by AM Kirkby
***
A pig, a sheep, a bull.
Three animals. Three sacrifices. Three lives for the life of Rome, blood to bind the army together. Three deaths at the end of an era, and the start of a new.
Every Roman – every free Roman – that is, every free male Roman – there on the Campus Martius, to be numbered, to be ranked, to be bound. File upon file, line upon line, their centuries, their thousands.
A pig, a sheep, a bull.
Let the speaking be done here. Not on the Palatine, where the palace gates stand thrown open, but here on the Field of Mars, god of battle, god of conquest.
The age of the heroes is over. Achilles is long dead, and Hektor, and the cunning Ulixes' mouth stopped by dust. They pour wine to some of them; it dries, and crusts, and stains the ground, and the next rain washes the traces away. There are no heroes now.
The age of the nobles is over, too. The Spurinnas, the Vipienas, the Tulumnes, elegant in bright robes and the gleam of gold, would yield to the bronze and iron of Rome.
Leading the sacrifices around the perimeter. The bull balks at first. One of the three always does. The sheep looking up. Its pupils are bars of black in the flecked yellowish green of its eyes. It bleats once, a thin, timid cry. The other animal walks, its snout close to the ground, sniffing. A pig, a sheep, a bull.
This is our time. Not the time of heroes, not the time of nobles, but our time. Take it, seize it; tear our future roughly from the womb of time. Our time to rise, our time to conquer.
See, I lead the sacrifices round this field, and I will lead you round the world. To the cruel white of the Alps, the dry heat of the Greek-held south. The very name of Tarchna will be forgotten; Veii's citadel will lie in ruins; and the groves of Velzna will be haunted only by owls and snakes when we have finished.
The bull stands at the altar. The man with the axe is ready.
Let the blood feed the ghosts of the heroes. But it will be our blood, our strength, our armies that conquer. And conquer we will.
This is where it all begins. This is where the slave became a king. This is where a city of refugees becomes the ruler of the world. The sons of slaves are the fathers of emperors.
Homer is long dead. It's time for us to move on.
The hammer falls. The knife flicks. Blood flows. It's time, Servius says, and the army cheers, and there is the noise of spears clashing on bronze shields like a gust of wind flattening dry reeds in the marshes.
A pig, a sheep, a bull.