[HN Gopher] Discovery of fresco portraying Dionysian mysteries a...
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Discovery of fresco portraying Dionysian mysteries at Pompeii
Author : dr_dshiv
Score : 144 points
Date : 2025-03-03 07:47 UTC (4 days ago)
(HTM) web link (pompeiisites.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (pompeiisites.org)
| echelon wrote:
| > [...] about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus, the
| god who dies and is reborn and who promises the same destiny to
| his followers.
|
| Sounds an awful lot like Christianity.
|
| I remember growing up, pastors lecturing me that "no other
| religion is like Christianity".
|
| It would appear there are a lot of similarities to contemporary
| cults.
|
| > the frieze can be dated to the 40s-30s BC
|
| > In antiquity, there were a series of cults, including the cult
| of Dionysus, that were only accessible to those who performed an
| initiation ritual, as illustrated in the Pompeian frieze. They
| were known as "mystery cults" because their secrets could only be
| known by initiates. The cults were often linked to the promise of
| a new blissful life, both in this world and in the afterlife.
|
| How related are the ideas of Christianity to these mystery cults?
| jfengel wrote:
| It sounds like a lot of religions. It's a pretty common idea.
|
| Christianity certainly had mystery cults, but so did all of the
| other Mediterranean religions, including its immediate ancestor
| Judaism.
|
| It's hard to tell how much Christianity cribbed from other
| religions and how much is just the same idea recurring over and
| over because it's a common human theme.
|
| Your pastors were wrong to say that Christianity is totally
| unprecedented. But neither is it just a cynical pastiche of
| existing ideas. It arose out of the time and place that
| surrounded its creation. Like all human ideas it's a blend of
| old and new thoughts.
| panagathon wrote:
| You can read Brian Muraresku's The Immortality Key for a
| detailed exploration of this topic.
|
| It certainly isn't beyond criticism, but it's points are
| substantive and well referenced, giving the reader enough scope
| to tackle the controversial points themselves, not just take
| the authors presentation on face value.
| ithkuil wrote:
| A good interview with him:
| https://www.samharris.org/podcasts/making-sense-
| episodes/346...
| felizuno wrote:
| Check out The Immortality Key by Brian Muraresku, it has a few
| theories on through lines. The book is about these mystery
| cults, and specifically how they may have been using and early
| form of LSD. Part of the theory is the classically reported ego
| death experience might be what is referenced by the
| rebirth/resurrection claims. As for overlaps with Christianity,
| there are lots of fun theories including that John the Baptist
| was an initiate and may have actually initiated Jesus. This is
| a little difficult to square with the fact that the greek
| mystery cults claim to have exclusively initiated women, but
| hey they don't call them mystery cults because they are fully
| understood.
| panagathon wrote:
| That's only potentially true for the Dionysian. Others were
| open to both. See 76e in Plato's Meno, for reference.
| dismalaf wrote:
| I mean, there's a bunch of religions that have figures that die
| and are reborn in some way. There's also dharmic religions that
| believe in various degrees of escaping the cycle of death and
| rebirth.
|
| Christianity was somewhat unique to the middle east in
| believing that there would be a final resurrection and earthly
| paradise, versus simply being reborn as a god, having a more
| comfortable underworld existence, etc...
|
| As for Dionysus, he was more of an Osiris-figure... Resurrected
| from pieces in the underworld and his death-rebirth was
| associated with the seasons especially the growing and harvest
| of wine. The practices of the cult was to enter an ecstatic
| frenzy while drinking wine (probably laced with psychedelics).
| If he did influence Christianity it would be to the same degree
| as Osiris, Horus, Inanna or other similar deities. But IMO
| Christianity probably derived from dharmic religions (the
| Buddha was known to early Christians...). But that's another
| topic.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| > Christianity was somewhat unique to the middle east in
| believing that there would be a final resurrection and
| earthly paradise, versus simply being reborn as a god, having
| a more comfortable underworld existence, etc...
|
| I think the final resurrection concept mostly comes from
| Judaism, where the Messiah will come and resurrect the people
| of Israel.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| >> to the same degree as Osiris, Horus, Inanna or other
| similar deities.
|
| The NT arose in a Hellenistic context, but the OT was
| inherently anti-Egypt and that's where you'll see more direct
| references (Book of Exodus, ten plagues, etc.)
|
| By the Apostolic Age/early Church, Egyptian deities were
| syncretized and interpreted by the Greeks, and Egypt was a
| safer place to hang out during the Massacre of the Innocents.
