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PittTheElder
Feb 13, 2012

:geno: Yes, it's like a lava lamp.


This meme made by the Incorrect Latin Pronunciations Gang :colbert:

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fancy stats
Sep 9, 2009

A man's man, wears a lot of denim, tells long stories and has oatmeal saved from this morning.

hey, that's not fair, it could also be by the Incorrect Body Parts Pronunciation Gang

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




Lawman 0 posted:

Didn't christianity basically absorb Neo-Platonism and Stoicism?

Sort of, the stoics went after Christianity hard. See the Contra Celsum. The apologists were super duper all about the Logos but the Christian Logos has some big differences from the Stoic Logos. I’m not sure that fight is over it just looks different and is fought with different words. Origin was super duper into Neoplatonism and the Christian cosmology mostly comes from him and should be understood through the lens of Neo-Platonism but mostly isn’t anymore. I’ve got some stuff from Tillich about but it’s long and seventy years old.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

If Hebrews and Carthiginians were related, does that mean that when the Romans razed Jerusalem, they were just finishing the job?

Whorelord
May 1, 2013

Jump into the well...

SlothfulCobra posted:

If Hebrews and Carthiginians were related, does that mean that when the Romans razed Jerusalem, they were just finishing the job?

In the same way that Russian army taking Berlin in WW2 was revenge on the British for the Crimean War or something, sure.

Arglebargle III
Feb 21, 2006

https://twitter.com/tutubuslatinus/status/1384622743056830467

Jazerus
May 24, 2011


SlothfulCobra posted:

If Hebrews and Carthiginians were related, does that mean that when the Romans razed Jerusalem, they were just finishing the job?

at first glance the special enmity that the romans have with both carthage and judea is suggestive, but the jewish revolts, etc. all spring from well-understood events which don't seem to have anything at all to do with their cultural connection. there's too much time and distance in between events to really say that the romans considered judea "carthage 2.0" in any meaningful way.

the roman hatred of carthage was predicated far more on the geopolitical threat they presented rather than any hatred of their culture or religion (apart from the lurid tales of human sacrifice anyway), and any people who revolted to the degree that the roman jews did would have been treated similarly.

A Festivus Miracle
Dec 19, 2012

I have come to discourse on the profound inequities of the American political system.

Blame Roman Catholicism for the incorrect Latin. Priests were railing at their congregations in trash tier Latin from Constantine's reign to Vatican II, so like 1500ish years of people saying words wrong, making the corpse of Roman grammarians rattle their urns in ghostly anger.

Hiro Protagonist
Oct 25, 2010

Last of the freelance hackers and
Greatest swordfighter in the world
I mean, if you want to take that perspective, how long do people have to say a word wrong until it becomes the right way to say it?

cheetah7071
Oct 20, 2010

honk honk
College Slice

Hiro Protagonist posted:

I mean, if you want to take that perspective, how long do people have to say a word wrong until it becomes the right way to say it?

only once, if enough people do it

Edgar Allen Ho
Apr 3, 2017

by sebmojo
romanes eunt domus

Telsa Cola posted:

It ultimately depends where you are, saints in haitain culture are very much local spirits/religious entities with their names find and replaced iirc.

Sort of depends on what you mean by "local." Voudon tradition takes christian saints, especially catholic french versions, mythological figures from many parts of Africa, a bit of islam, and makes its own thing.

Edgar Allen Ho fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Apr 22, 2021

OctaviusBeaver
Apr 30, 2009

Say what now?
I'm reading Pliny's letters and it's hilarious how badly Pliny wants to be micromanaged and how not into it Trajan is.

Pliny: "There's a giant river of raw sewage flowing through the middle of this city spreading disease, can I deal with it?"
Trajan: "wtf yes"

Sarern
Nov 4, 2008

:toot:
Won't you take me to
Bomertown?
Won't you take me to
BONERTOWN?

:toot:

OctaviusBeaver posted:

I'm reading Pliny's letters and it's hilarious how badly Pliny wants to be micromanaged and how not into it Trajan is.

Pliny: "There's a giant river of raw sewage flowing through the middle of this city spreading disease, can I deal with it?"
Trajan: "wtf yes"

Amazing. This has me wondering: which Roman rulers would leave you on read? Which ones would blow up your phone with a hundred missed calls and 'WHERE ARE YOU???!!" texts?

euphronius
Feb 18, 2009

Caesar would obv be a Trump tier social media force

He probably would have been the greatest poster ever

FAUXTON
Jun 2, 2005

spero che tu stia bene

Sarern posted:

Amazing. This has me wondering: which Roman rulers would leave you on read? Which ones would blow up your phone with a hundred missed calls and 'WHERE ARE YOU???!!" texts?

