January 7 - Saint Publius, Mythmonger

Tantus Noblesse Siphilus was furious with the Viagra-Scorpios.  Spurius Gallus, the bastard son of that debauched old goose, Priapi Senecus, had deflowered Fabula, Tantus’ sister, in the slave quarters on the maiden voyage of De Politica, the Siphilus’ yacht … when he should have been fraternizing on deck to aid the impression that the two families were on speaking terms, diminishing doubt that funds should be diverted from the proposed aqueduct—providing the squalid Roman suburbs with water—to the expansion of the families’ shared bath and amphitheatre.

In return, Tantus sought to seduce Spurius’ sister, Aquila, known to be as desirable, remote and chaste as Atalanta, and whispered breezy stratagems in every orifice on her pretty face:  your breasts are like the thoughts of Aphrodite¾made for exposure; your buttocks are like the Roman hills when Romulus and Remus first discovered them¾designed to be plundered; your legs are like barbarians’ temples¾meant to be toppled; your nest is like the home of eagles’ eggs¾created for eating.  When his honeyed arsenal failed to sway her, he removed the honey, ripped away Aquila’s coverings and had her until she bled to a stupor.  He then skinned her alive, fed her tongue to cats, hacked off the limbs she had refused to give him, and left her to die in the bleak silence of her own leaking blood.

An overreaction?  Sure.  But human passion doesn’t thrive on balanced scales.  Fortunately, the gods redeem such violations when they can, and Diana, after overhearing Persepina and Mars discuss the incident, took Aquila’s rotting flesh, turned it to seed and planted it in Saturnina Ovidus Naso’s womb, which on March 20 43 BCE released its holy charge into that portion of the world known at the time as Sulmo.

St. Publius was a prince of distilled passion, who suffered intensely from the loss of his beloved city and third wife, from his banishment to edgy desolation.  He loved flesh and the social games that clothed it, power’s center and words’ hot decree.  He knew despair from betrayal, isolation, and the clash of art’s power with the power of the sword.  From these loves and agonies, he provided one of the major sources of ancient mythology and a register of the psychological gulf that opens at the end of an age.  His stories sing with suffering creation, his words ring in the bellies of us all.

In Tomi on August 13 17 CE, St. Publius was savagely attacked by a wayward Cretan bull and gored to death on the rim of the Empire, where he was transformed to two tonnes of phyllophora crispa and cast into the sea.  The Council of I elevated him to sainthood on April 23 1564; we remember St. Publius today as this was the day of Corinna’s first infidelity to him, when she, from lust, revenge and boredom, stole from their matrimonial bed to rut with a forgettable lictor by the tomb of Caecilia Metella.  Let us honor the saint today with our souls and flesh.