A simplistic review of Zootopian History with Focus on the Lupinian Roman Empire as written by Doctor Emeritus Lulow Mandemus. Dean of the University of Zootopia.

Written by Dan 1966 as a prelude to “Lupis Gloria Romani” by Ademi and Dan 1966

       PREFACE

       The purpose of this simple small booklet is to give the citizen of our republic a basic understanding of the history of Zootopia through the three ages most commonly referred to as the “Pre-Common Age or “PCE”, The Common Middle Age or “The Middle Age” and the Common Modern Age or “CMA” so all will understand and appreciate where we have been, where we are and where we wish to go into the future. This particular writing will focus on the dominant and critical influence of the Middle Age Lupinian Roman Empire from whom our modern Zootopia in many respects still carries its defining marks. 

1. The ages of Zootopia

       The three ages so far in Zootopia are as follows….

1. The Pre-Common age or as our young mammals would call it? The Dumb Ages.

2. The Common Middle Age

3. The Common Modern Age.

Note: Explanation of the historical clock.

     It is generally accepted that our world is 10,000 years old, that is known time as archaeology and geology understand it. We count these 10,000 years in the three ages of Zootopia as follows…..

     The Pre-common age started roughly 2,000 years after the known creation time of our world (8,000 years before our time today) and lasted 2,000 years.

     The Common age or “The Common Middle Age” began roughly 6,000 years before our modern age and lasted roughly 4,000 years.

     Our current age called “The Common Modern Age” began 2,000 years ago and continues into our present day.  

2. The Pre-Common age or the “Dumb Ages”

     Our young mammals enjoy making merry fun of the Pre-common age of Mammalia by calling it “The Dumb Age”. It was during this time that our ancestors went about on their paws and hooves on all fours. Species could not communicate with each other and within species our forefathers and mothers could only bark, howl, whinny, meow, roar and perform the most primitive forms of basic communication.

      It was a terrible time to be a pray mammal in this savage and prehistoric period. Predators hunted prey for their basic nutritional needs. Procreation and perpetuation of species was emotionless, brutish and without affection or love. Prey mammals lived in deathly fear of every predator and every predator lived equally in fear of larger predators.

     We know by archaeology that there was a class of apex predators in our world who reigned supreme as the dominant super-predators and no mammal, predator nor prey, were safe from their ravages. We have chosen to name this super predatorial class...”Dinosaurs”...yet for reasons we have yet to discover, these super predators did not survive long into the Pre-Common age and less than 100 years into the Pre-common age...the Dinosaurs were all extinct. There is strong evidence that a virulent plague ravaged our known world at that time and this perhaps ended the Super Predators. There is someone or some thing we all should be thankful for...that they are not here now. Tyrannosaurus Rex would definitely make a bad dorm mate or a terrible pet.

3. The Common Era  or “The Middle Common Age”

      No one actually knows how nor the precise date of the event which brought radical change to our world happened. There are the usual theories and stories out of religion, conspiracy web sites, late night radio talk shows and the theories which have made their ways through our academia but there came a day when our ancestors walked upright on their hind legs and hooves, suddenly had the ability to speak a common language, express emotions and display advanced intellect.

     We grew a sense of shame and fashioned clothes to honor our modesty. Pray animals displayed concern for their lives and predators began to respond and feel a level of disheartening at taking the lives of small creatures for food. Species began to make their own settlements, the first crude forms of housing and farming began to evolve as well as senses of communal and family life. Though not all of our forefathers and mothers embraced this changing environment at once, many were more swift than others. The wolves especially were rapid adapters and by the middle of the Common age, They developed one of the most influential and powerful societies which would have a profound and lasting impact long after it fell by the beginning of the modern age. I speak of course of Lupinian Rome which I will expound on later in this writing.

       Lupinian Rome lasted 900 years. It has been 3000 years since the fall of the Western Lupinian Empire. The last 1000 years of the Common Middle Age saw Zootopia fall into a horrific and bloody conflict called “The great unification war” or as we better know it “The hundred year Predatorial Civil War”

       100 years before the Modern Era. Many predators believed that Zootopia, all of the land which now encompasses our modern home, was the only inhabited land in our world. We were centuries away from building ships to sail our seas and find out that we were not the only mammals in the world. Predators feared that with the continued slaughtering, consumption and enslavement of pray mammals; predators themselves would turn to devour each other and our world would then cease to exist as all life had taken itself out of existence.

       Many of our predator fathers stepped forwards to call for the end of the cruelties inflicted on the lesser and weaker mammals while other Predators refused, called these brave leaders traitors and threatened them with death. The civil war that followed was horrendous as prey mammals rushed to the side of the heroic predators who loved them, they fought with them and died with them in a great blood letting. Thousands of prey and predator alike littered the battlefields as arrows gave way to gun powder, gun powder gave way to muskets, muskets gave way to cannon and cannon gave way to rifles.

      Every year on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, all of Zootopia stops all work and quiets all tongues to remember the end of the great slaughtering and the great loss of life which gave us our modern world. It is why our society abhors war and values every sentient mammalian life as sacred and worthy of love be they predator or prey. With the end of the great war, the time clock of our civilization began to count upwards from the number zero and in the year 1776 on what is now Grand Mammalian Memorial Park in the center of Downtown Zootopia, our National constitution came into existence declaring that all Mammals are equal, that they deserve the rights of freedom, respect, life, liberty and happiness without fear. That to that end we the citizens of the republic are tied by our blood, our oath and sacred honor to preserve these assurances by our strength and if need be….our death.

That is just a basic outline of our history to this day. Next, we shall begin to look at Lupinian Rome and its’ impact and continued impact on our modern society.

LUPINIAN ROME and the Common Middle Ages

       Our society today in Zootopia owes many things to the anchient wolfen society known as “Lupinian Romana” or “Wolfen Rome”. Today, every wolf in Zootopia can trace their linage back to this powerful nation state which at the height of his power dominated all of the land we call Zootopia today. Wolves take pride in believing that our modern Fleet Marine Force is decedent of the great “Populare Legonus Roma” or “Army of the citizens of Rome” the powerful legions which transformed a small confederation of cast off rabble and dreg wolves into the colossal juggernaut of our Middle Age. Zootopia contains much of good advances developed by the Roman state. Finance, Government, commerce, construction, law being among the few lessons taken. But as with empires, there is great good shrouded by much great evil. Among that evil being an institution of brutal slavery and cruelty...no greater example of that cruelty than in the arena where predator and pray alike were sacrificed and torn apart for the amusement of the Roman state. Many prey species were on the verge of extinction by the time Rome fell from its’ own success.

The birth of the Roman State: A coffee cup of fact and fiction

      The exact historical details of the birth of the Roman Empire are lost to us. Much of this depravity of information is due to the many fires both physical and political that swept Rome during her history. The great library of Thesius Marnah, the glory of Roman education and knowledge, was itself destroyed during the third Roman Civil War and thus with it all traces of information concerning the founding of the settlement on the River Tyber and the exact dates.

       What we have about the founding comes from oral history passed from Wolf to cubs and as with such history, distortion and myth mixes with the physical and produces an entertaining and bizarre soup. If you dislike the lentil beans in this soup, you are left to pick them out and digest the remaining hearth. Yet according to the oral traditions of the wolves, this is the story of the founding of Rome….

      Long ago there was a female wolf named Drusella and among young female wolves, there was none that could match her in beauty or love. Her coat was said to be the shiniest, softest and most fair fur in all the land and every male wolf was smitten to vicious and bitter fights over the right to have her as his mate.

     Drusella was the daughter of Heckula, the leader of the powerful Italoni wolf pack who dominated the Tyber Plain. One day, Heckula proposed an alliance with another equally powerful wolf pack, the Sayoni of the Kuskeni (Kusk-Ken-eye) valley and offered Drusella to be the mate of the Sayoni wolf pack leader’s son, Prince Aluka. Drusella was commanded to remain a virgin for one year and prepare herself to be wedded to the strong and handsome Aluka.

     But before the year was over...Drusella was raped by a beast in the forest. The description of this frightening creature over the centuries of wolf tails has bore the descriptive name of “Werewolf”. A sort of hybrid creature best fitting our rated B movies because such a creature could never exist. The beast impregnated Drusella and she was forced to hide the shame of her despoiling until she berthed the filthy results of her spoiling. She bore two strange wolf cubs, calling them Romulus and Remus.

      So sickened to have born such abominations to her wolf ancestors, Drusella chose to throw the cubs into the reeds along the banks of the Tyber river and left them to die. Her wailing at this painful choice was said to have shaken the great mountains to their foundations.

      It was after Drusella left that another she wolf named Kala came upon the twin cubs and seeing that their mother had not returned, offered them her own teets to suckle and her body to keep them warm. When they had been restored their strength, Kala took the strange wolf cubs back to her own cave and to her mate Atriades (At-tree-ah-dees) and knowing his mate to be barren and incapable of having cubs, took Romulus and Remus into his care as his own sons.

      Today, a cave in the highlands of Tundra Town is still considered the sacred home of Romulus and Remus and many wolves make annual pilgrimages to offer flowers and gifts to the pair of adult wolves they consider to be the “sacred parents of wolf culture.”

