One desires to die, but not to suffocate; sickness disgusts us with death, and we wish to get well, which is a way of wishing to live. But weakness and suffering, with manifold bodily woes, soon discourage the invalid from trying to regain ground: he tires of those respites which are but snares, of that faltering strength, those ardors cut short, and that perpetual lying in wait for the next attack. I kept sly watch upon myself: that dull chest pain, was it only a passing discomfort, the result of a meal absorbed too fast, or was I to expect from the enemy an assault which this time would not be repulsed? I no longer entered the Senate without saying to myself that the door had perhaps closed behind me as finally as if I had been awaited, like Caesar, by fifty conspirators armed with knives. During the suppers at Tibur I feared to distress my guests by the discourtesy of a sudden and final departure; I was afraid to die in my bath, or in the embrace of young arms. Functions which formerly were easy to perform or even agreeable, become humiliating now that they have become more laborious; one wearies of the silver vase handed each morning to be examined by the physician. The principal ailment brings with it a whole train of secondary afflictions: my hearing is less acute than before; even yesterday I was forced to ask Phlegon to repeat a whole sentence; no crime would have cost me more shame.
The months which followed the adoption of Antoninus were bad indeed: the stay in Baiae and the return to Rome, with the negotiations accompanying it, overtaxed what strength I had left. The obsession with death again took hold of me, but this time the reasons were plain to see, and could be told; my worst enemy would have had no cause to smile over my despair. There was nothing now to restrain me: people would have understood that the emperor, withdrawn to his country house after having arranged all matters of State, had taken the necessary measures to facilitate his ending. But the solicitude of my friends amounts to constant surveillance: every invalid is a prisoner. I no longer have the force which it would take to drive the dagger in at the exact place, marked at one time with red ink under my left breast; I should only have added to the present ills a repulsive mixture of bandages and bloody sponges, and surgeons discussing at the foot of my bed. To prepare a suicide I needed to take the same precautions as would an assassin to plan his crime.
I thought first of my huntsman, Mastor, the handsome, half-savage Sarmatian who had followed me for years like a devoted wolf-dog. He was sometimes entrusted to keep watch by night at my door. I took advantage of a moment’s solitude to call him in and explain what I wanted of him: at first he did not understand. Then my meaning dawned; the barbarian face under the fair shaggy hair contracted with terror. He believes me immortal: morning and evening he sees physicians enter my room and hears me groan at each punction without his faith being shaken thereby; for him it was as if the master of the gods, thinking to tempt him, had descended from Olympus to entreat of him a death-blow. He tore away the sword which I had seized from him, and fled howling. That night he was found in the depths of the park, uttering strange gibberish in his native jargon. They calmed this terrified creature as well as they could; no one spoke to me again of the incident. But the next morning I noticed that Celer had exchanged the metal style on the writing table within reach of my bed for a reed pen.
I sought a better ally. I had complete confidence in Iollas, a young physician from Alexandria whom Hermogenes had chosen last summer as his substitute during his absence. We often talked together, for I liked to build up hypotheses with him on the nature and origin of things, and took pleasure in his intelligence, both daring and dreamy, and in the dark fire of those deep-set eyes. I knew that in Alexandria he had found in the palace archives the formulae for extraordinarily subtle poisons compounded long ago by Cleopatra’s chemists. An excuse came for me to get rid of Hermogenes for several hours: he had to examine candidates for the chair of medicine which I had just founded at the Odeon; there was thus the chance for a secret talk with Iollas. He understood me at once; he pitied me; he could but admit that I was right. But his Hippocratic oath forbade him to dispense a nocent drug to a patient, under any pretext whatsoever; he refused, standing fast in his professional honor. I insisted; I made absolute demand; I employed every means to try to draw his pity, or to corrupt him; he will be the last man whom I shall have implored. Finally won over, he promised me to go and seek the dose of poison. I awaited him in vain until evening. Late in the night I learned with horror that he had just been found dead in his laboratory, with a glass phial in his hands. That heart clean of all compromise had found this means of abiding by his oath while denying me nothing.
