CHAPTER 18

Aesculapius was the god of medicine and healing. He was conceived when Apollo impregnated Coronis. While she was pregnant, Coronis fell in love with another man and for her unfaithfulness was sentenced to burning. Just before Coronis died, Apollo rescued his son, cutting him from his mother’s womb. Apollo named him Aesculapius, which literally meant “to cut open.”

To compensate for the loss of a mother, Apollo gave his son the ability to heal people, and Aesculapius grew into a renowned physician. In fact, his healing powers became so great, he started raising people from the dead. The healings stopped when Jupiter, jealous about someone else having the privilege of immortality, killed Aesculapius with a thunderbolt.

Even in death, the god’s power was not extinguished. Aesculapius had healed hundreds, perhaps thousands, by his touch. He had brought men and women back from the dead. He became a favorite god among the Greeks and Romans. Rulers constructed temples in his name, and the masses called on him for healing.

So it was that Procula, the beloved wife of Pilate and the mother of his three children, turned to Aesculapius in desperate need of healing. She told me about the experience during a long walk by the Mediterranean Sea a few weeks after she had recovered from her near-fatal illness. I knew she had spent the night in the temple. I knew she had miraculously recovered. But she had not told anyone but Pilate about the vision until that day, when she shared her story with me.

For four days, Procula had been running a fever that would not break. She had tried everything. Pilate had offered sacrifices to the usual pantheon of gods, sat tenderly at her bedside dabbing her forehead with a damp cloth, hired Greek doctors to prescribe herbal medicines and drain Procula’s blood. She had endured cold baths followed by heated saunas designed to sweat the fever away. But nothing worked, and Pilate was on the verge of panic. “Don’t leave me,” he pleaded with Procula.

She managed a weak smile, reaching out for his hand. “I’m not going anywhere,” she assured him.

It was bravado, and they both knew it. During the first two days of the sickness, she had been vomiting and couldn’t seem to get warm even as her forehead was burning up.

By day three she was weak and fading. She just wanted to curl up and cover herself with blankets. Instead, the doctors drew her blood and forced her to endure the cold baths and hot saunas again. She slept fitfully, screaming herself awake in the middle of gruesome nightmares.

On the fourth day, the doctors gave her poppy seeds to reduce the pain. That’s when the hallucinations started. That evening, as the fever spiked again, they all knew it was time for her to spend the night at the altar of Aesculapius.

She gathered her strength, took a bath, and put on a simple white linen dress. Pilate and her servants walked with her to the temple at dusk, one servant supporting each arm, but that was as far as they could go. Pilate gave her a kiss, and she entered the temple alone.

She knelt before the altar and the marble statue of Aesculapius. “Heal me, O god of eternal life.”

She had brought a nonvenomous snake in a burlap bag. She hated snakes, but she hated the disease more. She would do anything to get rid of the fever, to stop the hallucinations, to feel like herself again.

Snakes were sacred to Aesculapius. He had not only healed many people from poisonous snakebites, but snakes supposedly obeyed his voice, wrapping themselves around a stick at his command. As Procula opened the bag, reaching inside to grab the snake just behind its head, she felt woozy. She wondered if she might pass out on the marble floor.

The snake she had brought, long and green and scaly to the touch, didn’t seem to fall under the god’s spell. As soon as Procula set it down, the serpent slithered off the altar toward the base of the statue.

Her servants had prepared honey cakes, and she pulled them out of a second bag, placing them on the altar as well. From that same bag, she removed a bottle of wine, poured some of it on the altar, and set the bottle down next to the honey cakes. Her bags empty, she walked to a side wall of the temple and sat on the floor, leaning her head back and repeating the words over and over: “Heal me, O god of eternal life.”

She needed sleep, but she was too cold. She knew that those who slept in the temple of Aesculapius had dreams that would describe the cure for their ailments. It was her only hope. She needed to sleep. She needed to dream.

“Heal me, O god of eternal life.” She shivered against the stone. She was freezing, her body shaking. It was dark outside, and the temple was lit only by the oil lamps on the altar. She watched the snake explore the nooks and crannies of the stone temple.

