Don’t throw out the baby with the bath water. So much that is good and beautiful in our lives has been twisted.

For example….

Mechanical Lions of the Comnenus. 

 

Financial Times Article

 

ALSO…

 

The Emperor’s Palace in Constantinople

(described by J Arnott Hamilton, Byzantine Architecture and Decoration (1956 pp16-17)

William of Tyre in the twelfth century wrote with admiration of the statues of animals and the stately staircases and the marble quay. Excavations undertaken at the Sacred Palace within recent years have uncovered a magnificent mosaic pavement which is one of the most important discoveries of Byzantine archaeologists.

The Sacred Palace was the habitation of the Emperor, and every method was adopted to surround him with glamour and mystery. He was the supreme autocrat, the arbiter of destiny, the vicegerent of God, “the equal of the Apostles”. A great army of functionaries, designated with grandiloquent titles, formed his court. Their costumes were of silk and other costly fabrics, appropriate for the long elaborate ceremonies which constantly took place. Perhaps it was the reception of foreign ambassadors which afforded the best occasion for display. The sovereign, clad in his imperial robes, stiff with cloth of gold and glittering with jewels, sat on his golden throne in the apse at the end of the great apartment. Near him was a golden plane tree on which mechanical birds were perched. Two golden lions crouched beside the throne and two gryphons flanked its sides. The rarest treasures were exhibited in the alcoves. In their rich embroidered robes the court dignitaries, ranged in order of etiquette, awaited the entrance of the envoy. As he entered the mechanical birds on the plane tree began to sing and flutter: the lions roared and the notes of an organ pealed. The ambassador prostrated himself on the floor.

When he looked up he beheld the throne suspended in the air with the Emperor clad in a different but equally magnificent robe. The throne which had been carried through an aperture in the roof descended slowly to the floor. The ceremony will seem trivial to the modem mind, but it can well be imagined how it would astound the envoy of some barbaric nation whose mind had already been dazzled beyond conception by all the opulence of the imperial palace.

SIDE NOTE:

Added later…

Please excuse me. I’m still cream-crackered.

This post is my way of pointing out how much

beauty and goodness has been hijacked by THEM.

Owl, flowers, lions, eagles….Us People et al.

And also – how advanced our Barbarian forefathers actually were.