1.
Mastroberardino
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Mastroberardino is an Italian winery located in the Campania region. Founded in 1878, the winery is known for its production of Taurasi DOCG as well as its work in identifying and preserving ancient grape varieties like Greco. The work of the Mastroberardino family, particularly Antonio Mastroberardino, in field is widely respected. For most of the 20th century, the winery was responsible for more than half of Campanias Denominazione di origine controllata wine production, but those percentages have declined as other producers have moved into the area and started producing DOC/G level wine. The Mastroberardino family has been producing wine in the Campania region for more than 11 generations, knowing the export market for Mastroberardino wines would be important in these early years Angelo founded a logistics company in Rome to help facilitate sales of his wines abroad. Angelos son, Michele Mastroberardino, continued to promote the familys wines throughout most of the early 20th century with frequent travels, after World War II, the family fell into the hands of Micheles sons, before Angelo and after Antonio and Walter. The Mastroberardino family have been a leader in uncovering and preserving the history of the Campania region, particularly during the ancient Greek. One such vineyard was owned by an ancient Pompeiian named Eusino who also owned a tavern in the city, the project is also using many of the same pruning, vine training and harvest techniques used during Roman times. The project also does not fine or filter the wine prior to bottling, the 2001 vintage of 1,721 bottles received mixed reviews. Most of the bottles from the Villa dei Misteri project are auctioned off with the going to fund continual research at Pompeii. During World War II, much of southern Italys vineyards were devastated by the Italian Campaign, at Mastroberardino, yields at harvest are often much lower than what is permitted under Denominazione di origine controllata and Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita wine laws. Many of Mastroberardino reds, such as the Aglianico for Taurasi, are aged in oak barrels for one to three prior to release. While many Taurasi wines include blended portions of Barbera, Sangiovese and Piedirosso, the winery also makes extensive use of soft pressing and often ferments their reds at cooler temperatures than other wineries. The white wines of Mastroberardino, including their Fiano wines, often see some oak aging though for far less of a period than the reds. In addition to its DOCG Taurasi wine, Mastroberardino also produces several other Campanian DOC and Indicazione geografica tipica wines as well as passito, among the wines they produce include Lacryma Christi, Fiano di Avellino, Falanghina from the Irpinia DOC and Greco di Tufo. Additionally they produce the Villa dei Misteri rosso wine from Pompeiano IGT from vineyards located within ancient excavation of the ancient city of Pompeii
2.
Dionysus
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Dionysus is the god of the grape harvest, winemaking and wine, of ritual madness, fertility, theatre and religious ecstasy in ancient Greek religion and myth. Wine played an important role in Greek culture, and the cult of Dionysus was the religious focus for its unrestrained consumption. He may have been worshipped as early as c, 1500–1100 BC by Mycenean Greeks, traces of Dionysian-type cult have also been found in ancient Minoan Crete. His origins are uncertain, and his cults took many forms, some are described by ancient sources as Thracian, in some cults, he arrives from the east, as an Asiatic foreigner, in others, from Ethiopia in the South. He is a god of epiphany, the god that comes and his festivals were the driving force behind the development of Greek theatre. The earliest cult images of Dionysus show a male, bearded and robed. He holds a staff, tipped with a pine-cone and known as a thyrsus. Later images show him as a beardless, sensuous, naked or half-naked androgynous youth, in its fully developed form, his central cult imagery shows his triumphant, disorderly arrival or return, as if from some place beyond the borders of the known and civilized. His procession is made up of female followers and bearded satyrs with erect penises, some are armed with the thyrsus. The god himself is drawn in a chariot, usually by exotic beasts such as lions or tigers and this procession is presumed to be the cult model for the followers of his Dionysian Mysteries. He is also known as Bacchus, the adopted by the Romans. His thyrsus, sometimes wound with ivy and dripping with honey, is both a beneficent wand and a used to destroy those who oppose his cult and the freedoms he represents. As Eleutherios, his wine, music and ecstatic dance free his followers from self-conscious fear and care and those who partake of his mysteries are possessed and empowered by the god himself. The cult of Dionysus is also a cult of the souls, his maenads feed the dead through blood-offerings and he is sometimes categorised as a dying-and-rising god. Some scholars believe that Dionysus is a syncretism of a local Greek nature deity, Dionysus had a strange birth that evokes the difficulty in fitting him into the Olympian pantheon. His mother was a woman, Semele, the daughter of king Cadmus of Thebes, and his father was Zeus. Zeus wife, Hera, discovered the affair while Semele was pregnant, appearing as an old crone, Hera befriended Semele, who confided in her that Zeus was the actual father of the baby in her womb. Hera pretended not to believe her, and planted seeds of doubt in Semeles mind, curious, Semele demanded of Zeus that he reveal himself in all his glory as proof of his godhood
3.
