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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XIX. A LITTLE LUNCH: DORMICE, GARUM, AND MORE
It’s time to stop and have some lunch. You find a spot on the grass on the hills surrounding the Circus Maximus. As you buy bread, wine, little game hens, dried fish, and, yes, dormice from vendors, you sit in the shade of a large tree. You are pestered by all kinds of beggars and mountebanks, until you slip a few coins to some burly men nearby advertising their services as private policemen. They hang about, wearing plain brown capes with a few patches in them, and worn armor suggesting they might once have been low-end gladiators who had the good fortune to escape death in the arena and were then pardoned because the emperor was in a good mood one long bloody afternoon in the Colosseum. You aren’t bothered by hustlers anymore, though several appealing street urchins offer to juggle and tumble for you in exchange for a few coppers. You don’t have the heart to turn them away, though you aren’t much entertained, knowing that they probably turn to other tricks after dark to earn their miserable living. You feel just as sorry about the coins themselves, for they are another mute, subtle evidence of the coming collapse generations hence. These antoniniani coins are irregular looking copper, coated with a thin wash of silver, and they tell us that the imperial efforts to save the empire from inflation have pretty much failed by now. It’s a fiscal conflagration that will sweep through the empire like a brush fire, devastating its economy. Already, the good silver coins of past centuries are history, melted down or hoarded—and this hoarding, friends, is one of the dreadful foreboding signs of coming apocalypse.
On this warm, sunny day as you chew on your dried fish and wash it down with honeyed wine, you do feel pretty good about things. The Romans too are taking some time off for lunch. Many of them had breakfast (ientaculum) early in the day, usually porridge with whatever little bits of meat, fowl, or fish are on hand, and maybe a bit of onion and some olives. The main meal is the cena, which is done in one of two ways. If you’re going to have a regular dinner (vesperna) toward evening, then your main meal or cena will be around noon. If, however, like Romans through the ages, you prefer to lie low during the hot months of summer, then you’ll eat a light lunch (prandium) and store up your energies for a late dinner (cena, the main meal). It’s quite a phenomenon to be around the streets of Rome around ten o’clock at night in the 21st Century as a cool breeze sweeps through the streets; and to suddenly see doors open and the streets fill with people laughing, talking, eating, until around midnight. But again one gets ahead of oneself.
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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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