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Spoilers
Temple of Saturn (a.d. IV Id. Dec.)
You're in the home stretch now. You'll see references in the
scrolls and Acta to the robbery of gold from the Aerarium. But you
won't be using the same entrance as you did for the weights puzzle
in May. Go underneath the stairs of the Temple of Saturn and click
on the vault door there. The combination is CLXV. (Clue: go to the
top of the Arch of Severus using the stairs at the end of the
Lacus Curtius tunnels, only when you get out, turn around again
and you'll see a staircase going up. At the top, you'll see a gold
circle and batons, as well as graffiti saying "Cumae." Cumae was
conquered in the year CLXV, as you'll see from the inscription on
the Golden Milestone near the Aerarium vault door.) Go to the
planetary map and get the ring of Saturn. Go out and up Saturn's
front stairs. Click on the ring; it reappears on the doors, which
open when you click on them. To the left is an anagram/palindrome
puzzle. Solve it by picking up each letter and running it over the
board until it magically appears in several places. Or, enter,
from top to bottom (or left to right), ROTAS, OPERA, TENET,
AREPO,SATOR. Go to the statue; what you do now will determine the
ending of the game:
1. Ignore the statue and proceed to Endgame. (I prefer the ending
that results from this one.)
2. Click on the panel beneath the statue to open it slightly, then
click on your axe to get it out and click on the axe again to
break the panel open. Get the wooden soldier, bone, and scroll.
Proceed to Endgame.
Endgame
Just Hints
Brave the elements.
Not all woods are created equal. (See Gordian's notebook.)
Go out with a bang, but don't give up!
Who left the most toys?
If I were Calamitus, I'd enjoy Winter, where:
I could be rather cutting,
OR
the shinbone's connected to the . . .
Spoilers
Must be completed before Kal. Jan.!
1. Identify the Suspect.
To help identify your suspect, the final scrolls of all five
characters will open simultaneously at some point during
Saturnalia (after Id. Dec.). Each describes what he/she would do
if he/she were the Calamitus and how to stop him/her. Check to
make sure you have all the items they mention: the axe (Lucius --
but if you used the axe in Saturn, make sure you at least have the
bone), the Regia tunnel key(Verania), the "water key" (Xanthus),
the vial (Sibyl), and the counterweight (Gordian). Then look at
the bottom shelf of your storage area; here are all the soldiers
and horses etc. that you haven't had any apparent use for. But
each different item is a symbol for each character, and Cornelius
said in one of his scrolls that the person associated with the
greatest number of crimes must be the Calamitus. The soldiers
stand for Lucius (on his desk in the Wine shop), the acorns for
Verania (on her desk in the House of the Vestal Virgins), the
horses for Xanthus (on his table in the Lacus Curtius lair), the
skull for Sibyl (in the back room of her taberna), and the stylus
for Gordian (on his desk in the Tabularium). If you used the axe
in Saturn, you should have 4 soldiers, 3 horses, 2 acorns, 1
skull, and 1 stylus. Lucius, then, is the Calamitus. If you didn't
use the axe, you'll have 3 soldiers, making Xanthus look like a
likely suspect too, but Lucius is the man. If you stay in the
Forum long enough before going on to the next step, Sibyl
exonerates herself in a final scroll, in which she says that
Cornelius speaks through her "from beyond."
2. The Elements Door.
Go back to Gordian's destroyed temple site (through the rebuilt
arch) and straight ahead to a court yard. To the right is
Cornelius's Elements Door. You'll need to click twice on each of
two of the panels and once on each of the two remaining panels --
it doesn't matter which ones. For example, click twice on the
first panel (upper left), once on the second (upper right), twice
on the third (lower left), and once on the fourth (lower right).
