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Welcome to a mythological dream time in which nothing quite makes sense, yet everything has a logic of its own. Powerful goddesses linger behind the curtains—one has brushed her fingertips over your eyes, laden with an opiate like bee pollen on a summer's day... ...You are about to fly on the wings of Parnassus to a realm where the empty tombs of the Etruscans are filled with sunlight; where the Seven Hills of Rome are wild and barren, filled with wildmen before Rome’s golden age; and where heroes and gods, warriors and goddesses, clash on the fields of battle and ideas. This is a fantasy, pieced together by late lamplight, from the author’s notes and studies of ancient Rome. Odd spirits keep knocking the ink well over, or hiding the quill, or giggling as they shuffle the pages out of sequence. Try not to be scared, and by all means have fun. The mystery of Amalthea--whom we meet, oddly, on an airplane; everything in this book is a bit odd--is founded in myths far older than Rome herself. Flying back and forth across ancient Roman history, we are present at the founding of Rome, and we are there when the great spectacle of empire finally draws to its conclusion. Our fictional Amalthea (and an ageless cricket she keeps in a cage) assists a mysterious professor who seeks long-ago truth, and leaves only his name as a legacy when the sands of time all too quickly blow away his footsteps. This is an adventure in life and death, past and present, a study in etymologies and odd bits of learning tattered in a confusing night wind, stirred up by a capricious garden genius. You will meet figures of myth and history—for example, a beautiful Vestal virgin imprisoned in a tower after being raped by the War God, up in the Alban Hills. She gave birth to twin sons swaddled by Fate in tragedy. One murdered his brother, and the killer founded Rome on such a bloody note. The Great Forum of Rome itself includes a defiled cemetery, from a time before there was a city here. The Forum mus