectulum: while the encounter of the young physician with the lifeless body ...  and the first treatment take place in the open (the physician's uilla), the second treatment, which results in the resuscitation, occurs in a confined space; the change of setting from "outside" to "inside" is also found in Apul. flor. 19.8. domum rettulit confestimque spiritum recreavit; and, (as Kerényi 1962: 39 points out) in the description of the miraculous revival of a young boy by the prophet Elijah in Vulgate III, Kings, 17.19: .... et portavit in cenaculum ubi (Elias) ipse manebat et posuit super lectulum suum (cf. on 22.11 labia labiis probat). The diminutive lectulus in this context is probably equivalent to lectus (for this use see Lamer in RE XII.1 1103-4; Hanssen 1952:119; Adams 1976: 105); in view of the Old Testament passage cited above, the term may have an intertextual significance. Of course, the term lectulus is also a symbol of love affairs (the diminutive is used this way in elegy and epigram, e.g. Prop.  2.15.2.; Mart. 10.38.7.; Van Mal-Maeder on Apul. met. 2.7.7.); the young physician's touch over the body of the allegedly dead ... is not strictly professional; ...

calefecit oleum, madefecit lanam, effudit super pectus puellae: the physician applies to the girl's chest a piece of wool moistened in tepid oil. Both objects appear in medical treatises in a therapeutic context (e.g. Ruf. Ren. Ves. 1.9.; Sor. Gyn. 3.10.4;  Gal. 10.419,  13.581 Kühn;  Orib. Syn. 7.31.1.), but their application in a case of apparent death is parallelled in a non-medical text, namely Artemidorus' Book of Dreams: Artemidorus reports that a professional wrestler dreamed that he was resuscitated from death by a masseur (aleiptes), this masseur employs the same means and healing process as the young physician in our story. For other healing methods see Apul. flor. 19.8. (Asclepiades) animam in corporis latibulis delitiscentem quibusdam medicamentis prouocauit. Kerényi 1962: 40 argues that our author is inspired from the imagery in Charit 1.1.15 (Calirrhoe).

4, ne me contingas aliter, quam oportet contingere: ... Contingere is rare for a physician's touch (but see 18.7. (medici) tangunt singulas corporis partes) and may specifically refer to the act of anointing the body (c.f. Ov. met. 2.123 suo sacro medicamine nati contigit); it has a sexual nuance at 27.10 ne ab aliquo contingeretur. This suggestive phrase functions as the climax of a series of double-entendres in the description of the treatment of the comatose princess/queen by the student (see above). She expresses reluctance when she is about to be examined by a male physician: this behaviour may reflect real-life attitude; see King 1998:  47-8;  Maraval on Greg. Nys. vit.  Macrin.  31.20 (cf. Greg. Naz. orat. 8.15). Flemming 2000: 76 remarks that visitations by male medici to female patients are in satire represented as opportunities for female sexual misconduct (e.g. Iuv 6.235-7; Mart. 11.17.7) It is justified that the queen immediately begs for the preservation of her chastity, which comes as a priority even under the most adverse conditions.

5. Iuuenis ut uidit, quod in arte uiderat, quod magistro fallebat: an example of the motif of the apprentice who outgrows his master (Kerényi 1962: 38). Schmeling prints ut uidit in arte quod arguing that the repetition of uidere quod is unacceptable (1994: 147) cf. Hamblenne 1993: 248)

6. probo artem, peritiam laudo, miror diligentiam: asyndetic tricolon with double chiasmus (ABBAAB) and P-alliteration. Ars and peritia are found in combination in e.g. Tac. hist. 4.30. Vlp. dig. 7.1.27.2., for peritia combined with diligentia see Aug. civ. deo 22.8 ex eorum (medicorum) diligentia peritiaque. The importance of peritia "experience, expertise" in a medical context has already been observed in our text: see et obstetricem peritissimam. For diligentia as a physician's virtue see e.g. Cels. 3.21 ille enim cum summa diligentia non medici tantummodo ... custodiretur; Plin. nat. 11.227 medica diligentia.

7. nolo te artis beneficium perdidisse: accipe mercedem: te, missing in P, is first added by Riese. One would expect perdere instead of perdidisse (c.f. 28.3. regnum, quod mihi seruabatur, nolo accipere), and Hunt 2009: 226-7 proposes nolo <aestimes> or <putes> .... perdidisse. For the infinitive perdidisse see also 14.10 iuuenis iste ... plura se perdidisse testatur. The idea expressed here squares with a general principle in this story: skill and merit require reward; see on 8.12 accipe ... quia mereris. On merces as a doctor's payment (misthós) see ThLL VIII 793,70 f.

7.2. artis beneficium: the phrase (less direct that merces "fee, payment")  indicates remuneration for the medical services provided by the young physician; cf. Cic. fam. 16.9. honos = merces, timé. Riese explains beneficium as fructus. Seneca (benef. 4.13.3) states that physicians who receive payment for their services do not perform a beneficium, since they act in their own interest. For the ancient debate about the way in which the physician's salary affects the definition of the medical profession as a liberal art see Kudlien 1986 167-81.

8. dedit ei decem sestertia auri: ... clear instruction in the letter is that the sum of 20,000 gold sesterces should cover both the fee of the person who finds ... body and the costs of the funeral: 26.4 Quicumque hoc loculum inuenerit habentem in eo XX sestertia auri, peto X sestertia habeat, X uero funeri impendat. Half of the gold is now the student's fee, since a funeral is no longer necessary. The reader is not explicitly informed as to the whereabouts of the rest of the money, yet it is expected that this sum goes to the person who found the coffin, the physician himself, who is thus shown to be a materialistic character (see Zimmerman on Apul. met. 10.9.1. on avaricious physicians in literature).

Ein junger Schüler - der Jüngling

 Discipulus (ein junger Schüler - der Jüngling) aus der Sammlung Gesta Romanorum. Übersetzung von Johann Georg Theodor Gräße

