Discovery of fresco portraying Dionysian mysteries at Pompeii

“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

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.

Better article with photos: https://eng.obozrevatel.com/section-news/news-bloody-ritual-...

Edit: link fixed

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.

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.

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.

Just stumbled upon an interesting episode in Roman Republic history: The Social War.

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...

> [...] 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?

The painting is described in detail, but there is no photograph of it. Isn't that strange? Did I miss a link somewhere?

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