      The twin cubs were indeed strange and different to their adoptive parents. They walked on their hind legs, spoke in a tongue that was strange and yet they could clearly understand their parents and moved and adapted quickly to landscapes wolves would have found impossible to engage. They were also capable of going from their two legged forms with powerful arms and long fingered paws to feral four legged wolves with normal canine paws with amazing speed. They also found that they could wield hand weapons with great ease and dexterity.

       The differences between them were obvious. Romulus was hot headed, brutish, aggressive, physically powerful and intimidating while his brother Remus was stronger in his thinking, cautious in his movements and slow to be rash and impetuous. He was also said to be as fair and as beautiful in appearance as his mother.

       Atriades taught his sons simple virtues which became the basic foundations that led to Roman Law and Roman societal cohesion. As they became teenagers and knowing well that their parents were not their original parents. Romulus and Remus begged the leave of their surrogates so they could seek out their real mother to show her they were alive and to tell her all was forgiven by them for being abandoned so long ago.

       After much inquiry however, the brothers learned the horrible truth of their mother’s fate at the hands of the powerful packs, the Italoni and the Sayoni. Accused of being a wretched whore, Drusilla was chased down, torn to shreds and tossed upon an elephant dung heap as waste. The quick to enrage Romulus called upon the Wolfen moon god for vengeance and howled all through the night in mourning until he and his brother awoke to find two swords presented at their paws. Romulus took up his sword and called it “Tam” while his brother took up his sword and called it “Fahr”

         Waiting for the right moment as the two wolf packs sat in counsel, Romulus fell upon the Italoni while his brother fell upon the Sayoni. The wolves were no match for the swift, fast morphing powers of the two brothers and the pack’s entire patriarchy including their cub bearing females were slaughtered with zeal and revenge. The brothers wearing the skins of the pack fathers for their brutal murder of Drusilla. The remaining wolves were only allowed to live when a youngster begged for their lives. After that day the Sayoni and Italoni packs ceased to exist.

        Romulus and Remus then led the survivors back to the cave of their adopted parents where after swearing oaths of allegiance to the brothers...father Atriades taught these young wolves the essence of virtue and law while the brothers taught them their skills of form switching and combat fighting. The young wolves realized that the brutal killing of Drusilla was an illegal act upon an innocent and devoted themselves to serving the brothers in anything they wished.

        Both brothers decided that they wanted to create a city state to unify all wolves under a single banner, a single voice and a single mind of thought. The brothers led their new pack down into the Tiber River valley to the place where their much loved adopted mother found them and thrust their swords into the mud and soil of the Tyber River bank…

      “Let it be here.” Romulus said. “And let it shake the earth with its’ howl.”

      That is the mythical founding of Rome. 

The rape of the Ituskins. (Eye-Tusk-Skins)

       Under Romulus and Remus, the small settlement grew swiftly as the brothers welcomed cast off wolves, vagabond wolves and wolves of ill repute into their gates. They also welcome escape predators who had been slaves of larger mammals like foxes and weasels. Soon however, the brothers realized a terrifying fact...the population of their settlement was majority male with very few female wolves. It would not possibly survive past a generation. Yet no other large wolf pack around them would allow its’ daughters to mate with such ruffians and briggens. In hasty counsel, the brothers and several of their most trusted confidants came upon a solution. If they could not get brides….they would steal them. So it was that Romulus and Remus crafted a plan to take females from one of the largest and most dangerous packs in anchient Zootopia, The Ituskins.

Under the cover of a festival dedicated to the wolf moon god in which the centerpiece was a large and beautifully prepared and cooked chestnut bull, the Ituskins were encouraged to bring their mates and pups, especially the females to the feast. Lulled by the elegance and beautiful poetry spoken by Remus who’s very charm lay in his own deceptively innocent and sublimely fair beauty as any wolf male could ever be….the paternal line of the Ituskins ate and drank themselves into stupor. Remus slipped from the banquet room, bolted the only escape shut and his brother and several conspirators set themselves upon the Ituskins…..and slaughtered them. They then set upon the female wolves, many of them just coming into pup bearing age and raped them in a night of ravaging lust and orgy.

When the surviving Ituskins found out what had happened, they prepared for war with the aim of annihilating the fledgling Romans. Sadly their planned slaughter would include their own sisters and mothers because of the shame of their despoiling at the hands of vermin.

The Ituskins took six months to prepare for war but during that time, Remus worked his spell binding skills of voice and oratory upon the Ituskin females as he had done on their fathers. Telling them of how devastated and low the Roman males felt about their crimes and how they brutalized the innocent female wolves. He told them with sweetness and kindness that the males would spend the rest of their days ensuring the females needed nothing nor would have worry for lack of anything. That the males would serve their every whim and fill their every desire. He even promised them glorious emancipation and the right to share every bit in decisions and powers of state and household if they would forgive the males for their criminal acts and accept them as their slaves and mates. His delivery of oratory worked.

As the Ituskins closed on the Roman settlement bent on murder, they were met on the trail outside the gates by a solitary young female Ituskin wolf named Caria. In a passionate plea, Caria begged her kinfolk not to slaughter the Romans for the sake of their sisters and mothers. 

“Please….do not make us widows and our cubs to die in the cold we beg you. Our mates have done great evil and will spend their lives atoning for it, yet we who are your dear ones will enjoy lives of comfort guarded by strong mates who adore us and are ready to give us the world. Please...if you refuse, you will watch us all throw ourselves into the Tyber river and it will be your names we will curse and haunt for all eternity. Should not all of us be one family? Should not all wolves prosper? Should not the world be ours? Allow us to raise our cubs with this noble ideal. Come and join us and we shall know greater glories on the tips of our paws than our pack would ever know alone.”

Caria’s words stirred the hearts of her brothers. The first to march up to the gate of the city with his paw extended was Mamericus Ituskin. He embraced Romulus with the words “Brother….all is forgiven. Now let us take the world and make it under this banner….”One pack, one paw, one tooth, one world….all ours.” It was truly the moment the Lupinian Roman Empire was whelped onto the world as our ancestors knew it.

Next: A brother’s murder and the line of kings. The road to a Republic.

What happened between the two brothers who were the founders of Rome has been a debate for centuries. Some say the story is an allegorical myth created towards the tail end of the empire to explain how Rome’s down turn could be blamed on sibling rivalry...”We didn’t cause this, those two morons did!” It is true that Romulus and Remus’s stars had turned sour by the time the empire split in two. Fact or fiction however, the story of the end between the two brothers confirms the old line that….”There can be only one.”

As the Roman settlement began to grow larger and faster, both Romulus and Remus declared there should be a king-ship to govern over the population. Naturally the brothers each claimed they should be the first king…

Romulus declared that because he was the strongest, the most aggressive and the most able to command armies and defend the settlement; naturally he should be king.

Remus declared that kingship resided much in being good with mind and words as with physical prowess. Thus he should be king.

The brothers decided to settle issue with a simple cub’s game. They agreed that a bag of river rocks from the Tyber should be gathered up and each would draw a stone from it. The one who drew a red river stone would be king of Rome. And so it was that a bag of rocks was gathered and the brothers retired to a distant hill with a neutral witness, a fox named Genifax, to oversee that the game was played fairly.

Now wolf lore says that this mound or mount is currently the highest point in Tundra Town. This of course can not be proven. But the brothers ascended the mound with their witness and together reached their paws into the bag….

Both of them drew out red colored river stones….

At first the brothers chuckled at the good fortune in jest. They dropped the rocks back into the bag, the bag was shaken and once again they dipped their paws into the bag...

Both of them drew out red colored river stones….

This was strange? The brothers ordered the bag dumped out. They and Genifax examined each stone, found nothing unusual, replaced the stones in the bag, shook the bag up, reached their paws once more into the bag….  

And both of them drew out red colored river stones….

Romulus, being the quick tempered hot head he was, suddenly accused his brother of praying to the fox god to help him steal the throne.

Remus like wise accused his brother of conspiring with the weasel god to steal the throne.

Romulus slapped Remus in the snoot.

Remus punched Romulus in the maw.

Then an all out brawl ensued between the brothers and poor Genifax was knocked out trying to stop the fighting.

At some point...Romulus drew a dagger and stabbed his brother in the chest, killing him instantly.

Needing to hide his terrible deed...Romulus quickly slit the throat of poor Genifax and cut off his beautiful fox tail. Coming into the settlement covered in blood and holding up the severed fox tail; Romulus declared that his brother had been possessed by a demon placed inside him by the treachery of Genifax and Romulus was forced to slay his only brother. In retribution, the twenty fox families who lived in the settlement were brutally murdered and their tails tied to the first standards of the founding Legionaries (The Legions). For the rest of the days of empire, foxes would be hunted down and butchered for their tails because of this deception. Sadly in our time there remains a deep enmity between foxes and wolves over what may just be a fable to cover the criminal act of sibling-cyde.

But Romulus’s ruse worked, making him the first king of what became Lupinian Rome, named by Romulus himself.

