rigorousintuition.ca

compared2what? wrote:That's also more or less my interpretation of the painting, too, btw. Kind of like:

The martyrdom is such an evil and unnatural act that it darkens God's creation and should give all God's creatures pause, even the dumb beasts.

Nothing against the tiger. He just can't see what's going on yet. It's implicitly clearly the Romans who are being shown as savage.

Maybe you're not supposed to, but it seemed natural to me to start with the lion and follow his gaze. And that's where it took me.

ON EDIT: I guess I felt like the lion was a proxy for the person looking at the painting. Facing the same way, etc. I identified with the lion.

justdrew wrote:It's christian propaganda. It never happened. There was indeed some persecution of early Christians, not an uncommon situation for a new cult to find itself in in that part of the world at the time. but then they went on and welcomed it, a martyr is the greatest thing a christian can be, per long tradition. Some intentionally insulted the people and religions around them until crowds demanded execution. An proconsul in Asia has a delegation of Christians come to him asking to be killed. He obliged a couple, probably because of their insults to his religion, then he sent the rest away, saying if they wanted to commit suicide, they could go find a rope or jump off a cliff.

Meanwhile, post persecution (by believers in other religions) we find no shortage of Christians persecuting each other for any variance of believe for centuries. Far more have been killed BY Christian persecution than Christians were ever killed. The inquisition was exactly the same as had been done to a few early Christians, but written far far larger.

The legacy of built up mythology of persecution has been used ever since by Christians to justify their own extensive and well documented far larger uses of violence and their sowing of many many seeds of hatred.


Jan Luyken. Execution in Strassburg in 1215. Engraving. XVII.

http://www.inquisition-art.net/eng/kazn04.htm

82_28 wrote:I wouldn't call it "Christian propaganda" at all. If you check out his other shit, Gerome doesn't seem to have an agenda. I don't know much about him other than what I have read. Terrifying photo still.

barracuda wrote:It's closer to Frank Frazetta's work than Christian propaganda, really.

Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts' skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his Gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his Circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man.

Sepka wrote:The painting is based on a fairly famous passage from Tacitus's "Annals", book 15, chapter 44. Tacitus, who was scarcely a Christian apologist, along with most of his contemporaries, thought that Nero started the Great Fire to clear space for his 'Golden House' (a vast palace cum amusement park). He discusses the ensuing persecution of the Christians in that context:

Nero substituted as culprits, and punished with the utmost refinements of cruelty, a class of men, loathed for their vices, whom the crowd styled Christians. Christus, the founder of the name, had undergone the death penalty in the reign of Tiberius, by sentence of the procurator Pontius Pilatus, and the pernicious superstition was checked for a moment, only to break out once more, not merely in Judaea, the home of the disease, but in the capital itself, where all things horrible or shameful in the world collect and find a vogue. First, then, the confessed members of the sect were arrested; next, on their disclosures, vast numbers were convicted, not so much on the count of arson as for hatred of the human race. And derision accompanied their end: they were covered with wild beasts' skins and torn to death by dogs; or they were fastened on crosses, and, when daylight failed were burned to serve as lamps by night. Nero had offered his Gardens for the spectacle, and gave an exhibition in his Circus, mixing with the crowd in the habit of a charioteer, or mounted on his car. Hence, in spite of a guilt which had earned the most exemplary punishment, there arose a sentiment of pity, due to the impression that they were being sacrificed not for the welfare of the state but to the ferocity of a single man.

I'm using the translation from here - http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/R ... B*.html#44

That's the Circus Maximus in the picture (see the chariot ruts?), and those three phallic-looking structures are the 'metae', or cones. There were a set at each end of the racetrack. They were oversized, stylized Roman survey markers, such as would be used to mark a road. Here they mark the turning point of the track. They were a general feature of racetracks, although the Maximus quite fittingly had enormous ones. I believe that's the Palatine Hill (where Rome was founded) rising in the background, although I'm not entirely sure.