[HN Gopher] Divers discover Roman mosaic
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Divers discover Roman mosaic
Author : Brajeshwar
Score : 156 points
Date : 2024-07-30 16:46 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com)
| golergka wrote:
| > During the late Roman Empire, rulers like Julius Caesar
|
| Caesar didn't rule in "late" Roman Empire -- in fact, he didn't
| get to see the empire at all, since the first emperor was his
| successor, Augustus.
| d3w3y wrote:
| These pop-sci and pop-history articles do things like this a
| lot. Sometimes it feels like the days of reliable scientific
| journalism are behind us.
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| The Smithsonian should be ashamed!
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| Augustus IS Julius Caesar, he quite literally inherited the
| name (and all of his great uncle's property).
|
| The full quote is this:
|
| >During the late Roman Empire, rulers like Julius Caesar and
| Nero owned homes in the town, which was known as a destination
| that aristocrats flocked to for drinking, parties and general
| hedonism.
|
| Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (aka Octavian) not only gained his
| great uncle's original property, but he invested quite heavily
| into property and other public works in Baiae with other
| emperors doing the same. Baiae was very much an "imperial city"
| and it definitely kicked off with Octavian.
|
| The city gained much of its notoriety (or negative connotation
| for extravagance) as time went on.
|
| And the sentence says "like", as in "hey reader, here are these
| two pretty familiar names who are not only relevant to the city
| itself, but also can give you an idea of the type of elite
| class we're talking about." It's a pretty succinct way of
| putting it and while reinforcing multiple points at once.
|
| So it's not wrong. If you're going to be pedantic, at least be
| correct.
| bambax wrote:
| Well, no. "Julius Caesar" with no other qualifier is Julius
| Caesar, even if other rulers also used the name. Otherwise it
| would be difficult to differentiate them.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| Well yes, that's quite literally how it worked. When
| Octavian was adopted he literally became Gaius Julius
| Caesar and _technically_ lost the "Octavianus" part of his
| former name; roman names did not work like our modern day
| names.
|
| The article is well constructed for its intended audience
| without getting into largely irrelevant details about the
| story.
|
| It's accurate and purposeful. It's certainly not incorrect
| by any measure.
| pegasus wrote:
| That's how it worked _then_ (for Romans), but it 's not
| how it works _now_. So when the writer refers to Julius
| Caesar without any other qualifications, he refers to the
| adoptive father of Octavian. It 's a minor nitpick
| though, hardly worth bringing up, but it is correct.
|
| edit: as someone else observed, none of these were part
| of the _late_ Roman Empire. Octavian and Nero lived in
| the early Roman Empire, and Caesar lived during the last
| years of the Republic.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| >That's how it worked then (for Romans), but it's not how
| it works now.
|
| Unfortunately you don't get to flip a switch arbitrarily
| and choose when to be pedantic to make an irrelevant
| point.
|
| >The article is well constructed for its intended
| audience without getting into largely irrelevant details
| about the story.
| pjungwir wrote:
| Nero isn't from the the late Roman Empire either.
| netule wrote:
| Exactly, and Augustus was the _first_ Roman emperor!
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| And you're reading a popsci article by a freelance
| journalist. Stick to the actual important topic instead of
| going "akschually" _WHILE_ being incorrect.
| Thrymr wrote:
| That's about as accurate as saying that John Adams and John
| Quincy Adams were the same person rather than father and son.
| whoknowsidont wrote:
| They didn't have roman names.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, Caesar was just Caesar, the emperors from the dynasty he
| founded continued to use his name, and then the emperors from
| following dynasties "adopted" his name as a title
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caesar_(title))
| 8338550bff96 wrote:
| Which is irrelevant when you explicitly name Julius Caesar.
|
| Fun fact to whip out at parties but not applicable here
| bambax wrote:
| Yes! But the rest of the sentence is equally wrong:
|
| > During the late Roman Empire, rulers like Julius Caesar _and
| Nero_
|
| Nero died in 68 AD: early Roman Empire. In fact he was only the
| 5th Roman emperor.
| Svip wrote:
| Even if we'd argue that the Republic was an empire before it
| was the Empire (which we probably should for other reasons),
| Rome probably at the earliest became an empire in the 300s BCE
| (and that is probably stretching it), and probably stretched to
| the 400s CE (if we ignore the eastern half). But even by that
| count, around 1 CE would at best be the "middle Roman Empire",
| hardly late by any calculation.
| sophacles wrote:
| The Roman Empire is in fact dead. Much like the late Mark Twain
| - rumors of both being dead in 2024 are in no way exagerated.
| 8338550bff96 wrote:
| I had to stop reading and double-check the source of the
| article. Come on, Smithsonian...
| ravenstine wrote:
| Pretty cool find, though I'm not sure I'd describe it as
| "mesmerizing."
| webwielder2 wrote:
| The algorithm gets bored, demands new forms of hyperbole in
| headlines.
| rob74 wrote:
| I'm also not sure if I would describe it as a mosaic, but
| Britannica disagrees with me (" _opus sectile_ , type of mosaic
| work in which figural patterns are composed of pieces of stone
| [...] cut in shapes to fit the component parts of the design"),
| so I guess I have to defer to its opinion...
| prometheus76 wrote:
| I don't anything about "bradyseism", but I am having a hard time
| wrapping my mind around it. From the article: "Due to bradyseism,
| a geological phenomenon in which the ground sinks or rises due to
| pressure changes under the earth's surface, the house ultimately
| fell into the Gulf of Pozzuoli."
|
| How would this happen in such a uniform way, such that the
| precise configuration (and the flatness!) of the floor is
| preserved? Wouldn't this have been an uneven process that would
| have broken the floor apart?
|
| It seems more plausible that this floor being underwater now is
| the result of a rise in sea levels. Can a geologist explain how a
| floor remains flat and a mosaic remains largely intact while
| sinking into the ocean?
| jcims wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradyseism
|
| Seems like a very slow process that happens on a wide scale and
| deep underground.
| bradrn wrote:
| The key bit in that article is this:
|
| > caused by the filling or emptying of an underground magma
| chamber
|
| In this case, the magma chamber underlies the entire area of
| the Phlegraean Fields. As more or less magma enters the
| chamber, the ground in the area slowly moves up or down.