Roman villa
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A Roman villa was a country house built for the upper class in the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. The villa rustica centered on the villa itself, perhaps only seasonally occupied, under the Empire a concentration of Imperial villas grew up near the Bay of Naples, especially on the Isle of Capri, at Monte Circeo on the coast and at Antium. Wealthy Romans escaped the heat in the hills round Rome. Cicero allegedly possessed no fewer than seven villas, the oldest of them, Pliny the Younger had three or four, of which the example near Laurentium is the best known from his descriptions. The Empire contained many kinds of villas, not all of them lavishly appointed with mosaic floors, in the provinces, any country house with some decorative features in the Roman style may be called a villa by modern scholars. Some villas were more like the houses of England or Poland. These early suburban villas, such as the one at Romes Auditorium site or at Grottarossa in Rome, demonstrate the antiquity and it is possible that these early, suburban villas were also in fact the seats of power of regional strongmen or heads of important families. A third type of villa provided the organizational center of the large holdings called latifundia, by the first century BC, the classic villa took many architectural forms, with many examples employing atrium or peristyle, for enclosed spaces open to light and air. Upper class, wealthy Roman citizens in the countryside around Rome and throughout the Empire lived in villa complexes, the villa-complex consisted of three parts. The pars urbana where the owner and his family lived and this would be similar to the wealthy-persons in the city and would have painted walls. The pars rustica where the chef and slaves of the villa worked and lived and this was also the living quarters for the farms animals. There would usually be other rooms here that might be used as store rooms, the villa fructuaria would be the storage rooms. These would be where the products of the farm were stored ready for transport to buyers, storage rooms here would have been used for oil, wine, grain, grapes and any other produce of the villa. Other rooms in the villa might include an office, a temple for worship, several bedrooms, a dining room, Villas were often furnished with plumbed bathing facilities and many would have had an under-floor central heating known as the hypocaust. Smaller in the countryside, even non-commercial villas operated as largely self-supporting units, with associated farms, olive groves, Roman writers refer with satisfaction to the self-sufficiency of their villas, where they drank their own wine and pressed their own oil, a commonly used literary topos. The late Roman Republic witnessed an explosion of villa construction in Italy, especially in the following the dictatorship of Sulla. In Etruria, the villa at Settefinestre has been interpreted as being the centre of one of the latifundia that were involved in agricultural production. At Settefinestre and elsewhere, the housing of such villas was not richly appointed
4.
