John T. Cullen has authored over 20 books, including The Generals of October (Simon & Schuster, 2004)—pulse-pounding political-military suspense fiction set in a near-future U.S. Constitutional crisis.
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John T. Cullen also writes screenplays, including one for Nebula Express (adapted from his SF novel) and the violent, darkly glistening, utterly strange tale of a serial killer in Scorpion.
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If you like what you read here, please send at least two other avid readers here so a growing readership can enjoy these books. That would be a great, painless, easy way to provide a huge assist. If you'd like to do more...click.
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The Sibyl's Urn
a novel
by John T. Cullen
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XVIII. CIRCUS MAXIMUS AND OTHER ATTRACTIONS
You pass through sprawling neighborhoods, many of them overgrown trailer park-looking things with wash flapping in the wind and smoke drifting up, with little children and pets running wild through puddles. You might notice a row of grassy rubble as you continue along the Ostian Road—those are the nearly 700 year old ruins of the ancient Servian Wall, which once surrounded a more primitive Republican Rome. Ironically, now, a three times larger Rome is being surrounded by a more far-flung set of walls (the Aurelian) in a mute and foreboding presentiment of the catastrophe and destruction looming a century in the future.
As you pass through the inner and far older (by at least 600 years) Servian Wall, and under an ancient aqueduct, you enter the heart of Rome, a good part of it familiar from your own century. Here is the greatest entertainment center of all time. There are other huge circuses in town, but the Circus Maximus is the greatest, true to its name. It easily seats 250,000 or more persons. That’s where Ben-Hur raced his chariot, if you saw the movie. Since the early Republic, this vast racetrack has run along the flat marshlands northeast of the Aventine and southwest of the Caelian and Palatine Hills. It wasn’t always this big, of course. Originally it was just a dirt track on which ceremonial and religious races were held. Probably, people were so thrilled at the leading edge Iron Age technology of chariots that they just had to invent some way to show off their cool new toys. What better way to do that then incorporate them into all that old-time religion you got from the Etruscans, who also gave you funeral games that turned in to gladiatorial entertainments. The Circus Maximus ("huge circuit" or "most gigantic circle of all") is as wide as two football fields are long, a mile in length. Its primary use is as a race track, but (arguably) the sandy bottom could also be filled with water for naumachia (Gr., ‘sea battles‘) in which opposing fleets of full-sized ships, filled with thousands of gladiators, fight to the death in front of frenzied mobs. You can imagine the cheering as a ship might be rammed and left ablaze while men with swords and shields fought to their mass deaths on listing decks. You can imagine the decks piled with bodies and slippery with blood, until the ship listed slowly on its side to the accompaniment of the screams of hundreds of drowning galley slaves. Unlike the Colosseum, which had underground passages filled with animals and prisoners waiting to be carried topside to their deaths by complex elevator systems, and therefore couldn’t very easily be flooded, this fake sea-mode was one of the spectacular ways the Circus Maximus could be adapted on short notice for entertainment spectacles.
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If you like what you're reading, please send at least two other avid readers to this website.
—Thank you! …Your grateful author, John T. Cullen.
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Other gripping books by the author:
Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.
John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996. He is listed by digital publishing historian Karen Wiesner as the sixth digital publisher in history, and the second person to publish serialized chapters on line (starting 1996). His web magazine Deep Outside SFFH was the first to be listed along with the professional pulps in Writer's Market (1999) and was at one time the oldest professional SFFH magazine in the world. John T. Cullen continues to explore new ways to adapt the primordial power of storytelling to emerging new digital opportunities as the Third Millennium springs to light.
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A Walk in Ancient Rome John T. Cullen (Simon&Schuster May 2005) innovative, acclaimed walking & teaching tour—explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history—smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome.
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= Summer 2008 =
A Walk in Ancient Rome, Second Edition John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books 2008)—New! Many new maps; images from the unique scale model of AndréCaron of Quebec. Read this innovative book, with its acclaimed walking & teaching tour. Explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history. Smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome. The new edition is bigger, like an atlas. Some people have carried the 1st edition with them to Rome, and found it ggreatly enhanced their experience. Preorders start Spring 2008.
Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, 2nd Ed. John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books, San Diego, Summer 2008). John T. Cullen has tackled the mystery of the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado. He has assembled a dramatic new theory about how and why she violently died on the back steps of the hotel in 1892. A first-class ghost story and whodunit wrapped in one. Don't miss it! Preorders start Spring 2008.
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