The Six Kings and their stamps on Lupinian Rome.

30 years into the 900 year existence of Rome...the growing city state was governed by six kings; Romulus being the first. He took Caria, the female wolf who’s appeal to her own kin of the Ituskins gave the young city state it’s most rapid population expansion as his mate and queen. From them would come Mulis Tracitus Romulia, Rome’s third king.

Each of the six kings would put their own stamps of influence into the Roman state that would shape and develop its’ character, its’ rise and its’ eventual fall in the years to come. The six kings reigned a total of 97 years.

Romulus

Romulus’s important contribution was the creation and foundation of the legionares military system and with it the first moves towards empire as Romulus led the fledgling legions in expanding the frontiers beyond Rome’s walls in what was described as pure defensive warfare. Romulus also established the requirements of citizenship even though he continued to attract a diverse mix of predator species like Tigers, Lions, Coyotes and Nubian wolves who became an elite commando force later in the early Republic.

Vibius Electus

     One of Romulus’s first legionare commanders and so endeared to the King that he adoringly called him “Father”. Vibius became “King pro temp” when Romulus became ill from mange and died in Vibius’s arms. Vibius solemnly promised to educate Romulus’s son Mulis to prepare him for the kingship and when the young wolf reached adulthood...Vibius stepped aside.

      Two important marks of Vibius’s reign was the creation of the People’s Assembly” or the Senate and the institutions of representative Democracy and voting. The Senate’s size fluctuated with another of Vibius’s inovations, the every two year Census...the counting of the population. 

Mulis Tracitus Romulia

      The son of Romulus, Mulis instituted the laws which governed who and who could not be a citizen of Rome and what procedures and steps would be required for citizenry. Wolves were automatically citizens of Rome be they natural born or not. Predators were welcome and were given some basic rights but had to meet requirements to petition for citizenship and upon granting of such, attained the full rights to be called a Roman citizen.

     Pray mammals on the other hand along with the wrongly despised foxes, could never become citizens. Pray animals were considered food stuffs, enemies of the state or slaves to be dealt with as seen fit. Even if a pray animal did anything noble in support of or in defense of the Roman state...their lot in life was the same. They were worked to death, beaten to death or put to death and then eaten. Every Roman from birth would be taught that pray animals were worth about a tenth of a tenth of a pile of dung...unless they were nicely prepared to be on a dinner plate.

Primus Romulus Ligur

After the death of Mulis, his son Primus became king. Primus’s memorable marker was sending emissaries throughout the known world to attract skilled crafts-mammals, laborers, scholars and ecomnomadi (economic specialists) to not only change the physical condition of the Roman city state but make it economically viable. Wood and thatch over time gave way to brick, masonry and mortar. An economic system of currency was created and trade and import established. It was also here that the most cruel part of Rome’s trading and inports was created...that of the pray slave and food trade which by the end of the Roman period would see millions of pray mammals slaughtered almost to extinction across the empire.

Kaeso (Ky-Ay-Sow)

Kaeso was the second King not of royal blood and sadly he would become the first and certainly not the last Roman leader to die by murder. His contribution to the city state was the reformation and codification of law into a more solid and coherent form binding rich citizen down to the poorest, except for pray who were vermin and deserved no protection. Kaeso would also continue the “defensive” wars of expansion giving Rome a nearly 100 mile defensive zone beyond the city walls. What Kaeso did not know was that his sister Vesnia was plotting to put her own son Quintus on the throne and by year 94 of the reign of the Kings...she did so by brutal murder.

Quintus Trebatus Cholrus
“Quintus the ripper”

Quintus Trebatus Cholrus was a tyrant who stole from the national treasury, killed his opponents, placed his family in positions where he could control power and abused his authority. What brought him to his end was a violent crime committed by his eldest son Oppius upon a well loved and respected female wolf named Papinia who was considered a model of female lupine industriousness and virtue. One night...Oppius followed Papinia to her home where he beat her, raped her and told her that if she dared to speak of the deed….he would kill her.

The next morning...the battered Papinia climbed atop the hall of justice near the royal palace and cried out what had been done to her by Oppius and not wanting to live with the shame of rape or having to bear his off spring...she flung herself to the ground before the horrified masses.
Rome…..exploded in violence. Led by a Lieutenant of the 3rd Legionares, Brutus Gracilis...the Wolves of rome stormed the palace, tore Oppius to shreds and burned “Quintus the Ripper” to death. Brutus then proclaimed that Rome would never again allow a King to reign over the free people. The monarchical system was dead. To be replaced by a yearly elected “bi-consolaria (Two wolves chosen by vote to govern for one year equally) a system that would survive until the rise of Lupine Rome’s first Cesaria Maximi (Cesar over all) in the 400th year of Rome’s 900 year existence.

Wars, wars, wars and wars….From defense to devastate. Lupinian Rome under the Counselors. 

     To keep this writing as brief as possible, we will not go too detailed into all the Counsels and Pro-Counsels and the intricate nature of Lupinian Rome’s political and governmental functions in the time between the end of the Monarchical age and the beginning of Cesaria Maximi.

    The between period between these two leadership extremes however was occupied by expansion, conquest and war, a plethora of all three. Romans were always told that “this legionary expedition” or “That legionary expedition” was done in the name of self-defense or the defense of some one else. When it came to predatory settlements, if alliances could be formed then Rome went to war to defend sed settlements. If alliances could not be formed and those settlements sat on or offered something useful to Rome….Rome just took them. If the settlement was full of pray mammals? Roman burned it, sacked it, raped it and brought the survivors back to be...slaves or dinner snacks.

     Two internal Civil Wars occurred during this period in years 236 and 370 which began to shift Rome towards the end of Republican government. Rome also fought five major wars, the worst and the one most threatening the Roman state was between years 237 to 245 with the Tusker Confederation and the way that war ended was to say the least….comical. The hero of this conflict who was crowned “Lupis Roma Deus Savitorium Affectionado” (god savior of Wolfen Rome we love you) was not a wolf….he was little bobcat.

     The Tuskers, a Confederation of War Elephants and Rhinos, swept down from the far northern plains in year 237 and after destroying four legions and ravaging many Romanized settlements; threatened the city state itself. Destroying a haste-fully cobbled together “Grand Legion” north of the natural barrier known then as the Verdia rift gorge (Where the Tundra Town south wall sits today) the Tusker’s leader Tantorius Getorex demanded Rome’s unconditional surrender or he would trample it to dust, erase its memory from history and sell every Wolf maiden into dog cages and perpetual whoredom. To give emphasis to his warning, he sent back barely alive the head Counsel of the Grand Legion that had been destroyed...minus his tail, his claws, his teeth and his pride was ….”well overly abused”.

     Rome was in a panic. Thus entered….Rufus Lynx. Simple farmer, raiser of wines and grains….who was not and never had been a soldier. But two things Rufus Lynx did seem to possess? Male organs the side of steel beach balls and a quick whit.

     Rome had only one way to span the natural defile of the Verdia Rift Gorge, the bridge of Mersali (Today it is the where central highway gate on the southern wall of Tundra Town stands or so the story goes.). It was here that Rufus Lynx arrived to see the beaten and abused masses of wolves from the Grand Legion streaming home. He went from Wolf to Wolf, Predator to Predator beckoning them to stand. Out of hundreds, he was lucky to find seven wolves who rallied to his angry snarling and hissing.

    Stripping another Wolf of his armor, sword, arrow quiver and javelin...Rufus devised a plan and sent the seven wolves to his home to gather oil, pitch and his fur grooming kit. When they returned, Rufus told them of his plan which they thought was suicidal. “We stand here or we run home to coward. Better to die here on our feet than home under our beds.” He told them.

     Dawning the legionnaire armor and preparing himself, the young Lynx waited on the Rome side of the bridge for the forces of Tantorius Getorex to arrive. Coming up to the end of the bridge, the war elephants and Rhinos noticed a lone Roman soldier at the other end screaming and hissing at them in a rage and daring them to come across and battle with him.

    Upon closer inspection of this obviously suicidal soldier. The elephants and Rhinos noticed that patches of fur were missing from his face and body and where his skin lay bare, splotches of red shown. Worse yet….foam was pouring from the small cat’s mouth. To them….Rufus was sick with mange, rabies or a terrible disease that would surely kill him soon enough.

      “Why do you wait!” Rufus screamed and hissed. “Are you all cowards! Come and fight me! Come and I will kill all of you!” Then...to show he was not only fool hearty but deadly serious...Rufus snatch up the bow he’d taken off a soldier, affixed an arrow and with almost deadly precision….sent a bolt flying true into the eye socket of Tantorius Getorex’s second in command, killing him instantly!

     While the wild feline taunted and berated the confederated army, his seven wolf compatriots were climbing over the underside of the bridge coating it with oil and pitch and when they had cleared themselves...they put the underside of the bridge to the torch!

     At one point while the underside burned...Rufus went into a screaming charge across the span, waving his sword, holding up his ridiculously over-sized shield, and demanded the Elephants and Rhinos fight him. He then was said to have looked right at Tantorius Getorex and snarled….