(Clue in Gordian's "Measures" notebook on the properties of wood ñ
he mentions what the door is made of, and in the chart of woods,
the number of times "max" appears is the number of times you
click. There's also a clue in the final scroll in Saturn, assuming
you used the axe and got it.) Turn the door handle and enter. The
Navitor promptly shuts down and explodes, scattering the five
"stop the Calamitus" items on the floor, along with the first
initial of each character's name.
3. Stop the Calamitus.
Clicking on the initials will re-play the "If I Were Calamitus..."
messages. Click on your suspect's item to pick it up.
A. Lucius. If you're going with Lucius (as you should, but the
other endings are fun to see), click on the axe or bone. You
already know from his "If I Were Calamitus" message that he plans
to blow up Cornelius's manure boat in the sewer (the one you
cranked up at the game start, and which powers the Navitor), and
that you can stop him by cutting the boat free with the axe. Go
through the wrecked Ver door and to the left through the old Hiems
door, where the conveyor belt is, and click on the belt. You'll be
transported to the sewer -- the same sewer you entered the game
from. If you chose to keep the axe, get over to the rope holding
up the boat and click on it. The axe cuts the rope, sending the
boat out of the sewer and into the Tiber, where it blows up. This
ending I like best; you'll see the ancient Forum morph into the
way it looks today, in modern Rome. If you went for the bone, go
over to the skeleton and click on the missing thigh. The wall
crashes forward, knocking the boat out of the sewer. This
transforms Rome into an ancient technological Utopia -- the ending
Cornelius would have liked, I think.
B. Xanthus. He's not the right man, but his ending is fun. Click
on the water key and go out through the courtyard. You'll be
transported all the way up the Via Nova stairs and through those
mysterious wooden doors you couldn't do anything with. This is the
Valve House. Click on the machine and the water key appears.
Xanthus says that he can be stopped by rotating the water key "in
the opposite direction" until it runs off the teeth. Remember the
scroll in the Baths. If you turn the key counterclockwise, it
causes a flood, and Byzantium takes over. If you turn it
clockwise, Rome burns, the Goths take over, and Xanthus is made
king.
C. Gordian. Click on the counterweight and try to go out the
courtyard door; you won't even make it, for Rome burns, the Goths
take over, and Xanthus is made king.
D. Verania or Sibyl. Click on their respective items; as with
Gordian, you won't make it out the door. Rome burns and Byzantium
takes over.
Things Not To Bother With
(Semi-Spoilers)
Places you can see but can't get into: The Senate House, the
Temple of Concord, the Tullian Jail, the Temple of Castor and
Pollux, the Cloaca Maxima (no, not even through that grate in the
Lacus Curtius tunnel!), the alcoves along the Via Nova, the Tiber
River, the Temple of Hercules (at the Tiber); the pool in the
House of the Vestal Virgins, the Temple of Jupiter.
Places you've heard about but can't get into: The Valve House
(except during the Xanthus ending), the cistern under the Regia,
the Imperial Palace, the reservoir on the Palatine Hill, the
mundus, the Field of Wickedness (where Verania was buried alive),
the Colosseum.
Places you can get into but that hold nothing of importance
(except possibly generating notebook entries): The Basilica Julia,
the Basilica Aemilia, the Rostra, the top of the Arch of Severus
(unless you really need that clue to the Aerarium door in
December).
Things that do nothing: The gates, stone blocks, and grate in the
Lacus Curtius; the mysterious wooden doors on the stairs of the
Via Nova -- they only open for the Xanthus ending.
Things you can play with but that do nothing important: Most of
the items on the characters' desks make some kind of appropriate
noise when you click on them; the chains across the doorways in
the Lacus Curtius tunnel rattle, and some of the closed gates make
a clanging sound; the livestock in the Cattle Market make barnyard
sounds; wall pictures not mentioned above often display some kind
of fun animation.
