"What do you mean? What's so terrible about breaking a bundle of reeds in half?"'

Malcolm grimaced expressively. "It used to be a requirement of the priesthood of Attis for the initiate to castrate himself and present the severed organ to the Goddess."

Margo halted in the middle of the street. "Yuck!"

"Margo, you're blocking the way."

She started walking again, but her expression caused Malcolm to chuckle. "It's a very, very common myth in this part of the world, actually," Malcolm said as they turned into another narrow side street. "It's already ancient by these people's reckoning. The Sun God or Grain God mates the Mother Goddess, sometimes in her incarnation as the Moon, sometimes as Earth. The Solar God reigns as sacred king, is ritually killed, then is reborn again to begin the cycle of seasons and crops all over again. Hercules is another ritually murdered sacred king. But he was burned alive rather than being castrated and hung to bleed to death on a pine. In Carthage, ancient sacred kings were burnt alive on pyres as the solar Hercules. Aeneas barely escaped that fate when he ran away from Queen Dido of Carthage. In Egypt, Ra-Osiris was cut into pieces and scattered-"

"Malcolm, that's gross!"

His glance was highly sardonic. "Well, yes, from our perspective it is. But they really believed sacrificial blood was required to fertilize the earth. Crops wouldn't grow without it. And they really believed the god and his severed phallus were regenerated by the blood and by mating with the Goddess. That's why the full-fledged priests in the procession carried reed scepters. They're symbols of the god's phallus reborn as grain. It's the same reason you'll find Herms-phallus symbols-all over Herculaneum, for instance, which has Hercules as its patron deity. They re considered good luck symbols. People put them up by their doorways, touch them for luck."

Margo could understand rubbing a stone penis for luck better than she could a man mutilating himself. "But Malcolm ... what kind of man would want to do that to himself? Did they do it voluntarily? Or were they prisoners"

"No, they were volunteers. Look on the bright side: the tradition was modified years ago to kill the bull instead of the castrated priests. And now the tradition's been modified again, substituting broken reed scepters for the real castration. Roman law wouldn't tolerate the cult, otherwise. Of course, the Romans like to pay lip service to civilized notions about human sacrifices, but they have their own darker element to religious practices."

Like what?"

"The Games."

"Those are human sacrifices?" She halted again; blocking the flow of the dispersing crowd behind her. Someone cursed at her in Latin. Hastily she stepped aside. "Malcolm, you're not serious? Nobody in any of my history classes ever said anything about human sacrifices in Rome and I didn't find anything like that in any of the reading I did do. I mean ... the Romans were supposed to be civilized!" She stared down the hill toward the hulking facade of the great Circus. "Why would civilized people do something like that? I don't understand. Malcolm, it doesn't make sense and it ought to, if it's true."

Malcolm's eyes glinted. "I seem to have reawakened that curious itch to learn I first glimpsed in London. All right. Let's see if I can shed some light. Centuries ago, probably during Etruscan times, the Circus Maximus began life as a natural amphitheater of ritual sacrifice. The games, mostly races, were part of elaborate funerary rites. When we watch the Ludi Megalenses in a few days, keep that in mind We are not merely watching spectator sports. The Games are not a Roman form of NFL Football. We'll be watching a sacred drama.

"It's exciting drama and the spectacles help the emperor keep the unemployed masses quiet by giving them something to do, but it's still sacred at its core and most people in this time recognize the ritual for what it is-if not overtly, then at some level of awareness.

"You asked if the priests of Cybele were volunteers or prisoners. The participants in Roman games are largely prisoners: criminals and slaves, prisoners of war. It's always easier on the king to substitute slaves for the real thing when the king must die. And in this particular time and this particular place, that is precisely what must happen."

The dust and noise of the bright April morning faded from Margo's awareness. She had difficulty taking in everything Malcolm had said. She understood much more clearly now why he'd said most guides held advanced degrees. They had to, in order to explain to tourists what they were watching. But I can't spend years at this before my first scouting trip! What she needed to become was a generalist. She could learn a little about a lot of things and fake it whenever she had to.

Meanwhile, she'd learn everything Malcolm would teach her.

"Huh. So now what?"

"Now," Malcolm grinned, "I think it's time to scout out some lunch."

"Now there's a plan I like!"

Malcolm laughed and took her back down the sacred Palatine Hill in search of her first genuine Roman meal.

Grey light had barely touched the sky when Malcolm stepped out of the Time Tours inn. Wagons and carts, caught like vampires by the sunrise, had been unharnessed and abandoned where they stood. Slaves and yeoman farmers carted off the goods by hand.

"The next three days," Malcolm told Margo as she joined him, "are going to be very much a repeat of yesterday."

"More weird parades?"

He shook his head. "No. That's reserved for the day of Attis' sacrifice. But Attis is a popular cult, particularly amongst the poor in the slums and in the port cities. A lot of people will walk around in a festive state of mourning, if that makes any sense, flailing themselves same as the priests yesterday and weeping for the tragic fate of their god."

She wrinkled her nose. Malcolm chuckled. "Get used to weird sights if you want to scout. Now, since the real fun doesn't begin until the Hilaria, and since that doesn't start for three days, I have a different plan of action in mind."

"That being?"

"Ostia."

"What's that? Another sacred ritual where some poor schmuck gets to play king of the hour?"

"No," Malcolm smiled "Ostia is the port city downriver from Rome."

"Oh! Oh! That means a sightseeing trip outside Rome?"

Malcolm resisted the urge to tousle her hair. "Yes. Claudius has been building new harbor facilities. I want to see them. You should, too, just to get a grasp of Roman engineering." He chuckled. "The engineers told the emperor the harbor would be ruinously expensive, but it had to be built because the main harbor is silting in. I can hardly wait to see it, even if it won't be finished in Claudius' lifetime. It's said to be spectacular."

Margo had brightened visibly. "That sounds super! How do we get there?"

"We hire a boat."

She grinned. "Great! Show me!"

Malcolm made arrangements with a local merchant willing to hire out his little lenunculi since he was on holiday for the festivals. The boat reeked of fish, but handled beautifully.

"You know how to sail, I guess?" Margo asked

"Yep. So will you, by the time we get to Ostia."

She groaned, but took to the lessons cheerfully once they were on the water. Malcolm taught her the rudiments of terminology while he navigated the heavy traffic in the Tiber. Once they were downstream from Rome and into quieter water, he started the hands-on lessons. She was clumsy at first and nearly put them into the near bank a couple of times but eventually caught on. He let her steer for a while and relaxed in the warm morning sunshine.

"You like it here," she said after a while.

Malcolm peeled an eyelid and found her watching him pensively. He smiled "Yes, I do."

"Even though they're barbaric and put people to death in the arena?"