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| If you visit Mycenae in Greece, there are notes for visitors
| there explaining why the Greeks built such a complex city in
| that location, which seems to have no particular importance
| today ... looking out from the city towards the sea is a large
| flat plain. Apparently, when Mycenae was built, almost all of
| that plain was underwater, and the city sat on the edge of the
| ocean. Same process, only in this case, a slow, steady uplift
| out of the sea rather than a descent into it.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I think you could watch some of the youtube videos the
| Professor Shawn Willsey has posted about the Icelandic volcanic
| activity over the last 6 months. As well as lots of cool stuff
| about the actual volcanoes and lava floes there is a lot of
| information about the magma chamber underneath the peninsula
| that is filling up and raising the land in a very measurable
| way. That's over a time scale of months. I think you'll see
| it's very plausible that over decades and centuries the level
| of land can change dramatically with respect to a the local
| 'base' level.
| prometheus76 wrote:
| I understand that land can change levels over time due to
| magma. What is harder for me to understand is land doing so
| in a uniform way that maintains a flat floor and leaving
| intricate mosaic patterns intact. Especially when you take
| into account the earthquakes that would also be a part of a
| magma shift like that.
|
| It's obviously possible, but hard to understand how the
| tensions would be spread evenly as the level raised up and
| down.
| mbreese wrote:
| I know nothing about this specifically. To me, it makes
| sense if you think about just how big these fields are and
| how slow of a process it is. Changes that take place slowly
| over a large area are more likely to cause shifts that seem
| relatively flat at the scale of a house. Another way to say
| it: at the geologic scale, a tile mosaic may as well be a
| point on a plane. Unless there is a fault line at that
| exact position, I can see how the area would move up and
| down relatively uniformly.
|
| What I'd like to know is how long of a process was it
| really to lose a city into the bay. It would have happened
| while people were around, so is there some kind of
| historical record?
| 2dvisio wrote:
| Most likely raise of sea level? Anecdotally, I am originally
| from the south of Italy and at different stages both my father
| and grandfather mentioned to me that the seashore was much
| further away than the current one with the one my father
| recalled midway between the one my grand father remembered and
| the one we have now.
| Alupis wrote:
| > It seems more plausible that this floor being underwater now
| is the result of a rise in sea levels
|
| Ah yes, the "it must be climate change" response. We've been
| "boogey booed" into thinking that is the _first and most likely
| cause_ any time we see an environment change... to the point
| where some people are unwilling or unable to accept the world
| is a constantly changing environment, even without human
| intervention.
|
| Is it really hard to believe if a significant sized piece of
| land sinks, that things on top might just sink in-place too?
| You can look at concrete pads and foundations to see this in
| practice every day. We can also see more sudden and dramatic
| examples with sinkholes (caused by underground erosion of
| limestone and similar).
| tristramb wrote:
| The outline of the submerged Roman port is visible on Google
| maps:
| https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8286245,14.0999983,1769m/dat...
| davidw wrote:
| There were some cool mosaics we saw last summer in Ostia Antica.
| I can't recommend that place enough. Where Rome is crowded and
| super busy, Ostia Antica was relatively calm and low-stress. We
| had plenty of time to wander around and check out all the things.
|
| Most importantly though, since the city was abandoned at roughly
| the same time, it's still an intact city, so you see how
| everything was connected, rather than just a ruin here and a
| temple there. You see it as a complete entity.
| lubujackson wrote:
| I also recommend Ostia Antica. I think it was an easy 1 hour
| bus ride from downtown. It is a full port city, 1 mile long.
| You get a map and full reign to wander around it and explore
| the ruins, including the very cool public bath mosaic. Most of
| the time, we were the only ones in eyesight, so you really feel
| like you have the entire ruins to yourself.
| omnibrain wrote:
| > I think it was an easy 1 hour bus ride from downtown.
|
| You can also take the Roma-Lido train. It's a quicker ride
| and more comfortable than a bus.
| vundercind wrote:
| This seems to be the case a lot of places that're dense with
| cool natural or historical sites. The most-famous sites are so
| crowded they're hard to enjoy, while less-famous sites 80-120%
| as good have almost nobody at them (relatively speaking) so are
| actually way better to visit, even if they're _per se_ a little
| less impressive or important.
| DoneWithAllThat wrote:
| Slightly off topic but that site is everything that is wrong with
| mobile websites. Incredibly short snippets of text intercut with
| ad after ad, the ads pop in late making the text jump around, a
| pop up asking me to sign up for some stupid thing, and finally
| less than thirty seconds into reading it the page is obscured by
| some loading spinner that I do not have time to wait for so I
| navigate away. How stupid this all is.
| Bluestein wrote:
| You username is relevant.-
| layer8 wrote:
| Your criticism is probably correct, but thanks to ad blockers
| I'm not seeing any of it.
| replete wrote:
| All I wanted to know in that article was the depth and distance
| to shore
| mystified5016 wrote:
| I know there are perfectly reasonable explanations, but I still
| find it fascinating and slightly mysterious that so many Roman
| structures are buried underground and/or underwater.
|
| It's crazy to think that there's a whole geologic strata of Roman
| artifacts.
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