Pompeii
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Pompeii was an ancient Roman town-city near modern Naples, in the Campania region of Italy, in the territory of the comune of Pompei. Pompeii, along with Herculaneum and many villas in the area, was mostly destroyed and buried under 4 to 6 m of volcanic ash. Researchers believe that the town was founded in the seventh or sixth century BC by the Osci or Oscans. It came under the domination of Rome in the 4th century BC, by the time of its destruction,160 years later, its population was estimated at 11,000 people, and the city had a complex water system, an amphitheatre, gymnasium, and a port. The eruption destroyed the city, killing its inhabitants and burying it under tons of ash, the site was lost for about 1,500 years until its initial rediscovery in 1599 and broader rediscovery almost 150 years later by Spanish engineer Rocque Joaquin de Alcubierre in 1748. The objects that lay beneath the city have been preserved for centuries because of the lack of air and these artefacts provide an extraordinarily detailed insight into the life of a city during the Pax Romana. During the excavation, plaster was used to fill in the voids in the ash layers that once held human bodies and this allowed archaeologists to see the exact position the person was in when he or she died. Pompeii has been a tourist destination for over 250 years, today it has UNESCO World Heritage Site status and is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Italy, with approximately 2.5 million visitors every year. Pompeii in Latin is a second declension plural, the ruins of Pompeii are located near the modern suburban town of Pompei. It stands on a formed by a lava flow to the north of the mouth of the Sarno River. Today it is some distance inland, but in ancient times was nearer to the coast, Pompeii is about 8 km away from Mount Vesuvius. It covered a total of 64 to 67 hectares and was home to approximately 11,000 to 11,500 people on the basis of household counts and it was a major city in the region of Campania. Three sheets of sediment have been found on top of the lava that lies below the city and, mixed in with the sediment, archaeologists have found bits of bone, pottery shards. Carbon dating has placed the oldest of these layers from the 8th–6th centuries BC, the other two strata are separated either by well-developed soil layers or Roman pavement, and were laid in the 4th century BC and 2nd century BC. It is theorized that the layers of the sediment were created by large landslides. The town was founded around the 7th-6th century BC by the Osci or Oscans and it had already been used as a safe port by Greek and Phoenician sailors. According to Strabo, Pompeii was also captured by the Etruscans, and in recent excavations have shown the presence of Etruscan inscriptions. Pompeii was captured for the first time by the Greek colony of Cumae, allied with Syracuse, in the 5th century BC, the Samnites conquered it, the new rulers imposed their architecture and enlarged the town
5.
Italy
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Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a unitary parliamentary republic in Europe. Located in the heart of the Mediterranean Sea, Italy shares open land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino, Italy covers an area of 301,338 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate and Mediterranean climate. Due to its shape, it is referred to in Italy as lo Stivale. With 61 million inhabitants, it is the fourth most populous EU member state, the Italic tribe known as the Latins formed the Roman Kingdom, which eventually became a republic that conquered and assimilated other nearby civilisations. The legacy of the Roman Empire is widespread and can be observed in the distribution of civilian law, republican governments, Christianity. The Renaissance began in Italy and spread to the rest of Europe, bringing a renewed interest in humanism, science, exploration, Italian culture flourished at this time, producing famous scholars, artists and polymaths such as Leonardo da Vinci, Galileo, Michelangelo and Machiavelli. The weakened sovereigns soon fell victim to conquest by European powers such as France, Spain and Austria. Despite being one of the victors in World War I, Italy entered a period of economic crisis and social turmoil. The subsequent participation in World War II on the Axis side ended in defeat, economic destruction. Today, Italy has the third largest economy in the Eurozone and it has a very high level of human development and is ranked sixth in the world for life expectancy. The country plays a prominent role in regional and global economic, military, cultural and diplomatic affairs, as a reflection of its cultural wealth, Italy is home to 51 World Heritage Sites, the most in the world, and is the fifth most visited country. The assumptions on the etymology of the name Italia are very numerous, according to one of the more common explanations, the term Italia, from Latin, Italia, was borrowed through Greek from the Oscan Víteliú, meaning land of young cattle. The bull was a symbol of the southern Italic tribes and was often depicted goring the Roman wolf as a defiant symbol of free Italy during the Social War. Greek historian Dionysius of Halicarnassus states this account together with the legend that Italy was named after Italus, mentioned also by Aristotle and Thucydides. The name Italia originally applied only to a part of what is now Southern Italy – according to Antiochus of Syracuse, but by his time Oenotria and Italy had become synonymous, and the name also applied to most of Lucania as well. The Greeks gradually came to apply the name Italia to a larger region, excavations throughout Italy revealed a Neanderthal presence dating back to the Palaeolithic period, some 200,000 years ago, modern Humans arrived about 40,000 years ago. Other ancient Italian peoples of undetermined language families but of possible origins include the Rhaetian people and Cammuni. Also the Phoenicians established colonies on the coasts of Sardinia and Sicily, the Roman legacy has deeply influenced the Western civilisation, shaping most of the modern world
6.