WHERE ARE MY LEGIONS

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Caesar was the greatest poster of his day and even his posting enemies acknowledged it

CommonShore
Jun 6, 2014

A true renaissance man


Andrew Marvell and Alexander Pope would have been the greatest posters ever and it wouldn't even be close.

sullat
Jan 9, 2012

skasion posted:

Caesar was the greatest poster of his day and even his posting enemies acknowledged it

Well yeah he was shitposting in the forums like a boss.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Edgar Allen Ho posted:

romanes eunt domus


Sort of depends on what you mean by "local." Voudon tradition takes christian saints, especially catholic french versions, mythological figures from many parts of Africa, a bit of islam, and makes its own thing.

Local wasn't a great phrase to use but generally yes.

Some are literally just mythological figures from Africa with a different name and like three different lines of text though.

Elissimpark
May 20, 2010

Bring me the head of Auguste Escoffier.
I'd follow Vespasian on Twitter. I feel he'd be like an ancient George Wallace.

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

Marcus aurelius is the guy constantly reposting motivational memes.

mycomancy
Oct 16, 2016

A Festivus Miracle posted:

Blame Roman Catholicism for the incorrect Latin. Priests were railing at their congregations in trash tier Latin from Constantine's reign to Vatican II, so like 1500ish years of people saying words wrong, making the corpse of Roman grammarians rattle their urns in ghostly anger.

Great avatar/post combo

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




Gaius Marius posted:

Marcus aurelius is the guy constantly reposting motivational memes.

I’m imagining an image macro of a casket, with the words being “I have given it back.”

Antifa Poltergeist
Jun 3, 2004

"We're not laughing with you, we're laughing at you"



Not roman, but diogenes would be a absolutely legendary poster.

Plotinus as the "well, actshually" guy

Vincent Van Goatse
Nov 8, 2006

Enjoy every sandwich.

Smellrose
Diogenes would be the dude who calls the internet an extravagance and deliberately avoids using it, which I suppose is the most powerful shitposting of all.

skasion
Feb 13, 2012

Why don't you perform zazen, facing a wall?
Diogenes would be a hobo who goes viral for jerking his dick at the presidential motorcade but derives no actual gain from his twitter fame

Agean90
Jun 28, 2008


FAUXTON posted:

WHERE ARE MY LEGIONS

I SENT YOU HONORS WHY WONT YOU REPLY

FAUXTON
Jun 2, 2005

spero che tu stia bene

*a scattering of muffled buzzes from several senators' togas*

*confused muttering as senators confer over what appears to be a selfie of Julius Caesar leading a legion midway through crossing a small brook in northern Italy, captioned "YOLO"*

CrypticFox
Dec 19, 2019

"You are one of the most incompetent of tablet writers"

skasion posted:

Caesar was the greatest poster of his day and even his posting enemies acknowledged it

Caesar wrote a book on Latin grammar that Pompey consulted when he was writing inscriptions, you can't get much better then that for posting victories.

Ola
Jul 19, 2004

It feels like I've posted this before, but I came across it again so I thought I'd share for the possible benefit of new readers. I started reading Pliny a while back and even though it's a tiny book I fell off. It was too much filler with "hello Tinnitus Anus please hire my neighbor's son Gingivitis Flatus, he is dreamy". An edited one would be nice, it is literally the version he published himself.

Anyway, here is the bit I wanted to share. I like it a lot for his old man self irony, but mostly for the way he uses the gods as metaphors for the literal activity he performed and reveled in that day. I'm sure you know, but for the ones that don''t, Diana is the hunter and Minerva is the wise one.

quote:

A letter from Pliny the Younger to Cornelius Tacitus:

You’ll laugh–go ahead and laugh! I–a man you thought you knew–have caught three boars, and just beautiful ones too. You? you say. Me. And, no, not at all to escape idleness and quiet: I was sitting still beside the nets; near me no spear or javelin, but stylus and tablets. I’d muse on something and note it down, so that (even if I’d bring home empty hands!) at least my wax would be full. There’s not a thing to scorn in this kind of study; it’s a wonder how the mind is roused by the exercise & movement of the body. Just forest all round and aloneness and the very silence that hunting inculcates* are great quickeners of thought. So when you go hunt, feel free (by my advice) to bring–along with bread-basket & flask–your writing-tablets too! You’ll find Minerva’s just as keen to range the hills as Diana! Farewell!

