There's a famous ancient 5th Century A.D. Greek quote lamenting the end of the classical world and lamenting the end of civilisation as Christianty takes over after the closing of the Academy and the Lyceum and the death of Hypatia but I can't remember it...



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2019 07:22PM by anybody.

Julian the Apostate is reputed to have said on his deathbed in Latin probably, "You have won, Galilean'. He tried to restore paganism sometime after Constantine and was unsuccessful.I.am not familiar with any other quote-at least not that I remember of the top of my head. I read the quote in Latin, but it could have been in Greek originally

-- after a Christian mob destroyed the Serapeum and what was left of the Library of Alexandria:

"Is it true that we Greeks are really dead and only seem alive? And in our fallen state we imagine that a dream is life? Or are we truly alive, and life itself dead?"



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2019 08:54PM by anybody.

"Once upon a time, I, Zhuangzi, dreamt I was a butterfly, fluttering hither and thither, to all intents and purposes a butterfly. I was con­scious only of following my fancies as a butterfly, and was unconscious of my individuality as a man. Suddenly, I awaked, and there I lay, myself again. Now I do not know whether I was then a man dream­ing I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/12/2019 09:01PM by Lot's Wife.

https://historyforatheists.com/2018/07/history-for-atheists-on-the-non-sequitur-show-2-the-great-library-and-hypatia/
This wet for was written by an atheist. The common story about the library is somewhat inaccurate. The author is an atheist.

Don't know about that specific quote but here's a good article on Hypatia. Debunks many of the myths surrounding her.

http://talesoftimesforgotten.com/2018/08/06/who-was-hypatia-of-alexandria-really/

"The only parts of this story that are actually true are that Hypatia was a real person and that she really was murdered by Christians. Everything else is pure fantasy, the result of centuries of myth-making by people with different polemical agendas."

No one really knows what happened to the library or what happened to the Museion (the research institute which the library was part of). Seven hundred years (300 BCE to AD 400) is a long time.

The formal closings of the universities in Athens, the death of Hypatia, and the end of the Museion in Alexandria are generally considered to be the end of the classical ancient world. It would take the West another thousand years to recover.

Our world now stands on the precipice. It is a hard thing to witness the end of civilisation -- just as the unknown author did sixteen hundred years ago.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2019 07:42AM by anybody.

So Cyrus was the loon responsible for turning shineola into shit. Christianity is a collective delusion created to control a decaying empire through engineered mythology. Don’t tell my achey breaky heart. Er, different Cyrus. Philosophy was a threat.

The complete absence of reincarnation in Christianity should tell you something. Suppressing such a fundamental part of nature is a gigantic red flag.

Fortunately, Neoplatonic ideas are back. The world won’t necessarily experience a second dark age. Not that we’ve left the first one.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2019 09:24AM by babyloncansuckit.

"Μήπως ενώ έχουμε πεθάνει ζούμε μόνο κατά φαντασίαν,
εμείς οι Έλληνες, που έχουμε περιπέσει σε συμφορά
νομίζοντας ότι η ζωή είναι όνειρο;
Ή ζούμε εμείς, και έχει αποθάνει η ζωή;"
Παλλαδάς ο Αλεξανδρεύς - αναφερόμενος στην καταστροφή του Ελληνισμού

"Is it true that we Greeks are really dead and only seem alive -
in our fallen state where we imagine that dream is life?
Or are we truly alive and is life dead?"

-- Palladas of Alexandria

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palladas

There is little direct allusion in his epigrams to the struggle against the onslaught of Christianity. One epigram speaks obscurely of the destruction of the "idols" of Alexandria popular in the archiepiscopate of Theophilus in 389; another in even more enigmatic language (Anth. Gr. 10.90) seems to be a bitter attack on the doctrine of the Resurrection; and a scornful couplet against the swarms of Egyptian monks might have been written by a Reformer of the 16th century. For the most part his sympathy with the losing side is only betrayed in his despondency over all things. But it is in his criticism of life that the power of Palladas lies; with a remorselessness like that of Jonathan Swift he tears the coverings from human frailty and holds it up in its meanness and misery. The lines on the Descent of Man (Anth. Gr. 10.45), fall as heavily on the Neo-Platonic martyr as on the Christian persecutor, and remain even now among the most mordant and crushing sarcasms ever passed upon mankind.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/15/2019 07:59AM by anybody.

Is it true that we Mormons are really dead and only seem alive
in our callings and election where we imagine that Lehi's dream is life?

Or are we only truly alive as in a dream and is real life only for the dead we work for?

~Elder Berry

Mormons believe that dead people can appear to them and ask them to do rituals for them.

Death where is thy sting? Mormonism is as a dream. The Mormons think their enemies and the uninitiated are wandering in mists of darkness or above these mists in a tower of power mocking them.

They are in a fog where life and death coexist with dead people everywhere.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/19/2019 11:31AM by Elder Berry.

"I'll die among the living, but I live among the dead" Morton Gould.

"Fruit flies like a banana" --An RFM poster this morning.

I'm happiest on here, when Elder Berry is being profound. Love ya, EB!

exminion Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> "I'll die among the living, but I live among the
> dead" Morton Gould.
>
> "Fruit flies like a banana" --An RFM poster this
> morning.
>
> I'm happiest on here, when Elder Berry is being
> profound.

Love this haiku-iness and koan-iness. And what I post is mostly Greek to me. I think I channel my inner idiot attempting to make sense of the deluge of information I feed it.