It is 150 BCE. Twenty-year old Quintus Cincinnatus Aemilianus arrives at his family estate in the Etruscan-farmed countryside an hour's ride from Rome to face adult responsibilities. He's a world traveler, senator-in-training, and learned in architecture. But he has only one mission in life: to maintain peace in the home. He believes family harmony is a microcosm of all that exists. He learns his father, a man with Etruscan enemies, is missing. After childhood years spent learning Greek, Latin, and Aramaic from diverse sages in Alexandria, seeking proper, holistic parenting is no problem. He owns the Antikythera device, a mechanism of complicated gears physically representing the Callippic and Saros astronomical cycles. It's not only gears he wants to mesh. It's the human condition. And he looks for patterns in nature. Quintus believes in proper holistic parenting as an adventure within a timeless search for the perfect nurturing mother. His goal and life purpose are achieved through practical deeds. He is an ancient builder of dreams so far ahead of his century, that he finds time travel a gift of destiny. For Quintus, the explorer and observer of comparative thought, the best way to study the human condition is through art. He believes that peace in the home feeds the growth of consciousness.… (more)