The title of my blog came from a little truth-or-dare story I wrote as a teenager. The lion's mouth was carved from stone and located in a Mediterranean possibly Italianate city, for where else in the world would such an object be located?
In a sense it was oracular. People came to ask it questions but it never spoke. Those who dared put their hand in the lion's mouth and legend had it that if they entertained falsehood the lion's jaws would clamp shut on their wrists.
The reason I brought this up is that yesterday I discovered via Google that there was a novel published in 1917 called 'Virgilia, or Out Of The Lion's Mouth' by a writer called Felicia Buttz Clark (it's a free Kindle download), so I thought it timely to explain the origins of the title. I've not yet read it but think it's set in ancient Rome on the cusp between paganism and the beginnings of Christianity.
But that's not my story.
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