Acknowledgments
This Walkthrough was the result of hours of play, but by no means
my own alone. Many thanks to my fellow Citizens of Rome, whose
cleverness in solving the puzzles they generously shared with me
and other desperate gamers by responding to our cries for help on
the Rostra of the S.P.Q.R.TM on-line version and GT Interactive
Software Corp.'s S.P.Q.R.TM Forum. Special thanks to Birba, who
helped me realize that I had not yet lost the game!
Please please PLEASE send your comments, suggestions, and
especially corrections to me at lcantoni@msn.com. Thanks to those
who have already helped me avoid too much embarrassment.
Links To Citizens' Sites
Players of the online version of S.P.Q.R.TM have formed a
tight-knit community of Roman citizens, whose expertise de rerum
romanae is well represented on the World Wide Web. Visit these
sites to enrich your Roman experience:
When in Rome, do as the Romans do and visit FeAudrey's SPQR
Companion Page, (www.techinter.com/~feaudrey/spqrcmpn.htm) chock
full of resources on ancient Rome and the S.P.Q.R.TM on-line
version, including links to esteemed fellow citizens' sites.
L. Aelius Stilo's comprehensive and scholarly Encyclopaedia Romana
(cgi.pathfinder.com/@@sWRDEgcAK6luxzeD/cgi-bin/boards/read/76/85)
is an invaluable compendium, updated in installments, of Roman
history.
Make yourself at home in Rome with M. Didius Festus's lovely
Domus, (plaza.interport.net/logomanc/domus/about.html) where you
can see how the ancient half lived.
The Women of Rome are celebrated in Livia Drusa's
(www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2116/) beautiful and
informative site.
Cave canem at Canis Venaticus's witty version of S.P.Q.R.TM, The
Adventures of Canis Venaticus in the Roman Republic and Empire as
Related and Embellished by Fredericus Pinguinus.
(langmuir.physics.uoguelph.ca/~freddy/)
The Unofficial S.P.Q.R.TM Walkthrough © 1997 Linda Cantoni.
S.P.Q.R. and S.P.Q.R.: the Empire's Darkest Hour are trademarks of
CyberSites, Inc. © 1996
CyberSites, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Temple of Saturn (a.d. IV Id. Dec.)
You're in the home stretch now. You'll see references in the
scrolls and Acta to the robbery of gold from the Aerarium. But you
won't be using the same entrance as you did for the weights puzzle
in May. Go underneath the stairs of the Temple of Saturn and click
on the vault door there. The combination is CLXV. (Clue: go to the
top of the Arch of Severus using the stairs at the end of the
Lacus Curtius tunnels, only when you get out, turn around again
and you'll see a staircase going up. At the top, you'll see a gold
circle and batons, as well as graffiti saying "Cumae." Cumae was
conquered in the year CLXV, as you'll see from the inscription on
the Golden Milestone near the Aerarium vault door.) Go to the
planetary map and get the ring of Saturn. Go out and up Saturn's
front stairs. Click on the ring; it reappears on the doors, which
open when you click on them. To the left is an anagram/palindrome
puzzle. Solve it by picking up each letter and running it over the
board until it magically appears in several places. Or, enter,
from top to bottom (or left to right), ROTAS, OPERA, TENET,
AREPO,SATOR. Go to the statue; what you do now will determine the
ending of the game:
1. Ignore the statue and proceed to Endgame. (I prefer the ending
that results from this one.)
2. Click on the panel beneath the statue to open it slightly, then
click on your axe to get it out and click on the axe again to
break the panel open. Get the wooden soldier, bone, and scroll.
Proceed to Endgame.
Endgame
Just Hints
Brave the elements.
Not all woods are created equal. (See Gordian's notebook.)
Go out with a bang, but don't give up!
Who left the most toys?
If I were Calamitus, I'd enjoy Winter, where:
I could be rather cutting,
OR
the shinbone's connected to the . . .
Spoilers
Must be completed before Kal. Jan.!