*literally: “the silence that is given to hunting”

In latin as well here: https://rainscape.wordpress.com/2012/07/24/diana-minerva/

It's such a wonderful way of summarizing the idea of something, just naming the god. When things happen to you in the hills, it's the god doing its thing in the hills. It's an insight into how the Romans and perhaps the Norse (and others I'm sure, but those are popular) actually considered their gods instead of the "Christianity but with a different cast" which is a common framing. It's more like we talk about movie characters than divine beings. Tyrion, the god of wine and women and the hope of all unattractive yet quite wealthy men, he doth appear on many a foreign holiday!

Ghost Leviathan
Mar 2, 2017

Exploration is ill-advised.
Yeah, a lot of myths and stories use the gods as much or more as representatives of concepts than as actual people/characters. Though also that each god has their own domains and spheres of influence; you don't go praying to Jupiter Optimus Maximus for every little thing when you have more specific domains and household gods.

Abrahamic monotheism seems to be more the odd one out, (and of course the Catholics love their saints) since Eastern spirituality seems to often be pretty similar, stuff like Shinto involving a spirit in pretty much everything you can think of, and the ideas of formalised, official heavenly government and bureaucracy with jobs, roles and spheres of influence that can get very specific.

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




Ghost Leviathan posted:

Yeah, a lot of myths and stories use the gods as much or more as representatives of concepts than as actual people/characters. Though also that each god has their own domains and spheres of influence; you don't go praying to Jupiter Optimus Maximus for every little thing when you have more specific domains and household gods.

Abrahamic monotheism seems to be more the odd one out, (and of course the Catholics love their saints) since Eastern spirituality seems to often be pretty similar, stuff like Shinto involving a spirit in pretty much everything you can think of, and the ideas of formalised, official heavenly government and bureaucracy with jobs, roles and spheres of influence that can get very specific.

After monotheism won out angels, demons, and saint filled that function (“representatives of concepts”). They couldn’t while monotheism was in conflict with paganism.

NikkolasKing
Apr 3, 2010



Bar Ran Dun posted:

After monotheism won out angels, demons, and saint filled that function (“representatives of concepts”). They couldn’t while monotheism was in conflict with paganism.

Despite my interest in Neoplatonism and some early Christianity, I've never really read up too much on "daemons."

is it true they were just a cool sorta intermediary being for the pagans then they became 'demons" as we know them (evil spirits, basically) because of Christian propaganda?

FreudianSlippers
Apr 12, 2010

Shooting and Fucking
are the same thing!

Related:
It's likely that "Elf" started out as a general term for powerful supernatural creature or minor diety and only later became a specific term for a race or species of supernatural creatures.

In the Dwarf section of the name verses of the poetic Edda there are more than one Dwarves whose name includes the word "álfr" including Gandálfr whose name Tolkien borrowed for his own writings. We also have sources about ancient kings who were referred to as Elves after their death and worshipped by some.

Troll is similar and is used interchangeably for everything from the undead to wizards to any strange unknown creature.

We also see some remnants of ancestor worship in the Scandinavian Tomte/Nisse who much like the Russian domovoy is a household spirit that can be helpful or harmful depending on the respect and offerings given to it. They've long ago morphed into cute little goblins mostly associated with the Yuletide but the name Tomte probably refers to a grave indicating that they might originally have been seen as the spirits of the dead.

It's likely that pre-Christian northern Europea was just as crawling with minor dieties as the Greco-Roman world or modern India. Even though the bastards only wrote about the big flashy Æsir and Vanie

Bar Ran Dun
Jan 22, 2006




NikkolasKing posted:

Despite my interest in Neoplatonism and some early Christianity, I've never really read up too much on "daemons."

is it true they were just a cool sorta intermediary being for the pagans then they became 'demons" as we know them (evil spirits, basically) because of Christian propaganda?

Deamons I think would initially start as encompassing what we would say are both angels and demons. But eventually that splits into angels and demons. But my understanding is that in the ancient world even before Christianity everybody is afraid of demons. Take the philosophy schools, somebody like Epicurus is called soter because he teaches a way of thinking that makes one unafraid of demons. That’s the same usage of soter Christians apply to Jesus. The stoics, the skeptics, etc all of them are using that word to talk about somebody who gives others knowledge that saves from the fear of demons before Christianity.

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface
SO is working for some folks who specialize in rock art and they have an extremely cool photo of a Australian Aboriginal pictograph of a european ship which I sadly can't show y'all.

