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Introduction
The Ides of October marked the end of the campaigning season, and on that day a race was held on the grassy sward of the Campus Martius, just outside the Servian Walls of Republican Rome.
The year's best war horses were harnessed in pairs to chariots and driven at breakneck pace; the right-hand one of the winning pair became the October Horse, and was ritually killed with a spear by the flamen Martialis, the special priest of Mars, who was god of war. Then the October Horse's head and genitalia were amputated. The genitals were rushed to bleed on the sacred hearth in the Regia, Rome's oldest temple, after which they were given to the Vestal Virgins to burn to ashes in the sacred flame of Vesta; later these ashes were mixed into cakes offered on the anniversary of the founding of Rome by her first king, Romulus. The decorated head was tossed into the midst of two teams of humble citizens, one from the Subura district, one from the Sacra Via district, who fought strenuously for possession of it. If the Subura won, the head was nailed to the Turris Mamilia. If the Sacra Via won, the head was nailed to an outer wall of the Regia.
In this ritual so old that no one remembered how it had begun, the very best that Rome owned was sacrificed to the twin powers that ruled her: war and land. Out of them came her might, her prosperity, her everlasting glory. The death of the October Horse was at once a mourning of the past and a vision of the future.
Copyright © 2002 by Colleen McCullough
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Book Description Hardback. Condition: Good. The book has been read but remains in clean condition. All pages are intact and the cover is intact. Some minor wear to the spine. Seller Inventory # GOR001292714
Book Description Paperback. Condition: Very Good. With the possible exception of the crucifixion of Christ no moment of history is more universally familiar and more often depicted than the assassination of Julius Caesar. Caesar is in the prime of his life and the height of his powers as the novel opens. A man of contradictions, Caesar is happily married yet at the same time the lover of the enigmatic and subtle Egyptian ruler, Cleopatra. He is at once a great general who commands the instinctive loyalty of Rome's legions, and a man who wishes to bring to an end Rome's endless civil and external wars, a man not only conscious of his own power, and contemptuous of lesser men, but respectful of the republic, and determined not to be worshipped as a living god or crowned as an emperor, a man whose very greatness attracts envy and jealousy to a dangerous degree. With her extraordinary knowledge of Roman history, Colleen McCullough brings Caesar to life as nobody has ever done before, and surrounds him with an enormous and vivid cast of historical characters, portrayed here not as literary figures, but as real, living people, trying to control and master enormous political events and survive. The book has been read, but is in excellent condition. Pages are intact and not marred by notes or highlighting. The spine remains undamaged. Seller Inventory # GOR001498082
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