Roman drunkard found on Danish island

Videnskab.dk via Science Nordic ^ | January 14, 2015 | Peter Pentz, translated by Hugh Matthews

[SunkenCiv]

A new archaeological find on the Danish island of Falster can be traced back to the first Roman Emperor, Augustus.

A bronze figure representing the Greek figure Silenus, from the time of Rome's first emperor, Augustus, has been found on the south-eastern Danish island of Falster.

This find suggests that there was close contact between the Roman empire and Scandinavia, before and after the emperor's reign...

At first sight the figure seemed so finely detailed that the finder took it home in the belief that it was a modern object. Later she handed it over to the National Museum of Denmark. Here experts were quickly able to ascertain that the figure represented not a man, but Silenus.

In Greek mythology, Silenus (Greek: Seilenos) was a companion and tutor of the wine god Dionysus. He appeared together with satyrs and other creatures in the wine god's entourage, resembling a satyr, although, he was considerably older. The character Silenus ended up as a very special genre of figure creatures known as sileni.

[SunkenCiv]

The practice seems to have come from the Etruscans (although the Etruscan men ate in the same room at the same time as their wives, unlike the Republic-era Romans and the Greeks). Boogieman’s suggestion that it started centuries earlier among nomadic ancestors looks pretty plausible to me.

[Bigg Red]

I would lose a lot of weight because I would have more food on me than in me.

Do you suppose they could have had some notion that it was more helpful for the digestion to be in such a position?

[SunkenCiv]

It was more convenient to eat in that position while getting serviced by courtesans.

[SunkenCiv]

:’)

[dsc]

“Most people don’t even know that Nero engaged the Ancient Ethiopians”

Most people don’t know that Ethiopia was Christian long before most of Europe.

[Roman_War_Criminal]

Everybody knows that!