Roman priest’s exceptionally well-preserved remains found in Pompeii
smithsonianmag.com
smithsonianmag.com
> Mount Vesuvius’ pyroclastic flows and poisonous fumes killed around 2,000 people in Pompeii and the neighboring city of Herculaneum.
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.
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.
The Roman Empire didn't codify anything. The Nicene Creed was composed by the Church in response to the Arian crisis. That the empire (through Constantine) had an interest in peace does not mean the empire performed the clarification.
First of all, the council was summoned by the emperor, organized by him, paid for by him, facilitated using public infrastructure, and personally attended by him. He might have “deferred” to the decisions of the bishops, but only happens when everyone recognizes his power to just declare things. He also banished some of the losing bishops into exile using his personal power. Whether or not it’s the “empire” or the dictatorial emperor declaring a thing is a fuzzy line, but a lot of state power was involved.
Secondly it wasn’t “the church” who declared anything, because no such singular institution actually existed to speak with one voice. Rather, the council was a self-conscious effort by Constantine to actually create a unified church, since he worried that the existing discord threatened spiritual safety of the church. Remember that Christianity had been legal for only a decade or so and it would take a while before the more underground organization could organize and finish settling old scores. Whether or not the Bishop of Rome was recognized as the leader of the church is still a hotly debated subject; he however did not actually chair the council of Nicaea. At Nicaea we’re still a century or two out from the first papal bull, 400 years or so from the first cardinals, and 700 years from the first recognizably modern papal conclave. In any case, only 300 or so of the 1,800 bishops of the empire attended.
In many ways the church became The Church by taking over the mantle of imperial authority as the Roman Empire receded from Western Europe. This is the process that gives it the power, organization, and bureaucracy to set religious policy and speak in one voice, and none of that is in place by Nicaea.
Rome was very serious about worshiping Ceasar; the rest was optional.
(Rome didn't have a "civil society" or "social contract" in any sense we'd recognize. Their laws were supposed to be divinely ordained, and refusing to acknowledge this was grounds for the death penalty. If you're imagining Rome as some sort of freedom of religion place like America with the First Amendment then you're sorely mistaken; think Soviet communism or China instead.)
Your parallels to 20th century governments miss the mark as much as the claims you are criticizing.
If he was a libertus, I wonder if he came from some remote part from the empire, possibly with different funerary customs.
As someone not familiar with how frequently a situation like this occurs, the phrasing of the article title made me think they found another Otzi[0] or Lady of Dai[1]
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%96tzi [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xin_Zhui
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.
A bit like starting a game of dwarf fortress.
You are agreeing.
Maybe if you want to report on something someone said in another language, have your translation checked by someone who can understand that language.
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.
1. This is the kind of thing where if there is a problem, it can easily be a huge problem. One of the simplest translation mistakes you can make, for example, is to come up with exactly the opposite meaning of what the original said.
2. Smithsonian Magazine is literally adding a tag to their article that says we do not stand by our reporting. Maybe it's true, maybe it's false; they don't know and they don't care. If it's false, that is, according to them, Google's problem, not theirs. This cannot meet even the bare minimum standard of acceptable journalism.