Alsbald ließ er einen Scheiterhaufen erbauen, allein während man noch damit beschäftigt war, den selben aufzurichten um den Körper darauf zu legen, kam ein junger Schüler des Arztes dazu, der jedoch, was sein Genie anging, ein Greis zu seyn schien. Als dieser den schönen Leichnam auf dem Scheiterhaufen liegen sah, erblickte ihn auch sein Meister und sprach zu ihm: Du kommst zur guten Stunde, denn eben wartete ich auf Dich: nimm diese Flasche mit Salbe und gieße sie, was das Letzte bei dem Begräbniß ist, über den Leichnam. Also trat der Jüngling zu dem Leichnam und zog dessen Gewänder weg, und goß mit seiner Hand die Salbe über den ganzen Körper, fühlte aber dabei Leben am Herzen desselben. Der Jüngling erstaunte, fühlte den Puls, und entdeckte Lebenszeichen; prüfte hierauf die Nasenlöcher und legte seine Lippen auf den Mund des Leichnams und entdeckte Leben, welches noch mit dem Tode rang; hierauf sprach er also zu den Dienern: stecket langsam Fackeln an diese vier Enden, nehmt Euch aber in Acht. Als hierauf das Blut, welches erstarrt war, flüssig ward, und dieses der Jüngling gewahr wurde, sprach er zu seinem Meister: das Frauenzimmer, welches Du für todt hältst, lebt, und ich will, damit Du mir Glauben beimissest, Dir solches durch einen Versuch beweisen. Als er so gesprochen hatte, hob er die Prinzessin auf und trug sie in sein Schlafzimmer, und legte ihr heißes Oel auf die Brust; hierauf feuchtete er Wolle an und legte sie auf ihren Körper, so daß das Blut, welches innerlich erstarrt war, durch die Wärme wieder zum Fließen kam und der Athem anfing durch ihr Mark zu ziehen; hierauf öffnete er ihr die Adern, sie schlug die Augen auf, holte Athem und sprach, indem sie wieder zu sich kam: wer bist Du? berühre mich nicht anders, als es sich geziemt, denn ich bin Gemahlin eines Königs. Als das der Jüngling hörte, ward er voller Freude, begab sich in das Zimmer seines Meisters und sprach zu ihm: siehe, Meister, das Frauenzimmer lebt. Der aber sprach: ich bin mit Deiner Erfahrung zufrieden, lobe Deine Kunst, bewundere Deine Klugheit. Höre von jetzt an sorgfältig auf meinen Rath: sey nie undankbar gegen Deine Kunst. Empfange hier Deinen Lohn, denn dieses Frauenzimmer hat eine große Summe Geldes bei sich gehabt; hierauf befahl er sie mit frischen Kleidern, gesunden Speisen und den besten Stärkungsmitteln zu laben, und nach wenigen Tagen, als er erfahren hatte, daß sie aus königlichem Blute entsprossen sey, rief er seine Freunde zu sich und nahm sie an Kindesstatt an. 

NIKOLAOS - MARK HADDON'S DISCIPULUS - AND KERIMON IN ULTIMA THULE

   It is just after dawn when they see the box. They are returning to port, exhausted and ill-tempered with yet another meagre catch in the half-empty baskets at the stern—wrasse, bream, a young tiger shark which does not look healthy. They are tempted simply to sail by. The box contains something, certainly, given how low it is riding in the water, but the gods have shunned them so doggedly over the last few months that it will doubtless turn out to be filled with rancid meat or sodden flour or shattered earthenware. It promises some small entertainment, however, and none of them can resist the faint hope of treasure which will transform their lives. So they pull alongside, slip a rope under each end and heave.

  It is very heavy indeed, doubtless full of seawater, though why someone should go to the trouble of tarring it like this is a puzzle. And if someone went to the trouble of tarring such a box why would they do it in so amateurish a manner?

  “I’m breaking my back for a piece of junk someone threw overboard.”

  “Do you really want to hear another crew bragging about how they hauled in a crate of opals?”

  “Here it comes.”

  The box bangs down hard onto the deck and rolls over. There’s water inside, certainly, but some heavier mass sloshing back and forth in the water, something big.

  “Open it, then.”

  Gaius grabs a knife and stabs it into the point where the lid meets the corner under the sticky black covering. The wood splinters. He lifts his foot and stamps on the handle of the knife to drive the point further into the gap, as if he were driving a spade into hard earth. The lid splits away and water gushes onto the deck. And with the water out flops a hand, pale, thin, unmoving. Everyone steps back.

  “Neptuno has ago gratias meo patrono,” mutters Nonus to himself, “qui salsis locis incolit piscolentis…”

  “What if it’s not human?” says Nikolaos.

  “You are a child, Nikolaos,” says Mettius. “Do all of us a favour and hold your little tongue.”

  Gaius drives the knife into the opposite corner of the box. The lid comes away in its entirety and a woman’s body is washed onto the deck by the remaining water. She is wrapped in sodden grave clothes, bruised and bloodied with a broken nose. Nikolaos makes a noise like a small, frightened boy. This scenario did not feature in any of their imaginings. Then Mettius stoops and picks up a sodden hessian bag none of them has yet noticed. He hacks it open like a rabbit’s belly. Gold coins clatter onto the wet deck. Tetradrachms? They have no idea. They have never seen currency of this value before. Mettius throws his head back and cries like a wolf and everyone feels the mood shift. They are poor men, everyone has a knife in their belt and accidents happen all the time at sea.

  “Hoist her overboard,” says Mettius. No one moves or speaks. “She’s no use to anyone now.”

  But Korax is holding a sheaf of parchment he has retrieved from the bag Mettius has dropped. “Nikolaos?”

  Nikolaos takes the parchment. There is writing on it, in Greek, which he can read after a fashion. The ink has run badly but the script is still legible. His shipmates are illiterate. If he thinks fast he might be able to invent a message which will get them all back to harbour alive.

  “Read it, philosopher,” says Mettius, who is picking up the gold coins one by one.

  The message is so extraordinary, however, that any thought of saying something different slips from Nikolaos’ mind. “…and use this money to grant her a burial befitting the daughter of a king.”

  Mettius takes the parchment from his hands, rips it into four pieces and throws them overboard. “What difference does it make who she is?” He lifts two stacks of gold coins between his forefingers and thumbs. “This is what matters.” He holds everyone’s eye in turn to make sure they understand. He drops the coins into his pockets and grips Nikolaos’ chin. “What did we find in the box?”

  “We found a woman’s body.”

  “So clever but so stupid.” He slaps Nikolaos’ face and grips his chin for a second time. “What did we find in the box, boy?”

  “She’s moving.” It is Nonus.

  Mettius lets go of Nikolaos. Everyone looks down. The woman twitches, then rolls over, coughing bile and seawater onto the deck. Mettius bends down and grabs her arm. “Let’s get her over the side before you bed-wetters start having qualms.”

  He has lifted her by the armpits when Nikolaos hits him. The boy is not strong and the playground blow lands awkwardly but it is enough to knock the bigger man off-balance so that he lets go of the woman and stumbles face down onto the washboard. Gaius takes the woman and drags her under the standing shelter. Nikolaos has no plan. He is simply no longer able to control the anger which he has stoppered up over three years of humiliation. He pulls the knife from his belt and stabs Mettius in the back of the thigh. Mettius roars. Korax and Nonus look at one another, then over at Gaius. It is obvious what they must do right now, but they need to know that they are all going to share responsibility.

  Mettius cannot stand. “Help me!”

  Nikolaos lifts the knife again but the other men move him aside. He has already done his part. They each put a hand under Mettius’ legs and hoist together so that he pivots over the transom into the water. He turns and grips the rudder. Korax raises his own knife so that Mettius has to let go before his fingers are sliced off. “Row!” shouts Korax. Nikolaos grabs an oar. Nonus grabs an oar. Mettius flails in the water. He cannot swim. Nikolaos and Nonus fit the oars into the rowlocks, sit themselves on the bench and pull hard. Gaius is wrapping a tarpaulin around the sodden woman.