The next day Antoninus was announced; this true friend could barely hold back his tears. The idea that a man whom he had come to love and to venerate as a father suffered enough to seek out death was to him insupportable; it seemed to him that he must have failed in his obligations as a good son. He promised me to add his efforts to those of my entourage in order to nurse me and relieve my pain, to make my life smooth and easy to the last, even to cure me perhaps. He depended upon me to continue the longest time possible in guiding and instructing him; he felt himself responsible towards the whole empire for the remainder of my days.
I know what these pathetic protestations and nadve promises are worth; nevertheless I derive some relief and comfort from them. Antoninus’ simple words have convinced me; I am regaining possession of myself before I die. The death of Iollas, faithful to his duty as physician, exhorts me to conform, to the end, to the proprieties of my profession as emperor. Patientia: yesterday I saw Domitius Rogatus, now become procurator of the mint and entrusted with a new issue of coins; I have chosen for it this legend, which will be my last watchword. My death had seemed to me the most personal of my decisions, my supreme redoubt as a free man; I was mistaken. The faith of millions of Mastors must not be shaken, nor other Iollases put to so sore a trial. I have realized that suicide would appear to signify indifference, or ingratitude perhaps, to the little group of devoted friends who surround me; I do not wish to bequeath to them the hideous picture of a man racked by pain who cannot endure one torture more.
Other considerations came slowly to mind during the night which followed Iollas’ death; life has given me much, or at least I have known how to obtain a great deal from it; in this moment as in the time of my felicity, but for wholly opposite reasons, it seems to me that existence has nothing more to offer: I am not sure, however, that I have not something more to learn from it. I shall listen for its secret instructions to the end. All my life long I have trusted in the wisdom of my body; I have tried to distinguish between and enjoy the varied sensations which this friend has provided me: I no longer refuse the death agony prepared for me, this ending slowly elaborated within my arteries and inherited perhaps from some ancestor, or born of my temperament, formed little by little from each of my actions throughout my life. The time of impatience has passed; at the point where I now am, despair would be in as bad taste as hope itself. I have ceased to hurry my death.
There is still much to be done. My estates in Africa, inherited from my motherin-law, Matidia, must be turned into models of agricultural development; the peasants of Borysthenes, the village established in Thrace in memory of a good horse, are entitled to aid after a severe winter; on the contrary, subsidies should not be granted to the rich cultivators of the Nile Valley, who are ever ready to take advantage of the emperor’s solicitude. Julius Vestinus, prefect of Education, sends me his report on the opening of public grammar schools. I have just completed the revision of Palmyra’s commercial code: it takes everything into account, from the entrance fees for caravans to the tax set for prostitutes. At the moment, we are assembling a congress of physicians and magistrates to determine the utmost duration of a pregnancy, thus putting an end to interminable legal squabbles. Cases of bigamy are increasing in number in the veterans’ settlements; I am doing my best to persuade these men not to make wrong use of the new laws which permit them to marry, and I counsel them to abstain prudently from taking more than one wife at a time! In Athens a Pantheon is in process of construction on the model of the Pantheon in Rome; I am composing the inscription to be placed on its walls, and shall enumerate therein (as examples and commitments for the future) my services to the Greek cities and to barbarian peoples; the services rendered to Rome are matters of course.
The struggle goes on against brutal misuse of judiciary power: I have had to reprimand the governor of Cilicia who took it into his head to execute under torture the cattle thieves in his province, as if simple death were not enough to punish a man and dispose of him. Both the State and the municipalities were abusing their power to condemn men to forced labor in order to procure workers at no cost; I have prohibited that practice not only with regard to free men but for forced labor of slaves as well; it is important, however, to watch sharply lest this detestable system re-establish itself under other names. In certain parts of the territory of ancient Carthage child sacrifice still prevails, so means must be devised to forbid the priests of Baal the pleasure of feeding their fires. In Asia Minor the rights of heirs of the Seleucids have been shamefully disregarded by our civil tribunals, ever prejudiced against the former kings; I have repaired that long-standing injustice. In Greece the trial of Herod Atticus still goes on. Phlegon’s dispatch box, with his erasers of pumice stone and his sticks of red wax, will be with me to the end.
As in the days of my felicity, people believe me to be a god; they continue to give me that appellation even though they are offering sacrifices to the heavens for the restoration
