mouthporn.net
#rome – @zenosanalytic on Tumblr
Avatar

Racing Turtles

@zenosanalytic / zenosanalytic.tumblr.com

"Why run, my little Phoenician?"
Posts
Avatar
reblogged
darkveracity
Avatar
hiljadu
Avatar
dduane

(glancing around in mild bemusement)

Seriously, people. Where do you think we even got the word "sponsor" from?

In its original usage it meant a guarantor: someone who promised you that you were going to get something out of what they were doing.

Throwing a ludus / game or a series of games was expensive. Local (or national) Roman politicians put down good money to pay for the rental of the event space (you think the Colosseum was cheap to rent? Think again. The Imperials who built it liked to make their money back...), the wages (and overtime!) of the hundreds of venue support staff, the fees required by the fighting talent and the schools that owned them (or their own management, if they were free), and so forth.

Whoever was footing the bill for a given Game (or sequence of Games) was formally known by the title sponsor, and got to parade around the arena at the beginning of the game to remind people in the stands just who was fulfilling their civic duty by throwing this entertainment for them. The message was, "I'm doing something for you. Next election, don't forget to do something for me!"

And it was always political. Never lose sight of that. (Especially when a local political party promises to build you a nice new stadium if you elect them. The more some things change, the more they stay the same...)

(cc: @petermorwood) 😏

#hiljadu#Diane Duane#Rome#Advertising#Sponsor#Gladiators#History#Roman Politics#informative reblogs
Avatar
reblogged
arrows-for-pens
Avatar
catominor

i do think theres something sad about how largely only the literature that's considered especially good or important is intentionally preserved. i want to read stuff that ancient people thought sucked enormous balls

Avatar
literaryreference

Time to take this post entirely too seriously:

  1. I often wonder if this is why you so commonly see the sentiment that we are in an era of uniquely bad literature, or at least that the fact that most books don't have artistic aspirations and are not aiming to be anything other than mindless entertainment is new. In fact what's new is the idea that everything is worth preserving (and also the internet making it easier to preserve it). The dumb artistically unambitious trash books of the past have survived only sporadically, because people thought of them as literally disposable.
  2. When I was in college I had a professor who was an expert on detective fiction. He had a longstanding beef with the idea that "Murders in the Rue Morgue" was the first detective story. He thought that it seemed way too polished to be inventing a new genre, and also that the whole orangutan business had the vibe of someone subverting preexisting audience expectations and maybe engaging in a bit of stealth parody. With the help of some student volunteers, he went trawling through old magazines and newspapers and found hundreds of detective stories from the early 1800s that just hadn't garnered enough individual attention to be remembered. This was because most of them sucked balls. He created an online archive of them, so you too can read these mostly terrible stories.
Avatar
zenosanalytic

We actl DO have some idea what ancient audiences read! I'm not going to cite anything here because 1)this was never my specific field so I don't have anything specific in mind and 2)I don't feel like putting that amount of time into this reply, but we've found quite a bit of, essentially, courtroom dramas in North African trash dumps from the Roman era(they actl seem to have had a pretty big impact on Christian Martyr literature!). So: Romans probably would have been big fans of "Law and Order" XD XD

And then there's the "Romance Literature"(literally "Roman Like Literature") of middle and late medieval times(so like: Arthuriana), which has long been known to be inspired by Roman Adventure Fiction. Roman Adventures were bscl colonial fic, and our own pulp Adventure stories aren't TOO far off, from what I've heard: Good Roman Man ends up Stranded Amongst the Foreigners, Woos the Exotic Princess, Kills the Evil Stereotypes, and Makes a Fortune before Returning to Rome And his Upstanding Roman Wife. I've never actl READ a roman adventure, but I've heard/read the Sinbad stories are a good example of what this stuff was like.

Also: Heroic literature. Obvsl this includes The Illiad, The Odyssey, and the REAMS of knockoffs and expansions both had(very little of which survived down to us tho we know OF it from surviving commentaries), but it also includes a fairly unique genre of fic; Heroic Philosopher Stories. The archetype of this is Plato's Socratic writings, though it seems to have, in Roman hands, leaned more heavily on the Martyrdom aspect of Socrates's tale, and less on the philosophical discussion. Again: this seems to have had a big influence on early Christian martyr literature.

#catominor#literaryreference#Ancient Literature#Pulp Fiction#Rome#History#Classical Studies#reblog replies#Our Staff
Avatar
reblogged
arrows-for-pens
Avatar
ancientcharm

3D reconstruction of the palaestra in Baths of emperor Caracalla.