  “I have the gold!” yells Mettius. He is holding up one of the coins and laughing, as if he is going to paint hell red at their expense. Korax rehoists the sail. Mettius slips under and resurfaces for one final time. Then he is gone.

  His erstwhile colleagues are an hour out of port, enough time to hone the details of the story of how their captain roped a lead weight to his own ankle before stepping overboard. It seems plausible that a man filled with so much anger should finally turn it on himself. Besides, no one is going to ask questions, least of all his widow, though they would like to have given her a gold coin or two to help her feed her children.

  Each man donates a piece of dry clothing. The woman is shaking and cannot talk but she is alive. None of them have seen royalty in the flesh before, and none expected to see royalty in so sorry a state. The wife of Pericles of Tyre, so the parchment said, though they can tell no one, lest someone comes asking for the other contents of the bag. She looks as if she has lost a long boxing match against a much stronger opponent. Was it a punishment or a mistake? Did family or enemies do this to her? The men are in a fairy tale. They fished a princess from the sea, for a whole minute they were rich beyond their wildest dreams, they killed a man and then they were poor again. The loss feels like some kind of recompense for taking a life, but those coins will glitter in their dreams for the rest of their lives.

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 When they have docked, Gaius and Nikolaos unload the baskets while Korax and Nonus take the woman up the hill to the doctor’s house. He is not a doctor as such but he owns books, which is qualification enough in this tiny town. They do not mention the gold which they found then lost but ask politely if they may hear news of the woman’s condition and old man Kerimon promises that he will leave a message with the harbourmaster in a few days’ time. He gets his house slaves to wrap her in clean, dry blankets and sends the two fishermen away with the salt-caked shirt, the waistcoat, the woollen cap, the breeches and the boots in which she was delivered.

  In truth she does not need a doctor. Her bruises will heal. Her nose will set of its own accord, if a little off-centre. But something important has broken in her mind and it will never heal completely. She will not sleep for many days and even then she will never sleep deeply, knowing that she will wake at some point during the night to find herself back inside that floating coffin. Every time she enters a small chamber or a dense crowd her heart will race, she will start to sweat profusely and feel sick and find it hard to breathe. She will always leave doors open and if one slams behind her she will weep. She will never enter a cave, a cellar or a tunnel. She will, after many years, agree to travel by sea but it will be painful and she will do it only once. She will only ever feel truly comfortable out of doors, in sunlight, away from the coast. Even then she will be struck by moments of blind panic that overtake her with neither warning nor explanation.

  She talks for the first time towards the end of the third day. She thanks Kerimon for his kindness and asks that similar thanks be given to the fishermen. She apologises for the fact that she can tell him nothing of how she came to be here. It is both a lie and not a lie. There was a king’s daughter who married a prince and they loved one another beyond measure. It happened a long time ago and far away and there is nothing to connect that woman to the woman sitting here on the terrace under the vines.

  She says, “My name is Emilia.”

  She was at sea for a couple of days at most, but it was enough to rip away the shell in which she had lived her entire life. She is ordinary now. Life is fragile and she can no longer take anything for granted. Days are all she has and they can be wasted or cherished, difficult as they sometimes are. To walk on warm dry stones is good, to eat fresh bread is good, to drink clean, cold water is good. If she met that prince now, what would she be able to offer him? What could he offer her? And her child? Thinking about this is the hardest thing of all, a hole in her belly which hurts like the labour that very nearly killed her. She does not even know whether the child survived. If they did then they will grow up cosseted and pampered and have nothing in common with Emilia, not unless they pass through a similar ring of fire which strips away the privilege and the presumption. And who would wish that on anyone, least of all on a child of their own? Better that Chloë is dead to all of them, to her child, to her husband and to herself.

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Kerimon is a generous host. He, too, found himself washed up in this coastal town, in his case after his fellow senators died in a coup in Samaria. He has been deprived of the company of social equals for many years and with the exception of this one bloody episode, about which he says nothing, the details of which Emilia later learns from Drusilla, the oldest of the house slaves, he recounts stories constantly, about his childhood and about the town news he hears via the documents he is asked to write and decipher for the illiterate or innumerate. He tells her about the early death of both his parents and the paternal uncle who beat him daily till his maternal aunt stole him away in the middle of the night, how he then grew up in his maternal uncle’s household as Allectus moved through a series of civil service postings along the Persian Gulf. He tells her about the lesser marvels of their own town—the sailor’s son with no toes who could see the future, the widow of seven years who remarried a month before her shipwrecked husband finally returned home, the man who bequeathed his small fortune to a horse.

  Kerimon is nearing sixty, a saggy man with a hangdog face and a tendency to drop objects and bump into furniture. He has no sexual interest in her. He is, however, besotted with a succession of young men whose attention is never wholly free of mockery. He has a large library—“a sad fraction of what I once possessed”—and is devoted to the garden laid out along a series of terraces descending to the river which feeds into the harbour. Every so often a grizzled traveller will arrive at the villa bearing a seedling from the world’s end and be rewarded with the kind of money other people spend on carnelian or garnet—mountain rhubarb, a bottlebrush tree, evergreen magnolia, fiercely spiked orange cacti…On occasion, instead of supervising his slaves, he gets down on his knees and digs the earth with his own hands.

 She thinks, sometimes, about her rescue. There was money in a bag. If the fishermen took it then they will have made better use of it than she could. One of them tried to throw her overboard. His fellows then threw him overboard. He will have drowned, surely. She has difficulty thinking of these acts in terms of right and wrong. What does she know of the stories which lie behind their actions? How much does one ever know of the stories which lead to the present moment? She has stepped out of life. She no longer has an investment. She can see it clearly now. Everyone inhabits a different world.

  She needs to be useful, to do something with her hands. So Drusilla is teaching her how to weave. It calms her, the way the body starts to operate without the mind’s bidding once you have learnt a skill. She is a good student this time around, she takes more care, she has more patience. She weaves a bedspread patterned with orange and blue diagonal lines. She is starting to learn how one weaves figures, landscapes, stories.

  Sometimes Kerimon finds her weeping. He seems embarrassed. He fetches a rug and places it over her as if it is cold from which she is suffering. He sits beside her and says nothing. Sometimes she looks at him and finds that he is weeping, too, though whether he is weeping for her or on his own account she never asks.

  Four or five weeks after her arrival one of the young men beats Kerimon about the head before stealing a ruby necklace and two silver cups. Emilia finds him in his chamber, sitting on the floor, a bloody gash running through his thinning hair, his right eye puffy and purpled. She cleans the wound then leads him to a stone bench in the corner of the garden where vines create a wedge of dappled shade. She lays the same unnecessary rug over his lap and sits beside him and reads from the Argonautica.

