One of the characters in the political his tory of this 1st century is almost more import ant even than the emperors. This is German icus, the nephew and adopted son of the Em Tiberius. He was the son of Drusus who ad proved such an active leader against the western barbarians. Germanicus hastened from Gaul in 14 A.D. to quell a mutiny which had broken out on the news of the death of Au gustus in a Rhenish camp. He found so much disaffection among the Roman soldiers that he felt that active service would be the only thing to restore anything like loyalty. He won a series of triumphs and salved the Roman feel ings by paying funeral honors to the dead whose bones were the mute but emphatic testimony to the defeat of Varus by Arminius, though a little later, Germanicus himself re ceived a set back from Arminius. His fleet was lost in a storm, one of his lieutenants was defeated, and even Germanicus himself, after immense preparations, was compelled to with draw from the enemy so that Tiberius, thinking it better not to risk Roman prestige further, recalled him to bring order out of the con fusion that had arisen in the East. Even his incomplete defeat of the Germans endeared Germanicus to the Roman people and his title of honor constantly reminded them of their vindication, because they had taken the de struction of the legions under Varus to heart. When Germanicus died in the East at the early age of 34, the Romans were quite willing to listen to stories that he had been poisoned. There is no evidence for that however and Germanicus is just one of the early cases in history in which untimely and unexpected death was attributed to poisoning. There are too many affections which may cause unex pected death in a comparatively short time, or by lingering illness in spite of all treatment, for any but the most direct proof of poisoning to be accepted in history. In spite of the popu lar impression to the contrary, there are very few poisons that do not give symptoms that will readily reveal their presence. Germanicus' remains were brought back to Rome in triumph. Later his wife, suspected of plotting to have the imperial throne bequeathed to one of her sons, was banished by a decree of the Senate and she and her son died of hunger. The second son, Drusus, was put to death on a similar charge of ambition and only Caius, afterward called Caligula, remained, but he be came the successor of Tiberius who died at 78 at Misenum (37).
Another character of the 1st century whose reputation among scholars at least has been very well preserved in Celsus. His works are an in dex of the scientific interest of the time. Though probably not a physician, he wrote a work on medicine. (De re medica.' He lived about the time of Christ. For the purity and precision of his Latin he has been given the title of (Cicero Medicorum.' With the exception of the Papyrus Ebers, Celsus' is the oldest medical document after the Hypocratic writings. Hy pocrates is the only one of the 72 medical authors whom Celsus mentions whose writings have come down to us. The interest in him can be understood then. His works are full of anticipations of modern developments in medicine and surgery that were supposed to be novel. Surgery evidently had developed mar vellously about that time and surgical instru mentation in particular was highly specialized. Over 200 different surgical instruments have been found at Pompeii which was buried 79 A.D.
Unfortunately, we know almost nothing of Celsus himself.
Another important writer on the sciences related to medicine who was very often quoted in the after time was Dioscordies, a Greek army surgeon in the service of Nero, called the father of the materia medics and the first to write on medical botany and applied science. Aretzus the Cappadocian who also lived under Nero, was a wonderful observer and "easily the most attractive medical author of his time.* (Garrison). The natural History of Pliny the Elder (23-79 A.D.) is a compilation of nearly all that was known of the biological sciences, geography and mineralogy up to his time. While he is thus so largely a borrower from others, his zeal for first hand information is well illustrated by the fact that he perished in the eruption of Vesuvius which destroyed Pompeii, while making a determined effort to approach near enough to the volcano to be able to see for himself actually what was happening. The letters of his son, Pliny the Younger, show how wide was the interest of the edu cated Romans of the time. Their interests are so like our own as to be often a commentary on the morning paper.
Manifestly the Romans were deeply in terested in science and above all in what re lated to human health. This makes the fact that Luke the Evangelist was a physician all the more significant, for as Harnack has shown, the Gospel written by him contains many of the technical medical terms of the time, and there fore would have an especial appeal to the edu cated classes. There is some question as to whether Luke was not a relative of Gallio, the proconsul of Achaia before whom Paul was tried at Corinth for Lucanus, his Latin name, is not Greek at all but a surname in the great family of the gees Anna'o to which Seneca, Gallio and Lucan all belonged. Philippi, where Luke was stationed, was a Roman colony. Perhaps this accounts for some of the strongly Christian character of Seneca's writings. The fact that Christ had devoted Himself so whole heartedly to the relief of suffering and the cure of the diseased among mankind made it all the more striking that a physician, learned in the medical lore of his time, should describe in medical terms the miraculous healings worked by the Lord, and thus give them the stamp of his approval.
After extensive controversy during the 19th century as to whether Saint Peter was ever at Rome, there seems to be now no doubt left in the minds of most historians that both Saint Peter and Saint Paul spent some years in the preaching of Christianity at the capital of the Roman Empire. Saint Peter seems to have been in the city with a considerable interval on two separate occasions and there is a universal tradition as to his 25 years Pontificate in Rome. He, together with Saint Paul, were victims of the persecution under Nero (67 or 68), Saint Paul as a Roman citizen, being put to the sword, while Saint Peter was crucified, head downward, according to tradition at his own request, not deeming himself worthy to die as did his Divine Master. The scene of his martyr dom was the Vatican hill in the Jewish quarter of the city, where in Constantine's time, two centuries and a half later, a great church in his honor was erected, and where Saint Peter's and the Vatican still stand.