Nessus
Dec 22, 2003

After a Speaker vote, you may be entitled to a valuable coupon or voucher!



Telsa Cola posted:

SO is working for some folks who specialize in rock art and they have an extremely cool photo of a Australian Aboriginal pictograph of a european ship which I sadly can't show y'all.
Is it a spiritual thing or a secular permissions thing?

Telsa Cola
Aug 19, 2011

No... this is all wrong... this whole operation has just gone completely sidewaysface

Nessus posted:

Is it a spiritual thing or a secular permissions thing?

Didn't ask but having worked with similar materials it's a fair chance of both being involved though the latter is way more common.

Alhazred
Feb 16, 2011




Bar Ran Dun posted:

But my understanding is that in the ancient world even before Christianity everybody is afraid of demons.

Yeah, this is from a tablet describing a exorcism ritual in Mesopotamia:

quote:

I raise up the torch and burn the statues of

the demon, the spirit, the lurker, the ghost,

…..

and any evil that seizes mankind.

Dissolve, melt, drip ever away!

May your smoke rise ever heavenward,

May the sun extinguish your embers,

May the son of Ea, the magus (of the gods), cut off your emanations.

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Ola
Jul 19, 2004

FreudianSlippers posted:


We also see some remnants of ancestor worship in the Scandinavian Tomte/Nisse who much like the Russian domovoy is a household spirit that can be helpful or harmful depending on the respect and offerings given to it. They've long ago morphed into cute little goblins mostly associated with the Yuletide but the name Tomte probably refers to a grave indicating that they might originally have been seen as the spirits of the dead.


That's very interesting. I've never thought about that particular word before but it's so incredibly obvious, the word "tomte" is as you say a household spirit (or just Santa Claus in Swedish) and the word "tomt", at least in Norwegian (not sure about currrent Swedish) is a plot of land. (edit: I don't mean to splain this to you, I just love going on about it) It ties into the idea of underground people that belong to the land and make things good or bad for the farmers that live there. There are many other words that tie in the same. Haugbonde and haugbokk is not in use now, I know the former from a folk song and the latter from a motorcycle club. :v: "Haug" is a mound, presumably a burial mound, "bonde" is a farmer, the word coming from "boende", someone who lives there. ""Bokk" or "bukk" is a male goat and is sometimes used to mean a man or old man .They both have grey beards I guess.

"Gardvord", farm keeper, pretty obvious. "Vette" is a common term for underground spirits, but perhaps it too like tomte has a connection to a plot of land. "Veit" means a ditch and is sometimes used today as a suffix in street names. Like "gard" can be a fence and or farm, meaning that the gard is something which is enclosed by a fence, perhaps a veit can also mean a plot of land enclosed by a ditch and a vette is something that looks after the land.

"Rudkall" is also quite obvious. "Rud" the same as "rydning", a clearing made to farm on and a common suffix in place names. "Kall" is an old man. Rudkall is the old man that first made the farm, so you obviously have to give him some porridge every winter solstice unless you want your cattle to get sick!

I don't know how the etymology of "nisse" ties in to plot of land or farm though. But show this to any Scandinavian and they will say oh what a lovely Christmas card.



I mean, whoever painted/drew this picture I found by googling nisse probably meant for it to be a Christmas thing, not a household spirit thing.

The tie in with winter solstice and farmer rituals is pretty understandable, it's much harder to understand how Saint Nicolas got shoehorned into this. About as convincing as Coca-Cola's connection. Neolithic archaeology shows that ancestor worship ties in strongly with early farming. They kept the bones for generations in stone slab monuments and probably took them out for big occasions. Some graves have the bones sorted by type rather than individual, skulls here, long bones there etc. Even today we invite grandma for Christmas. :v:

It was both a ritual for prosperity in farming and a claim to the land, which makes a lot of sense given tomt/tomte. This belongs to me, because it was my ancestor that made this. The concepts of inheritance and nobility have their roots here I'm pretty sure.

These type of spirits don't really stick out in norse mythology with Thor and Odin and serpents and warriors etc. They are so strong and common that they are just taken for granted I guess. They survive Christianity no problem, to put it mildly. Christianity even morphs to accommodate it. The little nisse above is a stronger symbol for the the festival of the birth of Jesus, than a picture of Jesus. They stick around through medieval times and are common today as Christmas symbols, perhaps more so in Iceland in the household spirit sense. My dad has a farm, he puts out porridge for the nisse every Christmas and it gets eaten every time! Some fat foxes too around the farm, hmmm.

Ola fucked around with this message at 10:26 on Apr 24, 2021

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