| But Jesus returned home with all the Moses we'd ever need.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| >> no other religion is like Christianity
|
| Isn't that a tautology? LDS, JWs, Messianic Jews, Oneness
| Pentecostals, Iglesia ni Cristo: are they Christianity or
| another religion? How different can a religion be until it
| isn't "like Christianity"? Soundbite doing some heavy lifting
| out of context.
|
| The NT writers used Koine Greek to evangelize a Hellenistic
| world. Anybody from a pagan tradition reading those books
| could've found aspects of Dionysus in Jesus, and because Greek
| Paganism wasn't untrue but simply incomplete, bound to a
| territory and lacking in universality.
|
| Pagans personify and explain nature and the supernatural
| through deities, while for Christians, the Holy Trinity is the
| lens through which we see all truth, beauty and goodness.
| krapp wrote:
| The Trinity is a recent addition to Christian doctrine,
| relatively speaking, and certainly not universal if one
| considers the entire history of the religion.
|
| It is delightfully weird, though, in a "we have polytheism at
| home" kind of way.
| AStonesThrow wrote:
| Many, perhaps most, mainstream Christian churches define
| Christianity as Trinitarian, and that dogma is the "bright
| line" between Us & Them. It's absolutely not "recent".
|
| You're confusing "additions/accretions to doctrine" with
| the way the Church worked in reality. Doctrines and dogmas
| were believed but not defined or formulated until heresies
| and controversies arose.
|
| The _definition_ of a doctrine is a final way to settle a
| controversy in favor of orthodox belief. The definition of
| the Holy Trinity was simply when the reality was put into
| human words.
|
| Lest we forget that the Church produced Scripture, because
| it seems like folly for this to be turned upside down, but
| for 500 years, Scripture has begotten churches.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Christianity has an entire pantheon, and always has. It's
| replete with angels and demons, even a Zoroastrian-like
| evil deity _not to be worshipped_. Multitudes of saints in
| most traditions.
|
| For that matter, they can't even all agree on the name of
| their primary deity, and I think one might be forgiven if
| they were to confuse the many names as not "many names of a
| single deity", but "many names for many deities".
| krapp wrote:
| A lot of this is the result of forcing syncretism with
| pagan religions to more easily convert their adherents.
| Gods become saints or demons and their mythologies
| retconned as needed. Saints Olaf[0] and Brigid[1] being
| two possible examples from Norse and Irish mythology,
| respectively. And from an outside perspective there's
| very little daylight between venerating and praying to
| the saints for intercession, and praying to household
| gods, possibly by design.
|
| Also (more interestingly) there's still evidence in the
| OT of the time when the religious precursor of Judaism
| was polytheist[2][3] ("let us create Man in our image",
| "God has taken his place in the divine council; in the
| midst of the gods he holds judgment.")
|
| [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Olaf
|
| [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brigid
|
| [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahwism
|
| [3]https://old.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/4nys70
| /what_...
| neuronic wrote:
| Appear? One of the only ways to get people to convert was to
| actually take some of their beliefs and traditions and
| assimilate them into Christianity.
|
| Just google how the Christmas tree came to be or better yet
| Christmas itself... the Bible is also just an anthology, a
| politically (!) hand-picked collection of texts, from various
| streams which fit the interests of the dominant sect at the
| time (400+ years after Jesus!).
|
| Also... "Christianity began as an outgrowth of Second Temple
| Judaism,..." [1]
|
| It's all related.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
| gpderetta wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| I'm not sure why you're being down voted. You're not the first
| person to make that observation. There's an actually an ancient
| author who wrote a whole epic about Dionysius and also wrote
| his own version of the Gospel of John. Ideas have always been
| moving around and mixing.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > I remember growing up, pastors lecturing me that "no other
| religion is like Christianity".
|
| These pastors should go back to school; they should have gotten
| education about other religions in their training so that they
| fully understand the origins, similarities and differences
| between them. They should know the origins of their own
| religion, like how the date of Christmas was established in the
| 4th century based on the date of the winter solstice in the
| Roman Empire.
|
| These pastors are reciting dogma instead of learning.
| bjourne wrote:
| That Christmas is a Christianized version of Saturnalia is a
| myth: https://www.thearchaeologist.org/blog/is-christmas-a-
| pagan-r...
| sethammons wrote:
| Interesting read. I'm not convinced. It predicates it's
| assertion on the idea that profits die on the same day they
| were conceived or born. That is a very unconvincing start.
