Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell Read Free Book Online Page A

meantime he shall take lessons with the little Rubria’s tutor.”
     
    Tears rushed to Aeneas’ eyes. Before Diodorus could move, the bookkeeper had sprung to his feet and had prostrated himself before Diodorus’ dusty sandals. He was beyond speech; he could only mumble distractedly in his gratitude and incredulity.
     
    “Come, come, man,” said Diodorus, who could never endure being thanked. “I have no son of my own, and this is the boy I ought to have had. He shall be a physician. Rise, Aeneas. You are not a slave. And have you forgotten that you took your lessons with me, also?”
     
    He knew exactly what Aeneas’ pretensions were, and how he considered his master a barbarian and he an exiled philosopher from a land he had never seen, and he knew how small, if how honest, a mind Aeneas possessed. Would Aeneas never forget that he was no longer a slave? Diodorus watched, scowling at the white-robed man at his feet. He moved them, as if fearful that Aeneas would kiss them in his extremity of wonder and gratitude, and this, from the husband of Iris, would have been unbearable to him.
     
    Aeneas seated himself in his chair again and dried his tears. Diodorus considerately looked aside and his eye fell on a roll of parchment on the table beside him. He saw that it contained Aristotle’s treatise on Democracy and Aristocracy. Diodorus was immediately interested. He said, “There was delivered to me today some of the books of a new philosopher, Philo. There is much excitement about him, and I wished to compare him with Aristotle.”
     
    For a moment hope awakened in the lonely tribune. He knew, from past experience in talking briefly with Aeneas, that though the freed-man could quote long sections of Plato and Aristotle exactly, and in Greek, he was incapable of any subtle understanding. Yet, still, hope came to Diodorus.
     
    “Philo?” murmured Aeneas, faintly. A spasm of disdain, totally involuntary, passed over his long pale mouth. Then, fearful that he had again offended Diodorus, he hurried on: “Surely he must be a great philosopher.”
     
    Diodorus shrugged. “There are too many in Rome who acclaim him. If a man is judged by the enemies he has made, then he is also judged by the men who honor him. Philo, at his youthful age, has already received too much honor to be of much worth.” He paused. In many ways Caesar Augustus resembled the ‘old’ forgotten Romans, for it was said of him that he was a moral man in comparison with those who thronged his court. He had tried to respect the Senate; if he could not respect the senators, it was not to his blame. “I have heard,” said Diodorus, “that Caesar himself has conversed much with Philo. Ah, well, I shall soon know whether Philo is worthy of such consideration.”
     
    He folded his short but massive arms on his chest and contemplated Aeneas. “Aristotle,” he said, reflectively. “I like his Definitions. In many ways his philosophy is superior to Plato’s, for Plato, though believing himself a realist, yet veiled himself in mysticisms. Even though he taught that universals have objective existence he swathed himself in poetry, for all his Republic, which, in my opinion, is an aery piece of work. What did Aristotle say of him? ‘I love Plato, but I love truth more’.”
     
    Aeneas, to whom Plato was the very essence of revealed truth, could only blink. He strove frantically to follow Diodorus, who he did not believe really understood the Grecian philosophers at all. He could find no words, but contented himself in nodding solemnly.
     
    Diodorus sighed. He saw that Aeneas was not following him. But at least the poor creature was distantly acquainted with the words of the philosophers. The tribune stretched again.
     
    “Plato, though he inherited a mania for defining terms from his master, Socrates, had really no awareness of the real connotations of terms,” said the tribune, warming to the subject. “He did not know it, but all he wrote