Made by Rome in 3D.

These are some screenshots (extra large images) that I took from the original 360 panorama image by 'Rome in 3D'

The extraordinary work by Rome in 3D team received recognition from scientists in the field of 3D reconstruction, archaeology and topography of Rome.

#ancientcharm#Rome in 3D#:O :O :O#Archaeology#Reconstruction#3D Modeling#The Baths of Caracalla#History#Rome#Gr8 Art#appreciative reblogs#informative reblogs
Avatar
reblogged
a-book-of-creatures
Avatar
teashoesandhair
writerwithproblems-deactivated2 asked:

Do you know anything about Celtic Mythology that you can share with me? I've read a lot of stories and researched about the gods and godesses, and I know that not much is known about druids and gods. I find it very confusing :( Maybe a web page or something? Thank you! :)

Avatar
teashoesandhair answered:

I can tell you some broadly helpful things about Celtic mythology, beyond ‘oh my god the stories are insane’ (because they are totally insane):

  • ignore the Internet. Like legit. It’s devastating how much nonsense there is online about Celtic stuff. According to the Internet, the Celts were some idealised nature-worshipping matriarchal society, which really couldn’t be further from the truth. Because Celtic traditions were ultimately lost to Christianity, which is obviously a very patriarchal institution, it has become understandably popular to view the earlier Celtic world as a more free and liberal place, devoid of the later Christian patriarchy, but it’s sadly as much of a myth as the story of Pwyll and Annwn.Most of the gods who are depicted as nature deities by modern pagans and Celtic enthusiasts were not even remotely linked to nature. Looking at Cernunnos especially as an example of this, there is no evidence at all that he was either a particularly popular god or in any way associated with nature, and yet he is now often thought of as the god of nature across the Celtic world. Women had a pretty hard time of things in much of Celtic society; chastity, purity and modesty were all qualities expected of them, and they were broadly expected to be subservient to their husbands (and woe betide you if you didn’t have one). I do slightly want to bash my head against a wall whenever these drawings of frolicking ‘Celtic goddesses’ show up on my dashboard, proclaimed as ‘the goddess of [insert bullshit field of living here]’, all scantily clad and bestowed with a list of their definitive qualities and their absolute power over nature. BUT I DIGRESS.Whereas a lot of online stuff is great for the study of other religions and traditions, Celtic studies have really suffered from an abundance of wishful misinformation. If you want to find things about Celtic religion that are in any way useful, you unfortunately have to stick to the peer reviewed stuff, or at least check that what you’re reading was written by someone who has a background in actual Celtic studies. It’s a bit of a faff, but as long as you’re careful with what you’re reading, there’s still a lot of interesting stuff out there! 
  • we know nothing. Or at least we know incrementally more than nothing. A lot of stuff written on Celtic mythology is based on speculation, because we don’t have a handy list of written texts from the Celts themselves to draw upon. The written sources, even the really old ones like the Mabinogion, are either dated from way after the dawn of Christianity or were written by people other than the Celts themselves. The Romans, for example, wrote a few things about these exotic and sexy barbarians, mostly in an attempt to portray themselves as being superior and cultured compare to their neighbours, but a lot of it was melodramatic; more of a bodice-ripper type narrative than a historical document. The Romans also used an approach called interpretatio romana, which is really exactly what it sounds like; they used the framework of their own world and tried to place Celtic society into the same boxes. For example, they described some Celtic deities as being Hermes, Jupiter and Cronus. They didn’t mean that the Celts actually worshipped these gods - the Celts had their own polytheistic system - but they were attempting to say ‘OK, this is how we as Romans understand religion, and this is how we’re going to make sense of other religions’. This has the unfortunate effect of modern people reading these texts and thinking ‘the Romans said that the Celts worshipped Hermes - from this, we can reconstruct that the Celts worshipped a trickster god! We know the names of X, Y and Z as Celtic gods, and X must be the trickster’. It’s a dangerous and speculative method, trying to reconstruct the religion from sources that are already tenuous. Therefore, a lot of what we think we know about the Celts isn’t exactly fact; we know a lot about what people wrote and thought about them, but with no accurate personal testimony, it’s hard to translate that into knowing anything concrete about them.