  ’Aρχόμενος σέο, Φοι˜βε, παλαιγενέων κλέα φωτω˜ν μνήσομαι…

  Beginning with you, Phoebus, I will describe the famous deeds of men of old, who, at the behest of King Pelias, drove the well-benched Argo down through the mouth of Pontus and between the Cyanean rocks, in search of the Golden Fleece…

  Autumn is turning to winter. It has been three months since her rescue and she is growing restless. She needs movement, purpose, responsibility, she needs to engage in some kind of business with other people. But none of the skills she possesses have much value at the end of this particular road where every woman weaves and Kerimon has cornered the market in the interpretation of legal documents and the writing of letters. But where else would she go, and why? She is fond of Kerimon. He welcomed her into his home when she had nothing. And as she once needed him now he needs her. Since the beating he moves like an older man who is nervous of falling. She does not like the idea of him living alone.

  One of her pleasures is walking in the hills behind the town, about which these maritime people seem largely incurious. She enjoys the quiet and her own company and likes the idea that she could simply carry on in any direction and nothing could stop her, the absolute freedom of it. She is returning to the villa one afternoon by a winding route she has not taken before when she chances upon a small deserted temple once dedicated to Artemis, but now derelict. Four columns under the portico and a single room behind the rear wall. The former priestess died years ago, Kerimon tells her later, and these are Neptune’s adherents, albeit sceptical ones, too inured to the weather’s fickleness to put anything but superficial trust in prayer.

  Her walks keep leading her back to the same spot. It is not the most beautiful of locations, a junction of five cart tracks, used enough to churn the mud but not enough to discourage weeds, two wooden byres left to rot, trees and scrub all around, a view of sorts down to the scruffier end of a scruffy town, other unremarkable hills beyond. There is a row of swallows’ nests behind the pediment. The temple must have been falling into disrepair even before the last priestess left. The wall paintings are sun-bleached and peeling, moss has made its dogged inroads, the initials of children and courting couples are scored into the plaster and builders have begun purloining the more extractable stones. But she belongs here in a way she cannot articulate. Perhaps it is the very unexceptional nature of the place which resonates.

  Kerimon no longer has anyone else to indulge and the project promises to keep Emilia in the villa for the next year at least so he is willing to pay for the work. Two men take on the roles of stonemason, builder, roofer, and plasterer. They are not craftsmen but one is hard-working and the drunkard is eventually replaced by the hard-working man’s son. The frescoes are restored by a painter of figureheads and shop signs. They are not accomplished pictures but they have a rough vigour and they are certainly eye-catching. Here is Diana hunting with her companions, a large dog at her side. Here is Artemis presiding over a childbirth. Here is the Lady of the Beasts in a forest, surrounded by a troupe of not wholly believable wild animals, one of which appears to be the offspring of a badger and a horse. Here is Lady Moon bestowing authority upon an unspecific ancient king.

  Emilia never becomes the priestess in any official sense. Rather, she realises belatedly that she has been something approaching a priestess in the eyes of the townspeople for a long time, even before she chanced upon the temple. She has possessed since her arrival an aura of the preternatural, the woman fished from the sea, dead then not dead, about whom nothing is known and who knows nothing about herself, the woman who walks alone in the hills and dwells in the villa of the wise man, casting her gaze over them all.

  She thinks they are coming to see the results of the restoration or to catch a glimpse of the crazy woman who has taken on this ridiculous job. She does not realise that the conversations these people strike up are anything beyond the ordinary, and it is this perhaps which gives them some of their power. They talk about children who have died of fevers and young men lost at sea. They talk about pregnancies and legacies, about violent husbands and unhappy wives, about wilful children, about wounds to the body and to the heart. She listens. And being listened to by someone held in such high esteem, by someone not quite of this world, makes them feel a little stronger, a little more in harmony with a discordant world, a little more able to solve their own problems without divine intercession. Most go away thinking they have been given wise advice which in truth they have told themselves. Perhaps this is what all prayer is, when the ceremony and the theology are peeled away, a serious stillness in which one talks quietly to one’s own best self.

  Marriages are consecrated. Funerals are performed. Small sacrifices are made at the little altar at the rear of the portico. Votive tablets are hung on the wall, plaster tiles bearing crudely drawn names and pictures of fishing boats and babies and naked couples and ploughs and farm animals and coins.

  Belatedly she finds herself thinking about the goddess whose intermediary she has accidentally become. Chloë gave the gods little consideration. They were a large and restive family ruling a neighbouring kingdom who demanded regular tribute and needed careful diplomatic handling. Even in her floating coffin she called out to none of them for intercession. But now? As Emilia she pictures the Huntress in the woods behind the temple, bow in hand, dogs at her side. Increasingly, at dusk, she will see flashes of something between the trees, and while she knows that it is probably the scut of a running deer, she feels…unalone, watched over.

  She returns to the story of Actaeon which had appalled her as a child—how the grandson of Cadmus is hunting in the valley of Gargaphie when he stumbles upon Artemis bathing in a clear, shaded pool in a sacred grove. Her nymphs cry out but are unable to shield the goddess on account of her height. Having no weapon to hand, she throws water at him and cries out, “Go and tell the story, if you can, of how you saw me naked.” Horns ---antlers--- spring from his forehead, his neck lengthens, his ears grow pointed, his hands become hooves, his skin a spotted hide. His hunting dogs can no longer see their master, only a frightened stag. They give chase and drag him to the ground. Forming a ring around the fallen deer so that each dog has a place at the table they fix their snouts deep into the flesh.

Terrified and suffering unbearable pain, Actaeon fills the valley with screams which are neither human nor animal. Then he screams no more.

  The story is still cruel and unfair, but she knows now that life can be cruel and unfair. There is perhaps some small justice in an innocent man, for once, being the victim of a woman’s capricious anger. But the myth hints at something else, the dangers of looking into the heart of the mystery. Questions always lead to more questions which lead to more questions. Do not seek out the sacred grove. Better to keep running with the hunt. She thinks too about those dogs. Were they, like Actaeon, human once? Did Ovid simply not have the time or the ink to tell their stories? She imagines them, sated and bloody-chopped, looking around for their master, finding themselves abandoned, their warm kennels far away and night coming down.

  She never utters the name Pericles, even in the privacy of her own mind. It edges into her field of vision sometimes. She pushes it gently away. She doesn’t know the name of Chloë’s child. It is perhaps better that way.