|
| Even if Jesus was born on Christmas, it is undeniable that
| having a similar dated holiday to co-opt is a marketing
| win. Other overlaps exist with stories thousands of years
| older, including virgin births, death and resurrection, and
| dying for humanity.
| wahern wrote:
| It's easier to understand the evidence when you
| appreciate that most early Christians for the first few
| centuries were semitic peoples (Jews, Syrians), Greeks,
| Copts and Berbers in the Levant and North Africa. Even
| the church in Rome used Greek, not Latin, for its liturgy
| until the 3rd century. There are multiple historical
| sources mentioning a March annunciation (i.e. conception)
| and December/January nativity[1] in the 2nd century, well
| over a century, if not two centuries, before Christianity
| was adopted by a significant number of Romans proper.
|
| Alexandria and Antioch were far more influential centers
| of Christian theology and scholarship, where Jewish (and
| related?) and Coptic calendars were the point of
| reference. Moreover, during this time Christian
| theologians were adamant about not mixing pagan Greek and
| Roman practices with Christian practices. And let's not
| forget the persecutions. The Roman calendar and the dates
| of its festivals were largely irrelevant to them in terms
| of establishing mythological dates or community
| festivals. And the nativity just wasn't a very important
| date--and never important enough to be an origin for
| other dates--to Christians until much later, long _after_
| a rough consensus on dates had been established.
| Theologically the annunciation (conception of Christ) was
| vastly more important, second only to easter.
|
| There's significant substantive evidence for these dates
| being established independent of the Roman festival,
| based on transparent and consistent rationales. The only
| real evidence for the date being chosen because of the
| Roman festival is basically a curious coincidence that
| stands out as significant from a Western European
| cultural perspective, rooted in a Roman centric
| historical narrative, by those living many centuries
| later. The coincidence feels particularly strong and
| intuitive in modern times, where Christmas is seemingly
| synonymous with Christianity. Plus, much of the modern
| narrative regarding the origins of Christmas arises from
| attempts by Protestantism to delegitimize Roman
| Catholicism, without appreciating that during this time
| the church in Rome wasn't nearly as preeminent as they
| would become [long] after Constantine. The conception of
| Catholicism as a religion dictated by clergy in Rome who
| could successfully scheme to set a date for Christmas
| comes largely from the Middle Ages, after the Great
| Schism with Constantinople, when Rome no longer had to
| justify itself to any of the other early Christian
| churches. This image was later reinforced and refined by
| Protestantism literally attempting to paint the Catholic
| church as a malevolently scheming institution.
|
| Now, the spring dates for the annunciation and death of
| Christ... you could easily trace it back to pagan
| origins, but rooted in semitic culture, not Roman or even
| Greek. The sources spell this out for you; no need to
| connect the dots.
|
| [1] In some instances the dates were mentioned alongside
| alternative opinions that were significantly different
| (some web articles seem to mention only these non-
| concordant alternatives), but that's beside the point.
| The point is that the relevant dates were rooted at a
| time when most Christians couldn't care less about the
| Roman festival, except in so far as they wanted to
| _avoid_ any conflation.
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| > These pastors are reciting dogma instead of learning.
|
| But isn't that more or less the point? I was raised in that
| tradition (evangelical) and the more you dig, the more you
| find the "simple stuff" isn't quite so 100% true or reliable,
| has a pretty convoluted history, etc.. Which makes you wonder
| and doubt and question, and for me, after seeing what N.A.
| evangelicalism is promoting these days, de-convert. And I
| know I'm not the only one who followed that path - many who
| wanted "a deeper understanding of it all" ended up
| deconverting because the "truths" they were taught weren't
| quite so true after all.
|
| By NOT teaching the historical details and just telling
| pastors the "high school summary" at seminary (in the same
| way that high school students aren't taught full quantum
| mechanics, but still study the basic theories of atoms,
| electrons, orbitals, ...), they can 100% believe and probably
| be more effective. If they 100% believe you're going to hell,
| they will work very hard to save you. If they're "well, the
| Bible borrowed this from these 3 other religions and
| integrated it over time and the current theories are
| different from what they were 30 years ago", they might not
| be as fervent and also be less convincing if they admit their
| doubts to you. Which might also cause you to question, study
| more, deconvert, etc. And there is a huge percentage of
| people who WANT concrete yes/no hard-line answers to
| difficult questions so they can stop thinking about it.
