Author: Taurobolium.
Title: The Tauroboliad or the Sacrifice of the Constitution. A Satire.
Description: London: Hatchard and Son..., 1831. FIRST AND ONLY EDITION. 12mo, 194 x 119 mms., pp. [v] - viii, 104, original binder's cloth, paper label on spine (faded), uncut and largely unopened with top margin of pp vi-vii carelessly opened, and small circular armorial bookplate (?Elton) on front paste-down end-paper The volume is inscribed by the anonymous author "To the Hereditary Guardians of the British Constitution the Peers of England This Satire is inscribed." In the preface, the author refers the founding of the ceremony of the Taurobolium by Julian the Apostate, alluding to the sacrifice of a bull, which was practiced "rom about AD 160 in the Mediterranean cult of the Great Mother of the Gods. Celebrated primarily among the Romans, the ceremony enjoyed much popularity and may have been introduced by the Roman emperor. The nature and purpose of the ceremony seems to have gradually changed during the late 2nd and 3rd centuries. At the beginning it apparently resembled similar sacrifices performed in the cults of other deities, such as Mithra. By about 300, however, the ceremony had changed drastically. The person dedicating the sacrifice lay in a pit with a perforated board placed over the pit's opening. A bull was slaughtered above him, and the person in the pit bathed in the blood streaming down. Thus the ceremony, perhaps influenced by Christianity, gradually took on the elements of moral purification" (Encyclopedia Britannica). The poem is written in decasyllabic syllabic couplets as a dialogue between a Tory and a Whig, and many of the assertions would not sound out-of-place in the current Brexit debates and debacles.

Keywords: politics government literature


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