1. Identify the Suspect.
To help identify your suspect, the final scrolls of all five
characters will open simultaneously at some point during
Saturnalia (after Id. Dec.). Each describes what he/she would do
if he/she were the Calamitus and how to stop him/her. Check to
make sure you have all the items they mention: the axe (Lucius --
but if you used the axe in Saturn, make sure you at least have the
bone), the Regia tunnel key(Verania), the "water key" (Xanthus),
the vial (Sibyl), and the counterweight (Gordian). Then look at
the bottom shelf of your storage area; here are all the soldiers
and horses etc. that you haven't had any apparent use for. But
each different item is a symbol for each character, and Cornelius
said in one of his scrolls that the person associated with the
greatest number of crimes must be the Calamitus. The soldiers
stand for Lucius (on his desk in the Wine shop), the acorns for
Verania (on her desk in the House of the Vestal Virgins), the
horses for Xanthus (on his table in the Lacus Curtius lair), the
skull for Sibyl (in the back room of her taberna), and the stylus
for Gordian (on his desk in the Tabularium). If you used the axe
in Saturn, you should have 4 soldiers, 3 horses, 2 acorns, 1
skull, and 1 stylus. Lucius, then, is the Calamitus. If you didn't
use the axe, you'll have 3 soldiers, making Xanthus look like a
likely suspect too, but Lucius is the man. If you stay in the
Forum long enough before going on to the next step, Sibyl
exonerates herself in a final scroll, in which she says that
Cornelius speaks through her "from beyond."
2. The Elements Door.
Go back to Gordian's destroyed temple site (through the rebuilt
arch) and straight ahead to a court yard. To the right is
Cornelius's Elements Door. You'll need to click twice on each of
two of the panels and once on each of the two remaining panels --
it doesn't matter which ones. For example, click twice on the
first panel (upper left), once on the second (upper right), twice
on the third (lower left), and once on the fourth (lower right).
(Clue in Gordian's "Measures" notebook on the properties of wood ñ
he mentions what the door is made of, and in the chart of woods,
the number of times "max" appears is the number of times you
click. There's also a clue in the final scroll in Saturn, assuming
you used the axe and got it.) Turn the door handle and enter. The
Navitor promptly shuts down and explodes, scattering the five
"stop the Calamitus" items on the floor, along with the first
initial of each character's name.
3. Stop the Calamitus.
Clicking on the initials will re-play the "If I Were Calamitus..."
messages. Click on your suspect's item to pick it up.
A. Lucius. If you're going with Lucius (as you should, but the
other endings are fun to see), click on the axe or bone. You
already know from his "If I Were Calamitus" message that he plans
to blow up Cornelius's manure boat in the sewer (the one you
cranked up at the game start, and which powers the Navitor), and
that you can stop him by cutting the boat free with the axe. Go
through the wrecked Ver door and to the left through the old Hiems
door, where the conveyor belt is, and click on the belt. You'll be
transported to the sewer -- the same sewer you entered the game
from. If you chose to keep the axe, get over to the rope holding
up the boat and click on it. The axe cuts the rope, sending the
boat out of the sewer and into the Tiber, where it blows up. This
ending I like best; you'll see the ancient Forum morph into the
way it looks today, in modern Rome. If you went for the bone, go
over to the skeleton and click on the missing thigh. The wall
crashes forward, knocking the boat out of the sewer. This
transforms Rome into an ancient technological Utopia -- the ending
Cornelius would have liked, I think.
B. Xanthus. He's not the right man, but his ending is fun. Click
on the water key and go out through the courtyard. You'll be
transported all the way up the Via Nova stairs and through those
mysterious wooden doors you couldn't do anything with. This is the
Valve House. Click on the machine and the water key appears.
Xanthus says that he can be stopped by rotating the water key "in
the opposite direction" until it runs off the teeth. Remember the
scroll in the Baths. If you turn the key counterclockwise, it
causes a flood, and Byzantium takes over. If you turn it
clockwise, Rome burns, the Goths take over, and Xanthus is made
king.
