Religion and The Ancient City State

 

"Religion was the sole factor in the evolution of ancient Greece and Rome, the bonding of family and state was the work of religion, that because of ancestor worship the family, drawn together by the need to engage in the ancestral cults, became the basic unit of ancient societies, expanding to the gens, the Greek phratry, the Roman tribe, to the patrician city state, and that decline in religious belief and authority in the moral crisis provoked by Roman wealth and expansion doomed the republic and resulted in the triumph of Christianity and the death of the ancient city state."

 Joseph McCarthy on Fustel de Coulanges and his book The Ancient City (1864)

 Biography of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges

ATHENS - Majesty Through the Centuries

 

ANCIENT ATHENS 3D is a honest attept to present how Athens was in different historical periods (from Archaic era up to 1800s) through 3D graphics. Even if the site is on its early stages, I hope in time they will put more stuff and more info. After all, Athens is a city with so rich history that you can never have enough.

The website:

http://www.ancientathens3d.com/

 "This site was created in order to present the monuments and buildings of Athens from the Mycenaean period (1600 BCE) to the Early Modern period (AD 1833), through 3D representations.  

Begin your virtual trip by choosing one of the historical periods from the main menu. The periods were separated by taking into account the significant architectural and city planning changes and not the equivalent historical chronological ones (although they do match to a great extent). Each period includes a list of monuments and areas. In every monument there is a short description and other information along with their 3D representation."

 

The Children of War

“The men of the Freikorps were children of the war, of the defeat and the revolution of November, they were in direct relation with the ‘Arditi’ of Fiume and the ‘Squadristi’ that arose a little later in Italy, and they embodied a very specific type of man, one that would never be seen again.They were mainly formed by the warfare of the First World War. 

 

The war had eliminated those men who were psychologically or morally broken by themselves -, separating them from those They emerged from it stronger and harder than before. Jünger compared them to the old German mercenaries, whose only homeland was their flag.

 The war had abolished all social differences between them, equating them according to standards that had nothing to do with the civil life class rankings were replaced by one of boldness and courage, and now they wanted to transfer this new hierarchy of values ​​to the civil society of the osguerra In their way, they were socialists. But his socialism was military and had nothing to do with the pursuit of security and material happiness. The only hierarchy they recognized was of merit. All shared the same faith in the power of the will and a sincere taste for quick methods.

Although they undoubtedly did not embody the whole essence of fascism and national socialism, they were a fundamental element of those movements, in the sense that they embodied the most radical revolt of their time against the bourgeois world. ”
 

Dominique Venner, “Le Siècle de 1914”

The Rime of The Ancient Mariner

'Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung'
When an albatross leads a stricken ship out of treacherous ice, a hapless mariner shoots the bird, arousing the wrath of spirits who pursue the ship. Haunted by Death, the crew begin to perish one by one, until only the cursed mariner remains to confront his guilt. As penance for his actions he is condemned to wander the earth, telling his tale to those he meets as a warning.
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's longest major poem and marks the beginning of the romantic movement in British literature.

(from the publisher)

   (From the publisher)

"Gustave Dore's magnificent engravings for The Rime of the Ancient Mariner are among the later works of the great French illustrator. The intensely evocative poem provided Doré with the long-awaited opportunity to convey limitless space on a gigantic scale, and he exploited the poem's fantastic range of atmosphere to the limits of its possibilities. The terrifying space of the open sea, the storms and whirlpools of an unknown ocean, the vast icy caverns of Antarctica, the hot equatorial sea swarming with monsters, all of the amazing visual elements that make Coleridge's masterpiece one of the most exciting and most memorable poems in the English language are unforgettably engraved in Doré's plates.
This edition reproduces all of the plates to perfection, in their original size. The illustrations and the text of the poem appear on facing pages, so that the imaginative kinship of Doré and Coleridge is delightfully evident on every page: the illustrations capture all the moods of the poem in their full intensity, bringing the images evoked by the words into clear visual focus."

 

 To see Gustave Dore's engravinings click HERE

 

 (From the back cover)

 "One of the great narrative poems in English, "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner" is admired for its fluid meter and masterly structure, accurate observation of sensuous detail and mystic power. Coleridge asserted that his aim in writing the poem was to make the supernatural seem real."

To read more about "The Rime..." click HERE