The Romula Digest presents
One beam of light. A thousand prayers. Five stars from Plinius.
Docket No. P-001 · Filed at noon, on time
At the heart of Romula stood the Pantheon, and at the heart of the Pantheon stood a hole in the ceiling that the whole city set its watch by. One hundred forty-two feet of perfect dome, open to the sky, and every day at noon the sun laid a single column of light on the marble floor. The temple went quiet. Even the pigeons observed the silence, which tells you everything about how seriously Romula took it.
Engineering · A mystery in marble
No one knows how it stays up. The builders left no notes, only the dome itself, which has now outlasted every engineer who ever studied it. Plinius the Nosy's theory, delivered with total confidence and forty scrolls of supporting material, is "confidence." Livius the Boring wrote a nine-hundred-page treatise on the load-bearing mathematics. Nobody read it. The dome stayed up anyway, which Plinius cites as further evidence.
Theology · The city's beloved minor gods
God of lunch
Offerings: lunch. Response time: immediate. His festival is the best-attended religious event in the city, largely because attendance includes lunch.
Goddess of naps
Her temple is the quietest place in Romula. Her priests communicate entirely in yawns. Maximus Snorus is her high priest by acclamation, a title he accepted in his sleep.
Goddess of fountains
Said to sing through the water. Aqua Marina, Minister of Fountains, tunes every fountain in the city to her pitch each morning.
God of messages
Currently in a labor dispute with himself. Prayers are being answered by tortoise in the interim. Delivery times are up, and so is reliability.
Goddess of marble
Every slab in the city is hers. She is very proud, and she should be. The Minister of Marble leaves her a polishing cloth every evening.
Calendar · The sacred year
The Festival of the First Lunch opened the spring, when the city gathered in the forum to eat together at one enormous table. Flavius Fullbelly gave the blessing. The blessing was "finally."
The Long Nap marked the summer solstice: at noon, the entire city napped. Visitors were warned well in advance. One tourist, misunderstanding, tried to conduct business during the Long Nap and was gently but firmly tucked in.
The Blessing of the Pigeons has grown awkward since the unionization. This year the pigeons sent a representative, who accepted the blessing on behalf of the membership and immediately filed a grievance about the seed quality. Negotiations continue.
Romula fell.
E2 rose.