    “I don’t know what beast birthed you? But she must have been the most reviled and ugly whore to have ever walked on land. And as for the dirty Socialator (Roman word for pimp) who raped her? He must have been so hideous as to make the god’s wretch!”

       Blind with fury,  Tantorius Getorex charged onto the bridge with two platoons of his army determined to put the maniac little cat’s head on a pike and have it lead him into Rome. Much lighter and certainly quicker...Rufus ran over the now flaming bridge span and made it onto the Roman side of the Verdia Rift. The bridge, bearing too much weight for its’ burned up span….shattered into splinters and sent Tantorius Getorex and most of his senior captains to their deaths on the rocks below…

      The remaining elephants and Rhinos. Deprived of their leadership, the bridge and having no engineers among them...retreated.

      Rufus’s seven wolf compatriots hoisted him high over their heads in great joy, throwing him in the air, singing songs and crying the news forward until all of Rome was wild with joyous cheer! Since soldiers could not enter the city itself because of the law...Senators took the young Lynx and carried him in a great triumph to the Senatorial hall where a special seat was brought out. A crown of laurels was placed on Rufus’s head, a robe of purple was wrapped around him, a baton of victory placed in one of his paws and all of the Senate bowed low to the floor to proclaim him the citizen’s gawd. The President of the Senate then told Rufus Lynx that nothing would be denied his asking. All of Rome waited to hear his words…

     Rufus Lynx could have had anything he desired and yet his answer endeared him in mammalian legend for all time to come…

    “I desire no such ostentation and deserve no such magnanimity. I did what desperation and duty called me to do and having done such? I only wish to go home and go to bed.”

      Rufus took off the robe, the laurel ring, kept the baton of victory and quietly walked out of the Senate house. When his words spread through the throngs awaiting to adore him, they reacted as he wished with simple tokens of affection and quiet appreciation. Rufus Lynx did as he said he would, he went home to his small farm, stacked his armor in a corner of the hut, climbed into his bed and went to sleep. Years later it was how the great hero of Rome was found when he died and in accord to his wishes there were no grand memorials, no great buildings and no spectacular tomb to remember him by.

      Perhaps there is a basis of fact to the story? When engineers began to construct the Southern Wall of Tundra town over the Verdia Rift...several skeletons of large Elephants and Rhinos were discovered at the bottom of the gorge. But fable or not, Rufus Lynx remained a powerful image of aspiration for admired Roman and Mammalian virtues. In the corruption poisoned later years of the Lupinian Roman Empire...Rufus Lynx was an image the citizens of Rome longed for against the largess and selfish supreme powers enjoyed by the Caesars. Rufus Lynx was an example of pure selflessness, of forsaking self and reward out of duty, honor and concern for country. He is still spoken of today with affection to cubs and among older mammals alike as an example of behavior and a watch word against power seekers and politicians alike. In a sense...a tomb would have been a little too grand a way to remember him. His very name does that quite enough.

Conquests and consequence: Falling into the Roman orbit or under the Roman claws.

       Lupinian Rome’s sweep of the known world now encompassing Zootopia, The Tri-Buroughs and all of the lands to the seas that make up our own large continent is staggering considering the span of time in which the Empire performed the feats of road building, bridge building and difficult land forming engineering. The Roman Legions were machines of efficiency but Rome was not just about conquest and war. She was hungry for talent, knowledge, skill and education. Lupinian Rome practiced a multi-prong approach to diplomacy, at least when it came to other predators. To pray animals however….Rome practiced absolute barbarism.
 
       If Roman Legions came upon wolf tribes, packs or villages, she approached them as beloved kin and where they didn’t posed a threat, Rome would leave them alone….except….they would “sales pitch” the glory of Rome like your typical door to door sales mammal. It was “Anim-way” (AMWAY) on steroids. Wolf tribes would be encouraged to share information, knowledge, education and in exchange Rome offered them society, belonging, kinship, trade, food and above all protection from harm. To lay one tip of any body part on a Wolf tribe or pack was to invite Rome like a “bully smasher” at a school yard brawl. The bully was going to get his snoot bashed in.

        If the Legions came upon a tribe of predators like a pride of Lions or a Tiger pack. If they offered no threat to Rome, they would get the sales pitch, offers of alliance, trade and food in exchange for knowledge. If the group of predators was large enough however to threaten Rome? War would surely break out and usually the wars didn’t last very long. Yet for Predators, Roman terms were generous and lavish enough to pacify further thoughts of opposition.

        If the Legions fell upon a pray village however...horror and bloodshed were the terrible results. Pray villages and societies would be torn to shreds and burned to the ground, the land to be taken over by Roman settlers later. The old, the infirm, the sick and most of the adults were killed. The younger pray mammals were thrown into slavery or sent to their deaths to feed and please the empire.

        Foxes, because of the old legend of Romulus and Remus, avoided making settlements and survived where they could. If a fox and his family were caught by the Romans? They were tortured, often skinned alive or chewed and beaten till they bled to death. Their tails hung from Legionary standards, their entrails and private parts were boiled for soups, their skulls were collected as macabre trophies in the homes of the Roman elites. Foxes to Rome were enemies of the state to the extreme and only their cries from torture would be satisfaction. By the time Rome fell….foxes were ranked number 2 on the continental species threatened with extinction.

Slavery in Lupinian Rome. Walking or walking dead.

         Lupinian Rome was built on the backs of slaves. Sometimes fed by the fat and flesh of slaves as well. Slavery took on many forms within the capital city. Contrary to popular belief, a great number of slaves in Rome….were Romans because second to gladiatorial games….suing the hell out of your neighbor for looking at you wrong sometimes made you his slave and came off as good theater. Debt slavery reached insane levels in Rome by the year 500 of its’ existence, one writer remarked that there were more lawyers per square foot in the forum than there were bricks on the floor. Romans sued each other, counter sued each other and sued everything not nailed down for ludacris reasons more than legitimate ones and there were always the “ambulance chasers” ready to offer their services and accuse anyone of causing heart failure. Uncontrolled howling was said to be the number one record offense for a law suit. The ancient wolf chronicler Livy wrote….

        “Flavius Faustus, a young wolf in good standing was brought into the court by a young female wolf named Opsia who sued him for an exorbitant amount of money because he appeared to howl a little during a greeting which she suspected looked lurid and offending. She almost had him as a slave when on the next day he counter sued her claiming she was casting her eyes upon his private parts a moment too long for a proper female wolf of Rome. He even produced seven witnesses confirming that Opsia was a filthy female of the brothel district who gave them crabs and scabees. It just proves that if you have the money? You can get any actor to call anyone a whore.”

       Law suits and other legalities in fact were more lucrative a venture than slavery itself and for a predator taken as a slave in the many Roman wars, the vast throat cutting industry of law was the best and fastest way to regain your freedom. Perhaps it was a form of poetic justice when former predator species slaves got their freedom then turned around to become lawyers and trial judges. “Put me in chains? Now I’m going to bite you were it hurts puppy dog…..your change purse!” And yes I am not talking about the low hanging change purse.

         Predators taken as slaves during conquest wars found their lot difficult yet merciful. Many predators were educated by their masters to become accountants, teachers, trash collectors and other small time jobs Romans would not soil their paws over. A predator slave was evaluated annually and if they were found to be no threat to the Empire, they were ordered released then offered to work for their citizenship as compensation for their years of ill treatment. With predators, Rome was looking to build, expand and cultivate allies and citizens not enemies. Very few predators taken as slaves chose to leave Rome. More than a few became not only rich but eventually attained enough wealth and power to serve in the Senate itself.

        And then….there were the pray mammals. Their lives were a living hell. Rabbits, Pigs, Sheep, Goats, Deer even mice were fodder to be butchered for dinner plates or tortured and worked until they died. Whole industries were built around meat production. Auction houses, stock farms, slaughter houses. Many of Rome’s districts stank of blood and the bi-products of depriving a mammal their life and their identity. Female pray mammals,if they were young, were thrown onto large breeding facilities where they were forced to birth litters of cubs and kits without rest that they knew would end up in a meat market. Many of them found peace in waiting for a Roman guard to fall asleep so they could impale themselves on swords or lances.

       If you were a deer or a goat? you were hitched to carts or sleds and worked till you dropped dead. If you were a pig? You were worked in the mines or thrown to the meat processors. Over half of all prey animal youngsters ended up butchered or thrown into the arena where they were ripped apart by wild feral lions and Mastiff dogs. Around the city were meat shops called the “captionem ostium commutationem” or “Trap door exchanges” where prey youngsters were bid upon as they stood on extended platforms out from a stage and forced to expose and dance themselves before salivating predators. A winning bid meant a noose around the neck and slow strangulation as the trap door below the feet slowly gave way. The crowd of predators who gathered around the stand reveled in the awe of watching a poor prey child cry, struggle, suffer and lose their bowels as they died swinging.

         Cubs were cooked alive in ovens or skewered skillfully through their tail holes and out their mouths so they would struggle and scream as they were cooked to death. To Rome...pray animals were created to be harvested, exploited, abused and eaten. Yet one incident involving a pray mammal was a noted exception. That prey Mammal was the most gifted genius of the Common Middle age, Archimedes.