  • Celtic gods were not discrete units. It’s hard to put into words what exactly I mean by that, but I shall try. Whereas in studies of Greco-Roman religion, it can be easy to say things like ‘Athena was the goddess of strategic warfare (amongst other things)’, and thus link a deity inexorably to a field over which they had dominion and control, Celtic gods probably didn’t function in the same way. Instead, they likely functioned more like Egyptian gods, with certain deities linked to or identified with certain regions of the land instead of areas of life. Also like Egyptian gods, there was no one pantheon of gods which all Celtic people worshipped; we don’t have a single godly father like Zeus, or a pantheon of 12 important gods like the Olympians. Instead, we have evidence of literally hundreds of Celtic deities, most only mentioned in one source and then never referenced again, suggesting that gods were localised and specific. There’s no evidence that a family who moved from one end of the country to the other would be familiar with all of the gods of that new location at all. One good example of this is actually Cernunnos. Cernunnos is the name that has been given to a horned god. We do have over 50 statues of this deity (although we only have one instance of the name Cernunnos being applied to this deity), but all of these statues were found in Northern Gaul. So, although Cernunnos is often described as a ‘Celtic god’, implying a wide-reaching cult, all the evidence points to him - or whatever version of him was actually worshipped - being a much more localised deity.  This points to a system whereby what exactly it meant to be religious was very different. Gods were personal and immediate; a man living in the North of Wales would not make an offering to the same god as a man living in the South of Ireland, even if they both wanted to ensure good luck at the weekend’s hunt. And this is why it is irritating when things like ‘Cernunnos, Celtic god of nature’ and ‘Arianrhod, Celtic goddess of the moon’ show up. 
  • on the same note as above, the Mabinogion isn’t a text of Welsh mythology. It’s a text copied and written by Christians, was intended for an esoteric courtly audience, and mixes typical courtly tropes (e.g. the saucy knights and the swooning dames) with some elements of Welsh folklore, but it’s not a book from which we can deduce a whole bunch about what the Welsh pagans actually believed. Even things that are generally accepted to be religious truths, such as Rhiannon being a representation of an important Welsh goddess, aren’t factual - this particular interpretation comes from a dude named WJ Gruffydd, who looked at Irish mythology and decided that Welsh mythology was probably identical. Ireland had a goddess associated with horses named Epona, and Rhiannon in the Mabinogion is shown riding a horse; this, in Gruffydd’s view, was proof that there used to be a Welsh myth where Rhiannon was a horse goddess (and, in his opinion, an actual horse - wtf). There is no evidence whatsoever for this. It was purely conjecture, and yet it’s almost accepted universally as fact.There are some things within the Mabinogion that are pretty obviously derived from Welsh mythology, such as Manawydan fab Llŷr (more on this dude below) but it has been so heavily Christianised and euhemerised (meaning that the original myths have been placed into a real world context) that, with none of the original source materials existing, we should be wary of trying to reconstruct the pagan originals from the Christian adaptations.
  • so, one thing we should remember is that ‘Celtic mythology’ as an entire and whole unit of narrative and belief is a real misnomer. There was never a unified society across the whole of Britain who called themselves the Celts. Instead, there are multiple local and regional traditions which are obviously and inevitably linked; tendencies to name rivers after goddesses believed to live there, some shared gods, and generally accepted societal norms. The term ‘Celt’ has been disputed in terms of who exactly it should apply to, when it should apply, and what it actually means. Different people use it in different ways. It’s a pain in all two of my feet.We have evidence that a lot of their beliefs were shared or derived from the same root - there are obvious similarities and cognates between Welsh and Irish mythology, such as the Irish god Manannán mac Lir and the Welsh king Manawydan fab Llŷr, referenced in the Mabinogion, but this doesn’t mean that they were essentially interchangeable. A lot of older scholars, such as Gruffydd mentioned above, believed that they were, and a lot of what we ‘know’ about Welsh mythology comes from what we do know about Irish mythology. This is Bad Practice with a capital B and P (and also B and S). 
  • there is some actual stuff we can genuinely infer, but I can’t even begin to cover the basics here because I will actually die. If you have any specific questions (e.g. the Celtic ideas of the Otherworld or the roles of male and female deities) then I can do a more focused reply on that! Otherwise, I will leave you with a handy little bibliography.