| bjourne wrote:
| What distinguishes Christianity from contemporary pagan cults
| and Judaism are the concepts of sin, repentance, salvation, and
| atonement. In Christian theology God sacrificed Jesus to offer
| people the option of "paying off their sin debts" which they
| otherwise wouldn't have been able to pay. This is in stark
| contrast to the mystery cults for which enlightenment came
| through secret knowledge. Romans in general didn't really think
| in terms of sin.
|
| That said, we don't know exactly what rituals the earliest
| Christians practiced and to outsiders they may have looked
| similar to the rituals of the mystery cults. Especially since
| Christians at times were persecuted all over the Roman empire
| and therefore may have had to keep a low profile.
| bregma wrote:
| Offering a human sacrifice to an angry god to redeem us of
| our sins is not that uncommon and certainly not unique to
| Christianity. Perhaps what makes Christianity unique is the
| ritualistic cannibalism in many major sects, but there is
| much less archaeological remains of such practices in other
| religions and lack of evidence is not proof.
| bjourne wrote:
| Sin is orthogonal to sacrifice. Pagans had sacrifice, but
| not sin. Jews had sacrifice _and_ sin. Christians had sin
| _but not_ sacrifice. That was the whole point of the
| religion, you did not have to "pay up" because God had
| already paid for you. At the time it was a novel (even
| revolutionary) idea and most certainly contributed to
| Christianity spreading so quickly because poor people
| generally had very little to sacrifice.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| What makes Christianity unique is its attempt at
| universalism. Prior to it there weren't really belief systems
| that tried to make a claim to being both exclusively true and
| universal across all people. e.g. Judaism was/is explicitly
| for the Jewish people, the Romans freely borrowed from other
| pantheons and had no concern about other peoples worshiping
| whatever gods they wanted, etc. etc.
|
| Christians are the first major belief system we know of that
| declares not only that it is universal for all humans, but
| that if you don't believe/practice its specific faith you are
| damned, and that it is the duty of every Christian to convert
| others to the faith. This is one of the reasons why many in
| pre-Constantine Rome found it so objectionable and
| disruptive.
|
| Islam obviously followed in the same tradition.
|
| Various strands of Christianity go even further, making your
| _practices_ almost entirely irrelevant and the _inside of
| your thoughts_ being the key determinant on whether you are
| eternally damned or not. Ancient belief systems were very
| concerned about rituals and practices and sacrifices etc, vs
| e.g. strains of modern evangelical Protestantism that is
| obsessed with your feelings /thoughts/internal mental state.
| shrubble wrote:
| No other religion has ever had quite the impact on the world as
| Christianity; but I'm not sure if that's the context of what
| your pastor was saying.
| krapp wrote:
| That's more due to the power of the imperialist governments
| that spread the religion by force rather than any innate
| property of the religion itself.
| amanaplanacanal wrote:
| For me the starkest contrast is that Christianity introduced
| the idea of thoughtcrime, though they didn't call it that. In
| Christianity it is important that you _believe_ the correct
| things, whereas the pagan religions only cared if you performed
| the rituals.
| triyambakam wrote:
| The bolding of certain phrases and words makes me think of how
| many popular language models write. And even more interesting now
| is the skepticism of, "Did a human write this?" I'm not a purist
| and use models at times in my writing, but try to keep it
| matching my own voice and what I would actually say.
| janwillemb wrote:
| This made me also think of an LLM. But looking into their other
| press releases this seems to be their style if writing, also
| for the press releases predating LLMs.
| the-rc wrote:
| This is the way Italians write, especially academics,
| translated into English words. Even in mundane, everyday
| documents the style has plenty of fillers and embellishments,
| unlike the more straightforward one of everyday English.
| darkwater wrote:
| It's just Italian style for this kind of press releases,
| especially if it involves publicly funded studies. Source: I'm
| Italian.
| lurk2 wrote:
| It's like they figured out how to put emphatic hand gestures
| into the written word.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| You're beating around the bush but you seem to want to accuse
| this of being AI generated, just because it's unfamiliar to
| you. I get it though, and it's going to get worse. Was this
| written by an AI? Who knows? Maybe I put all my HN comments
| over the years into an LLM and it's now writing comments for
| me?
| triyambakam wrote:
| No, I was not trying to make that point inadvertently.
| ojo-rojo wrote:
| The painting is described in detail, but there is no photograph
| of it. Isn't that strange? Did I miss a link somewhere?
