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💬🌳🏛🖼️📜 Quotes, nature, architecture, art and history about our homeland, Europe.
Advertising card from about 1899-1903 depicting elephants of King Pyrrhus of Epirus, called by the Tarentins to help fighting against the Romans.
Pyrrhus landed in southern Italy in 281 BC with a large Hellenistic army. For the Romans, their ensuing fight with Pyrrhus would be the first time they had ever faced elefants, these unpredictable tanks of ancient warfare on the battlefield.
Following his first victories against the romans (in Heraclea and Ausculum), Pyrrhus found himself without many of the key officers and soldiers who had ventured with him from Epirus barely two years earlier – men whose quality could not be matched by his allies in southern Italy. When Pyrrhus’s comrades congratulated him on his victory, the Epirote king sombrely replied: “Another such victory and we shall be utterly ruined.”
Thus originated the term “Pyrrhic victory”, a victory won, but at a crippling price.
"After First Communion", Carl Frithjof Smith (Norwegian), 1892
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Etruscan Faliscan Commanders Crested Helmet 8th century BCE.
📸 The Penn Museum
Helmet all'Antica, attrobuted to Filippo Negroli. Milan, Italy, ca. 1532-1535
A fabulously embossed parade helmet crowned with a laurel of oak leaves, possibly made for the della Rovere of Urbino.
📸 Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Sham Castle, Bath, Somerset
It is a screen wall with a central pointed arch flanked by two 3-storey circular turrets, which extend sideways to a 2-storey square tower at each end of the wall.
It was probably designed around 1755 by Sanderson Miller and built in 1762 by Richard James, master mason for Ralph Allen, "to improve the prospect" from Allen's town house in Bath.
Other 18th-century so-called "sham castles" exist at Hagley Hall, Clent Grove, Castle Hill, Filleigh and two at Croome Court (Dunstall and Pirton castles).
Beryl intaglio with portrait of Julia Domna, wife of the Emperor Septimius Severus (A.D. 193–211) and mother of Emperor “Caracalla”.
Circa 200 AD. Dimensions: H. 15/16 in. (2.4 cm)
📸 Metropolitan Museum of Art.
“Allegory of sadness”, detail of Frederick V's sarcophagus, work by Johannes Wiedewelt (1731-1802), Roskilde Cathedral (Domkirke), 12th-13th century, (UNESCO World Heritage List, 1995), Denmark.
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"The first boatman", Franz Caucig (Slovene), 1810.
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Palace of the Grand Master of the Knights of Rhodes, Greece
Originally built on the foundations of the Temple of Sun God (Helios), whose cult was much spread in Rhodes in the antiquity, this palace was the residence of the governor and administrative center in the Medieval times. Constructed in the 14th century by the Knights of Saint John, it distinguishes for the spherical towers and the arched gate.
The palace was enormous in size. It had 158 rooms that have antique furniture of the 16th and the 17th century, exquisite multi-colored marbles, sculptures, carpets, and fine Oriental vases. On the first floor, there are the official rooms as well as the private quarters of the Grand Master. On the ground floor, the auxiliary rooms are found. The most important rooms are the Grand Reception Hall, the Waiting Room, the impressive ballroom and the elegant Music Room, while not to miss is the Medusa Mosaic.
"Société Protectrice des Animaux" — Jules Didier (French)
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“People will not look forward to posterity who never look backward to their ancestors.”
― Edmund Burke.
Roman helmet once belonged to a gladiator of type provocator, dated to the 1st century CE.
The helmet is beautifully decorated with a visible eagle on the front. The face was covered with a visor with holes.
Provocator was partially armoured, unlike other types of gladiators. He wore a breastplate held by leather straps crossing his back. The fighting style required a great deal of skill in using a sword and operating a shield. His weight prevented him from making too much of his finesse.
He was most often put up against Samnites or other provocator.
📸 Naples Museo Archeologico Nazionale.
Uniform and Sword of General Jacques-Zacharie Destaing of the French Army dated between 1801-1802 on display at the Musée de l'Armée in Paris
Destaing spent his early army career fighting in Europe first in the National Guard in Aurillac, Auvergne (1789) and then going on to fight in Spain and Italy (1793-96). But it was when he joined the Army of the Orient in 1798 led by the Consul Napoleon Bonaparte to fight the Mamluks in Egypt.
It was during this campaign he led soldiers in the Battle of the Pyramids where the the French Republic destroyed the Mamluk and the Ottoman armies. On the battlefield he was promoted to General of Brigade by the First Consul Napoleon himself.
“Most people would rather die than think and many of them do!”
— Bertrand Russell
"The shepherdess" — Edward Frederick Brewtnall (1846-1902)
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The Moszna Castle, located in the small village of Moszna, Poland
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“Those who do not look upon themselves as a link, connecting the past with the future, do not perform their duty to the world.”
— Daniel Webster
A marble Roman toilet decorated with a cart wheel 211-224 AD
Perhaps one of a set, each painted in the colour of a Faction (team). Pavonazzetto marble, from the baths of Caracalla, Rome.
📸 British Museum
The corpses of King Charles I and his heir after the Lisbon Regicide, Portugal, 1908
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A gold hairnet, Greece, 3rd century BCE. In the centre is a relief of Artemis.
📸 National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Cameo of Ptolemy II Philadelphus and Arsinoe II, his second wife, 278-269 BC. C.
It is an onyx gem with nine layers of engraving, with remarkable dimensions, 11.5 x 11.3 cm.
Arsinoe (the figure behind) wears a crown covered by a veil on her head, while Ptolemy (in front) wears a helmet adorned with divine symbols that were already attributed to Alexander: the serpent uraeus-Agathodaimon on the cap (which was shown here without wings), the winged thunderbolt of Zeus on the cheekbone and an image of Amun on the nape shield.
They are clearly idealized portraits that respond to an identification of royalty with the ideal of physical and spiritual perfection that a god or a sovereign must have and, in turn, an affirmation of their dynastic legitimacy in Egypt as successors of Alexander the Great.
📸 The Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.
“We’re all immortal, as long as our stories are told.”
― Elizabeth Hunter, The Scribe
Roman swastika-shaped fibula. The object is made of bronze and dates to the 3rd-4th century CE. The artifact was found near Veliko Gradište, in eastern Serbia.
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Ancient Roman marble statue of a panther with a goat's head between the legs.
Thought to be part of a large group of sculptures found at Hadrian's Villa in the 18th century, the panther was actually found on one of the estates known as "Old Rome" (Roma Vecchia).
Due to the restoration of the ancient surface by caustic acid etching, it gives the impression of the work of the 17th or 18th century.
📸 Vatican Museums in Rome
Burgonet, elaborated by the Armorer Filippo Negroli (Italian), in 1543.
This masterpiece of Renaissance metalwork is signed on the browplate by Filippo Negroli, whose embossed armor was praised by sixteenth-century writers as "miraculous" and deserving "immortal merit." Formed of one plate of steel and patinated to look like bronze, the bowl is raised in high relief with motifs inspired by classical art. The graceful mermaid-like siren forming the helmet's comb holds a grimacing head of Medusa by the hair. The sides of the helmet are covered with acanthus scrolls inhabited by putti, a motif ultimately derived from ancient Roman sculpture and wall paintings.
"The Lion Man", from Stadel Cave in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, 40,000 years old.
The oldest known evidence of religious belief in the world.