        Archimedes lived in a rare society for the Common Middle Age, the Seleucid Incorporation, a mixed predator/ pray safe haven fashioned by mammals determined to stand against the brutality and might of Rome. The Seleucid held out for a long time against continued Roman attempts to attack their city because of the genius of the near hermit like old bunny who devised defenses no one had seen or experienced, among them the famous Archimedian death ray that harnessed the suns power to set wolves on fire. The Death Ray and other inventions of Archimedes caused so much trouble for Rome that the Senate decreed at any cost that Archimedes must be taken alive.

      So it was that a pro-counsel named Marcus Numonis led two legions against Seleuca, the small city state and by infiltration through the water supply below, he conducted a night assault. His legionares killed the gate guards, opened the gates and the legions set upon the poor Selucids in an orgy of murder while searching for the famous genius. Problem was? The Romans were absolutely blinded by their hate of pray mammals and of course Archimedes….was a pray mammal.

      A solitary Wolf happened to come upon the great genius by chance. He stumbled into a large room where, on the floor, a massive math problem was written in chalk with the genius toiling away at it. So much for two plus two equals four….the soldier only saw a tasty food item with chalk in his paws…

     The Roman solider pushed Archimedes and demanded to know where Archimedes was. The old bunny simply replied...”Go away, can’t you see I am busy?”

    The soldier with one swipe of his sword, chopped the great genius’s head off.

    Moments later, one of Archimedes’s students, just happened to be a fox, came into the room and recoiled in horror. “Father! You’ve killed the genius!” The fox yelped.

    The soldier snatched the fox up by his neck and demanded to know where Archimedes could be found. When the fox pointed to the decapitated body on the floor...the soldier slit his throat.

    In their blindness, two Roman legions deprived Rome and the world of the most talented mammals of the age. They set Selucia to the torch and burned a wealth of ancient knowledge.

    The Senate however, understood completely and flew into a rage when they found out Archimedes had been killed. The wolf who killed him was de-fanged, de-clawed, Neutered and thrown out of Rome along with Marcus Numonis. It was probably the only time any Romans cared for a pray mammal’s death.

Next: The rise and fall of Cesar, the apex of empire.

    Before we continue….we must review how Lupinian Roman Government and governance morphed from the beginning with Romulus to the beginning of the end of Republican government in activity even though it continued as a sort of red curtain hiding a puppet master who manipulated a vision the masses were drawn to  watch.

    In the beginning with Romulus to the end of monarchy, The king was at the top and the Senate, the immediate representation of the populace or “Plebes” was below the King. Only those families identified as the founding families of the city state, wolves of course called the Patritian or Patriarchas (Parents), could be members of the Senate at first. Plebes and peasantry were excluded from ever moving up to the social status required to hold Senatorial office. At first the King was the judiciary who heard the petitions and the concerns of the plebes in disputes and could render judgments. The last king of Rome, who was an absolute tyrant...killed that concept.

     With the death of the monarchy and the ascendancy of representative republican government, The state government body was re-organized into three separate but equal bodies with the powers in hand to check the power of the other two. 

    The Executas or Executive branch was composed of two Counsulari or counsels elected by the people and approved by the Senate to hold office for one year. The Counsels ran the foreign policy of the state and the military affairs such as commanding legions in combat.

    The Senate of course was made up of the Praetorian class, the nobility. The Senate created laws, governed the exercise of foreign policy and more often than not...served their own interests and aggrandizement over the citizens. The Plebes, the Tribunes and the Senate were always at each others throats as the Senate tried constantly to increase their power over that promised to the plebian masses.

    The Judaci or Judicial Branch was composed of Tributaris or Tribunes who served both to represent the legal concerns of the Plebes to the Senate and act as judges in affairs of law. The Tribunes could come from the upper strata of the Plebes (Lawyers, business owners, trade guild leaders) and were chosen basically for life or until they were found to be corrupt.

     From the beginning of the Republic, voting was the most cherished right of the citizens. And of course over time...because oversight suffered hand in hand with the expansion of a horrific Middle Age bureaucracy, Voting was slowly being undermined and this eventually led to violence in the streets. The Second Roman Civil War came as the result of voting fraud which nullified the election of two popular counsels, replacing them with two inept candidates voted into office by the senate just in time for the first of two bloody slave revolts. The first was in the year 370 led by the scourge of Rome...Bambinus Blacktail and his lieutenant Ronocellus. But that is for another writing. Needless to say...like most slave revolt leaders, Bambinus didn’t die peacefully...he died being eaten piece by piece...alive as his body was cut apart in the celebratory banquet!

     It was because of the year 370 slave revolt that the course was set for the appearance of Julius Cesar on the Roman stage, but we must digress a little backwards in time to cover a wolf who had a yet unseen paw in helping Cesar to power. That wolf was Counsel Sinius Mesalla Mawlus, the father of the heavy mobile strike legions. But he’s not remembered so much for how he re-shaped the Legions to fight in the wake of the war with Tantorius Getorex in the year 237 as much as where they would owe their allegiance and where they came form.

     Mawlus made two important and far reaching changes to the Legionare system. He turned the army from one stacked only with the rich and privileged families to a career long, open to all, professional army with poor and rich members alike. It would also be the soul responsibility of the reigning Counsels of Rome to equip, train and care for these legions….including giving retirement benefits; which for Rome meant land ownership and certainly there was plenty of land to be given out...as most of it had been inhabited by pray mammals or subjugated city and nation states.

     Mawlus turned the legions into efficient machines of death and destruction but he also made them dangerous to the Republic as legionaries didn’t owe their lives and fortunes to the command of the State but to the Counsel who oversaw them. As would happen with Cesar...a counsel with a good education in oratory skills, was dangerous as a serpent. Only a strand of hair kept the counsels from turning their legions on the state and after the disaster of the slave revolt in 370, a counsel named Sulivas Graka became the first Legionary General to violate the sacred enclave of Rome like a drooling beast bent on raping a virgin.

      After defeating Bambinus and his slave army, Graka wanted the Senate purged as he blamed them directly not only for the corruption that had caused his loss in the previous election (that led to the slave revolt disaster) but for daring to tell him that there would be no restored elections for the next two years and that he had to resign his Counsel-ship and wait for the restored election cycle. Graka wasn’t going to wait for anything. Under the banner of “Send the patrician criminals to hell!” and “Return the voice to the Plebes!” Graka became the first Counsel of Rome to march his legions into the city, forcing the Senate to run for their lives and opening by force the participation in the Senate by the plebes, the citizenry.

      Now Graka did promise that his actions were justified, they were only temporary to restore the spirit of the Roman constitution and he would abide by the results and the law to disband his army...once the election was held between himself and a populace candidate. That candidate called by a reading of noisy cheer reactions to the calling of several names, fell to a wolf named Haroldius Augustinian Graylus. Graylus wasn’t a politician as much as he was a successful banker whom the Plebes had great respect for because he was a well known philanthropist, especially when it came to veterans of the legion. His affections for the soldiery had their ties to his older son Williamus who at the time Haroldius was being chosen, was off on a far distant campaign with a wolf and pro-counsel Haroldius patronized…

Julius Cesar.

       By now perhaps you must be thinking...Graka has some legitimate beefs here, he sounds totally sincere, he’s calling for an election and has asked the plebes to present a rival candidate for election. This Graka isn’t so bad….

      Oh yes he was. Did you really think for one moment that Graka didn’t have the playing deck staked to his favor? Second only to Cesar, Graka had great oration skills, he was said to have a golden lyre for a mouth, and he was super ambitious. Yet….smooth talking doesn’t mean you’re going to escape scrutiny. So while Graka’s putting this all together, a herald (a messenger) is riding his horse south towards what’s now the tri-buroughs where another well known general is sitting with three full legions. This General is Cassius Pompeii. You can imagine how long it will take the Herald to reach him in this age of super slow snail mail. And by the way? Graka hates Cesar and Pompeii hates Cesar and Graka and Cesar’s super ambitious like he’s addicted to Savage serum. This has all the trappings of a three way cage match. It’s going to get very messy.

         Haroldius is caught in the middle of this crazy frakus of course and when he and Graka are in the forum debating, yes our ancestors did political debates, he brings up the notion that there should be a third party of overseers to this haste-fully cobbled together election to assure the nerves of the plebes and the nobility that everything is on the level...it’s only fair right?

        Except….Haroldius has been stacking the decks too….with Cesar’s supporters. And...Graka doesn’t know Haroldius is a patron of Cesar...at least not for the moment. This is really going to get messy. Except this whole crazy course of events is to intricate and too long for this writing so I will give you the quick summation.

       Cesar wins. Graka commits suicide, Pompeii flees to what today is the Outback Islands, Cesar chases Pompeii, Pompeii is killed by the natives, Cesar falls in love with a stunning female fox…

       Result…Cesar becomes a dictator and the Republic is…..dead, at least physically so. Keep in mind that curtain/puppet master concept I spoke of earlier. And it won’t be long before Cesar...because of his hyper ambition...will turn on his sponsor Haroldius and set himself up for assassination and as a result...Lupinian Rome will begin the downward side of its’ roller coaster peak.

