“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.”
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
> [...] 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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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.
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]
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.
Fewer than 180 years before the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Pompeii and Campania had been subjugated by Republican armies after their rebellious insurrection.
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.
[+] [-] dr_dshiv|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] ourmandave|1 year ago|reply
Fun times, except they'd occasionally rip dudes limb from limb along with the local fauna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ScBPfrSl6Q
[+] [-] techload|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sapphicsnail|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Telemakhos|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] wdutch|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] mistrial9|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] monero-xmr|1 year ago|reply
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|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] musikele|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] jajko|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] atomicthumbs|1 year ago|reply
Speak for yourself.
[+] [-] sureIy|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] neuroelectron|1 year ago|reply
Edit: link fixed
[+] [-] PretzelPirate|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] triyambakam|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] the-rc|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] darkwater|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] janwillemb|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] echelon|1 year ago|reply
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|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] bjourne|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] felizuno|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] panagathon|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] amanaplanacanal|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] sapphicsnail|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] dismalaf|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] Cthulhu_|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] shrubble|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] neuronic|1 year ago|reply
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
[+] [-] AStonesThrow|1 year ago|reply
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.
[+] [-] AStonesThrow|1 year ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_War_(91%E2%80%9387_BC)
Pompeii and Herculaneum are identified as “having joined insurgents” (see color coded map)!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pompeii#The_Roman_period
Fewer than 180 years before the catastrophic eruption of Mt. Vesuvius, Pompeii and Campania had been subjugated by Republican armies after their rebellious insurrection.
Here, have a erudite post-punk music video (1986) about the eruption: https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=wsOHvP1XnRg&si=kNoAj2scal8...
[+] [-] doodlebugging|1 year ago|reply
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|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] ojo-rojo|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] defrost|1 year ago|reply
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...
[+] [-] Jtsummers|1 year ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] curtisszmania|1 year ago|reply
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[+] [-] eurekabot123|1 year ago|reply
[deleted]