Secret Pagan Basilica in Rome

[guy]

An interesting article:
 
 

A mysterious Roman basilica built for the worship of an esoteric pagan cult and now lying hidden more than 40ft below street level has opened to the public for the first time.

The basilica, the only one of its kind in the world, was excavated from solid tufa volcanic rock on the outskirts of the imperial capital in the first century AD.

 The subterranean basilica, which predates Christianity, was built by a rich Roman family who were devotees of a little-known cult called Neopythagoreanism.

Originating in the first century BC, it was a school of mystical Hellenistic philosophy that preached asceticism and was based on the writings of Pythagoras and Plato.

 

 
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/12005864/Secret-pagan-basilica-in-Rome-emerges-from-the-shadows-after-2000-years.html



guy also known as gaius

Edited November 19, 2015 by guy

[caldrail]

No suprise whatsoever. Despite the increasing predominance of christianity in Roman society paganosm remained an alternative for those seeking something different. This is normal in any society - even in the strictly christian victorian world there were still pagan sects in the background, however serious or silly - and pagan worship on Britain is known to have continued into the eighth century ad (there is a list of penances written down for worship of craven idols and other minor practises), and the persistence of druidism, ostensibly destroyed by the Romans at the Battle of Mona in the first century, is hard to explain unless druids continued into the middle ages, even if increasingly isolated and irrelevant. As it happens, Rome was quite a hotbed of religious experiment, importing syrian and egyptian cults in particular, some of which were persistent.