Today in town - while battling through crowds of zombie shoppers - I was overcome by a most shocking noise!
Was it a car horn, or perhaps the intruder alarm from a high street shop? Whatever it was, I cannot say.
However, I was struck with a profound understanding that nothing following would be the same again.
"... the most striking phenomenon of all was when the sound of a trumpet rang out from a perfectly clear and cloudless sky with a shrill, prolonged and dismal note so loud that people were driven half crazy with terror. The Etruscan wise men declared that this portent foretold a change over into a new age and a total revolution in the world. According to them there are eight ages in all. In each age the lives and manners of men are different and God has established for each age a definate span of time which is determined by the circuit of the Great Year. Whenever this circuit comes to an end and another begins some marvelious sign appears either on earth or in the heavens so that it becomes at once clear to those that have made a thorough study of the subject that men of a differnt character and way of life have now come into the world and the gods will be either more or less concerned with this new race than they were with their predecessors."
[Plutrach, Life of Sulla, 7]
