Raunchy Paintings Show A Wine-Glugging Cult Of "Wild Women" At Pompeii
Newly discovered frescoes unearthed at Pompeii reveal glimpses of a wine-fueled cult that embraced the "wild, untamable side of women".
The painting captures a wild procession of Dionysus in a vivid dance of ecstasy and ritual. Female followers of the god (called bacchantes) are pictured dancing alongside hunters who carry slaughtered goats on their shoulders and clutch swords and animal entrails in their hands. A mythical half-man, half-beast with pointed ears (called satyrs) plays the flute, while another pours a stream of wine over his shoulder into another cup.
At the heart of the scene, a mortal woman stands next to an aged follower of Dionysus holding a torch, as if she is about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus, the god who dies and is reborn, promising the same to his devotees.
"For the ancients, the bacchae expressed the wild and untamable side of women; the woman who abandons her children, her home and the city, who leaves the male order, to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains and woods," Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii Archaeological Park, said.
“In short, the opposite of the ‘pretty’ woman, who emulates Venus, goddess of love and marriage, the woman who looks at herself in the mirror, who ‘makes herself beautiful’,” he added.
https://www.iflscience.com/raunchy-paint...peii-78247
Newly discovered frescoes unearthed at Pompeii reveal glimpses of a wine-fueled cult that embraced the "wild, untamable side of women".
The painting captures a wild procession of Dionysus in a vivid dance of ecstasy and ritual. Female followers of the god (called bacchantes) are pictured dancing alongside hunters who carry slaughtered goats on their shoulders and clutch swords and animal entrails in their hands. A mythical half-man, half-beast with pointed ears (called satyrs) plays the flute, while another pours a stream of wine over his shoulder into another cup.
At the heart of the scene, a mortal woman stands next to an aged follower of Dionysus holding a torch, as if she is about to be initiated into the mysteries of Dionysus, the god who dies and is reborn, promising the same to his devotees.
"For the ancients, the bacchae expressed the wild and untamable side of women; the woman who abandons her children, her home and the city, who leaves the male order, to dance freely, go hunting and eat raw meat in the mountains and woods," Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of Pompeii Archaeological Park, said.
“In short, the opposite of the ‘pretty’ woman, who emulates Venus, goddess of love and marriage, the woman who looks at herself in the mirror, who ‘makes herself beautiful’,” he added.
https://www.iflscience.com/raunchy-paint...peii-78247
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