Sources:

  • Studia Celtica - a journal on Celtic studies, produced in Wales (and annoyingly not available online - the bane of my academic life)
  • The Mabinogion translated by Sioned Davies - this has a really good introduction to Welsh religion and the problems of trying to reconstruct it, as well as a lot of stuff that can be reconstructed. Stay away from Charlotte Guest’s translation if you want a more accurate one.
  • Jeffrey Gantz’s various translations of Welsh and Irish works - he’s done an Irish Mythology compilation with a load of good background and context, available from Penguin. 
  • The Mammoth Book of Celtic Myths and Legends - Peter Berresford-Ellis - this is not a scholarly book and it falls into a lot of the pitfalls I’ve mentioned above, but as long as you’re aware of these pitfalls, it’s a good book for just seeing the narrative traditions .
  • Pagan Britain - Ronald Hutton - useful for seeing some of the modern misinterpretations / reinterpretations of Celtic stuff and how they link to the actual sources. 
  • One final Internet source - the Celtic Encylopaedia! It’s basically a compilation of a lot of out-of-copyright translations of Medieval texts. It’s handy if you want to read more of the stories, but there’s obviously not a great deal of actual info here. 

And now my fingers hurt.

Avatar
#teashoesandhair#The Gaels#~Celtic Myth~#Yeah#:T#even the word 'Celt' is just a Roman pronunciation of a word THEY say some ~Celts~ in Spain described themselves with#it's sort of like the contemporary Japan/Nippon situation in English?#Classical Studies#Classical Gaels#Gaelic Society#of course my using 'Gael' for all of them isn't much better; it's about 1000 years out of date and from northern Britain#but I mean: it's what we call the language group so *Shrug*#History#Rome#Colonialism#Imperialism#Cultural Erasure#informative reblogs
Avatar
reblogged
arrows-for-pens
Avatar
cryptotheism
Anonymous asked:

Was Moses a wizard?

cryptotheism answered:

That's a good question!

I'll point to prof. Gideon Bohak and his book Ancient Jewish Magic, because his discussion about these ancient Jewish holy men (Christ included) was one of the most comprehensive I've seen.

So, Bohak argues no, Moses is not a wizard or a magician. He points to the duel with the Pharaoh's magicians as evidence. The scene acknowledges that the Pharaoh's magicians have some kind of power, but it is wholly lesser than or subservient to God. Moses is a Prophet.

"Well, then whats the difference?" The difference Bohak draws is between how you got your power. Nobody taught Moses how to turn his staff into a snake. His power was in his piety as a conduit for God. Moses can't teach you how to turn staffs into snakes on command, but he can teach you how to be pious.

King Solomon, though, can teach you how to make an incense that wards away sheydim. Solomon is a wizard, because his power lies in wisdom that anyone can theoretically learn.

The reason the bible intentionally draws this distinction between Miracles and Magic is that the ancient Mediterranean was full of magicians and wonder-workers and foreign priests who all had claims of supernatural power. These guys were rivals to Judaism and Christianity.

Its a dynamic you see mirrored in Roman society. Where a "Magician" is really just Their Foreign Barbarous Rituals as compared to our Righteous and Just Roman Religion.

Avatar
#cryptotheism#Abrahimic#Rome#~Barbarians~#Miracles#Magic#Chauvinism#Politics#appreciative reblogs
Avatar
reblogged
roach-works
Avatar
just-late-roman-republic-things

Fanfic tropes for your next ancient Rome AU

Enemies to co-consuls

There was only one curule chair

Shipping war - now with actual warships!

Slow burn (of the Senate house)

Accidental Baby Sacred Chicken Acquisition

No beta we die like a tribune advocating for land reform

Soulmate AU (but your mark just says "Gaius" and isn't helpful at all)

5 6 times Marius got elected consul (+1 time he exploded)

Oops we both got locked in the Senate house after dark

Oops our daggers got mixed up while we were stabbing Caesar and now I need to return this to you

Someone attempts to make pants a fashion statement and chaos ensues

Mistaken identity (due to having 15 guys with the same name in the Senate house)

Alpha/Beta/Omega dynamics (but it's not omegaverse it's just Romans trying to figure out how to pronounce Greek)

Avatar
dduane

cc: @petermorwood

(snicker)

#just late roman things#XD XD XD#Rome#Classicist Jokes#Classical Studies#History#Humor#Fanfic#Tropes#Gr8 Art#appreciative reblogs#frivolous reblogs
Avatar
reblogged
roach-works
Avatar
lesbianshepard

This comparison has been living in my brain for months:

A humorous Roman tombstone from the 1st-2nd century CE:

Translated, the text reads:

Calidius Eroticus made this for himself and Fannia Voluptas while still alive. – Innkeeper! Let’s work out the bill! – You’ve had a sextarius of wine, and bread for one as. Stew, two asses. – Okay. – The girl, eight asses. – That’s okay too. – Hay for the mule, two asses. – The damn mule will bankrupt me!