Next: The bridge and Cesar masters Rome.

    Before we come to the assassination of Cesar, we must go back 70 years before the year 370 slave revolt to year 300 when Rome faced a crisis. In the space of time between the attack by the Tusker Confederation in the years 237 to 245, the Tuskers sought to deprive Rome of her abundance in pray mammals on which the growing Republic required for both food and slave labor. The Tuskers invited desperate pray mammals to escape to their territory to the north, a vast expanse of wild wilderness beyond a natural defensive boarder, the mighty Roana River. Until Cesar...five Roman counsels would try to forge the unpredictable currents of the Roana with the forces needed for invasion. Five times those counsels were returned to Rome with their legions and their bodies cut to shreds. With pray mammals fleeing in great numbers, the predators of the Roman Republic could not survive long as they would be forced to deplete their on hand stocks of pray food and slaves. But of course the Romans were not ones to sit and belly ache on their troubles. Here was the birth of the Roman Navy.

       But although the Navy could extend both conquest to other lands and provide Rome with abundant fish from the seas, that alone would not sustain the Republic. The answer lay in conquest of the Tusker land called by the Romans, Ispania. Other Roman generals thought the feat too impossible but they weren’t Julius Cesar.

     Cesar was unlike any Wolf general in the classical Lupinian sense. Born into lowly peasant stock, Cesar was a furnace when it came to both ruthlessness and ambition. He had an exceptionally keen mind which was fast thinking, fast adapting and as voluminous as a modern zip drive when it came to storing and recalling information. Above all else? Cesar listened to anyone who offered counsel, ideas or advice be they a lowly slave or a Patriarch…

     “All crawlers and critters are my superiors, that I may learn from them.” Was a standard that Cesar lived by. In oration he was astounding, in leadership he was unmatched, in brute force of will? If he’d ordered his legions to capture hell, they could probably have done it without batting an eye because they always knew that Cesar was with them.

      In 372, with the Bambinus rebellion in its’ second year, Cesar departed Rome with eight heavy legions 50,000 tigers, Lions, Panthers, Wolves and many other predators and slaves to do that which could not be done. When the Senate demanded to know his plans, Cesar replied simply...”I’m going to the meat market...do not disturb me.”

      He arrived at the southern banks of the Roana River in early year 373 and looked out over the imposing barrier curling his lips as he thought of a way to cross it. Then one day as he sat throwing stones into the water, one of his servants came up to him and tugged on his armor…

      It was an otter named Questriatus who pointed out over the Roana and said to Cesar...”My father? Why do you not bridge it?”

      Cesar simply looked at his servant and replied. “Why don’t you prove that I can?”

      Questriatus fetched a wind of rope and a stone and set out swimming over the Roana. He came back hours later to tell Cesar that though expansive with rough currents, the Roana was only 30 feet deep at best. Cesar went to his Chief engineer with the information. When the engineer told him how stupid it was to trust the advice of a slave? Cesar made his Chief Engineer a slave and his servant Questriatus both a free mammal and his new Chief Engineer.

      The Questria Bridge at Roana became the most amazing marvel of engineering in the Middle Age, not only for its’ design but for the speed in which Caesar built it. Nothing would horrify the Tuskers more as the Romans, with ant like industrial and mechanical efficiency, cut down the forest around them and followed Questriatus’s directions to span across the Ronana. Cesar made sure that the Tuskers and their many inhabitants directed their worry and attention on his building project, enough of a ruse to allow part of his massive force to forge the river farther down stream.

     Cesar gave the mission of the flanking penetration to  Haroldius Augustinian Graylus’s son Williamus Graylus. The order was simple….run wild, rape, kill and sew panic in the enemy rear. Graylus’s two legions, 20,000 troops , after forging the Roana by boats over three nights to the west of the bridge, slammed into the Tusker’s Capital city of Methiolas far to the Tusker rear, just as the Questria Bridge touched the Tusker banks of the river….

     What came after it was a brutal holocaust with the Tusker’s caught in a vice. Cesar personally ripped the tusks out of the great grandson of Tantorius Getorex and roasted him alive over an enormous fire pit stoked with the fat from his entire family. In Year 375, Cesar “pacified” Ispania. It was a year later while ruling over the new province and sending thousands of its’ pray mammals south to be butchered or made slaves that Cesar got word of the turmoil being caused by Graka in Rome. He left Ispania to a confident subordinate and two Legions while his remaining force sped south towards Rome.

      As Cesar began his march back to Rome however...Cassius Pompeii was already on the outskirts of the city demanding that Graka disband his legions and step down from his self-proclamation of dictator. Still unaware that Haroldius Augustinian Graylus was a patron of Cesar and believing that Cesar was still in Ispania, Graka turned to the powerful banker Graylus to help him raise more legionares to face down Pompeii. Haroldius played a very dangerous game between the two powerful counsels, plotting to weaken both of them for Cesar’s arrival.

      Of course Graylus would help Graka fill his ranks...fill them with Cesarian loyalists. On October 28th, year 376 while facing Pompeii’s legions outside of Rome...the Cesarian loyalists triggered a battle while Graka attempted to negotiate a deal with Pompeii. In the midst of this battle...the Cesarians abandoned Graka’s right flank and Pompeii rolled over Graka’s weakened lines like a wheat blade. Graka ran from the battle and promptly hung himself from a tree near the Forum.

      Now for the second time, a Roman general entered the capital city with armed troops and as expected…Pompeii purged the Senate, sent soldiers to kill political opponents and promised the citizens that all would return as it was before….just be patient and don’t be stupid to resist. He then dispatched a herald (a messenger) to find Cesar and warn him to both disband his legions and never show his snoot through the gates of Rome. As if Cesar would listen. What Pompeii didn’t know was that Cesar was already inside the gates. The first indication he had that his position was extremely dangerous was the yellowish glow outside his bedroom window as he slept one night in his mansion. Cesarian loyalists had quietly pounced upon the legionary barracks housing Pompeii’s cavalry troops. They bolted the doors, shuttered and bolted the windows then set the buildings on fire.

      It was a classic ruse tactic. As Pompeii’s forces rose from their sleep to deal with the catastrophe...Cesars legions poured into the city through the four main gates and crashed into the still sleepy legions. Pompeii had been caught naked, his troops were spared if they surrendered, butchered if they did not. Pompeii was forced to flee with his remaining troops to the port of Cortona (Now Sahara Square) where he commandeered five war galleys and sailed into the open sea.

     Cesar turned to his captains and pointed to Williamus Graylus….”You know what must be done? Set yourself to the task and don’t disappoint me. Care for Rome, I chase after Pompeii.”

 the White Siren seduces a Roman gawd.

     We’ve come to this point now in Lupinian Rome where Cesar has taken power, left Rome to be “reformed” (air quotes) according to his dictates by his most trusted subordinate Williamus Graylus while Cesar and a legion chase Pompeii across the seas because...Pompeii is a threat. He’s a threat to Cesar more than Rome. So Cesar’s not going to let Pompeii skulk away with his tail between his legs because….like Cesar….Pompeii is a very ambitious bastard.

        Much we know about how Cesar wanted to “shape” or “re-shape” or “Restore” Lupinian Rome’s governmental situation comes not from him but from third sources and they are not very reliable. Sadly with the great Roman fire that happened 200 years after Julius Cesar died, so went the great library and all that collected personal data Cesar wrote? Poof….gone.

        So we have some thought writings from Cesar before this period when he was a mid-ling wolf, some of his campaign writings when he was trotting around with the Legions and even with this we don’t have a clear idea of Cesar’s vision.

        We do know that he wanted to get rid of the counsel system. His proposal to the Senate was that he would serve four years to get things hammered out like corruption, favoritism, vote buying, influence peddling and then at the end of those four years there would be an election and from that point on a single counsel would serve a two year term and would have to be elected again to serve for two more years and so forth.

        Another idea was taxes upon the wealthy patrician classes which would be deposited into a sort of populace welfare fund which Mammals could petition to if they were in dire straits, predators of course.

       Another thing Cesar suggested “be done” which probably made him a lot of enemies? Place the prey mammals under a government controlled ration system, stop the reckless free for all smorgasbord buffet slaughtering that the predators in Rome had been doing since the founding. For prey mammals it didn’t mean you weren’t going to die...just that you were going to die….a little slower than before. And if you worked in the mines or pulled a cart? Your status wasn’t going to change at all. Cesar saw the writing on the wall...at some point? The supply of pray was going to get pretty skimpy and that was a vulnerability Cesar wanted to manage.

       But the biggest change in the government? The one which probably contributed to Cesar ending up dead? He wanted elections in the Senate to be an annual affair. Not only that? He wanted to allow the plebes to be able to form petition groups to challenge Senators if corruption was suspected. A lot of things were coming together to fashion a wick for a powder keg. The only reason Cesar’s enemies didn’t consider lighting the wick while Cesar was gone? They knew  Williamus Graylus would not play nice with his toys. Remember that individual behind the curtain idea? The senior Graylus was that individual.

