Frescoes buried by volcano uncovered in ancient dining room in Pompeii

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Frescoes buried by volcano uncovered in ancient dining room in Pompeii

By Victoria Bisset
April 12, 2024 at 10:15 a.m. EDT



This Handout picture released by the Pompeii archaeological park on Thursday on shows frescoes depicting mythological characters Apollo and Cassandra in a banquet room. (AFP/Getty Images)

In the ancient city of Pompeii, which was preserved under a blanket of ash and smoke from Mount Vesuvius volcano eruption in 79 A.D., archaeologists have uncovered a banquet room decorated with beautiful frescoes of mythological characters inspired by the Trojan War.

The room “provided a refined setting for entertainment during convivial moments, whether banquets or conversations,” the Pompeii archaeological park said in a statement Thursday.

The walls of the room were painted black to prevent the smoke from oil lamps being seen, explained Gabriel Zuchtriegel, the director of the Pompeii archaeological park.
“People would meet to dine after sunset; the flickering light of the lamps had the effect of making the images appear to move, especially after a few glasses of good Campanian wine,” he said in the same statement Thursday.

The room, with its frescoes and mosaics, was part of “an elegant lifestyle” of its ancient owners, according to the site.

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A fresco of a mythological character inspired by the Trojan War is seen in this handout picture taken in the Pompeii archaeological park. (Reuters)

{snip}



A fresco of a mythological character inspired by the Trojan War is seen in this handout picture taken in the Pompeii archaeological park. (Reuters)

By Victoria Bisset
Victoria Bisset is a breaking-news reporter for The Washington Post's London Hub, covering the most urgent and consequential stories as they unfold on the European day

[riversedge]

1. The lady does not look impressed.

[marble falls]

3. Lea and the swan - the swan is Jupiter.

[Think. Again.]

4. Yeah, I can see why.

[marble falls]

2. Nice article.

The photos are great!

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. Yeah. I was posting from a phone.

It’s all too easy to hit the wrong key.

All good now. And good evening.

[marble falls]

7. I thought maybe you'd found a hack around the four paragraph limit!

[Chainfire]

5. Pompeii is a time machine.

[JoseBalow]

8. "character inspired by the Trojan War is seen"

Not to be confused with the Magnum War

[frogmarch]

9. Thanks for the fascinating post!

But I still had to know about one little thing, so I googled it.

article excerpt:

Rewind to the ancient Greek world of around 400 BC, and you’ll find that large, erect penises were not considered desirable, nor were they a sign of power or strength. In his play The Clouds (c. 419–423 BC), ancient Greek playwright Aristophanes summed up the ideal traits of his male peers as “a gleaming chest, bright skin, broad shoulders, tiny tongue, strong buttocks, and a little prick.”

Historian Paul Chrystal has also conducted research into this ancient ideal. “The small penis was consonant with Greek ideals of male beauty,” he writes in his book In Bed with the Ancient Greeks (2016). “It was a badge of the highest culture and a paragon of civilization.”

In ancient Greek art, most of a great man’s features were represented as ample, firm, and shiny—so why weren’t these same aesthetic principles applied to the penis? As Lear and other historians suggest, part of the answer lies in how the phalluses of less admirable men were portrayed.

https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-ancient-greek-sculptures-small-penises

[brush]

11. Ahhh...could be shrinkage, as in that Seinfeld episode.

Or they're not erect. Duh!

[UTUSN]

10. I love this stuff, thanks

[AllaN01Bear]

12. still intact after all the things that went on around it.