And a tweet from 2013

#lesbianshepard#Classical Studies#wint#Calidius Eroticus and Fannia Voluptas#My Family is Dying Meme#People is the Same#Rome#Contemporary#Comedy#Gr8 Art#appreciative reblogs
Avatar
reblogged
lifeattomsdiner
Avatar
forthegothicheroine

I’m not a classicist, but I suspect one of the reasons so many of the Greek gods are portrayed so unflatteringly was less because they were seen as villains than because they represented their domains.  Of course Zeus sometimes misuses his power, that’s what a king does.  Of course Artemis’s wrath is wild and painful, that’s what nature can be.  Of course Hades snatched away a young girl from her mother’s arms, that’s what death does.  This is one of the reasons callout posts for some gods comparing them negatively to ‘nicer’ gods are kind of missing the point.

as someone who is partially a classicist, this is a better analysis of Greek mythology as a whole than 99.95% of the takes I’ve seen on here (and a substantial number of the takes I’ve seen in ~academia~)

Avatar
remspeedwagon

People forget that Artemis is the goddess not just of hunting, but also beasts. She’s as responsible for boar that mauled your village doctor as she is the hunt that brings it down

Avatar
st-just

For anyone interested in an essay on a similar topic, may I recomend Brett Devereaux’s Practical Polytheism series?

If the world is full of gods who possess great power, then it is necessary to be on their good side – quite regardless of it they are morally good, have appropriate life philosophies, or anything else. After all, such powerful beings can do you or your community great good or great harm, so it is necessary to be in their good graces or at the very least to not anger them. Consequently, it does not matter if you do not particularly like one god or other. The Greeks quite clearly did not like Ares (the Romans were much more comfortable with Mars), but that doesn’t mean he stopped being powerful and thus needing to be appeased.
Avatar
zenosanalytic

Yeah! Another couple points:

  1. Sometimes the gods are primarily characters in a story, doing something cuz it's good for the story(ie: Ares getting shoved in a pot is funny. Athena showing up to put Ares or Aphrodite in their place while they're having fun slaughtering mortals who can't really fight back is satisfying), and sometimes an author WANTS to portray the gods in an unflattering light(Ovid's Metamorphoses is a good example of this, and some of the stories there seem to be Roman inventions)
  2. Sometimes there is a historical context, in society or practice or belief, for a particular aspect or presentation of a god we no longer have access to, or don't commonly consider. For instance: one popular theory about why Zeus "sleeps around" is that Zeus is a composite of many similar, older, local god-kings who were each seen as the divine ancestor of particular dynasties, which were all later smooshed into Zeus. Athena is named for the city Athens not the other way around, so why is THAT the name everyone calls her?
  3. The Greeks saw the Olympians as not just gods but also people, in the sense of having personalities and particular traits. Artemis turned that man into a deer because he surprised her while she was bathing, and that's a terrifying experience for any woman(and also: a common Rape-theme in Greek stories).

Of course these aren't mutually exclusive: A cheating husband can serve MANY narrative purposes(and PLENTY of Greek authors used Zeus and Hera pretty explicitly to comment on married life or contemporary mores) AND is a rather apt metaphor for a Rain-God spcl when your culture talks about rain DIRECTLY as semen which Fertilizes the fields. The grim fates of Apollo's various paramours characterize HIM, retain a cultural-memory of his more gruesome past as a plague-god, is FUNNY(Apollo, the impossibly beautiful god of Arts, Science, Prophecy, and The Sun, can't get a date), works as a kind of negative parallel to his twin Artemis(she doesn't WANT a lover; he can't GET one. Volcel vs Incel), and also maybe conveys something of the ambiguous feelings ancient Greeks had about prophecy and divine "aid". The Olympians were part of these ppl's culture and daily life in the same was as clothes or food, and they were treated and understood with a similar level of complexity. The way we study Greek myth now -and the way Christianity has recontextualized "religion" as a concept for Euros over the last 2000 years- has a tendency to flatten this out.

#st just#Brett Devereaux#Practical Polytheism#Polytheism#Classical Polytheism#Ancient Greece#Rome#Olympianism#Greek Myth#reblog replies#zA's Endemic Historicality#zA's Exceedingly Amateurish Classicism#zA Opinions#zA Writes
You are using an unsupported browser and things might not work as intended. Please make sure you're using the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, or Edge.
mouthporn.net