[HN Gopher] Roman priest's exceptionally well-preserved remains ...
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Roman priest's exceptionally well-preserved remains found in
Pompeii
Author : benbreen
Score : 95 points
Date : 2021-08-31 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| Grakel wrote:
| Definitely don't take any close up pictures, I'm here for the
| words!
| op00to wrote:
| I wonder what the priest would think if he knew his bones were
| discovered so far into the future...
| raducu wrote:
| Thinking about death, as in complete anihilation is something
| both awe inspiring and frightening to all, isn't it?
|
| I recently visited a salt mine/museum; as soon as I entered the
| enormous chamber with the low-rumbling noises, beautiful
| geological patterns on the wall, I was struck by the feeling
| that this is an inescapable tomb, our fate is sealed, an
| eternity passed before us and an eternity will pass after us,
| billuons upon billions of years and we won't get to experience
| them, we are both so dumb and so lucky not to think about it
| every day.
| aksss wrote:
| What was the salt mine/museum, out of curiosity? Sounds like
| an old IT job I used to have. :D But for reals, it sounds
| like an incredible experience.
| p1mrx wrote:
| I would be more interested in the method by which he obtained
| that information.
| aksss wrote:
| 5th level necromancy. A cleric or paladin can cast Raise
| Dead, takes an hour, consumes a diamond worth 500gp. I mean,
| if we can transport people to other celestial bodies and
| transform the light of the sun into the power of 100 horses,
| should be kinda easy in the scheme of things, no?
| ithkuil wrote:
| By inspection of animal entrails I suppose.
| [deleted]
| olegious wrote:
| The original announcement from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii
| has more and larger pics as well as a video:
| http://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-tomb-of-marcus-ven...
| tryagainacct wrote:
| > The fact that Secundio was buried rather than cremated
| contradicts the long-held idea that Roman funeral rites were
| followed strictly for fear of incurring the wrath of the gods.
|
| > Mount Vesuvius' pyroclastic flows and poisonous fumes killed
| around 2,000 people in Pompeii and the neighboring city of
| Herculaneum.
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| The joke is on you. Correlation does not imply causation.
|
| On a more serious note, I wonder how people reacted to his
| decision to forgo cremation at the time, especially since he is
| a priest himself; and if there were any discussions, even
| privately among his relatives, on how he can get away with it
| because of his status (if this was really the case).
|
| It's for moment like these, not the ones immortalized by
| historians, that I wish there is/was (does it even matter what
| tense to use) a time machine.
| tus89 wrote:
| I don't think strict beliefs and Rome were really a thing until
| a certain Eastern religion took over.
| aksss wrote:
| Christianity wasn't granted legal protection until ~300AD.
| Prior to that, you could say that it was a strict belief that
| Christianity was verboten and its members subject to
| persecution (lions, crosses, etc). It would be another half-
| century before the empire started to codify what
| "Christianity" was in a "strict" sense (Nicaean creed,
| right?).
|
| The time period of Secundio's tomb is around AD 60 or so. As
| the article at pompeiisites.org says, "During the Roman
| period at Pompeii, funeral rites usually involved cremation,
| while only small children were buried." This burial of a 60
| year old man stands out for a few reasons, but one of which
| is that it even exists at all given that it's contrary to
| custom of the pre-Christian age.
| dukeofdoom wrote:
| Every place I visited that had a volcano, has been an amazing
| place filled with natural beauty. Hawaii and Costa Rica, and
| Washington. I can see why people want to live close to them. The
| meadows of Mount Rainier, The hot springs of Arenal Volcano, and
| Haleakala in Maui really stand out in my mind to this day.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > If he chose this manner of burial himself, that "could mean ...
| there was a certain ideological freedom [in Pompeii]," Llorenc
| Alapont, an archaeologist at Universidad Europea de Valencia who
| participated in the excavation, tells ANSA, per Google Translate.
|
| Maybe if you want to report on something someone said in another
| language, have your translation checked by someone who can
| understand that language.
| asveikau wrote:
| Interesting detail. Assuming the original was Catalan or
| Castilian or some other Latin language, I think a machine
| translation of a short phrase about "ideological freedom" is
| likely to be accurate. Most of Europe uses the same handful of
| Greek and Latin roots to express that. (In English we have
| "freedom" from a Germanic root, but you get the idea.)
| dang wrote:
| Please don't pick the most irritating detail in an article and
| then copy it into the thread to complain about it. This leads
| to significantly lower-quality discussion, especially when the
| detail is off topic.
|
| HN threads are sensitive to initial conditions, so this is
| particularly important when there aren't many comments yet.
|
| One thing we're working on learning as a community is how to
| respond to the interesting parts of an article or situation and
| leave superficial provocations alone. Not easy, but important
| for curious conversation.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| Koshkin wrote:
| He was born when Christ was just 10 to 15 years old. Not sure
| why, but this somehow fascinates me.
| adolph wrote:
| Folks interested in this might be interested in the Told in Stone
| YouTube Channel:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/c/toldinstone
| JohnGB wrote:
| This just shows that Zeus is the one true god! /s
| pandemic_region wrote:
| It's amazing how those few strings of hair turned the skeleton
| bones back into a real person for me. Thanks, nice post !
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(page generated 2021-08-31 23:00 UTC)