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Showing posts from May, 2007

A very small carnival

This is one of the more thorough news articles I've seen on the c. 400 Roman man under Trafalgar Square. Over at the Huffington Post, Byron Williams compares Jerry Falwell to Constantine . Smintheus at Unbossed.com opened a discussion on The Golden Ass , the only (if I'm not mistaken) surviving novel from the Roman imperial period. ...finally, a shout-out to Clioaudio for linking to the Serapeum entry. A needed jolt after an unplanned, six-week hiatus. Thank you!

Serapeum

Image
Ruins of the Serapeum, Alexandria. Photo by Bernt Rostad . Serapis stood alone. The statue of Alexandria's patron god wore the same expression of divine detachment as it had for seven hundred years, with a grain measure balanced on his head to symbolize his blessings of plenty upon his city. But the people assembled before him now were not his followers. They were gone, fled or hidden after the imperial herald read a pronouncement from the Emperor Theodosius: The Hellenes, as the Christians called anyone who followed the old gods, would receive amnesty for their role in the bloody siege that had paralyzed "the crown of all cities" for weeks, but their cult was now illegal. Serapis had become deus non gratis in his own city, and this was his reckoning. As his followers scattered, the soldiers had marched confidently into the massive temple, but now they paused. Declaring a cult illegal and driving off its adherents was one thing. Raising arms against a god