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Roman and greek civilization
Greek and Roman culture
Greek and Roman culture
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The main thing about “The Festival of Isis” is that she was the “Mother” Indians, Egyptians, and Romans people. She married her brother and they had children, also she was worshiped during predynastic times around 3100 BCE.She was mostly known as “Virgin Mary”, her job was to restore love for the people in bad love situation.Isis was prayed for because they called her the protector, by protecting the pharaoh, so people really prayed to her for protection.The festival outlived christian persecution by theodosius,and arcadius persecution against the Roman Religion. In the roman empire it was still celebrated in italy for 416 year’s. The Navigium Isidis or Isidis Navigium (trans. the vessel of Isis)[1] was an annual ancient Roman religious festival
...resting passage in the "Golden Ass" of Apeleius {Book xi.} we find that the double character of Anubis was maintained by his votaries in Rome even in the second century of our era, and in describing the Procession of Isis he says, Immediately after these came the Deities, condescending to walk upon human feet, the foremost among them rearing terrifically on high his dog's head and neck----that messenger between heaven and hell displaying alternately a face black as night waving aloft the green palm branch. His steps were closely followed by a cow, raised into an upright posture----the cow being the fruitful emblem of the Universal Parent, the goddess herself, which one of the happy train carried with majestic steps, supported on his shoulders. By another was borne the coffin containing the sacred things, and closely concealing the deep secrets of the holy religion."
As Michelangelo once said, “Every block of stone has a statue inside it and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it” ("Michelangelo Quotes"). During the Greek/Roman periods prosperity was scarce, and to the early citizens who lived during this time one of the only values was personal religious beliefs/ideas - mostly pagan. The expression of these beliefs/ideas were most commonly portrayed through paintings, sculptures, and buildings. During the Renaissance periods prosperity was on a steady but slow growth. This growth was still accompanied by a flowering of philosophy, literature, and especially art. Renaissance arts mostly portrayed the beliefs of Christianity. Acknowledging the years passed between the Greek/Roman to the Renaissance, art was still valued as one of life’s great prosperities in both times. Against the backdrop of different political stabilities and prosperity statuses both time periods were jointed by the importance of personal desires and one's beliefs. While the Renaissance and Greek/Roman time periods were different in many ways, the two time periods had similarities including the expression of the human form, the confidence with the body, and different religious beliefs.
Then and now religions shared common dimensions that provide society with a doctrine, narrative, ethics, ritual, experience and a social institution. These six dimensions that Ninian Smart derived spell out the framework for comparative study of religions1. The six dimensions hold true when comparing the daily routine Roman religious thought to modern Christianity. Interwoven into the core of both cultures is a strong unifying spirit that built a strong communal bond for its people.
With the formation Hellenistic civilization, came new forms of religion. Stoicism, Epicureanism, and Skepticism came into play for those that were considered intellectuals. While those less philosophically inclined, chose to worship fortune, or lean towards the more emotional religions of Oriental origin. The Orphic and Eleusinian mystery cults because more popular than ever before, while the worship of Isis, the Egyptian mother-goddess, seemed for a time to almost become a world religion.
Within the Ancient world, political leaders manipulated the balance between religion and politics to further their own power. In particular, Gaius Octavius (63 BC – 14 AD) later known as Imperator Caesar Divi Filius Augustus, exploited the ‘imperial cult’ as a political tool within the Roman Empire. Termed by modern historians, the imperial cult was a combination of local religious cults where people worshipped the emperor as a deity who received divine honours exceeding all other living entities. By directly allowing the imperial cult in the Roman provinces, this achieved much required unity and stability throughout the Empire. Consequently, this enabled Augustus to indirectly incorporate the cult into Rome’s ritualistic polytheism practices.
It is no simple task to pinpoint the most important contributions of the Greco Roman ages towards the later Western Roman culture of the Renaissance. Almost every aspect was influenced or supported by another. Despite this, there is a particular concept that has continually served as a core contributor: religion.
She is stil worshiped to this day by the Indian people. Her story is quite different from Athena’s, she was not the goddess of war and had nothing to do with violence. Instead she was also the goddess of knowledge helping people learn things such as the Alphabet. The Indian people hold a festival every year in her honor on the fifth day of spring in which the Hindu children are given their first lesson in reading and writing (Das).
When walking around a city, you may notice that the architecture and art look similar to other works. Many of these designs have changed along the course of history and time whilst others have not. The designs that many people still see in society and day to day living is from two of the many cultures of the old civilizations, Roman and Islamic. The art and architecture forms from the Islamic and Roman cultures have many comparisons and contrasts between them. They, the Islamic and Roman nations, have both adopted from other cultures and have made their own discoveries in the art and architecture worlds. The Roman and Islamic architecture and art vary drastically from each other and yet have varying comparisons between the two.
