Colleen McCullough - 6. The October Horse - A Novel of Caesar and Cleopatra

The Soul, the Soul, whom the Greeks thought female. How right it seemed, listening to the storm outside, that the natural world should echo the tempest within his heart? mind? body? We do not even know that, so how can we know anything about the Soul, her purity or lack of purity? Her immortality? I need to have her proved to me, proved beyond a shadow of a doubt! Several multiple lamps burning, he sat down in a chair and opened the scroll between his hands, reading the Greek slowly; it was always easier for Cato to separate the words in a Greek text than a Latin one, why he didn't know. Reading the words of Socrates as he asked Simmias one of his famous questions: Socrates taught by asking questions.

"Do we believe in death?" "Yes," said Simmias. "Death is the separation of Soul and body. To be dead is the end result of this separation."

Yes, yes, yes, it must be so! What I am is more than mere body, what I am contains the white fire of my Soul, and when my body is dead, my Soul is free. Socrates, Socrates, reassure me! Give me the strength and purpose to do what I must do!

"To enjoy pure knowledge, we must shed our bodies.... The Soul is made in the image of God, and is immortal, and has intelligence, and is uniform, and cannot change. She is immutable. Whereas the body is made in the image of humankind. It is mortal. It has no intelligence, it has many shapes, and it disintegrates. Can you deny this?" "No." "So if what I say is true, then the body must decay, but the Soul cannot."

Yes, yes, Socrates is right, she is immortal! She will not dissolve when my body dies! Enormously relieved, Cato put the book in his lap and looked at the wall, his eyes seeking his sword. At first he thought what he saw was the aftereffect of the wine, then his mortal eyes, so filled with false visions, acknowledged the truth: his sword had gone. He transferred the book to his side table and rose to strike a copper gong with a muted hammer. The sound thrummed away into the darkness, torn by lightning, enhanced by thunder. A servant came. "Where is Prognanthes?" Cato asked. "The storm, domine, the storm. His children are crying." "My sword is gone. Fetch me my sword at once." The servant bowed and vanished. Some time later, Cato struck the gong again. "My sword is gone. Fetch it at once." This time the man looked afraid, nodded and hurried off. Cato picked up the Phaedo and continued to read it to its end, but the words didn't impinge. He struck the gong a third time. "Yes, domine?" "Send every servant to the atrium, including Prognanthes." He met them there and looked angrily at his steward. "Where is my sword, Prognanthes?" "Domine, we have searched and searched, but it cannot be found." Cato moved so fast that no one actually saw him stride across the room to punch Prognanthes, just heard the crack! of Cato's fist against the steward's massive jaw. He fell unconscious, but no servant went to help him, just stood shivering, staring at Cato. Young Cato and Statyllus erupted into the room. "Father, please, please!" Young Cato wept, throwing his arms about his father. Who shook him off as if he stank. "Am I a madman, Marcus, that you deny me my protection against Caesar? Do you deem me incompetent, that you dare to take my sword? I don't need it to take my own life, if that's what's worrying you taking my own life is simple. All I have to do is hold my breath or dash my head against a wall. My sword is my right! Bring me my sword!" The son fled, sobbing wildly, while four of the servants took hold of the inanimate Prognanthes and carried him away. Only two of the lowliest slaves remained. "Bring me my sword," he said to them. The noise of its coming preceded it, for the rain had died to a gentle murmur; the storm was passing out to sea. A toddling child brought it in, both hands around its ivory eagle hilt, the tip of the blade making a scraping sound as the little fellow dragged it doggedly behind him across the floor. Cato bent and picked it up, tested its point and edges; still razor sharp. "I am my own man again," he said, and returned to his room. Now he could reread the Phaedo and make sense of it. Help me, Socrates! Show me that my fear is needless!

"Those who love knowledge are aware that their Souls are no more than attached to their bodies as with glue or pins. Whereas those who do not love knowledge are unaware that each pleasure, each pain is a kind of nail fastening the Soul to the body like a rivet, so that she emulates the body, and believes that all her truths arise from the body ... Is there an opposite to life?" "Yes." "What is it?" "Death." "And what do we call the thing that owns no death?" "Immortal." "Does the Soul own death?" "No." "Then the Soul is immortal?" "Yes." "The Soul cannot perish when the body dies, for the Soul does not admit of death as a part of herself." There it is, manifest, the truth of all truths.

Cato rolled and tied the Phaedo, kissed it, then lay down upon his bed and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep while the storm muttered and grumbled into a profound calm. In the middle of the night his right hand woke him, stabbing, throbbing; he gazed at it in dismay, then struck the gong. "Send for the physician Cleanthes," he told the servant, "and summon Butas here to see me." His agent came with suspicious celerity; Cato eyed him with irony, realizing that at least a third of Utica knew that its prefect had demanded his sword. "Butas, go down to the harbor and make sure that those trying to board vessels are all right." Butas went; outside he paused to whisper to Statyllus. "He can't be thinking of suicide, he's too concerned with the present. You imagine things." So the household cheered up, and Statyllus, who had been on the point of fetching Lucius Gratidius, changed his mind. Cato wouldn't thank him for sending a centurion to plead with him! When the physician Cleanthes arrived, Cato held out his right hand. "I've broken it," he said. "Splint it so I can use it." While Cleanthes worked at an impossible task, Butas returned to inform Cato that the weather had played havoc with the ships, and that many refugees were in a state of confusion. "Oh, poor things!" said Cato. "Come back at dawn and let me know more, Butas." Cleanthes coughed delicately. "I have done the best I can, domine, but may I remain in your house a while longer? I am told that the steward Prognanthes is still unconscious." "Oh, him! His jaw is like his name a rocky shelf. He broke my hand, a wretched nuisance. Yes, go and tend him if you must." He was awake when Butas reported at dawn that the situation on the waterfront had settled down. As the agent left, Cato lay down on his bed. "Close the door, Butas," he said. The moment the door shut, he took the sword from where he had propped it against the end of his narrow bed and attempted to maneuver it into the traditional position, drive it upward under his rib cage into his chest just to the left of the sternum. But the broken hand refused to obey, even when he tore the splint off it. In the end he simply plunged the blade into his belly as high as he could, and sawed from side to side to enlarge the rent in his abdomen wall. As he groaned and hacked, determined to succeed, to liberate his pure and unsullied Soul, his traitorous body suddenly snatched control from his will, jerked massively; Cato fell off the bed and sent an abacus flying into the gong with a clatter and a huge, sonorous boom. The household came running from all directions, Cato's son in the lead, to find Cato on the floor in a spreading lake of blood, entrails strewn around him in steaming heaps. The grey eyes were wide open, unseeing. Young Cato was howling hysterically, but Statyllus, too far into shock to weep, saw Cato's eyes blink. "He's alive! He's still alive! Cleanthes, he's alive!" The physician was already kneeling beside Cato; he glared up at Statyllus. "Help me, you idiot!" he barked. Together they gathered up Cato's bowels and put them back inside his abdomen, Cleanthes cursing and pushing, shaking the mass until it settled and he could draw the edges of the wound together comfortably. Then he took his curved needle and some clean linen thread and sewed the awful gash tightly, each stitch separate but in close proximity; dozens of them. "He's so strong he might live," he said, standing back to review his handiwork. "It all depends how much blood he's lost. We must thank Asklepios that he's unconscious."