Fresco
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Fresco is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly-laid, or wet lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the fresco technique has been employed since antiquity and is closely associated with Italian Renaissance painting. Buon fresco pigment mixed with water of temperature on a thin layer of wet, fresh plaster, for which the Italian word for plaster. Because of the makeup of the plaster, a binder is not required, as the pigment mixed solely with the water will sink into the intonaco. The pigment is absorbed by the wet plaster, after a number of hours, many artists sketched their compositions on this underlayer, which would never be seen, in a red pigment called sinopia, a name also used to refer to these under-paintings. Later, new techniques for transferring paper drawings to the wall were developed. The main lines of a drawing made on paper were pricked over with a point, the paper held against the wall, if the painting was to be done over an existing fresco, the surface would be roughened to provide better adhesion. This area is called the giornata, and the different day stages can usually be seen in a large fresco, buon frescoes are difficult to create because of the deadline associated with the drying plaster. Once a giornata is dried, no more buon fresco can be done, if mistakes have been made, it may also be necessary to remove the whole intonaco for that area—or to change them later, a secco. An indispensable component of this process is the carbonatation of the lime, the eyes of the people of the School of Athens are sunken-in using this technique which causes the eyes to seem deeper and more pensive. Michelangelo used this technique as part of his trademark outlining of his central figures within his frescoes, in a wall-sized fresco, there may be ten to twenty or even more giornate, or separate areas of plaster. After five centuries, the giornate, which were nearly invisible, have sometimes become visible, and in many large-scale frescoes. Additionally, the border between giornate was often covered by an a secco painting, which has fallen off. One of the first painters in the period to use this technique was the Isaac Master in the Upper Basilica of Saint Francis in Assisi. A person who creates fresco is called a frescoist, a secco or fresco-secco painting is done on dry plaster. The pigments thus require a medium, such as egg. Blue was a problem, and skies and blue robes were often added a secco, because neither azurite blue nor lapis lazuli. By the end of the century this had largely displaced buon fresco
7.
Roman art
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Roman art refers to the visual arts made in Ancient Rome and in the territories of the Roman Empire. Roman art includes architecture, painting, sculpture and mosaic work, sculpture was perhaps considered as the highest form of art by Romans, but figure painting was also very highly regarded. Roman coins were an important means of propaganda, and have survived in enormous numbers, other perishable forms of art have not survived at all. Stylistic eclecticism and practical application are the hallmarks of much Roman art, though very little remains of Greek wall art and portraiture, certainly Greek sculpture and vase painting bears this out. These forms were not likely surpassed by Roman artists in fineness of design or execution. As another example of the lost Golden Age, he singled out Peiraikos, whose artistry is surpassed by only a very few. ”The adjective vulgar is used here in its original meaning, the Greek antecedents of Roman art were legendary. In the mid-5th century BC, the most famous Greek artists were Polygnotos, noted for his murals, and Apollodoros. In sculpture, Skopas, Praxiteles, Phidias, and Lysippos were the foremost sculptors, Ancient Greek treatises on the arts are known to have existed in Roman times though are now lost. Many Roman artists came from Greek colonies and provinces, the high number of Roman copies of Greek art also speaks of the esteem Roman artists had for Greek art, and perhaps of its rarer and higher quality. One exception is the Roman bust, which did not include the shoulders, the traditional head-and-shoulders bust may have been an Etruscan or early Roman form. Where Greek artists were highly revered in their society, most Roman artists were anonymous, there is no recording, as in Ancient Greece, of the great masters of Roman art, and practically no signed works. Roman culture assimilated many cultures and was for the most part tolerant of the ways of conquered peoples, Roman art was commissioned, displayed, and owned in far greater quantities, and adapted to more uses than in Greek times. Wealthy Romans were more materialistic, they decorated their walls with art, their home with decorative objects, when Constantine moved the capital of the empire to Byzantium, Roman art incorporated Eastern influences to produce the Byzantine style of the late empire. When Rome was sacked in the 5th century, artisans moved to, of the vast body of Roman painting we now have only a very few pockets of survivals, with many documented types not surviving at all, or doing so only from the very end of the period. A succession of dated styles have been defined and analysed by modern art historians beginning with August Mau, there are a number of other parts of painted rooms surviving from Rome and elsewhere, which somewhat help to fill in the gaps of our knowledge of wall-painting. Nothing remains of the Greek paintings imported to Rome during the 4th and 5th centuries, in sum, the range of samples is confined to only about 200 years out of the about 900 years of Roman history, and of provincial and decorative painting. Most of this painting was done using the secco method. There is evidence from mosaics and a few inscriptions that some Roman paintings were adaptations or copies of earlier Greek works
8.
Eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79
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The 79 AD eruption of Mount Vesuvius was one of the most catastrophic volcanic eruptions in European history. Historians have learned about the eruption from the account of Pliny the Younger. It is the namesake for Vesuvian eruptions, several Roman settlements were obliterated and buried underneath massive pyroclastic surges and ashfall deposits, the most well known being Pompeii and Herculaneum. The remains of about 1,500 people have found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. The 79 AD eruption was preceded by a powerful earthquake seventeen years before on February 5,62 AD, which caused widespread destruction around the Bay of Naples, some of the damage had still not been repaired when the volcano erupted. Suetonius recorded that the emperor continued singing through the earthquake until he had finished his song, the Romans grew accustomed to minor earth tremors in the region, the writer Pliny the Younger wrote that they were not particularly alarming because they are frequent in Campania. Small earthquakes started taking place on 20 August 79, becoming more frequent over the four days. Reconstructions of the eruption and its effects vary considerably in the details but have the same overall features, the eruption lasted for two days. Mount Vesuvius violently erupted, spewing up a column from which ash and pumice began to fall. Rescues and escapes occurred during this time, at some time in the night or early the next day, August 25, pyroclastic flows in the close vicinity of the volcano began. Lights seen on the mountain were interpreted as fires, people as far away as Misenum fled for their lives. These were accompanied by additional light tremors and a tsunami in the Bay of Naples. By evening of the day, the eruption was over. Pliny the Younger wrote an account of the eruption, Broad sheets of flame were lighting up many parts of Vesuvius, their light, two pyroclastic surges engulfed Pompeii, burning and asphyxiating the stragglers who had remained behind. Oplontis and Herculaneum received the brunt of the surges and were buried in ash, pumice, lava fragments. In an article published in 2002, Sigurdsson and Casey elaborate on the evidence based on excavations. Subsequently, the cloud collapsed as the gases densified and lost their capability to support their solid contents, releasing it as a pyroclastic surge, the eruption alternated between Vesuvian and Peléan six times. Surges 4 and 5 are believed by the authors to have destroyed and buried Pompeii, surges are identified in the deposits by dune and cross-bedding formations, which are not produced by fallout
9.
Dionysian Mysteries
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It also provided some liberation for those marginalized by Greek society, women, slaves and foreigners. In their final phase the Mysteries shifted their emphasis from a chthonic, underworld orientation to a transcendental, mystical one and its spread was associated with the dissemination of wine, a sacrament or entheogen with which it appears always to have been closely associated. However, all stages of this developmental spectrum appear to have continued in parallel throughout the eastern Mediterranean until late in Greek history and forcible Christianization. After the deitys name was discovered on Mycenean Linear B tablets, however, this theory was abandoned, the absence of an early Olympian Dionysus is today explained by patterns of social exclusion and the cults marginality, rather than chronology. Whether the cult originated on Minoan Crete or Africa – or in Thrace or Asia, as a proto-Sabazius – is unanswerable, due to lack of evidence. The original rite of Dionysus is associated with a cult, concerned with the grapevines cultivation and an understanding of its life cycle. Most importantly, however, the intoxicating and disinhibiting effects of wine were regarded as due to possession by the gods spirit, wine was also poured on the earth and its growing vine, completing the cycle. The cult was not solely concerned with the vine itself, wine includes other ingredients adding to its quality, flavour and medicinal properties. Scholars have suggested that, given the low content of early wine. Honey and beeswax were often added to wine, introducing an even older drink, károly Kerényi postulated that this wine lore superseded earlier Neolithic mead lore involving bee swarms associated by the Greeks with Dionysus. Mead and beer were incorporated into the domain of Dionysus, perhaps through his identification with the Thracian corn deity Sabazius, other plants believed to be viniculturally significant were also included in wine lore such as ivy, the fig and the pine. The bull and goat were also part of the cult, eventually seen as manifestations of Dionysus, some of these associations had been linked with fertility deities and became part of his new role. The latter provided wine to ancient Egypt wine from about 2500 BC, in any case Minoan Crete was the next link in the chain, importing wine from the Egyptians, Thracians and Phoenicians and exporting it to its colonies. The Mysteries probably took shape in Minoan Crete from about 3000 to 1000 BC, since the name Dionysus exists nowhere other than Crete and Greece. The rites were based on a seasonal death-rebirth theme and spirit possession, spirit possession involved liberation from civilizations rules and constraints. It celebrated that which was outside civilized society and a return to primordial nature—which would later assume mystical overtones and it also involved escape from the socialized personality and ego into an ecstatic, deified state or the primal herd. In this sense Dionysus was the beast-god within, or the mind of modern psychology. All were equal in a cult that inverted their roles, similar to the Roman Saturnalia, although the Greek Dionysian rites were associated with women, the cult officers titles were of both genders—belying the claim that the cult was solely for women
10.