      But...onto Pompeii’s dilemma. Pompeii fled to the closest mammal enclave that might offer him salvation. This was the island / continent of Anakato. Now there is no “Anakato” today, this is where the Outback Islands are. The reason Anakato doesn’t exist any more is that at one time it was a huge volcanic caldera and 219 years after Cesar was assassinated in the Roman forum...Anakato blew itself, an the civilization that sat on it...to oblivion.

       And what was interestingly special about Anakato? It was populated by foxes called the Minotians. Now why didn’t Rome invade and slaughter the whole culture? Because the Minotians were skilled in politics, persuasion and hospitality. Basically...they had a lot of things the Lupinian Romans needed, they had the slaves to deliver it and bribery was a cultural specialty.

      Yet as Pompeii approached, the society at that moment was plunged into civil war, actually the result of a violent divorce. The Minotian royal blood line was perpetuated through incest and the latest married pair of foxes had a falling out.

      There was the brother named Palomi who held the throne and had only recently, by the time Pompeii set foot in the harbor of the capital city, booted his sister / wife into the wilderness. Her name was Cassiopeia and if you think generations of incest might end up affecting the gene pool when it came to looks and brains? Well….the affliction missed Cassiopeia. With white fur as white as a cloud or a blanket of snow and an exceptional genius to accompany it? Cassiopeia was both Beautiful and extremely cunning. Her spies reported to her the arrival of this influential Wolf named Pompeii and the situation he had found himself trapped in.

      Cassiopeia set herself to using the unfortunate Pompeii to her advantage knowing that Cesar was hot on his tail and foolishly Palomi had chosen to offer Pompeii protection and deal with the incoming angry war wolf. Palomi installed Pompeii in a guarded family villa north of the capital city. Perhaps someone should have informed the young fox king that the family villa had tunnels running all under it.

     Cassiopeia’s forces caught Pompeii while he slept and dragged him from the villa under the eyes of his remaining troops and into the forest. And there he was garroted to death. You can imagine Palomi’s shock when Cesar entered the palace demanding Pompii be brought to him but there was no Pompeii to speak of. Of course Palomi blamed Cassiopeia.

       Cesar warned Palomi that he had two days to produce Pompeii alive and bring his sister to him or all bets of the Minotian society continuing into the future were off. Cesar retired to his encampment to await the result.

       Did I previously mention that Cassiopeia was not only dangerous and dangerously beautiful but also dangerously daring? Disguised as Minotian traders, two foxes gained entry into the camp, arrived at Cesar’s tent and unrolled the naked fox princess before Cesar’s feet from a rug.

        “Mighty and glorious Wolf.” Cassiopeia said as she bowed herself low before Cesar. I Cassiopeia offer myself to be despoiled at your willing. Do with me as you desire.” She then turned her tail to him and spread herself willingly before him.

       Cesar was taken by the Princesses boldness. He threw a sheet over her rump and pulled her to her feet “And tell me why I shouldn’t turn you back over to your brother the King? The way he explains? You are devil not to be trusted.”

       “Forgive me great Cesar.” Cassiopia replied. “I come bearing news of your enemy Pompeii. My brother is a vile liar and distasteful scum. He killed Pompeii and planned to spoil the body in vile and disgusting ways believing it would curry your favor. He lies! I had the body stolen and prepared as a Roman deserves to be prepared and honored in death.”

        Cesar demanded to see Pompeii’s body. He followed Cassiopeia to where she had spirited away the dead Roman Counsel and sure enough, the body was superbly cared for and prepared for an honorable burial. The elegant and respectful preparations impressed Cesar. 

       “Why did you go to all this trouble? You knew he was my bitter enemy? How do you know I would have treated him as you have so respectfully?” Cesar asked the stunning female fox.

        “Because he is a citizen of Rome and you are its’ dear heart.” Cassiopia replied. By the force of her own will or by the aid of some potion or maybe a pheromone...the white fox had drawn Cesar to her side…

       “It would seem that the wrong member of the family is on the throne.” The great wolf warrior snarled. The next day, Cesar showed up with Cassiopia in Palomei’s throne room along with a beaten and abused fox who fingered both the King and his grand Vizier’s “diabolical plot” to do the most unspeakable horrors upon the former dead Counsel of Rome.

       “So? You dare to even think of debasing the body of a citizen of Rome?” Cesar snarled. He quickly had the two of them taken prisoner and installed Cassiopia on the throne of Minotia. He then had the two horrified foxes put before the legion…

       “Show these curs the joy of Roman hospitality in your tents.” Needless to say...they didn’t last long. Yet their screams as they were abused over and over again were enough to pacify the population of thoughts of revolt. What was left of them was impaled on trees as a clear warning not to anger Cesar. Of course the Minotian civil war was over.

       Cesar spent a year in Minotia getting to know the culture and especially the beauty who had him at her every whim and call. By the time Cesar was getting ready to go back to Rome, he had known her well in her bed and she had bore him a son.

Next: Kill the Heretic, Blasphemer and tyrant with his whore! The death of Cesar.

      All told, it took two years for Cesar to finally get back to Rome and in that time,  Williamus Graylus had stuck firm to implementing the reforms Cesar had tasked him to despite repeated attempts by members of the Senate and the high social classes to bribe and influence him into turning against Cesar for his own dreams and ambitions. He survive two attempts to kill him, one intercepted by his own younger brother Alexander as written by the Roman scribe Scinectaus…

     “Williamus Graylus was making way through the public forum when an assassin, cloaked in his four legged form as a family pet who had slipped from their master, ran through the forum being chased by the screams of his handler. When Williamus grabbed the leash to restrain the animal, the assassin took on his two legged form and prepared to drop a killing blow on the Tribune. The younger Graylus brother Alexander, a playful cub who always carried a wooden gladius, reacted swiftly. Knocking the killing blade from the assassin’s paw while his faithful slave, a young goat, tackled the offending wolf off his feet. The young Alexander then proceeding to beat the assassin to death.” 

       Williamus instituted the prey rationing reforms, the reforms to clamp down on vote buying, influence peddling and corruption and strove to clean both the Senate and the higher classes of those who would resist Cesar’s dictates. Williamus was the public face of Cesar, his father was the figure behind the curtain as both the purse and the silent persuasion. Cesar’s enemies chose to lay low and bide their time till his return.

       Cesar returned as expected with his new wife and his then toddler son in tow yet secretly so. While he might have been able to swoon his own close at hand legions to accept the stunningly beautiful fox queen of Minotia, it would be far different when it came to a populace born, bred and educated to see every fox as a mortal enemy of Rome.

       The city held a great triumph parade for Cesar, a spontaneous entry made mostly from the plebes who saw Cesar as a liberator from what they felt was the ever growing lack of concern and corrupted nature of the patricians and the Senate. The writer Scinectaus described the speech Cesar gave upon his entry into the public forum…

       Cesar stood on the steps of the portico of the temple to the Lupin moon gawd and declared an end to the years of tumult that plagued our dear city. He pardoned his enemies, called us to remember our sacred bonds of pack and paw and promised to hold himself to limited rule until the Republic was again on sure and stable grounding. He adamantly refused calls of monarchy, denied a crown of laurals thrust into the noble Williamus’s paws and affirmed solidly that the law forever bound the high and the low equally and low to those who would alter its’ sacred princepts.The day ended in great joy.”

       Joy perhaps for some, not for all. The next event is clouded in fog, Cesar going to the temple of the Oracle to offer a sacrifice and seek her guidance on the course for Rome once his task was complete. Three days later the Oracle emerged in a flowing gown of white before a throng and pronounced a shocking revelation concerning the founders of Rome, Romulus and Remus. The Writer Scinectarus…

       The holy oracle emerged in a trance before the throng and declared that all which had been handed down concerning the treachery of the fox Genifax. As the oracle related the visions, she declared that the gawds were testing the brothers and they failed this test by becoming angry and turning to violence and murder and that Rome would forever be cursed with the blood of the innocent she had wrongly convicted through Romulus’s attempt to hide his crime. The only remedy lay in clemency and forgiveness and she urged the throng to end the persecution of the foxes and restore their rights as fellow predators. Whatever the Oracle declared was meant to be taken as holy law.

       While the plebes in the majority accepted what the Oracle had declared. The nobility detected a rat. It was well known that Cesar had spent hours in the temple when all one usually did was bring their questions in script and spend less than a few minutes. Given that Cesar was in Minotia for some time...many of the nobles were putting two plus two together and coming up with stink. When Cesar announced the Oracle’s words and declared he would follow her pronouncement to grant clemecy to all foxes within the empire? Stink turned to nose curling. Then…..Cesar produced Cassiopia and their son Cessai. Nose curling turned to teeth snarling rage.

      While he didn’t openly declare Cassiopia his wife, the resemblance of her toddler cub to being part wolf and part fox couldn’t be hidden. One thing to say foxes should be given clemency...another for a wolf to father a filthy hybrid bastard from a fox slut. That was unpardonable. The last insult that struck the match to the wick was when Cesar proposed an “equal alliance” with Minotia. Rome was equal to no one, certainly not equal to filthy foxes, I’m speaking as to Roman superior sentiments.