At one point, the snake slithered toward her, and she held her breath. It stopped a few feet away and seemed to regard her with curiosity. She couldn’t harm the snake because it was now sacred.

She froze with terror as the snake came toward her again. She tensed every muscle and closed her eyes, her skin tingling with fear. She felt the serpent crawl over her left calf, and she nearly shrieked as she looked down to see it draped over her leg. It stayed there for a breath-holding, heart-stopping moment, and then it slithered away.

She wanted to leave herself.

“Heal me, O god of eternal life.”

Sometime later, still shivering against the cold, Procula curled into a fetal position on her right side. It was quiet in the temple. The floor was cold and hard. It smelled musty. She couldn’t get the snake out of her mind. What if it came back and crawled across her face?

“Heal me, O god of eternal life.”

Those were the last words she mumbled before she fell into a fitful sleep. The last words before she had the vision.

The man’s face was both beautiful and bloodied. His left eye was purple and swollen nearly shut. His beard and features were Jewish, but he wore a purple robe of royalty. Somebody had wedged a crown of thorns on his forehead —briars that cut into his skin and formed rivulets of blood that streaked down his face and matted his beard.

Yet there was strength in the firm-set jaw and compassion in the eyes. He stretched out his hand and touched Procula. He mumbled something —a prayer in Aramaic that Procula didn’t understand. He placed a hand on her forehead as he spoke. When he had finished, he brushed her hair gently behind her ear and smiled.

She wanted to thank him or minister to him. She tried to reach out and lift the thorns from his head or wipe the blood from his face. But she seemed powerless, paralyzed. She could not even speak. The man knelt there for a moment; then he rose and was gone.

At dawn, Pilate came to wake her. Gently he touched her shoulder and whispered in her ear. He placed blankets around her shoulders.

“How are you feeling?” he asked.

It took her a minute to process the question. She was still freezing and she felt weak, but somehow she knew that her strength was returning. She wasn’t dizzy anymore, and it seemed she could focus on her husband for the first time in days.

“Better, I think.”

Together, they made their way to the altar. Pilate had brought a rooster, its wings and beak tied with leather. He placed it on the altar and handed Procula the knife. She gathered her strength; she would need all of it for the next moment of chaos and flurry. With her left hand, she grabbed the legs of the rooster and squeezed. As Pilate helped hold the bird in place, Procula sliced the leather that tied the bird’s beak, and it immediately squawked. Quickly, she cut the leather cord on the bird’s back and its wings flailed out, feathers flying. She squeezed the legs harder, holding on, the adrenaline flowing, and drew the knife across the rooster’s neck.

Another flap of the wings, a warm stream of blood that covered her hand, and then the stillness was back.

She handed the knife to Pilate, and they left together. He pressed a cheek to her forehead and told her that he thought the fever might have broken. For the first time, she realized that her body was soaked with sweat.

There was a litter waiting outside the temple, and Pilate helped her in for the jostling ride back to the palace. She closed her eyes and tried to picture the face of the man who had come to heal her. Had the healing already taken place, or did she need to do more?

That question was answered in the next two days. The fever subsided. Her strength returned. Three days after she left the temple of Aesculapius, she returned with more honey cakes and a prayer of thanks. She stared at the face of the statue. She tried to imagine the statue brought to life, battered and bruised, a crown of thorns on its forehead. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t make that face resemble the one she had seen in her dream.

Nevertheless, she said her prayer of thanks and left.

When she finished her story, she looked at me with inquisitive eyes. “What do you make of this?”

In truth, I had no idea. “I’m just glad you are well,” I said.

And none too soon. In seven days, we would be heading to Jerusalem. It was time for the great Jewish feast of Passover. Pilate and his soldiers would be needed to keep the peace. And Procula would be needed to help keep Pilate in check. He was still seething about the shields.

We took a few more steps in silence, and I thought about the healing power of Aesculapius. “With power like that,” I said, “I can see why Jupiter wanted him dead.”

“Yet even Jupiter could not destroy a god with the gift of eternal life,” Procula said.

We were deep into legend now, and I decided to let it go. I wasn’t sure that I believed any of it, though I had witnessed Procula’s healing like everyone else.

Who can comprehend the ways of the gods? I wondered.