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Check the bottom of the page.
| ojo-rojo wrote:
| That's what I missed. Very very nice to see the detailed
| photos.
| rob74 wrote:
| Thanks for the pointer! Those photos are the typographical
| version of a post-credits scene in movies - you generally
| don't expect to find something interesting below the listing
| of all participants in the project (even below the social
| media icons!).
| defrost wrote:
| There's a photo at the top of the article:
| https://pompeiisites.org/wp-content/uploads/MegalografiaRegi...
|
| There's an interview held in front:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WK6pisszEyo
|
| and there are other articles with more detailed images:
| https://www.classicult.it/pompei-una-megalografia-dionisiaca...
| monero-xmr wrote:
| The wealthy ancients cared so much about aesthetics. Imagine
| hosting a party in such a room, surrounded by such beauty, the
| paintings, the columns.
|
| I live in a very old home, built by a wealthy man almost 200
| years ago. The cost to rehabilitate this property was staggering
| and I had to pay extra to get foreign workmen to fly in who had
| the skillset necessary to do the work properly. If you have the
| money and appreciate aesthetics, living in an ornate home that is
| beautiful inside and out is a pleasure.
|
| The Scandinavian modern minimalist style is so anathema to me, it
| goes against everything we as humans appreciate. Classical style,
| Greek columns, open spaces, ornate decoration. The ancients
| understood this and modernity forgot what these styles provide to
| the human psyche.
|
| I see these monstrosities for sale in the $5 million+ range that
| wealthy Americans build as new construction. You don't need or
| want ~10,000 sqft. You want livable space that gives you
| emotional resonance. You need a home that is pleasing to work in,
| relax in, sleep in, view externally and internally. I think
| modern society has forgotten so many things. You can build things
| for the same cost that reflect these ideals but for whatever
| reason we don't anymore.
|
| Every room in my house has a vibe. I care very deeply about the
| vibes of every single location. The walls, the art, the motifs,
| how it appears as you walk up the frontage, enter the vestibule,
| the space, what it means. Guests to my home sense this instantly.
| I can't express the pleasure I get from living in a house I have
| perfectly created to my exact intention.
|
| Some people argue it is financially beneficial to rent vs. own. I
| argue the benefit of owning, having exact precision and control
| over every aspect of the surroundings you spend the majority of
| your life in, far surpasses whatever benefit _not_ investing
| money into your own home can provide. I want every moment to be
| surrounded by pleasurable aesthetics as much as I can.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Each to their own - I personally find the ornate decoration,
| richly coloured walls, large pictures etc quite unpleasant,
| almost eerie. It is mentally too noisy and overwhelming - I
| much prefer a simpler approach - not necessarily "minimalist",
| but simple, light and plain are best for me. Calming, relaxing,
| peaceful, quiet.
|
| More important than decoration though for me is the quality of
| the architecture, the quality of the space it self - light,
| human-scale, how you move through the spaces, outlook and views
| etc
| monero-xmr wrote:
| That's a fair argument. If you truly like minimalism and it
| gives you aesthetic pleasure then that is your choice.
|
| I think people like to go into cathedrals, museums, travel
| around Europe, and experience the old world because it
| resonates with them spiritually and emotionally. I live in my
| own version of beauty, which is rare today, but I think far
| more people would prefer to live how I do than the current
| paradigm. I view minimalism as shorthand for "cheap" that
| society has foisted upon us in order to cut costs. Everything
| expensive in terms of time or money that I invest in, I do
| because of the value it provides me
| danans wrote:
| > I view minimalism as shorthand for "cheap" that society
| has foisted upon us in order to cut costs.
|
| Cheap aesthetics (in the sense of quality and
| thoughtfulness, not necessarily $), can be either
| minimalist or ornate.
| brudgers wrote:
| I live in the American west to be surrounded with natural
| beauty.
| 0xEF wrote:
| Interesting take on minimalism, if not a bit at odds with
| my own. Rather than align it with cheapness, I see it as a
| challenge of efficacy in communication, asking how we can
| convey an idea in as few words, symbols or pictures as
| possible and still achieve general understanding. In my
| experience (mostly in writing product manuals and trying to
| keep them from turning into novel-length publications)
| communicating in a minimal way requires far more work. I
| think of the problem of labeling nuclear waste sites as an
| illustration to my point.
