Who is Marcus Clintonius Americus?

Marcus Clintonius Americus was born toward the end of the 1st century BC. The exact year and place of birth are unknown. He became a favored member of Caesar Augustus’s inner circle, who gave him the cognomen ‘Arbiter’ as he so valued his judgment on many things of concern to Rome’s first “emperor.”

According to legend, he gained immortality and still roams the Earth today due to the imaginative devices of one Asklepios, a brilliant Greek scientist.

Asklepios believed that all mortals have within them an immortal life spirit that departed the body at the moment of death, which he called the “asphyx.”  He thought that if it were possible to capture the asphyx, immediately after it had “shed its mortal coil,” and before it could depart to the hereafter—wherever that might be—the physical body could not complete the death process. Hence: immortality. He dedicated his life to achieving this goal, and legend has it that he succeeded, choosing Clintonius to partner with him in the execution of the experiments. Each in turn subjected the other to a life-terminating trauma, and using the apparatus that Asklepios designed, trapped their respective asphyx's.

What happened in the intervening millennia is unknown, but Clintonius claims to be searching for Asklepios, who holds the key to releasing his asphyx and thus allowing Clintonius to die—which after two thousand years he now craves more than anything.

At some point in his (relatively) recent past, Clintonius jettisoned his cognomen, bestowed by Augustus, in favor of “Americus”—apparently to signify his “conquering” of the New World. It’s assumed this was done sometime in the last 300 years.

Or—Clintonius is actually the dominant personality of a man suffering from dissociative identity disorder.

Wherever the truth may lie, Clintonius has written two books and writes the Substack, The 3rd Rail, formerly blogging on brontis3rdrail.blogspot.com/, hence the book series name: Notes from the 3rd Rail. Though occasionally reverting to his “native” Latin, his writing is contemporary, reflecting his complete adaptation to the modern, English-speaking world. And as might be expected from someone who has lived for two millennia, he bemoans what he perceives as the signs of (another) collapsing civilization, ours. He consistently presents conservative judgments on what he views as the sure signs of the decline and fall of western civilization.