     The nobles and the members of the Senate who’d been scheming to take Cesar down hinted on a plan to expose Cesar as another monarchical tyrant in waiting plotting with his fox bitch to put their hybrid little bastard on the throne. To do this, the Senate invited Cesar to the Senate house where by unanimous vote they wished to declare Cesar “Dictotatus Eternia” or Dictator for Life which they claimed was a life title that would allow Cesar to continue to advise those counsels that would come after him and his mandates would carry weight, yet Cesar refused the title at first until the Senate debated and decided to put the title on Cesar as a “Name only honorific.” Which gave Cesar a permanent seat in the Senate chamber. Cesar accepted the honorific which sealed his fate.

     The other thing which further sealed Cesars doom was the turning of  Haroldius Augustinian Graylus to the conspiracy because of Cesar’s “putrid” and unforgivable crime of mating with a fox. Yet the elder Graylus hid his secret actions from his older son while grooming his younger son Alexander to be solidly at his father’s side, believing Williamus would naturally stay with his little brother. Not so...Alexander wasn’t stupid. Playing the clueless cub interested more in play and his slave, Alexander was feeding his older brother information.

     Yet the highest level of conspirators themselves were not stupid. There was a plot afoot to murder Cesar by the nobles….just not the time, the place or the stage on which it would happen.

      Three years after Cesar returned from Minotia. The nobles tried one last time to turn Williamus to their side or engineer his death by requesting he appeal to Cesar and turn him from the course of actions he had set himself too. Yet Williamus remained fiercely loyal. The night before his death….Cesar talked long into the night with Williamus. Possibly throwing back and forth contingency plans should some move be made against Cesar or his wife and child.

      The next day. The Senate was to meet in triumvirate session to bestow upon Cesar the honorary title of Dictator of Life. Absent from the occasion was Cassiopia, her son Cessai and Williamus. As Cesar took his place in a chair reserved for him, the President of the Senate read the parchment of proclamation. When he finished and as he was handing the parchment to Cesar’s paws….the Senate President suddenly snatched Cesar’s wrists and proclaimed…

     “Traitors deserve no mercy…..nor do their whores!”

      Senators and nobles sprang from their chairs and plunged their daggers into the  struggling and screaming Cesar. The last as he staggered and stumbled over the blood soaked floor was the senior Haroldius Augustinian Graylus. Cesar cried out as he collapsed into Harolius’s arms….

      “You two my beloved patron?”

      Haroldius snickered back….”Fear not...your whore will be well serviced before she dies. As for your bastard freak? He might take a while. Farewell treasonous wretch. My son Williamus will see well to your slut.”

       Haroldius stabbed Cesar right in the heart and ripped it in two before kicking the body away and joining the angry crowd of senators and nobles in doing all sort of vile abuses upon it. They then threw it from the portico of the Senate house and cried aloud….”Thus this be for tyrants and traitors of Rome!”

Next: The rise of the Cesars, the death of Republica.

      Williamus had indeed turned against Cesar, the brutal proof was made more clear when the young Graylus returned to Rome and held up the blood soaked and abused body of Cassiopia before the throngs in the forum declaring once again that the foxes were engaged in witchcraft and magic potions trying to overthrow the eternal city and its’ citizens. He cut off the white fox queens tail and threw her remains to the crowd to be torn apart among themselves as a sickening trophy.

        Haroldius Augustinian Graylus Immediately invoked emergency powers and seeing that his son was the most able and senior military officer in Rome...for the past years of turmoil had killed off a cream top of tallent, Williamus was named the title of Grand Counsel General of the Legions. The powers of the Senate were forever altered, reduced to working only the affairs of the city.  Haroldius Augustinian Graylus declared himself supreme ruler and took the title of Cesar for himself, becoming Cesar Augustus. His first move….to hunt down and punish every last Cesarian supporter of Julius Cesar and send the Roman Navy and three heavy legions to Minotia to…..as he put it….wipe the tail hole of the world clean of retched red bushy tailed bastards.

        Yet two things erupted to stop Augustus in his tracks. Cesarian supporters attacked the naval yard and the naval boat yard, burning and sinking the Navy’s wooden ships and destroying the boat building yard. Wide spread desertions and acts of dissent sprang up within the legions that took another year to quell. And as if things could not get worse...a plague of rabies swept through Rome. Only by keeping three legions far beyond the city was the threat of attack from some as yet undiscovered enemy prevented while thousands of prey and predators suffered or were forced to be killed when they were beyond hope. Tragically...word reached both Augustus and Williamus of the death of their son and brother Alexander who had only joined the legions himself as a young recruit. Ravaged by the disease, the last time Alexander was seen he was foaming at the mouth and dragging his screaming slave towards a cliff overlooking the Tyber River. For Williamus the loss was devastating made more painful by his father’s absolute callousness. “I can always have another brood.” Augustus is written to have said.

       The reign of Augustus marked the end of the Roman Republic in spirit and physicality. From here on would come the Cesars to the end. Ten would rule over Rome until first she broke in half, then she died. Yet each of these maximum leaders would leave something to be praised while leaving much to be reviled, save two of them and one would be a surprise no one in Rome saw coming.

       Augustus would reign for the next 16 years and yet his plans for Minotia would escape him. He dies in his bed after declaring Williamus his successor. Yet Williamus does something totally unexpected the day after his father dies, He calls for a general election after telling the Senate…

”I’m more a soldier than a bureaucrat, just make sure you find a good bureaucrat because I don’t want to be a bad soldier.”

       In a stunning shock...the next Cesar is not a wolf...but a lion. Cesar Africanus was a well respected jurist and legal-mammal whom the plebes believed was the hope for great reform. Over his 18 year reign...Africanus does reform the criminal justice system, the tort system, even showing some grace for slaves by ordering a two day mandatory period of rest and reduced brutality in corporal punishments the slaves are exposed too. However...He orders the building of a grand new coliseum where predators deemed criminals, innocent or not, and pray animals are thrown before throngs to fight each other or be executed in gruesome spectacles. From this comes the second slave revolt led by a black panther named Spartigira which becomes the most dire threat to Rome since the first Tusker war. Once again, Rome turns to it’s senior warrior, Williamus Graylus and in the resulting bloody meylee with Spartigira...Graylus is killed. Spartigira is wounded by arrows in his legs and is taken prisoner.

      The revolt comes at the worst possible moment for Rome. With legions scattered about the great expanse of the empire, the city is ripe for invasion and invasion comes from the sea as in the middle of the night a fleet of war galleys’ land on the shores of what is now Sahara Square beach. The invasion force rolls over a lightly garrisoned Legionnaire outpost west of Rome yet spares most of the troops inside who look upon the leader of this incursion force with quaking fear. He is a tall white wolf...with a foxes tail. He is Cessai, Son of Cesar and Cassiopeia who has returned to claim his birthright to Rome. He has also brought something the Romans are not used to fighting...horse mounted mobile cavalry….with riding foxes. It is the Minotian cavalry and they make their presence unmistakable when they speed past the gates of Rome and cut down their guards with arrows shot on the run as the Foxes stand on their horse’s backs.

      Africanus sends heralds racing from the city to recall the far flung legions to aid the capital city, the closest legion being that of the wolf vice counsel Restitutious (The 14th heavy legion) less than 20 miles from Rome. Until the fourteenth can arrive, Africanus mobilizes the Pretorian Guards Legion and stacks it with retired veterans, even predator slaves and prisoners. Yet when he calls for Spartagira, offering him clemency in return for his help….Spartagira replies. “The demon of hell is at your door. Perhaps it is not me who should be bowing?”

      Two days later, the Praetorian Guard and Cessai’s force meet out on the fields of Particula (South of Rome which is now Southeast Savana Central) and crash into each other in brutal hand to hand combat while the Minotian cavalry races into, out and around the battle picking off Roman soldiers at will. At one point the Pretorian Guards rally, successfully driving the Minotian cavalry from the field. If the fourteenth legion would show up, victory would surely be in the paws of Rome.

    Sure enough….the flying standards of the fourteeth legion come over a rise in the hill covered ground of the battlefield and the Pretorian Guard surges in a charge against the weakening line of the Minotian infantry. The Writer Scinectarus…

     The Pretorian Guards surge forwards assured that their brothers of the fourteenth would crash into the line of filthy foxes and put those devils to flight. But as some of them watched the fourteenth thunder closer...their standard bearers suddenly threw their flags away, pulled out their Gladius swords and followed after their leader on horseback who screamed out as he waved his own sword…

    FOR CESSAI! FOR THE STATE! FOR THE CITIZENS! KILL THEM IF THEY REFUSE TO SURRENDER!”

    It was Alexander Graylus, once believed to be dead, leading a charge of Cesarian loyalists who had escaped his own father’s treachery. His legion slammed into the Praetorian Guards and they simply melted like wax under hot blades. Africanus and Rome were at the mercy of these new invaders and all expected a gruesome spilling of blood.

Next: The Fox tailed Wolf and the prophet of peace and doom.