  Winter turns to spring. The hills smell of thyme and sage again. There is chamomile and dittany. There are heliotropes and gladioli. She sees kingfishers and, occasionally, a hoopoe. Two boats go down in a freak storm. Nine men are lost. A wife is left blind in one eye after she is punched in the head by her drunken husband. A house is destroyed by lightning. Nine couples are married. Thirteen people die, five of them babies. The body of a teenage boy is found high in the woods a month after his disappearance. A monstrous fish is caught, its weight beyond anyone’s guessing. It has to be towed back to harbour where a crowd of men haul it up the beach on log rollers. It has an ill-tempered expression, a mouth a child can climb inside and grey skin so smooth and shiny you can see your own blurred portrait in it. Opinions are divided as to whether it is a blessing or an ill omen, though everyone agrees that the meat is delicious. Only a small amount of it can be eaten, however, before the carcase starts to rot and emit a stench so strong it can be smelled leagues downwind. By this point the fish is more substance than object and must be put back into the sea over several weeks, stinking greasy shovel by stinking greasy shovel.

  Spring turns to summer. Kerimon is more frail, more easily fatigued. He takes as much interest in the garden as he ever did but he no longer clips and weeds and plants himself. The illiterate and innumerate come to the villa just as frequently, but after untangling a poorly drafted will or a long bill of lading he will sometimes sleep for an hour on the terrace. The difference in age would make them father and daughter but Emilia pictures them, instead, as two blackbirds sitting on a wall, two horses at a fence, the way animals sit so peaceably in one another’s company with neither noise nor fuss nor explanation. She asks him if they should seek the advice of a doctor from another, larger town. He believes that doctors are charlatans and that it is the quality of years which counts, not their number.

  Autumn and winter, mild as they are, take their toll. He finds it increasingly hard to breathe and is often racked with a cough that can be soothed only a little by Drusilla’s concoctions of honey, gentian and liquorice. He sometimes dozes off while Emilia is reading to him. He can no longer lie down at night but must sleep propped on a bank of pillows.

  Emilia deals with much of the paperwork that continues to arrive at the door. It blends seamlessly with her role at the temple. So much sadness flows from broken promises and monies unpaid, so many tragedies leave bureaucratic chaos in their wake.

  Both Kerimon and Emilia know, without speaking of it, that he will die in the spring. He is able to comfort her less and less when the memories ambush her during the day, but caring for him lightens her own burden. He can no longer read. His sight is milky and he cannot see much of the garden. His life has become a small thing.

  In his final month he talks about the coup in Samaria, how he watched from an attic window as one of the other senators was skinned by a mob, how he himself escaped by burying himself in a pile of dung on the back of a cart pulled by a merchant friend and how he still bears the scar left by an investigatory pitchfork thrust into the dung at the gates. She tells him in turn about Chloë and Pericles and the child whose name and gender she never knew. She tells him about the wrestling and the marriage and the birth at sea and how she woke to find herself adrift in a sealed crate.

  In his last two weeks he becomes increasingly confused. He thinks he is in Talmena. He thinks he is sailing on the Sea of Azov. He sees elephants. Woken by noises in the small hours they find him sleepwalking, moving with an ease and energy he has not possessed for years. They steer him gently back to his chamber. Come morning he is bed-bound once more. He asks repeatedly about an escaped songbird called Autonoë and cries, asking his uncle to stop beating him. He has moments of clarity. In some he is frightened. In others he seems utterly at peace with the world. One afternoon he says, “I seem to be making rather a performance of my departure. You must be exhausted.”

  He dies at night in the garden. They find him in the morning curled around an acacia. Drusilla assumes he became disoriented, went outside, could not find his way back in and died of the cold, but Emilia finds a key in the earthenware bowl from which she eats her wine-dipped bread every morning. He must have known that it was his final day. She likes the idea that death did not come to take him away but that he decided to go and meet it.

  She finds the locked box which the key opens. It contains papers which transfer ownership of the property and fortune to her. As if such things matter here in Ultima Thule, Kerimon has written in the accompanying letter. You have been my one true friend. Live well.

  His body is burnt in front of the temple. The crowd stretches into the shadows beneath the trees in every direction so that the forest seems to have grown from a field of people. One by one men and women climb the steps of the portico to share stories of his generosity. She sees none of the young men who hung about the villa in the early months of her stay. She waits long into the evening for the crowd to disperse. Dark descends and the last embers are still glowing inside the ashy pyre when a woman comes up to her and says that her mother died a year ago but that she still wakes in the night and sees the old woman standing at the end of the bed. Emilia listens. Life has started up again already.

  She gives a generous parting gift to the house slaves who wish to leave. Drusilla and Hamda, one of the younger women, choose to remain.

  Spring turns to summer. The heat is vicious. A forest fire comes close enough to the temple to leave the southernmost side of every column smoke-blackened. Many plants die in the garden. Someone breaks into the villa at night and steals a little marble bust of Eurynome and an oil lamp in the shape of a lion. The bust reappears in the garden ten days later, slightly chipped. On the same day she hears news of a young man falling to his death from a roof. It is pointless asking whether the events are connected.

  Summer turns to autumn. She reads several treatises on plants from the library. She starts to restore the garden. She has never done physical labour like this before. She is surprised to find that she likes the dirt under her fingernails that she can never wholly remove. She walks to the temple every day. She is rarely alone. She prays to the Goddess. She draws up contracts and tries hard to soften the impact of letters containing bad news.

  Autumn turns to winter. The days grow shorter. They close the shutters at sunset and put logs on the fire.

  This is her life. It is simple. It is complete.

THE PRAISE OF THE DISCIPULUS, RETRANSLATED

Unbowed, unbent, unbroken.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité.
These are two of my favourite tripartite mottoes, and the third is:

"Probo artem, peritiam laudo, miror diligentiam."

"I commend your skill, I praise your knowledge, I admire your attentiveness." (tr. Kortekaas)

An artfully formed tripartite, with chiastic arrangement: increasing numbre of syllables in the objects. In terms of content, the formulation makes a Greek Hellenistic impression. For artem (ars), that would be techné; for peritiam (probably a translation of empeiria "experience"), a cardinal virtue for scholars in Hellenistic texts. Often techné and empeiria are found combined or contrasted, cf. he empeiria technen epoieses, ie "practice makes perfect." Finally, as regards diligentiam, s.v. àkribes 'accurate, precise', in the strict sense of the word.

DISCIPULUS - CARLOS GARCÍA GUAL

CARLOS GARCÍA GUAL

"RESUMEN Y ANÁLISIS

[···]
[···] llega, tres días después, a la costa de Éfeso, cerca de la residencia de un famoso médico, que lo encuentra mientras paseaba con sus discípulos con la orilla del mar. Uno de los discípulos logra volver a la vida a [···]" 

Nada más en este resumen. García Gual considera prescindible la caracterización del personaje al que llama "Uno de los discípulos" como es evidente.