|
| You might be right about European tourists, though. I
| appreciate the cathedrals and the like for what they are,
| but my draw to travel in Europe has more to do with the
| reminder and humility that comes with doing something so
| mundane as eating a piece of licorice in a sweets shop
| that's been in operation longer than my country has (US),
| or something to that effect. Things like that are great
| medicine for staying grounded and alleviating symptoms of
| American Exceptionalism.
| vladms wrote:
| Just curious, are you really calm on the long term in a
| minimalist decor? I get that when you look at it at first you
| don't get assaulted by input (as it is minimalist), but can
| you keep an inner peace for long because of the decor?
|
| For me, in such a decorated place, I get a calming effect on
| the longer term by just studying the details, which makes my
| mind not focus on your every day worries (or what stupid
| thing happens somewhere in the world) but rather on other
| questions/observations. Then, when I get back to every day
| worries I can see that maybe my worries were exaggerated,
| misplaced.
| mattlondon wrote:
| Not "minimalist", but simple, plain, neutral: very much
| yes.
|
| Would you say you get a calming effect from studying the
| details of a tiktok or facebook feed? Unlikely I expect.
| Too much going on, too much fighting for attention etc -
| its draining. I cannot see how people can complain about
| how "bad" the modern internet is with social media and then
| decorate their houses the same way?!
| skyyler wrote:
| Comparing beautiful ornamentation to algorithmic content
| feeds is kind of strange to me.
|
| Even if a piece by Heironimus Bosch or Pablo Picasso was
| used as wallpaper, that would be significantly less
| stimulating than an agloslop content feed.
| vladms wrote:
| Would definitely not getting the same effect from a
| tiktok or facebook feed, but static art/decoration are
| quite different from that for me. For one, the art stays
| the same, the only thing you can change are your position
| and the lighting. Second, most art is much less
| political, does not claim to be something it is not and
| does not try to sell you something. So quite some
| advantages.
| mattlondon wrote:
| > Second, most art is much less political, does not claim
| to be something it is not and does not try to sell you
| something
|
| I am not much of an art expert, but pretty much _all_ art
| is about that from what I can recall from school?!
| vladms wrote:
| The discussion started from art inside a house (not like
| a public statue). Lots of art in houses is meant to be
| pretty (think of painting on a wall with a city you love,
| a portrait of some family, an abstract set of colors on a
| canvas, a statue of some Greek hero, etc.). The sale
| process is before you look at it in your home (as opposed
| to social media, where the sale is after you look at it).
|
| Some contemporary artists can try to shock and can engage
| in "political" statements, but I never saw personally any
| such thing in a home. And, anyhow when you talk with such
| artists the points their trying to make are so convoluted
| you need to know all (art) history to get what they are
| trying to say... (which I didn't so they had to explain
| it)
| atomicthumbs wrote:
| >it goes against everything we as humans appreciate. Classical
| style, Greek columns, open spaces, ornate decoration.
|
| Speak for yourself.
| musikele wrote:
| The director, Gabriel Zuchtriegel, wrote a book about Pompeii
| (I don't know if it was translated to English, since I read it
| in Italian), and it described why rich people decorated their
| homes this way. Of course these paintings served to rich
| homeowners to show off their power, but also to have some fun
| during dinners. For example, everybody in ancient Rome knew the
| mith of <name_your_favourite_roman_god>. So, when entering a
| room with a painting of such god on the wall, after a couple of
| glasses with their friends, they'd start arguing, "I understood
| why Jupiter did this and that..." or, sometimes, they painted
| the mith with something odd just to have fun. It was a
| conversation starter, a way to be ironic of life and with
| friends, and a way to enjoy their lives.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Europeans liked to depict the same scenes over and over.
| There must have been hundreds of versions of "The Adoration
| of the Magi" done over the centuries.
| jajko wrote:
| You mean actual old home say in Italy or Greece or some cheap
| 'me-too' mcmansion copies in US?
|
| If that works for you thats fine, but to many Europeans this
| looks very cheap and bland copy, like building a stone medieval
| castle in suburban US. Having 'greek columns' anywhere apart
| where they were built 2000 years ago is tasteless to me for
| example.
|
| Also there is huge room between ornate and minimalist, where
| most people fall re design taste. I'd say minimalist is for
| folks who derive their happiness from other aspects of their
| lives compared to real estate, which is generally a good
| approach regardless.
|
| But thats us Europeans, we like originality and appreciate and
| respect utmostly where it came from, be it food or culture.
| trgn wrote:
| > Having 'greek columns' anywhere apart where they were built
| 2000 years ago is tasteless to me
|
| so all the revivals are tacky? e.g. all buildings of
| importance before 1920 in american and european cities are
| tacky?