C. Gordian. Click on the counterweight and try to go out the
courtyard door; you won't even make it, for Rome burns, the Goths
take over, and Xanthus is made king.
D. Verania or Sibyl. Click on their respective items; as with
Gordian, you won't make it out the door. Rome burns and Byzantium
takes over.
Things Not To Bother With
(Semi-Spoilers)
Places you can see but can't get into: The Senate House, the
Temple of Concord, the Tullian Jail, the Temple of Castor and
Pollux, the Cloaca Maxima (no, not even through that grate in the
Lacus Curtius tunnel!), the alcoves along the Via Nova, the Tiber
River, the Temple of Hercules (at the Tiber); the pool in the
House of the Vestal Virgins, the Temple of Jupiter.
Places you've heard about but can't get into: The Valve House
(except during the Xanthus ending), the cistern under the Regia,
the Imperial Palace, the reservoir on the Palatine Hill, the
mundus, the Field of Wickedness (where Verania was buried alive),
the Colosseum.
Places you can get into but that hold nothing of importance
(except possibly generating notebook entries): The Basilica Julia,
the Basilica Aemilia, the Rostra, the top of the Arch of Severus
(unless you really need that clue to the Aerarium door in
December).
Things that do nothing: The gates, stone blocks, and grate in the
Lacus Curtius; the mysterious wooden doors on the stairs of the
Via Nova -- they only open for the Xanthus ending.
Things you can play with but that do nothing important: Most of
the items on the characters' desks make some kind of appropriate
noise when you click on them; the chains across the doorways in
the Lacus Curtius tunnel rattle, and some of the closed gates make
a clanging sound; the livestock in the Cattle Market make barnyard
sounds; wall pictures not mentioned above often display some kind
of fun animation.
Acknowledgments
This Walkthrough was the result of hours of play, but by no means
my own alone. Many thanks to my fellow Citizens of Rome, whose
cleverness in solving the puzzles they generously shared with me
and other desperate gamers by responding to our cries for help on
the Rostra of the S.P.Q.R.TM on-line version and GT Interactive
Software Corp.'s S.P.Q.R.TM Forum. Special thanks to Birba, who
helped me realize that I had not yet lost the game!
Please please PLEASE send your comments, suggestions, and
especially corrections to me at lcantoni@msn.com. Thanks to those
who have already helped me avoid too much embarrassment.
Links To Citizens' Sites
Players of the online version of S.P.Q.R.TM have formed a
tight-knit community of Roman citizens, whose expertise de rerum
romanae is well represented on the World Wide Web. Visit these
sites to enrich your Roman experience:
When in Rome, do as the Romans do and visit FeAudrey's SPQR
Companion Page, (www.techinter.com/~feaudrey/spqrcmpn.htm) chock
full of resources on ancient Rome and the S.P.Q.R.TM on-line
version, including links to esteemed fellow citizens' sites.
L. Aelius Stilo's comprehensive and scholarly Encyclopaedia Romana
(cgi.pathfinder.com/@@sWRDEgcAK6luxzeD/cgi-bin/boards/read/76/85)
is an invaluable compendium, updated in installments, of Roman
history.
Make yourself at home in Rome with M. Didius Festus's lovely
Domus, (plaza.interport.net/logomanc/domus/about.html) where you
can see how the ancient half lived.
The Women of Rome are celebrated in Livia Drusa's
(www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/2116/) beautiful and
informative site.
Cave canem at Canis Venaticus's witty version of S.P.Q.R.TM, The
Adventures of Canis Venaticus in the Roman Republic and Empire as
Related and Embellished by Fredericus Pinguinus.
(langmuir.physics.uoguelph.ca/~freddy/)
The Unofficial S.P.Q.R.TM Walkthrough © 1997 Linda Cantoni.
S.P.Q.R. and S.P.Q.R.: the Empire's Darkest Hour are trademarks of
CyberSites, Inc. © 1996
CyberSites, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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