DISCIPULUS (GESTA) - VERSIÓN ESPAÑOLA

Traducción de la Gesta de J. M. Díaz Regañón

[···] llegó un discípulo del médico, joven en edad y en lo que se refiere al talento, viejo. Este, cuando [···], se le quedó mirando [···]. Llega el joven [···] El joven queda atónito; [···]
Cuando el joven vio esto, dijo al maestro: "[···] y, para que puedas creer más fácilmente, te satisfaré con un experimento".
[···]
Y aquel: "Apruebo tu pericia, alabo tu arte y admiro tu prudencia. Atiende a la diligencia de la disciplina; no quieras ser ingrato a tu arte, recibe el premio, [···]"

DISCIPULUS REDIVIVUS - OCT. MMXVII

Remark this line:

...le corps est d’abord déposé dans un coffre de plomb et de ciment qui arrive miraculeusement à Éphèse où la dame, revenue à la vie grâce à l’intervention d’un puer senex, devient prêtresse au temple de Diane. La version de Bruxelles précise alors qu’il s’agit de la « deesse de la mer ».

Remark this line: "grâce à l’intervention d’un puer senex,". The discipulus is merely (as by the other, Anglophone, critic who refers to him as "(Cerimon's) precociously smart pupil;") recognised only by the trope he embodies, that formidable combination of youth and expertise -an ideal which also has encouraged Yours Truly to begin this Master's Degree in Creative Translation at the University of Valencia at the end of this month-.

DISCIPULUS REDIVIVUS - MMXVII

a student of youthful appeareance, but mature judgement,
When the young man saw this, he ran to his teacher and said: [···]
The teacher, upon entering the room, saw [···] and said to the student: "I commend your medical knowledge, I praise your skill, and I admire your care. But I don't want you to be deprived of the rewards of your medical expertise: take as your payment the money."  And he gave him ten thousand gold sesterces.
 EN3 (Gerald N. Sandy)

Here's another student of youthful appearance, but mature judgement, saying to herself: "I commend your knowledge, I praise your skill, and I admire your care. But I don't want you to be deprived of the rewards of your expertise: take as your payment the summer and the degree."
Yes, that student of youthful appearance, but mature judgement, is yours truly cramming for the decisive exam that will make or break her career.
Ganbatte kudasai!!

NEW SOURCES - DISCIPULUS

[···] a la costa de Efeso, cerca de la residencia de un famoso médico, que lo encuentra mientras paseaba con sus discípulos por la orilla del mar. Uno de los discípulos logra volver a la vida a la supuesta muerta, que les cuenta su historia.

CARLOS GARCÍA GUAL.

[···] is washed ashore near Ephesus, and owing to the perceptiveness (praise of learning---a pattern) of a physician's assistant (cf. Ephesian physician in Xenophon of Ephesus 3.4.) she is revived [···]

GARETH SCHMELING.

LETHE - ESTÉS ON THE SLEEPING MESSENGER

LETHE - ESTÉS ON THE SLEEPING MESSENGER

"In time, the king had to wage war in a far-off kingdom, and he asked his mother to care for his young queen, for he loved her with all his heart. “If she gives birth to a child, send me a message right away.” The young queen gave birth to a happy babe and the king's mother sent a messenger to the king telling him the good news. But on the way to the king the messenger tired, and coming to a river, felt sleepier and sleepier and finally fell entirely asleep by the river’s edge.
The lad who ran with the message again came to the river, and feeling heavy as though he had eaten a feast, soon fell asleep by the side of the water."

"But the messenger, weary with the long distance,
rested by a brook
and was in fact so tired
that he fell asleep."

The messenger seems normal enough, but as he nears a stream of water, he becomes more and more sleepy, falls asleep, [···] This is a clue that tells us there will again be a challenge to the psyche during its next labor in the underworld.
In the story, the messenger, stream, and the sleep that causes forgetfulness reveal that the old religion is right underneath the story line, just the next layer down.

In Greek mythos, in the underworld there is a river called Lethe, and to drink of its waters causes one to forget all things said and done. Psychologically this means to fall asleep to one’s actual life. The runner who is supposed to enable communication between these two main components of the new psyche cannot yet hold its own against the destructive/seductive force in the psyche. The communicating function of the psyche becomes sleepy, lies down, falls asleep, and forgets. In the story, the messenger, stream, and the sleep that causes forgetfulness reveal that the old religion is right underneath the storyline, just the next layer down.

This has been the archetypal pattern of descent since the beginning of time, and we too follow this timeless system. Likewise, we have a history of terrible chores behind us. We have seen Death’s steamy breath. We have braved the clutching forests, the marching trees, the roots that trip, the fog that blinds. We are psychic heroines with a valise full of medals. And who can blame us now? We want to rest. We deserve to rest for we have been through a lot. And so we lie down. Next to a lovely stream. The sacred process is not forgotten, just ... just ... well, we would like to take a break, just for a while you know, just going to close our eyes for a minute...
And because we are near Lethe, we snore on.

----------------------------------------------------------------

So Estés connects this episode to the myth of Lethe, fittingly enough. Which brings me to remember how it was put into pentameter in Paradise Lost:

Far off from these, a slow and silent stream,
Lethe, the river of oblivion, rolls
Her watery labyrinth, whereof who drinks
Forthwith his former state and being forgets—	585
Forgets both joy and grief, pleasure and pain.

There I happen to have noticed something the motif has with the downfall of the characters deceived by Iago in Othello: it's all about lowering one's guard. And about entitlement, the feeling that one deserves something, that what one wishes for is one's by right. These conditions are oh, so human. The archetypal pattern of descent. To fall asleep to one’s actual life. To lower one's guard; to think that what one desires is one's by right, that it is not only desired but also deserved.

You may never understand

how the stranger is inspired,

but he isn't always evil

and he isn't always wrong...

Though you drown in good intentions,

you will never quench the fire:

You'll give in to your desire

when the stranger comes along.

Iago is the Stranger. The catalyst, the disruptor. Satan, Loki, Eris, the Lord of Misrule. Every paradise has at least one discontented enfant terrible within. Not evil, but unable to care for what is right or wrong, knowing the distinction between left and right yet not paying heed to it.
The Stranger also lives within us. It's the little voice that whispers into our left ear or throbs within our hearts whenever we are inclined to lower our guard. Like the messenger in Handless Maiden tales; like Roderigo, Cassio, and even Othello; like many a character in A Song of Ice and Fire; we do feel the same as when the messenger stops for a rest. 
Contrast all of the Constanze Saga examples with a Snoilsky poem, "Stenbock's Messenger," which is one of the author's best known. In it, Lieutenant Henrik Hammarberg rides all the way from the war front outside Helsingborg to the royal court at Drottningholm Palace, a short distance west of Stockholm. Right across the southern half of Sweden. And, though his spirits waver, though his strength fails, though weary with the long distance, though his steeds die one by one of exhaustion, he does not stop at all. Not for a drink, not for a rest. He literally spends nearly 555 km on the move, on horseback, without resting or feeding at all, feeling so compelled to his duty that he never lowers his guard. His duty comes first and foremost. And, of course, when he finally arrives at the royals' presence, he is carried in with a guard on each arm, one on the left and the other on the right, supporting him as human crutches as he difficultly staggers, with lead-heavy feet, into the throne room, where, before he can speak... he collapses, exhausted.
And he should have died if the Queen Grandmother had not offered him her throne to sit upon and a drink of Riesling to restore his spirits. Only then does he rest. Even though, like in the Fourth Story of The Snow Queen, the haughty and class-conscious courtiers at first look down upon the weary and worn subaltern officer, and frown to themselves as Hedwig Eleanor rises from her throne to let the lieutenant, a younger man of the landed gentry and the subaltern officer class... way below royalty on the social ladder... finally have a rest and a drink of the finest Rhenish in Sweden from one of the royal household's best silver tankards. 