| sureIy wrote:
| As you said, maintaining that costs more than a coat of white
| paint every 5 years.
|
| I envy the artists who have a sense of style in their living
| spaces, but also I gradually emptied my childhood room as I
| grew up as I could not stand the clutter -- or jut the cleaning
| part.
|
| Then you have to consider that the majority of people have
| absolutely no taste and a minimal home is their best bet at
| _tasteful living spaces._ The second choice would probably be
| green walls and red couches.
| sapphicsnail wrote:
| Just want to add that there is no one thing that is Greek
| Paganism or Christianity. Any belief system of sufficient age is
| incredibly diverse and I'd be wary of people online making big
| generalizing statements about them.
|
| There's actually an epic called the Dionysiaca, about Dionysius,
| that's longer than the Iliad and Odyssey combined. I think
| there's still only one English translation of it but it's pretty
| interesting. It has a story of Dionysius being reborn that might
| be related to this.
| wdutch wrote:
| Plug for my favourite podcast Literature and History which has
| convered this topic:
| https://literatureandhistory.com/episode-096-the-last-pagan-...
| intrasight wrote:
| Thank you!
| Telemakhos wrote:
| You left out the best part: the author of the Dionysiaca,
| Nonnus of Panopolis, also wrote an abridgment of the Gospel of
| John.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| I've been a student of early christianity (first three
| centuries) for just over a year. The wiki entry on Nonnus is
| scant. Can you please recommend quality literature to learn
| more about the Metabole? It's not clear to me the purpose of
| the text.
| Telemakhos wrote:
| That's not really my area, but I can offer a few. The big
| one would be the new Brill's Companion to Nonnus (2016) and
| anything by Domenico Accorinti, who seems to be the person
| most often working on Nonnus now.
|
| - Accorinti, D. 2020. "Did Nonnus Really Want to Write a
| 'Gospel Epic?' The Amabiguous Genre of the _Paraphrase of
| the Gospel According to John._ In Hadjittofi, F. and
| Lefteratou, A. eds. _The Genres of Late Antique Christian
| Poetry_. Berlin: De Gruyter. 225-48.
|
| - Accorinti, D. 2016. _Brill's Companion to Nonnus of
| Panopolis._ Leiden: Brill.
|
| - Hadjittofi F. 2020. "The Poet and the Evangelist in
| Nonnus' Paraphrase of the Gospel According to John."
| Cambridge Classical Journal 66: 70-95.
| mistrial9 wrote:
| the First Council of Nicaea would like a word with you?
| brendoelfrendo wrote:
| The First Council of Nicaea spoke for some of the Church at
| the time, and became the prevailing position of most
| Christian churches, but it's not a monopoly. Most obviously,
| non-trinitarian Christian churches have popped up
| sporadically since then, and several exist today.
| thenewwazoo wrote:
| I feel like https://xkcd.com/927/ applies
| dr_dshiv wrote:
| "Let us not forget, however, that for the Roman religion,
| conceived as a rigid state religion, the unbridled nature of a
| cult like that of Dionysus was considered dangerous. Arriving
| from Campania, the Dionysian cult spread rapidly to Rome, where
| the famous scandal of the Bacchanalia broke out and the devotees
| were deemed dangerous for the stability of the res publica
| itself.
|
| In 186 BC a famous senatus consultum prohibited the cult of the
| god and prosecuted transgressors. Numerous places of worship were
| destroyed and even death sentences followed. In Pompeii, a
| sanctuary dedicated to the god and dating back to the middle of
| the third century BC remained in operation until the end of the
| city, in 79 AD and Pompeii always showed a fervent and growing
| devotion to the mysterious manifestations of the god."
|
| https://www.classicult.it/pompei-una-megalografia-dionisiaca...
|
| And more from Wikipedia on the cult and its violent suppression--
| nearly 7000 killed.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacchanalia
| techload wrote:
| An interesting account of these related persecutions, etc.:
| LETTER TO A BRAZILIAN MASON UNEXPURGATED:
| http://www.themasonictrowel.com/ebooks/freemasonry/eb0158.pd...
| mistrial9 wrote:
| Blavatsky? Incarnate God? this might be an attempt to smear
| masonry.. what giant quasi-government institution in Brazil
| might have interest in doing that?
| ourmandave wrote:
| Shout out to the Maenads, the OG _Girls Gone Wild_.
