#hamilcar

The Video:

“The legendary death of Hercules, the historical death of Hamilcar, and the picture of Croesus enthroned in state on the pyre and pouring a libation, all combine to indicate that to be burnt alive was regarded as a solemn sacrifice, nay, more than that, as an apotheosis which raised the victim to the rank of a god. For it is to be remembered that Hamilcar as well as Hercules was worshipped after death. Fire, moreover, was regarded by the ancients as a purgative so powerful that properly applied it could burn away all that was mortal of a man, leaving only the divine and immortal spirit behind. Hence we read of goddesses who essayed to confer immortality on the infant sons of kings by burning them in the fire by night; but their beneficent purpose was always frustrated by the ignorant interposition of the mother or father, who peeping into the room saw the child in the flames and raised a cry of horror, thus disconcerting the goddess at her magic rites. This story is told of Isis in the house of the king of Byblus, of Demeter in the house of the king of Eleusis, and of Thetis in the house of her mortal husband Peleus. In a slightly different way the witch Medea professed to give back to the old their lost youth by boiling them with a hell-broth in her magic cauldron; and when Pelops had been butchered and served up at a banquet of the gods by his cruel father Tantalus, the divine beings, touched with pity, plunged his mangled remains in a kettle, from which after decoction he emerged alive and young…. Thus we can understand why kings and commoners who claimed or aspired to divinity should choose death by fire. It opened to them the gates of heaven.”

—J. G. Frazer, Adonis, Attis, Osiris, part 1 (The Golden Bough, vol. V, 1914, pp. 179-181)

The Feast of Tantalus (Le festin donné aux dieux par Tantale), by Hugues Taraval (1763).

Le plan politique du président chinois Xi Jinping est de faire de son pays la première puissance mondiale en 2049 afin de commémorer le centenaire de la victoire de Mao Tsé-toung sur Tchang Kaï-check. Par Hamilcar Continue reading Untitled

Foundation Current Carthage

The most probable chronology places towards the year 860 BC the foundation of Carthage, It was then that Dido, the daughter of Belus, fleeing the tyranny of Pygmalion, her brother, king of Tire, who had just killed her husband to seize his riches, landed in Africa. Tradition has consecrated the singular stratagem employed by this princess to obtain the…