Here is my translation of the poem:

STENBOCK'S MESSENGER

By Count Carl Snoilsky

From the Swedish by Sandra Dermark.

August MMXVII - Stora Höga

(Partial translation)

Within the royal castle

that rises on the isle,

by the lakeside, round towers

on which springtime won't smile,

the aged royal matriarch,

Queen Hedwig Eleanor,

three Charleses' firm supporter,

is anxious evermore.

How many nights of waking

has she spent in her life?

Her spouse fighting in Warsaw,

only son in Lund's strife!

Her grandson at Poltava...

like thunder, 't struck her ear...

Is this the fall of Sweden?

Thus does the news appear.

She sits there in the throne room,

the queen so good and old;

her granddaughter Ulrica

on her left, pale and cold...

Through her lips, no words stealing;

same King Fritz, on the right...

only the clock's tick-tocking

rouses this courtly sight.

But what's up on the staircase?

Door opens after door...

Through powdered wigs, a whisper

spreads lightning-fast for sure!

"A messenger from Stenbock!"

Victory or defeat?

At the page's announcement,

a few steps all retreat.

Two royal guards support, though,

this half-fainted young man;

on leaden feet he staggers --

they no more bear him can.

Each footstep Swedish soil leaves

on the floor -- he's so weak!

He stands before the royals --

he swoons, he cannot speak.

As pale as snow or marble,

yet remaining serene,

from her crowned throne arises

the old Dowager Queen.

"Please take a seat, Lieutenant!"

The courtiers stare in fright:

unusually, he sits there

and she's standing upright!

She waves, and a cupbearer

arrives, flagon in hand:

'tis a fine silver tankard

with scenes of war's command,

full of the finest Rhenish

within the royal store:

to the youth she has reached it,

her grip still strong and sure.

"As a dutiful soldier,

you've fulfilled your command:

thankful are not we only,

but all of Sweden's land.

Remember this good kindness:

thus, drink your thirst away,

and then, let us all listen

to what you have to say!"

No sooner have his parched lips

kissed the golden grape's blood

that through his limbs and soft face

streams anew life's warm flood.

He stands up at attention:

let all of Sweden hear

the young warrior speaking,

for sorrow or good cheer:

"Twenty-eighth of February:

At Helsingborg, the Dane

vanquished in open battle

was, with much toil and pain.

We've got thousands of captives,

and foemens' banners, too:

our bold general's written

the whole account here, true."

The mother of the Charleses

dissolves herself in tears:

"Now I shall die in peace, thus

bereft of any fears!

Amidst cheers of elation,

Ulrica's face shines bright:

she resembles her brother...

Everything's full of light!

Thanks to his strength of willpower, Hammarberg receives a rest and a drink fit for royalty, and he is hailed as a national hero. It comes as no surprise that Swedish children and adolescents have studied this poem for decades. While the messenger in Handless Maiden tales is portrayed as weak-willed, and only earns his redemption by telling the crowned husband the truth about his dereliction of duty (just like Cassio), Hammarberg's cross-country ride is definitely portrayed as a feat of derring-do, something that takes its toll upon his system and nearly kills him, yet, for Crown and Country, consecrated to his duty, he gradually uses up every single reserve of strength he cannot replenish until his mission is accomplished. And this reward feels far more gratifying than that of the messenger in Handless Maiden tales... yet Cassio, for me, gets a reward as worthy as Henrik's. While the messenger in Constanze tales is nothing more than an episodic character, Shakespeare's lieutenant is a far more complex character. We see more of a backbone in him, something in between the folktale messenger and Hammarberg. At first, Cassio declines Iago's invitation to have a strong drink before being on duty, and it takes a little coaxing to make him waver, and, finally, give in. And, once the first sip goes down, the lieutenant has been shoved down the slippery slope... until he cannot tell his left from his right. Then, we feel terribly sorry. Like the messenger in the Handless Maiden cycle, a third party falling asleep to his actual life, lowering his guard, causes an idyllic married couple to fall apart. However, unlike the maiden and her husband, Othello and Desdemona do not reunite in life. And, even more ironically, he kills the one he has loved the most with the self-same warrior's strength he should have used to protect her. Unlike the messenger in folktale, Cassio is forgiven with a far heavier weight on his conscience. The deaths of his childhood friend and commanding officer, through uxoricide and suicide respectively. That, I think, weighs more than the fact that Othello, before stabbing himself to die upon a kiss, has forgiven the young lieutenant. Or than the loss of his left leg, which has put an end to his military career. The surviving lead character is already broken within, dead in life, at the end of the day. Surely guiltridden, since it was his own weakness, taken advantage of by others, what wrought the whole tragedy.

"The messenger travels far, is weary, and resting by a brook, falls asleep. [···] Again the messenger falls asleep by the water's edge [···] 
The messenger carries his message by way of letter and "sleepy water". If these second waters are the waters of forgetting (Lethe)... Plato's Phaedrus also links the image of the written word and the waters of forgetfulness, for it is said there that letters undermine memory, producing forgetfulness (274e, 275b). The written message borne by the messenger works to reinforce a "forgetting." [···] the demonic ancestral voice of the dark depths that twists and garbles communication to and fro in the messenger who falls asleep along the banks of the brook."

"But, as can happen, the messenger fell asleep on his way...
Yet once again the messenger, overly complacent, fell asleep,..."

Gertrud Müller takes a similar stance in favour of this character: We cannot berate the messenger -- he was hot and tired. He wasn't out to cause trouble. He didn't know what was going on. This messenger, who becomes unconscious at all the crucial moments...