|
| Fun times, except they'd occasionally rip dudes limb from limb
| along with the local fauna.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ScBPfrSl6Q
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I'm gonna let all of y'all discuss the religions and cults. I'll
| go off topic for a bit.
|
| I have to put in a plug for all the craftsmen (and women?) who
| did the tile inlay work on those floors. I've seen lots of
| pictures of mosaic floors and I am always impressed by the skills
| of the artists who created those designs and how they were able
| to use colored bits of rock to craft intricate portraits that
| have lasted millenia.
|
| In the last photo of the series you see one of my favorites. The
| section between columns depicting fish in the four corners with
| the circular design using hexagonal symmetry shows how they were
| able to combine elements with entirely different symmetries and
| the fish, which were mirrored corner to corner, and do it
| coherently. I would love to see a photo of the individual tile
| work. The only thing that drives me nuts about that element is
| the placement of the two columns. The artist should've scaled the
| design to fit between the columns so that the column on the right
| overlaps the outside black boundary the same as the left column.
|
| I'm thinking that they used a bottom-up building technique where
| the walls are established and then the floors are laid first and
| then after the walls are complete they add a roof so that the
| column placement comes into play later in the building process.
| This means that the motif is likely complete under those columns
| instead of the floor being tiled up to the columns.
|
| The section between the columns to the left of the fishes is a
| really nice intricate design incorporating small equilateral
| triangles with a central strip that appears to have some Greek
| lettering, perhaps the letters phi or psi. I can't make it out.
|
| Does anyone have an idea about the methods and materials used for
| roof construction? I suspect that timbers were used as you can
| see at the tops of the walls how they would've been spaced by the
| layout of openings that I think would've held the ends of large
| timber beams just above the dark painted columns on the wall. The
| stone columns appear to line up with the nooks so that one can
| picture something akin to a coffered ceiling design where the
| timbers, since they are oriented with their widest sides
| horizontally instead of the stronger vertical orientation, needed
| the column support at intervals to prevent collapse.
|
| I also can appreciate the level of detail work that went into the
| motif that used the squares cut by a small black diagonal on a 45
| degree angle so that the design is a combination of squares and
| right triangles. The thin diagonals are made using individual
| black tiles and the triangles are infilled with similar sized
| white tiles. It's a really nice geometric design that would've
| been easy to lay out and execute if the materials were
| consistently cut. I can imagine the materials list that the tile
| crew would get and how specific the designer would be about tile
| dimensions.
|
| I've done a bit of tile work in the houses that we've owned and
| tried to make each special. Tiling is a lot like needlepoint in
| that you are laying things out on a precise grid and everything
| in the design has a specific location and orientation and the
| sizing of elements really is important to avoid visual artifacts
| that will draw the eye of someone like myself whose eyes are
| magnetically drawn to imperfections. I see all the defects all
| the time. That character defect made me a nice career doing QC
| work though I know that some people hated to discover that I was
| the one checking their work. I get it. It's hard being me
| sometimes and harder to work with me most times.
| krunck wrote:
| The craftsmanship is indeed amazing. But, where did the central
| floor tiles go? Did they decompose? Stolen?
| chrononaut wrote:
| Given that the tiles along parts of the perimeter are intact,
| I imagine the tiles might've shattered in many small pieces
| when the roof collapsed during the eruption, and they didn't
| want to just leave them there during the excavation
| doodlebugging wrote:
| I wondered about that myself and decided that they were
| probably removed by those doing the excavation for
| conservation purposes. If you refer to the 11th photo where
| you are looking diagonally across the room toward the corner
| you can see evidence in the thin accent tiles that the
| collapse of the columns along the right wall and left of the
| corner damaged the floor. Several of those accent tiles are
| broken as if something long crushed them as it landed. It is
| especially noticeable in the lower center foreground where
| there are several crushed tiles.
|
| They have taken care to place their post jacks on a surface
| elevated above the original floor level to avoid disturbing
| the rest of the layout.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Better article with photos: https://eng.obozrevatel.com/section-
| news/news-bloody-ritual-...
|
| Edit: link fixed
| PretzelPirate wrote:
| I think you pasted the wrong link. Your link is about a car.
| zaat wrote:
| One can still hold that it's a better link, it's a matter of
| preference. Anyways, if you scroll the original article to
| the very end it does contain an impressive set of photos. It
| is beautiful.
| velcrovan wrote:
| Maybe they just think theirs is an objectively better
| article, even though their topics differ. And that it also
| has photos.
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