Throughout the many stories in the Greek religious mythology Hellenism, which meant to teach lessons and explain how the world works, there are a vast number of characters. One that has become quite known today through the media, and even teachings in school, is the gorgon Medusa. The name gorgon is derived from the Greek word gorgos, meaning “fierce”, “terrible” or “dreadful”. A gorgon is traditionally a repulsive creature with an innate hatred towards men and the ability to turn people to stone with a single look into their eyes. Some stories even write that their ability extended to not just humans and other animals, but also plant life in the sea. Greek literature and art often depict the gorgons as having scaly skin, large talons, wings, and the tusks of a boar; even when these additional attributes are not present, Medusa and her sisters possess horrid visages framed by nests of live, venomous snakes. Among the three sisters, Medusa, Stheno and Euryale, only Medusa was mortal, and thus the only one able to die.
Religion is an ever-growing idea that has no set date of origin. Throughout history religion has served as an answer to the questions that man could not resolve. The word religion is derived from the Latin word “religio” meaning restraint in collaboration with the Greek word “relegere” which means to repeat or to read again. Religion is currently defined as an organized system of beliefs and practices revolving around, or leading to, a transcendent spiritual experience. Throughout time, there has yet to be a culture that lacks a religion of some form, whether it is a branch of paganism, a mythological based religion or mono/polytheistic religion. Many religions have been forgotten due to the fact that they were ethnic religions and globalizing religions were fighting to be recognized, annihilating these ancient and ethnic religions. Some of these faiths include: Finnish Paganism, Atenism, Minoan Religion, Mithraism, Manichaeism, Vedism, Zoroastrianism, Asatru, and the Olmec Religion. Religion is an imperative part of our contemporary world but mod...
Factors Which Led to the Spread of Christianity in the Roman Empire Christianity was not born in a vacumn. There were many social, geographical, historical and religious issues prevailing at the time of Christ and all of which were favorable to the spread of Christianity. Geograpicly, Christianity came into being in the Meditation world, the largest of the various centers of civilization at that time. Israel stands almost central to the five continents, dividing the east and west.
They worshiped Isis, an Egyptian Goddess, and also Mithra, an Iranian God, as well as the Greek Gods, and their own Roman Gods. The Romans took over the gods of peoples they conquered and established their festivals at Rome. Christianity draws heavily from Jewish culture, as Jesus was a Jew, but also bears the inspiration of the Roman Empire. A good example that Wikipedia gives is how the Romans included Greek, Anatolian, and East Mediterranean gods into their religion without adopting some of the cultish practices. The Egyptian goddess Isis, mother of the god Horus This image closely resembles the early Christian iconic art of Mary and Jesus, who, together with Astarte and other Near Eastern goddesses, influenced the rise of the Virgin Mary. The “sistrum”, a tinkling rattle that was shaken during ceremonies honoring the goddess, is the source of the bell that is rung at several points in a Roman Catholic mass. Another image that was adopted by Christianity was the Celtic High Cross, a pre-Christian symbol, which was later mixed and combined to form and symbolize the Christian crucifix. The High Celtic Cross is perhaps the best example of the link between pagan Celtic and Christian traditions and Armenian churches. The mixing of Christian traditions with these pagan, folk traditions resulted in religions such as Roman Catholicism, Irish Catholicism and Greek and Russian
From the third to the fourth century, the Roman Empire witnessed a widespread attempt to stop the spread of Christianity. Initially, leaders of the church were predominately targeted, but later anyone admitting to Christianity became a target. The persecutions hit a climax during Diocletian’s reign. These persecutions actually helped the spread of Christianity by glorifying Christians and beginning a tradition of martyrdom that shaped the Church, and the strength that Christians displayed shows that the persecutions could not have possible stopped the spread of Christianity.
In the novel Persepolis, religion is actually the key role of giving the storyline depth. Religion enhances ones understanding of the novel because without the religion the readers would be lost on why the characters have to wear veils or why the children have to be separated by gender. The novel gave the readers background knowledge on how all government decisions are “religion based”. If reading this you must have noticed the quotation marks around religion based, certainly because that is not true. The leader Shah wants everyone to believe that his decisions are religion based so his citizens do not judge him for making a wrong choice since the rules were indeed influenced by him. To back that conclusion up, the textbooks in the children’s
With the decline and fall of the western empire, the classical age of Rome came to a close as disease, warfare and corruption conspired to bring about the downfall of an ailing empire that had once conquered the known world. Where once enlightened despots had ruled a debauched and unwieldy polity, now barbarians stood over the ruins of a once thriving metropolis. In its absence a new world would arise with new values and ideals. Turning their back on a pagan past the Christian children of these wild men from the north would spawn the greatest houses of future European nobility, and when they looked back for a legacy, they would not see their ancestors as pillagers picking at the bones of a defiled Rome, but instead as its trusted guardians, partnering with the Church to carry her legacy through the “Dark Ages”.