Maenad
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In Greek mythology, maenads were the female followers of Dionysus and the most significant members of the Thiasus, the gods retinue. Their name literally translates as raving ones, often the maenads were portrayed as inspired by Dionysus into a state of ecstatic frenzy through a combination of dancing and intoxication. During these rites, the maenads would dress in fawn skins and carry a thyrsus and they would weave ivy-wreaths around their heads or wear a bull helmet in honor of their god, and often handle or wear snakes. They went into the mountains at night and practiced strange rites, according to Plutarchs Life of Alexander, maenads were called Mimallones and Klodones In Macedon, epithets derived from the feminine art of spinning wool. Nevertheless, these warlike parthenoi from the hills, associated with a Dionysios pseudanor fake male Dionysus, in southern Greece they were described with Bacchae, Bassarides, Thyiades, Potniades and other epithets. The term maenad has come to be associated with a variety of women, supernatural, mythological. In Euripides play The Bacchae, maenads of Thebes murder King Pentheus after he bans the worship of Dionysus, Dionysus, Pentheus cousin, himself lures Pentheus to the woods, where the maenads tear him apart. His corpse is mutilated by his own mother, Agave, who tears off his head, a group of maenads also kill Orpheus. In ceramic art, the frolicking of Maenads and Dionysus is often a theme depicted on kraters, used to mix water and these scenes show the maenads in their frenzy running in the forests, often tearing to pieces any animal they happen to come across. They strike rocks with the thyrsus, and water gushes forth and they lower the thyrsus to the earth, and a spring of wine bubbles up. If they want milk, they scratch up the ground with their fingers, honey trickles down from the thyrsus made of the wood of the ivy, they gird themselves with snakes and give suck to fawns and wolf cubs as if they were infants at the breast. No weapon of iron can wound them, and the snakes harmlessly lick up the sweat from their heated cheeks, fierce bulls fall to the ground, victims to numberless, tearing female hands, and sturdy trees are torn up by the roots with their combined efforts. Having symbolically eaten his body and drunk his blood, the celebrants became possessed by Dionysus, Maenads are found the later references as priestesses of the Dionystic cult. They will give to you both the rites and good practices, and they will establish dance groups of Bacchus in your city. Dionysus came to his birthplace, Thebes, where neither Pentheus, his cousin who was now king, nor Pentheus’ mother Agave, Dionysus punished Agave by driving her insane, and in that condition, she killed her son and tore him to pieces. From Thebes, Dionysus went to Argos where all the women except the daughters of King Proetus joined in his worship, Dionysus punished them by driving them mad, and they killed the infants who were nursing at their breasts. He did the same to the daughters of Minyas, King of Orchomenos in Boetia, according to Opian, Dionysus delighted, as a child, in tearing kids into pieces and bringing them back to life again. He is characterized as the one, and the mad one
Dionysiac frieze, Villa of Mystsdaasdaseries, Pompeii, Smarthistory[8]