And Henrik Hammarberg, the strong-willed messenger of General Stenbock in the Snoilsky poem? Like Stannis Baratheon, "he'll break ere he bends." This iron-hard resolve not to yield proves both Stannis's and Hammarberg's tragic flaw. Denying himself every chance of rest and refreshment nearly put an end to his short life (we assume that this character, Cassio, and the messenger in the folktales are all three in their twenties). While the messenger in Handless Maiden tales is overly complacent, and Othello's aide-de-camp shows at first some willpower that finally wavers, the titular character in "Stenbock's Messenger" is not complacent or self-indulgent at all. Which nearly kills him.
Stories of the Constanze Saga are definitely universal: the waylaid messenger, whether intoxicated, exhausted, or both, occurs all over the Western world, and even in Japan and Sub-Saharan cultures. But the earliest examples can be traced back to France, Austria, Hungary, the Spanish and Italian realms. Catholic narrators usually highlight the importance of this messenger character: both when his exhaustion and thirst cause him to yield to the spirits of drink and/or to his need to sleep, and when his confession of his dereliction from duty --swearing that he is guilty of no treason, attesting that he never tampered with the letters, and confessing that he was made drunk-- brings him a pardon from the husband (king/count) who otherwise might have put him to death. These aspects reflect a particularly Catholic view of descent, in which: 1) sin is inherent to the human species [original sin], ever since Eve tasted the forbidden fruit, and all humans are born with weakness and predisposition to wrongdoing in the blood; 2) a responsible sinner's confession (the age-old ritual of telling the curate in the confessional, tête-à-tête, one's sins and being forgiven from them) is the key to redemption.
The Swedish national character, post-Reformation, preaches a rather different view: 1) neither deeds nor words can redeem a sinner, but faith alone. Believe in redemption and you shall be redeemed; 2) children are innocent, untouched by original sin, since they cannot tell right from wrong ("their left hand from their right," to quote the LORD in Jonah 4), and become tainted as they come of age and enter adult human society. These two tenets of Protestant redemption can be seen in the character of Hammarberg, predisposed to rather break than bend; he is weak-willed at heart, but repressing his desires all along, even if they are vital to life itself. The portrayal of the Count of Tilly (an aged Catholic!) in Swedish depictions of the 30YW falls along the same lines: having never got drunk or made love, consecrated solely to his duty... yet, after his first defeat, despair drives him to risk it all and finally die an excruciating death. The messenger in the Snoilsky poem does indeed feel light-headed, wavering, faltering, "weary with the long distance," "heavy as though he had eaten a feast," but he shakes all of these urges off. The scene when he reels into the throne room, his limbs as worn as his clothes, a guard on each arm for a crutch, then falls, as if bereft of life, on the costly carpet... proves the result of his lifestyle. It's only then he can earn his much-needed rest and a strong drink to come to his senses. Only when he has fulfilled the command he was given without any wavering, even if there is a price to pay.
The messenger in Nicolas Trivet's Chronicles swallows "an evil drink which takes such a hold of his brain and binds his senses so strongly that he falls down bereft of sensation, as if he were a dead man." Hammarberg collapses for exactly the opposite reason; "sense and speech leave him" because he has not rested or refreshed himself at all until he has reached his destination. The Catholic view of descent is far more pessimistic than the Protestant one, but the latter has also got its sinister side. The alcohol- or exhaustion-induced sleep in Type 706 folktales and the exhaustion/burnout in the Snoilsky poem are two sides of the same coin. One of them has his reason stolen away by self-indulgence; the other, by attrition. In both cases, unconsciousness is a metaphor for the loss of identity.
And Cassio is something in between the Constanze messenger and Stenbock's. A Catholic character created by a Protestant author, the hopeful young lieutenant stands on the same threshold of coming of age, yet his character arc curiously exhibits both Catholic and Protestant views of descent. Like most of his counterparts in Type 706, he is plied with drink, and the state of intoxication leaves him unaware of the truth once he has come to (like the Galysian messenger "knew no guile/treason"); we cannot blame him either, he never meant to cause trouble and didn't know what was going on, yet he becomes unconscious at all the crucial moments. His plight serves as an invitation to temperance, yet it is also the first step in the whole falling action of the story. Like the messenger in the folktales, he is thought to be unreliable until the truth comes to light, and then he is forgiven. And still there are echoes of the Protestant "child-at-heart" within his character, until losing his loved ones and his left leg opens his eyes to the world's malice. To begin with, at first our lieutenant declines Iago's temptations, stressing the importance of his duty and his young head's weakness for strong drink. And he keeps on standing his ground for a while (until Iago finally hits that soft spot that is peer pressure/desire to fit in). Furthermore, once his eyes are glazed and his speech is slurred, he is still slightly unaware that his reason begins to drift away. "There are souls that shall be saved and souls that shall not be saved, but, in this company, I come first: the lieutenant is to be saved before the ensign." Here, he displays knowledge of his status, that he outranks the others, which makes him slightly entitled. This stress on status and privilege, along with intoxication, indicates that he's crossing the threshold into adulthood. However, after another drink, when reassuring the others that he is not intoxicated, Cassio confuses left and right (claiming that his left hand is the right one and vice versa). Here we've got a powerful metaphor for spiritual darkness, helpless ignorance, and existential confusion. Like his claims that he can walk in a straight line and speak perfectly, it sounds ironic, contradictory. And this metaphor for being unable to tell right from wrong also reveals a side of his character that had been repressed: like those thousands of pardoned children in Jonah 4, "who cannot tell their left hand from their right." In that sense (and perchance the Bard was one of King James's biblical translators), it serves as some kind of foreshadowing. Of the fact that his lord will at last forgive him, though at a price to be reckoned with. Thus saith the LORD to Jonah as the prophet broods over the death of the wild vine that had shaded him from the sun: "You have been worried about that vine that you have not raised, that sprung up and withered overnight; and should I not be concerned about thousands of people who cannot tell their left hand from their right?" (people who cannot tell their right hand from their left -- Their ignorance is so great they “cannot tell their right hand from their left.”) The lives of innocent and helpless children who cannot tell the difference between right and wrong, including those standing on the threshold of adulthood, are more precious than that of a wild creeper. Once redeemed, the Shakespearean lieutenant believes and hopes with all his heart that he will be forgiven, and he finally earns not only his general's pardon, but also his succession at the outpost rulership. At the end of the day, suddenly promoted to governor, Cassio has to lean on crutches, his left leg broken, the distinction between left and right now having become painfully clear to him, as clear as the loss of those he loved and that of his military career. A Catholic character created by a Protestant author, the hopeful young lieutenant stands on the same threshold of coming of age, yet his character arc curiously exhibits both Catholic and Protestant views of descent. Perchance this is why his character arc is far more relatable than those of the messenger in Handless Maiden tales or Henrik Hammarberg. Because it is a more human exploration of descent and loss of identity, portraying and highlighting every stage of the process: initial resistance, wavering, downfall, punishment, redress, forgiveness/redemption, and the final consequences, positive and negative, of the sum of all the stages. The discipulus (student/pupil) of Cerimon in the Apollonius saga is a "puer-senex" or child-elder ("a stripling in appearance, yet an aged man in wisdom / of youthful appearance, but mature judgement"), a typically classical and Catholic portrayal of a person in this liminal stage of life, as physically young yet learned and cultured; the young characters created by Protestant authors, and their depictions of their child and adolescent royals (Gustavus Adolphus, Christina...), are the children at heart of Lutheran lore, whose innocence and kindness are unflinching guiding stars; while many of Shakespeare's Italian and French youths, like Cassio, Portia, Beatrice, Audrey and Touchstone, Miranda and Ferdinand... blur the line between these two conceptions, incorporating both.