[HN Gopher] Roman priest's exceptionally well-preserved remains ... ___________________________________________________________________ Roman priest's exceptionally well-preserved remains found in Pompeii Author : benbreen Score : 95 points Date : 2021-08-31 16:57 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.smithsonianmag.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.smithsonianmag.com) | Grakel wrote: | Definitely don't take any close up pictures, I'm here for the | words! | op00to wrote: | I wonder what the priest would think if he knew his bones were | discovered so far into the future... | raducu wrote: | Thinking about death, as in complete anihilation is something | both awe inspiring and frightening to all, isn't it? | | I recently visited a salt mine/museum; as soon as I entered the | enormous chamber with the low-rumbling noises, beautiful | geological patterns on the wall, I was struck by the feeling | that this is an inescapable tomb, our fate is sealed, an | eternity passed before us and an eternity will pass after us, | billuons upon billions of years and we won't get to experience | them, we are both so dumb and so lucky not to think about it | every day. | aksss wrote: | What was the salt mine/museum, out of curiosity? Sounds like | an old IT job I used to have. :D But for reals, it sounds | like an incredible experience. | p1mrx wrote: | I would be more interested in the method by which he obtained | that information. | aksss wrote: | 5th level necromancy. A cleric or paladin can cast Raise | Dead, takes an hour, consumes a diamond worth 500gp. I mean, | if we can transport people to other celestial bodies and | transform the light of the sun into the power of 100 horses, | should be kinda easy in the scheme of things, no? | ithkuil wrote: | By inspection of animal entrails I suppose. | [deleted] | olegious wrote: | The original announcement from the Archaeological Park of Pompeii | has more and larger pics as well as a video: | http://pompeiisites.org/en/comunicati/the-tomb-of-marcus-ven... | tryagainacct wrote: | > The fact that Secundio was buried rather than cremated | contradicts the long-held idea that Roman funeral rites were | followed strictly for fear of incurring the wrath of the gods. | | > Mount Vesuvius' pyroclastic flows and poisonous fumes killed | around 2,000 people in Pompeii and the neighboring city of | Herculaneum. | ahmedfromtunis wrote: | The joke is on you. Correlation does not imply causation. | | On a more serious note, I wonder how people reacted to his | decision to forgo cremation at the time, especially since he is | a priest himself; and if there were any discussions, even | privately among his relatives, on how he can get away with it | because of his status (if this was really the case). | | It's for moment like these, not the ones immortalized by | historians, that I wish there is/was (does it even matter what | tense to use) a time machine. | tus89 wrote: | I don't think strict beliefs and Rome were really a thing until | a certain Eastern religion took over. | aksss wrote: | Christianity wasn't granted legal protection until ~300AD. | Prior to that, you could say that it was a strict belief that | Christianity was verboten and its members subject to | persecution (lions, crosses, etc). It would be another half- | century before the empire started to codify what | "Christianity" was in a "strict" sense (Nicaean creed, | right?). | | The time period of Secundio's tomb is around AD 60 or so. As | the article at pompeiisites.org says, "During the Roman | period at Pompeii, funeral rites usually involved cremation, | while only small children were buried." This burial of a 60 | year old man stands out for a few reasons, but one of which | is that it even exists at all given that it's contrary to | custom of the pre-Christian age. | dukeofdoom wrote: | Every place I visited that had a volcano, has been an amazing | place filled with natural beauty. Hawaii and Costa Rica, and | Washington. I can see why people want to live close to them. The | meadows of Mount Rainier, The hot springs of Arenal Volcano, and | Haleakala in Maui really stand out in my mind to this day. | thaumasiotes wrote: | > If he chose this manner of burial himself, that "could mean ... | there was a certain ideological freedom [in Pompeii]," Llorenc | Alapont, an archaeologist at Universidad Europea de Valencia who | participated in the excavation, tells ANSA, per Google Translate. | | Maybe if you want to report on something someone said in another | language, have your translation checked by someone who can | understand that language. | asveikau wrote: | Interesting detail. Assuming the original was Catalan or | Castilian or some other Latin language, I think a machine | translation of a short phrase about "ideological freedom" is | likely to be accurate. Most of Europe uses the same handful of | Greek and Latin roots to express that. (In English we have | "freedom" from a Germanic root, but you get the idea.) | dang wrote: | Please don't pick the most irritating detail in an article and | then copy it into the thread to complain about it. This leads | to significantly lower-quality discussion, especially when the | detail is off topic. | | HN threads are sensitive to initial conditions, so this is | particularly important when there aren't many comments yet. | | One thing we're working on learning as a community is how to | respond to the interesting parts of an article or situation and | leave superficial provocations alone. Not easy, but important | for curious conversation. | | https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html | Koshkin wrote: | He was born when Christ was just 10 to 15 years old. Not sure | why, but this somehow fascinates me. | adolph wrote: | Folks interested in this might be interested in the Told in Stone | YouTube Channel: | | https://www.youtube.com/c/toldinstone | JohnGB wrote: | This just shows that Zeus is the one true god! /s | pandemic_region wrote: | It's amazing how those few strings of hair turned the skeleton | bones back into a real person for me. Thanks, nice post ! ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-08-31 23:00 UTC)